Hallelujah, What A Savior

It has come to my attention in
the last year or so, and don’t ask me why, it’s just come to
that now, but when I walk, I shuffle my feet a lot. And as a result, I tend to trip
a lot. Outside of our house, the sidewalk,
there’s one little panel of sidewalk that is just raised above the
previous one. And so when I walk to the mailbox,
if I’m not thinking about it or whatever, I often hit that
little raised portion of the sidewalk and I trip. And I may
look really goofy, but I haven’t fallen and I don’t fall. Why do you tell us that? Well,
today we’re going to be looking at the book of Jude, specifically
versus 24, specifically 24 and a little of 25. But as Christians, we need to realize
that we’re gonna stumble, but we will not fall. We are
saved to a glorious end. And so we have this passage in
Jude, it’s a benediction. and let me read it for you now
to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you
stand in the presence of his glory blameless and with great
joy to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord
be glory majesty dominion and authority before all time now
and forever amen I remember this passage from when I was probably
junior high or high school age, and I read this and it struck
me immediately. He’s able to keep me from stumbling
and to present me faultless with great joy. And I, what? It struck me and
I thought, how is that gonna happen? Because
I am very faulty. And it just hit me, even though
I didn’t know all that went into that. And so when we go over
this this morning, I want you to be in awe of what God through
Christ is doing and what it will result in for you, the follower
of Christ. And that’s why I’m calling the
sermon, Hallelujah, What a Savior. I had many titles up until Friday
and said, you know what? Hallelujah, what a Savior for
what He has done for us. Little background on the book
of Jude. Not much to it, 25 verses. It’s written by Jude, okay? Jude and James, James the leader
of the Jerusalem church, the one who wrote the book of James,
are brothers, half brothers of Jesus Christ. Now as a parent,
I am proud of my children. But if you went up to Mary and
say, how are your children doing? Oh, well, James, he was a leader
of a church, and he wrote a letter. Oh, Jude’s also, he wrote a letter,
and it was published in the Bible. And their half-brother, Jesus,
is the son of God. We have no reason to boast. So
the book of Jude is a warning against apostasy. Verse three. He’s telling the believers to
earnestly contend or struggle for the faith. In verse 18, he’s
telling them to remember and just hope for the grace of our
God which will appear. But in between, it’s all about
apostasy. It’s about those who have fallen
away. In 2 Peter, we read that there will be false teachers
who will be coming. In Jude, they’re there. And so
that’s what Jude is warning against, a falling away from the faith. So he writes this letter and
then in verse 24 and 25 he concludes with a benediction. Now to him
again who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you
stand in the presence of his glory blameless and with great
joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time,
now and forever. Amen. And so the first point
I want you to get here is that believers are entrusted to a
divine guardian. As you can see through the quick
summary of Jude I just gave you, stumbling here is not sinning.
We are sinners and we’re going to sin. We are called, regenerated
by God, made alive from our spiritually dead condition. We are justified,
as we have been talking about in Sunday school. We are declared innocent, but
it doesn’t mean we’re gonna stop sinning. Our nature does not
change. but our status in Christ changes. Now, probably a lot of your versions
say stumbling. He who is able to keep you from
stumbling. I actually like what the New Revised and King James
have, and that is falling, to keep you from falling. He is
able to keep you from falling, falling away from the faith,
losing the faith from apostasy. And so this part, is there a
clicking going on here? This part of the verse deals
with perseverance of the saints, which is one of the doctrines
of grace. It means eternal security. As a Christian, you can’t lose
your faith. It shows that those who are truly in Christ will
not fall away. And this is probably a duh statement,
but it’s mightily important. Because left in our own strength
and in our own human faith, we would, we would fall away. We sing the hymn, Come Thou Fount
of Every Blessing. Barry used this a couple weeks
ago in his sermon. It says, prone to wander, Lord,
I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.
