FAREWELL JUDE
Jude 25
Today we finish the book of Jude. Today we leave this small book and my prayerful desire for us is that we are more ready for the presence of Jesus Christ than we were on February 4th when we began this study. Jude taught us to step fully into the joy and delight of our salvation, to vigilant against false teachers and give them not one square inch in our lives or ministries. Jude has told us to be prayerful, merciful and righteous. He told us to always look back to the words of the Apostles and to always look forward to the coming of Christ.
In verse 25 there are 10 things about God that make Him worthy of our worship. We’ve covered seven: Oriented, Exclusive, Savior, Glorious, Majestic, Powerful, and Authority. Today we finish the last 3: Through Christ, Lord, and Eternal.
THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
Everything is through Jesus Christ. The NIV says, “to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, THROUGH Jesus Christ…” Other translations say the same thing but a little differently, like the NASB, “to the only God our Savior, THROUGH Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority…”
The relationship God has with creation is through Jesus Christ. Everything God does towards creation is through Him. And, everything God accepts from creation is through Jesus.
- God CREATED everything through Jesus (Colossians 1:16);
- God REVEALED Himself through Jesus (John 1:18; Heb 1:1-3);
- FORGIVENESS of sins is through Jesus Christ (Acts 10:43);
- the RESURRECTION will be through Jesus (John 5:25; and
- God will JUDGE the world through Jesus (John 5:22; Acts 10:42).
Here’s the thing about God: He will not be seen, comprehended, understood or imagined apart from His Son. He will not be approached in any other way than through His Son. He relates to creation through His Son, and creation MUST relate to Him through His Son.
As you read the Bible you see this truth about God: ever since the Fall man cannot approach God directly. We must have someone represent us. Someone must go-between us and God. Job represented his friends to God at the end of the book. God spoke to Moses – not the nation – and had Moses communicate his messages to the people.
In the OT PRIESTHOOD you see the same thing. No one could come near to God. Everyone had to bring their offering to the priests who would take it and do the actual physical work of the sacrifice. Most powerfully you see it in the ritual of the Day of Atonement. No one ever is allowed to go into the Holy of Holies in the Temple where God’s presence was. Only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies and he could only go in on that one day each year – the Day of Atonement. He represented the people to God. He was the only acceptable man to God and in accepting that one man God accepted the nation. No one could march in, rip the curtain back and say, “He God, here I am, I’m all done having these guys represent me, I want to represent myself.” That was suicide.
Why, though? Why can’t we just go directly to God ourselves? The answer is our sin. Sin is our problem. Remember the Fall, where Adam and Eve sinned. The disastrous result them and all of humanity after them had numerous facets to it. But one of the defining consequences of that sin was the alienation of man from God. Separation. No more “together-ness.” God would NOT reunite with man in his sinful condition and man COULD NOT go to God on his own behalf. Thus, someone.
The sin of man makes him utterly unworthy to be presented to God. God in all His majestic holiness will not put up with sin in His presence and so he condemns it, and brings judgment on it. But what do you do if you’re God and the thing you condemn is also the thing you love. What do you do when in righteous judgment you must and will punish forever sinful man, yet at the same time you love that man and want fellowship with him?
What you do is you plan from before the foundation of the world to send your Son, your Only Son, into the world to save that sinful man you love. In your perfect wisdom you plan it so that man will have Someone else represent him to You. Someone who is perfect and righteous and holy as you are. That Someone is your Son, whom you would send into the world to man, by becoming a man.
And so your son went to the Cross to represent man on the cross in death. On the cross he represented all of sinful mankind as all of man’s sins were imputed to Him. Which means that although He was perfectly holy as God is, because He was also God and not just man, it means that God looked upon him and treated Him AS THOUGH HE WERE IN FACT GUILTY of ALL OF MAN’S SIN. So in death Jesus bore our sins and in doing so He represented us in all our guilt before God so that all of God’s just judgment against our sin would fall on Him and not us.
And now He represents us in Heaven. Our entire standing before God is based on the fact Jesus is alive, accepted by God, and since we are joined to Jesus by faith, God also accepts us. WHoever accepts the Son accepts the Father. Whoever accepts the Son will be accepted by the Father.
The arrangement that everything to God is through Jesus Christ is at the same time God’s sanctification of Jesus Christ. God has set forth His Son as the one and only way, thus setting Him apart from all other way. Jesus is holy in every way, but in this way he is holy because He is the exclusive way to God – as God has determined.
APPLICATION: Understand that your faith in the Jesus God has sent, and your rejection of all other gods and of all other gospels, is a testimony of the holiness of Christ. To say, “Jesus and only Jesus saves. Jesus and only Jesus is Lord” is to declare Him as the holy one of God, whom God has made holy by making him the only way. Declare, therefore, boldly, therefore, Christ and Christ alone. Do not put up for one moment with any notion that He has an equal, that others are like him. None are like Him. God has a son and He has no other son but Him. Do not show up on Judgment day finding out there and then that you were wrong.
APPLICATION: Make everything in your life to God, through Jesus.
APPLICATION: Roman Catholicism
JESUS OUR LORD
So everything is through Jesus, and Jesus is Lord. Jude says, “through Jesus Christ our Lord…” Lord is the word that means Master, the one to whom it all belongs and who has sovereign rule over all that belongs to Him.
That is exactly what Jesus is. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Mt 28:18). Showing how subordinate to Jesus all angels are Hebrews 1 says, “Let all God’s angels worship Him” and “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.” Turn to Daniel 7 with me and see how Daniel describes the Lordship of Jesus Christ… Colossians 1 says, “Revelation is one long declaration of Christ as Lord:
- Jesus introduces himself to the church of Laodicea, “These are the words of Him who is …the ruler of God’s creation” (3:14)
- “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah” (12:10);
- “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (11:15)
Ephesians 1:20-21 gloriously pronounce, “God exerted His power when he raised CHrist from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”
Colossians 1:16, “all things have been created through Him – rulers, authorities, thrones and powers, He is before all things..”
Thomas felt the hands and scars of Jesus and fell on his knees declaring, “My LORD and my God” declaring the divinity of Jesus and the authority of Jesus – the divine authority and Lordship of Jesus.
First Corinthians 12 states, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Romans 10:9 says, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.”
APPLICATION: Lords are obeyed. Lordship means authority and authority means obedience. Jesus is Lord and so Jesus is obeyed. The Lordship of Jesus was seen in creation, in miracles, in driving out demons, in healings, in resurrections.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Obedience to Jesus is on display most clearly in believers. Our faith in Jesus as our Savior is at the same time our faith in Jesus our LORD. In other words, we prove He is our Savior by proving He is our Lord.
False teachers deny Jesus our Lord. Jude said in verse 4, “they deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” False Christians reject and disobey the commands of Jesus OUR Lord. They prove He is not THEIR Lord by their rejection of His commands and teachings. But we prove we are His and He is ours because we obey Him. Jude emphasizes that Jesus is OURS so much because He is emphasizing that WE belong to Jesus and all those frauds do not. “But many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we do miracles and prophesy and drive out demons in your name?’ But I will tell them, ‘Away from me you evil doers. I never knew you.’” My theory is that when they say to him “Lord, Lord” its the first time they’ve ever addressed him as Lord. They didn’t live their lives for Him as Lord. Their fraudulent ministries were never to glorify Him as Lord. But on their Judgment Day they see what they re
ALL TIME
Here we have the idea of eternalness. God is eternal. He is praised and glorified “before all ages, now, and forevermore.” Past. Present. Future.
The first and maybe most standout thought is that God is worthy to be glorified for all eternity. He has always been worthy, He is worthy, and He always will be worthy.
The second thought that I have about this is God is eternal. He is God, always has been God, and always will be God. Again driving home the thought of His eternality. He is without beginning and without End.
But now listen to this! God is eternal but that is not all Jude is saying. Jude, like all NT authors, is also saying Jesus is eternal. Can you see it? Notice that the doxology is ascribing glory to God through Jesus Christ….BEFORE all ages, now, and FOREVERMORE. How can God be glorified before all ages through Jesus Christ UNLESS Jesus Christ was with Him? In the beginning was the Word and the Word was WITH God..” John 1:1 says. But I only quoted half the verse, the last part says, “And the Word WAS God.” Jesus is God. Jesus, the Son of God eternally preexisted before all creation, with God, because Jesus is not created.
I remember my first year of preaching I started preaching through John’s Gospel. I preached on Jesus being eternal, and having existed with God, as God, before all time in eternity. An older sister in the faith came up afterwards in shock. She said she had never really realized that Jesus existed prior to His birth as a human.
CONCLUSION:
Farewell Jude. And Thank you Jude. Thank you for teaching us to delight in our salvation, to be vigilant for false teachers, to leave well for Christ, and to worship our all-worthy God. Thank you for making us better prepared than we were on February 4th to be presented to Jesus Christ