Thomas Manton wrote, we do not fall because God does not let
our hands slip from his. Our necessities, and difficulties
are so great that nothing less than divine power can support
us. We are like a staff in a man’s
hand. Take away the hand and the staff
falls to the ground. Last week in his sermon, Frank
talked about the got God theology or mentality where many churches
are saving people with the promise that God wants you to be free
of problems, wants you to be well off. And that sounds great. I mean, who wouldn’t buy into
that? And there are so many who come
to the faith believing that. But as you know, as a follower
of Christ, it goes completely against what Scripture teaches.
Scripture gives us instead warnings. Stresses the difficulties that
will come as a result of being a follower in Christ Matthew
10 22 You will be hated By all because of my name, but it is
the one who has endured to the end who will be saved 2nd Timothy
tweet 312 indeed all to who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus
will be persecuted John 16, 33. Jesus tells his followers that
in this world, the follower of Christ will have trouble. Philippians 1, 29. For to you,
it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in
him, but also to suffer for his sake. Persecuted, hated, suffer,
These are just some of the passages that tell us of the trouble the
Christian will face. And there is certainly, that’s
not all of it, but it’s not the message that the God Christians
were given. There are also commands that
we are to follow. Take up your cross and follow
me. Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. Love your
neighbor as yourself. Be holy. as I am holy, love your
enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. And there are
more. Following Christ is a demanding
commitment, and it is why Jesus told potential followers to count
the cost. So it is no wonder, considering
what the calling entails, that we need to be kept from stumbling. to be kept from falling. And
it doesn’t happen without God’s moving. Without a God-giving,
and as John MacArthur calls it, supernatural faith, left on our
own, without God’s intervention, without a God’s gift of faith,
we will not have the protection needed to survive the difficulties
and demands a follower of Christ will encounter. I want to take
just a few moments to examine why that is. The first one, it’s
pretty easy and it’s going to be really quick. We wouldn’t
even want to be a follower of Christ. Without God’s moving,
without His intervention, we wouldn’t even want to follow
Christ. We weren’t looking to follow
Christ. We didn’t want to follow Christ.
You might want to argue that point. But scripture says otherwise. These verses are probably familiar
to you. Romans 3, 10 and 11, there is none righteous, not
even one. There’s none who understands. There’s none who seeks for God.
There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 5, 10, for if while we
were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his
son, much more having been reconciled we shall be saved by his life
we while we were enemies we were his enemy okay that’s number
one that was quick and it was easy number two why we need to
be kept from stumbling because in our own strength without God
given faith our human faith will fall I want to give you four
reasons for this. Now, you exercise faith every
day. You’ve exercised it already this
morning. When you got up, you got out
of bed, you put your feet on the ground, you trusted that
the ground was going to hold you. You turned on the water
this morning from the faucet, and knowing most of you, it was
to make coffee. But you turned on the water,
and you expected water to come out. You got in your car, turned
on the car, you turned the key, you had faith that the car would
start. You drove here, you came to a
green light, and you had faith that the person coming the other
way was going to obey the laws of the road and stop at that
red light. You came in here, and you chose
a place to sit. And you trusted that when you
sat down, the pew would hold you. Why? Because you’ve had
experience with these things. You’ve had years and years of
experience with these things. You know what’s going to happen
because it’s happened over and over. Now, many of you may be
familiar with that team building exercise where one person gets
up on a step and they fall backwards, trusting that the people behind
them will catch them. I’ve been a part of that little
test. I’ve seen it many times. I have
never, maybe you have seen it, I have never seen somebody get
up and just go back. It’s always, they catch themselves. Why? They don’t have experience
with the two people behind them. They don’t know who they are.
Can they really hold me? Oh, that guy, I’m not a real,
he’s He’s not a big fan of me. He may let me go on purpose. The variables change. Your experience
with them is not much. And your control has been taken
away a little bit. So when variables change, our
faith tends to fall. So number one, our human faith
is small. Our human faith is small. In
Matthew 17, Jesus encounters a woman who wants him to heal
her demon-possessed son. And she says, I brought him to
your disciples, but they could not heal him. Jesus heals the
son, and later the disciples want to know, well, why couldn’t
we heal him? 1720. Matthew 1720. Because of the littleness of
your faith. For truly, I say to you, if you
have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,
move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will
be impossible to you. Imagine, these are the disciples
who have been with Jesus 24-7. They have seen Him do miraculous
things, yet their faith is still small. It’s a pre-Spirit given
faith. They have not yet received the
Spirit and their faith is small. So, how would you measure up?
Our faith is not only small, but it’s ever-changing. Can you
think of a time in your life where you once believed something
and then changed that belief? Those of you who are married,
when you went into a marriage You had preconceived notions.
You thought, this is the way it’s going to go. This is how
we will interact. This is how roles will be defined.
And then you got into it. It wasn’t necessarily like that. Maybe you had to change your
thinking. Maybe you had to change the way the roles were defined. Carolyn works till 7 o’clock
at night. I thought it was insensitive
of me to when she came in at 7.15, what’s for dinner? So I said, you know what, I’ll
make dinner. And I kind of enjoyed it. And
so the cooking duties are shared quite a bit in our house. You
parents out there, you had preconceived ideas of how you’re going to
raise your children. How you were going to discipline them?
Has that changed? In our family, discipline with
the kids, when they were little, the way you did one wasn’t going
to work with the other. And then you had three, and then,
OK, then it’s a whole other thing. And I don’t want to embarrass
him. He’s probably staring me down
right now. But I remember a time when I
was working out in the backyard in our house in Sunland, California,
and Colin was very young. He was probably three or four.
And he did something that I didn’t like. But with Colin, all you
had to do was give him a look. And that was it. Caden, on the
other hand, You might have to include words with him. So what
works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other. You’re thinking
changes of how to raise a child or what is necessary to do. How about some of you who are
younger, who are maybe just graduated from college or newly in the
workforce or so? As you have become more independent,
Have your beliefs in how things should operate in the world changed? Has your thinking changed? I
have a degree in organizational leadership, which is basically
a business degree. And so when I was going to college,
they teach you how things work in the business world, what to
expect if you owned your own business or were working for
a company. There’s a lot of book knowledge
there. But when you get out there, It’s a lot different because
there’s a lot of variables to get thrown at you. And so, to
me, experience is greater than book knowledge. Book knowledge
is great. It’s good to have that in your mind, but your experience
with something, with someone, is probably going to have you
change your thinking a little bit about how those things might
work. Our human faith is small. It’s
ever-changing and it is selfish. Back to the God faith again.
That mindset that God is there to serve you. That he is a tool
to accomplish what you want or how to achieve your goals. So,
again, you are told that God wants you to be happy. Wants
you to be successful. Wants you to become rich. And
you come to faith believing in that. So what happens to your
faith If you continue to have struggles, if you don’t have
the success you thought was due you, that God did not give you,
you didn’t become rich, God has not served you as you expected
him to. John MacArthur in his book, Hard
to Believe, he said that today’s churches, one that would preach
the got God mentality or the health and wealth mentality,
are creating a long line of people who will come before Jesus expecting
a reward. And instead they will hear, go
away, I never knew you. Our human faith is also weak. And I’m not trying to make fun
here, but we’ve all encountered it. Maybe, well I shouldn’t say
that it would be us, but we’ve all encountered it The one who
hears the gospel message and believes it and everything is
exciting. Everything is praise Jesus. They
read their Bible. They go to church. They go to
Bible study. They’re the ones who, you know,
I was going to the store the other day and I couldn’t find
my keys. So I prayed to God that he’d help me find my keys. And
I found them right in the pocket of the coat I was wearing at
work. Praise Jesus. Now I’m not trying to make fun
of praising Jesus because we should praise Him for everything,
but they’re so excited. And then a family member comes
and says, you’re going to be a hypocrite. That’s just a crutch. You’re going to have to stop
doing the things you remember you like to do. Friends don’t
invite you to parties anymore. Their enthusiasm starts to dampen.
They don’t read their Bible as much. They’re sporadic at Bible
study, and then they stop going to church. The worldly pleasures
and other pleasures get the best of them, and they fall away. Peter said, never will I deny
you. Peter did deny Christ, and Christ
was right in front of him. Peter was right there. And all
it took was a few people to say, hey, you were with the Galilean,
weren’t you? No, it wasn’t me. This is the same Peter who wrote
two letters in our Bible. The same Peter who preached on
the day of Pentecost and 3,000 people were converted. And he
denied Christ. Our human faith is weak. Sin is a powerful force. Ephesians 6, 12 says, Our struggle
is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against
the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against
the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Sin is
powerful. and it can look appealing. Psalm 141, 3 and 4 says, David
praying, set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over
the door of my lips. Do not incline my heart to any
evil thing. To practice deeds of wickedness
with men who do iniquity. And do not let me eat of their
delicacies. Here David’s asking for protection
against temptation. Spurgeon said about this, they
will bring out their sweet morsels and delicate dishes in the hope
of binding us to their service by means of our palates. The
trap is baited with delicious meats that we may be captured
and become meat for their malice. Sin is powerful. It can look
appealing and Satan is looking to use whatever means possible
to get us to fall away. Your enemy the devil prowls around
like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And then what happens when external
pressures mount? What about when you’re ridiculed
at work, belittled because of your faith? You’re left out of
the inner circle you once were part of You don’t get promoted. You lose friends and family over
your faith. What happens when life gets in
the way? Family issues. You lose a family member at an
age that in our humanness we would say is way too early. You
lose your job. You have financial pressures.
Your health fails. Your kids get health problems. in your own strength, would your
faith stand? Would you be Job? Or would you
be Job’s wife? R.C. Sproul said about the Christian
faith, faith is not something that is naturally exercised by
a fallen human being. Again, Thomas Manton said, all
means without the Lord’s grace will not keep us from falling.
When we consider our own infirmities and corrupt inclinations and
the sundry temptations and allurements that we meet with in the world,
the many discouragements which befall us in our heavenly course,
we think we shall never hold out to the end. So that want
of power is our greatest trouble. It doesn’t matter what resources
we have available to us. Without God’s grace, without
God’s divine guardianship, we would still fall away. However, the good news is here
in Jude, that Christ is able to keep us from stumbling and
it happens because of the gift package that we are given in
the process of salvation, which is all God’s doing. We were dead. That was the problem. God is
the one who moved first. We were dead in our transgressions,
spiritually dead in every sense, unable to respond, headed justifiably
to hell. The place that Jonathan Edwards
describes as a place of perfect hate. Webster defines dead as lacking
the power to move, feel, or respond. But God, being rich in mercy,
made you alive. He regenerated us, or in other
words, God gave us divine resuscitation. So, God called us. He resuscitated
us. provided forgiveness of sins
by Christ’s death and resurrection, by His grace granted us the gift
of faith, and in the process He is sanctifying us by the Holy
Spirit. And as a result, as 2 Corinthians
5.17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away.
Behold, new things have come. We are completely different people
when God resuscitates us. We have a love for God, no longer
enemies. We have peace with God, Romans
5, 1. We are able to understand exactly
what Christ came and accomplished for us, and therefore we should
have a hatred of sin. It was January 28th, 1977. I was in 11th grade. And we went
to a… I’ve mentioned him before, Ken
Miedema. He’s a blind pianist, songwriter, singer. And he was performing at a church
in Rolling Hills, California. And we went that night. I was an athlete in high school, surrounded by everything that
accompanies an athlete, the talk, all that. After that concert,
the next morning, I woke up to Rick Dees in Kiss FM in LA. That was what woke me up in the
morning. And it was just like that. What am I listening to? All of
a sudden, the jokes and the things that we were saying in the locker
room and in the team weren’t funny anymore. What is happening to me? Everything
was changed. There was a sensitivity to what
I was listening to, to what I was hearing, to what I was speaking
about. I was a new creature. We have the power within us to
overcome temptation. That power is not our power.
It’s God’s power. We want to live for God. We want
to tell others about Him. Our priorities change. We can
consider trials a joy, as James says. We have a peace that passes
all understanding. We have a true comforter in times
of sorrow. We have the fruit, all of the
fruit, of the Spirit. We are given the ability to trust
in God, the one who has all power in him. And we’re able to give
him control of our lives. Ezekiel 19 through 20, and I
will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them.
And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and
give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statues and
keep my ordinances and do them. then they will be my people and
I will be their God. And most important, we are given
divine protection that is needed to preserve us. Salvation is
secure. The question is, why would God
go through all this? Why would he take us through
this whole process? Why would he resuscitate us?
Why would He justify us, declare us innocent, if He wasn’t going
to see us to the end? James Boyce, in his book, The
Doctrines of Grace, said, For those who have been brought to
faith in Christ, having been foreknown and predestined to
faith by God from eternity past, having been called, regenerated,
and justified in this life and having been so set on the road
to ultimate glorification that this culminating glorification
can even be spoke of in the past tense meaning it’s a done deal
that these persons will and never can be lost perseverance is implied
in each preceding doctrine of grace and is a logical consequence
of salvation being the work of an eternally loving and utterly
immutable unchanging God. In other words, since God does
all this for us, why would He let us lose our salvation? Meaning
that the other doctrines of faith don’t necessarily mean as much
without perseverance of the faith. If He can do all that for us
and we can still lose our faith, but we can’t. I mentioned the
hymn Come thou fount of every blessing. When I said prone to
wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.
But the verse goes on. Here’s my heart, O take and seal
it. Seal it for thy courts above. And that’s exactly what God does
for us. We are sealed and protected. John 10 verse 27 begins, My sheep hear
my voice, and I know them. and they follow me and I give
eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one
no one will snatch them out of my hand my father who has given
them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch
them out of the father’s hand I and the father are one first
Peter one beginning in verse three blessed be the God and
father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy
has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance
which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away reserved
in heaven for you you who are protected by the power of God
through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last
time. It was He who brought us to faith
and He will not let us go. Paul writes again in Romans 8,
for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord. And glory be to God because he
accomplishes this for us. One wrote, when the difficulties
of salvation are sufficiently understood, we will need explicit
thoughts of the divine power before we can with any confidence
trust ourselves with Christ and go on encouraged in doing good. So this benediction in Jude 24
shows us that not only are believers entrusted to a divine guardian,
that is most important, but it leads to my last two points.
Believers are presented to God as a completed project. Now to Him who is able to keep
you from stumbling and to stand in His glorious presence blameless. First off, we have to address
the fact that we are standing in His glorious presence. That
in and of itself is amazing. In Scripture, when people are
confronted with the glory of God, they’re not standing. And if they are, they’re not
for long. In Exodus 33, 18 through 23, Moses wanted to get a glimpse
of God’s glory, to show God saying that to show Moses that he had
found favor with God. God says I will do this thing
that you have asked. Then Moses said I pray you show
me your glory and he said I myself will make all my goodness pass
before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you
and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show
compassion on whom I will show compassion but he said you cannot
see my face for no man can see me and live Lord said, behold,
there is a place by me and you shall stand there on the rock
and it will come about while my glory is passing by that I
will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my
hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away
and you shall see my back, but my face you shall not see. Matthew 17, the transfiguration. Peter, James, and John are with
Jesus and then Moses and Elijah are there. talking with Jesus
that in and of itself again would cause me to fall down in amazement
but then a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice out of the cloud
said this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased listen
to him what happened then Peter James and John fell face down
on the ground and they were terrified. John, when writing the book of
Revelation, describing the voice that was coming from behind him, he turned around to look at who
it was and he fell on his face like a dead man. Abraham fell
to the ground in Genesis 17. Ezekiel also fell like a dead
man in Ezekiel 1. Isaiah cursed himself in Isaiah
6. So for us to stand in his presence,
which I am only guessing here, but we’ll quickly turn to bowing,
is an amazing thing. And to stand there blameless,
without fault? When speaking about healings
in the New Testament, one said that God’s healings are always
complete. Meaning, for the lame man who
took up his pallet and walked, he didn’t walk with a limb. For
the blind man who he healed, he didn’t need corrective glasses
for a while while his eyes adjusted. His healings were complete. And so one said about our being
presented faultless, our Lord never stops short of perfection
in his work of love. The Savior, who means to keep
his people to the end, will not present them at last just alive,
all stained and foul as when he helped them out of the miry
places. He will present them how? faultless. Keep in mind
this is not just a picture of justification. It’s justification
and sanctification complete. This is the picture of Jesus
Christ presenting the church without spot or wrinkle before
the Father. You’re in your glorified body.
This is what Dan was talking about earlier. You have fought
the good fight. You have kept the faith or he
has kept you in the faith. This is the graduation ceremony.
This is the ultimate retirement. Now, I think of some of you who
are retired, and I get jealous a little bit because I don’t
want to get up at 530 every morning. I don’t want to have deadlines.
I don’t want to have to do this or have to do that. And so I
think, man, retirement is just perfect. And hearing those laughs,
Explain. Retirement might be great, but
the cares of the world have not gone away. There are still pressures. There are financial pressures.
There are health pressures. There are numerous things. It’s
not perfect, but here it’s perfect. The work is finished, and the
cares of this world are gone. There is no night there. No more
cares, no more tears, no more temptations to sin, no more traps
and snares set by the enemy. Again, all the work of Christ,
not only does he keep us in the faith, he keeps us in the faith,
he keeps us from falling into apostasy, but here we are with
our glorified bodies being presented before God, lameless. Colossians
1. 21 through 23, and although you
were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death
in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond
reproach. We sang the hymn, My Hope is
Built on Nothing Less. The fourth verse of that hymn
says, when He shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then
in Him be found, dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless,
to stand before the throne.” You have accomplished what Paul
wrote to Timothy about. You have fought the good fight.
You have finished the race. You have kept the faith. And
now you will be rewarded with a crown of righteousness. Spurgeon
said, it will be a blessed hour when sin shall at last give up
the ghost, when there shall not even the tendency to sin within
our nature. Then we shall be presented faultless
before the throne of God. So again, this benediction not
only shows us that believers are entrusted to a divine guardian,
that believers are presented to God as a completed project,
but that Christ rejoices. Now to Him who was able to keep
you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of
His glory blameless with great joy.” With great joy. Not only are we kept from falling,
we are presented to God blameless and He does it with great joy.
We will be filled with great joy. But Christ is joyful to
do this. I would understand it in that
after keeping us and presenting us blameless, basically carrying
us to the finish line, that Jesus would be, yeah, you should be
full of joy. I got you here. But He is joyful
also. Hebrews 12.2 says, fixing our
eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for
the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. In
Luke, we have three parables, Luke 15. Lost coin, lost sheep,
lost son. The parables are to show us the
joy that one receives when something of value is found. and it represents
the joy in heaven when a sinner is converted. Part of that is
the prodigal son, and after basically telling his father that he wishes
he were dead by asking for his inheritance now, the prodigal
son goes off and squanders the inheritance. Then he comes back,
tail between his legs, and as he’s coming back, the father
who represents God the Father in this parable sees him and
goes out to him. Eager to extend forgiveness,
he sees the son far off and he runs to meet him. Christ presents
us with great joy as he sees what his accomplishment has produced. A sinner converted, standing
faultless faultless before the Father Spurgeon said this who
will have joy I ask again why Christ will have the most joy
of all angels and ministers and you yourselves having more joy
than you could ever imagine will scarce no such joy as he will
have all his sheep safely folded every stone of the building placed
in its proper position all the blood-bought and blood-washed
ones who all whom the Father gave him delivered out of the
jaw of the lion, all whom he covenanted to redeem effectually
saved. His stipulations all carried
out. The covenant not only ratified, but fulfilled in all its jots
and tittles. Verily, none will be so happy
as the great surety in that day. As the bridegroom rejoices over
his bride, so shall Christ rejoice over you. Can you imagine what
it will be like? you can try, but it will be much
more glorious than you can envision. Now the benediction closes, to
the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory,
majesty, dominion and authority before all time now and forever.
Amen. If you are a true follower of
Christ, when you think about what Christ has accomplished
on your behalf, When you consider who He is and who you are, even
on your best day. Even on your best day, you’re
just a sinner saved by grace. When you remember that you were
an enemy of God, dead in your trespasses and sins, unable to
respond, that God made you alive. He regenerated you. That God,
through the filter of Christ, sees you as legally innocent,
justified. that God has provided you as
forgiveness at the cross, that God has provided you with a supernatural
faith and has entrusted you to a divine guardian that will enable
you to finish the race, that God has sealed you and provided
you with the Holy Spirit to guide, comfort, convict us of sin, empower
us to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. In light of all
that, How can we not be overflowing with praise and worship of Him? It will be a great day. But I
would be remiss if I did not also mention that the return
of the Lord will not be a day of joy for many. For those who
do not have faith in God, the divine faith that is necessary,
that day will not be a day of joy. Instead it will be a day
of judgment. Spurgeon again said to those
of whom God’s grace has never yet been accepted by you. It
is a sad state of heart for any man to be in to be excluded self
excluded from the general acclamations of joy in the presence of God
because you feel no such joy and cannot therefore unite in
such acclamations. So if you’re going through life
in your own strength, if you’re not bothered by your sin, if
Jesus Christ is not both Savior and Lord, if you have not or
are not willing to let Christ have the reins to your life,
to follow His leading, then the day of the Lord’s appearing will
not be a day of joy. It will be a day of terror For
in that day, he will either say, enter into the joy of your master
or go away. I never knew you. Just as there
is a heaven, there is also a hell. And it is real. And like heaven,
it is eternal. Christ went to the cross to pay
for those sins. He wants that to be a day of
joy for you. He wants you to stand forgiven.
justified, faultless before His glorious presence, and He will
do that. He will protect you, keep you
from falling, if only you will believe in what He has accomplished
on the cross for you and follow in His ways. Make Him Lord of
your life. It’s a promise. And I guarantee
the pure joy, peace, and contentment that comes from following Him
is more satisfying and complete than any supposed joy or peace
or contentment that might come from anything the world can offer.”
We’re going to close in a minute with, He will hold me fast. When I was preparing this sermon,
I thought, oh, He will hold me fast. That would be a good one
to close with. And then on Monday or Tuesday, I went back and I
just, let me just see all that’s in it. He might as well just have entitled
this Jude 24. When I fear my faith will fail,
Christ will hold me fast. When the tempter would prevail,
He will hold me fast. I could never keep my hold through
life’s fearful path, for my love is often cold. He must hold me
fast. Those He saves are His delight.
Christ will hold me fast. Precious in His holy sight, He
will hold me fast. He’ll not let my soul be lost.
His promises shall last. Bought by Him at such a cost,
He will hold me fast. For my life He bled and died,
Christ will hold me fast. Justice has been satisfied, He
will hold me fast. Raised with Him to endless life,
He will hold me fast. Till our faith is turned to sight,
He will hold when He comes at last. Our Heavenly Father, we
are amazed, at least I am amazed at what all you have done for
us and accomplished for us in the process of salvation. Made
us alive when we were dead. Declare us legally innocent. Continue to work with us when
we are in our sinful ways. Continue the sanctification process
in us. than holding us that we will
not fall. Father, we are so indebted to
you for keeping us and holding us so that we cannot be lost. Father, let us show our thanks
because words fail. Words are not enough. But as we have our time here
on this earth, let us walk in the ways of Christ, and be completely
devoted to Him and His ways, and help us to share this good
news with others who so badly need to hear it. We thank You,
O God, for all You accomplish for us. And it is in the name
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself up for
us, that we pray these things. Amen.