Word of Salvation – Vol. 20 No.06 – November 1973
Our All Sufficient Saviour
Sermon by Rev. K. J. Campbell, B.A., B.D. on Jude 24
SCRIPTURE READINGS: Jeremiah 32:36-44; Jude 1-8, 16-25
PSALTER HYMNAL: (new) 190; 184 (Opening); 121 (Law); 378;
445; 373:4 (Doxology)
The Word of God is a word for all seasons! The Word of God can meet and satisfy the needs of every possible life situation. As we as Christians continue on our pilgrimage through this life towards the heavenly city, towards the New Jerusalem, towards the new heavens and the new earth. . . as we journey towards that great day when Jesus Christ will return and glorify us with himself, as we press on towards the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus, as we face the complexities of life day by day. . . it is the Word of God which comes to us in all its sufficiency and meets each need that we may have at any given moment.
The Word of God is a word for all seasons! It comes to call us to repentance. It comes to rebuke and to chasten when we need correction. But, it comes also to encourage us. It comes as a word of hope and a word of joy. It comes to comfort and to console. It calls forth the confession of a sinful and sorrowful heart. But, it also calls forth praise and thanksgiving for the grace of God that supplies every need.
Now you know that the Christian life is a glorious life full of hope, full of the knowledge and the experience of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Yet, you also know that the Christian life is not an easy life. We are involved in spiritual battles day by day. For instance, I’m sure you know how hard it is to get down to pray some- times. Satan keeps you busy or offers you all sorts of excuses for not praying just so he can deprive you of that time of fellowship and communication with your Saviour God. That’s a spiritual battle.
Life as a Christian can be a real struggle from time to time. There’s the confusion you young people have to face with all the cross currents of secular thinking. For six hours a day for five days a week you are subjected to what secular man has to say about life and teach about death. Then you come home to discover that the Bible says the exact opposite. Constantly you have to re-examine your thinking and get rid of all the non-biblical principles and opinions on life. The Christian life is not easy.
For all of us, never before in our life time have the opportunities for falling into sin, the opportunities for giving way to temptation been greater and more plentiful. With all the wealth about us and the moral laxity and the downgrading of authority, the Christian life is not made easier. Just one evening’s viewing of T.V. is a measure of the difficulty, Christians have in living out this life to the glory of God. More often than not portrayed on the T.V. are the very things God condemns, but these things are not portrayed as evil, instead they are portrayed as exciting, things that you should want, things that you should try out in life, things you should get, things to envy over. It seems the least exciting thing in life today is the worshipping and serving of God. Everything we face and meet in life seems to be against us living consistently as Christians. It is a day in which it is very easy to accept the temptation offered, to fall into sin, to backslide, even to apostatize. Thus the greater joy, the greater blessing when we read in the Word of God:
“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever.”
The Word of God is a word for all seasons!
Our text sets our hearts and minds upon the only one who can help us through the daily complexities of life. The one who can aid us and keep us as we battle against Satan and struggle against sin. Our text is a word of encouragement, a word of joy, a word of exceeding joy! It is a word of praise! because it tells us about the ability of our Saviour God. His ability to keep us. His ability to keep us from falling. His ability to present us faultless before the presence of his glory.
Our text says, “Now unto him who is ABLE”. The very source of our encouragement in this life is the ABILITY of our Saviour. The ground of our assurance of salvation is in this ability of God. Ephesians 3:20 says,
“Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”
God’s ability is his power. That sovereign power which brought the whole of creation into being. That sovereign power which has brought every historical moment to its pre-ordained end. That sovereign power which divided the Red Sea, dried up the Jordan River, made the Sun stand still, brought down the walls of Jericho, gave Gideon his victory over the tens of thousands with his mere three hundred, gave life to Jonah in the fish’s belly for three days, raised up Lazarus from the dead, brought to pass the miracles of Jesus and his apostles, raised up Jesus from the dead, and which has preserved the Church of Jesus Christ throughout all ages. When Jude says God is able, then he means that He is powerful over all. Paul in Romans 16:25 says,
“Now to him that is of POWER to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ.
Do we recognise and acknowledge this ability, this power of God? When the problems of each day come upon us whose ability do we rely on to overcome them? As a Christian wife and mother how do you handle those moments of frustration and temptation? As a Christian worker where do you find your strength to face a difficult situation? As a Christian student whose ability do you rely on to restrain you when you are confronted with the invitation to sin?
In whose ability do we trust?
Who has ability in which we can trust?
You know that sinful secular man thinks he has the ability. He thinks he has the ability to fix all the problems and difficulties he makes for himself. If he hasn’t an answer now he thinks science will eventually find it for him. Education was supposed to be the answer of all social and moral problems, but it seems that the more educated society becomes the more immoral it becomes. The smarter man becomes, the smarter his excuses for his immorality.
Who has the ability to handle the spiritual and the moral problems of today? Man decidedly hasn’t got that ability. God alone is able. “Now unto him who is able”, who is powerful. That’s the direction Jude sets our eyes and our attention – to him who is able!
To our Saviour God we are to turn.
our trust for help, for encouragement,
for strength is to be in him, for he alone is ABLE.
Oh, blessed thought, that we have such a one, such an able one, to trust in.
The writer of this following chorus had come to know and to experience this ability of God. The writer says,
“He’s able, He’s able, I know he is able,
I know my Lord is able to carry me through.
He healed the broken hearted,
He set the prisoner free,
He made the lame to walk again,
And caused the blind to see.
He is able, He is able, I know he is able,
I know my Lord is able to carry you through.”
Our Lord is able, able to do what? He is able to KEEP YOU, keep you from falling. God’s power is directed towards keeping you, God’s power and almighty ability is directed towards making all things work together for your good. When our text says “God is able to keep you, it means that all the resources of his power are utilised for watching over you, for guarding you, for defending you, for protecting you. The very same word is used in 2Peter 2:5 where, speaking about the flood and Noah, Peter says,
“And God spared not the old world, but SAVED Noah the eighth person.”
That is, God protected Noah, he guarded him, he KEPT him, even to the point of saving him. And so with you and I, our Lord God, our Saviour Jesus Christ is able to keep us, to preserve us even unto salvation.
“Ye are KEPT by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” says 1Peter 1:5.
Haven’t you experienced this power of God, this ability of God keeping you? Restraining you from sin? Protecting you from the full forces of evil? Delivering you from temptation? That is the blessing you should be conscious of. When you look upon the folly of unsaved sinners and their sin, you can truly say “there go I, but for the grace of God, but for the power of God, but for KEEPING by God.”
Paul who underwent great suffering and much trial in his life as a Christian was still able to say near the end of his life in his second letter to Timothy 1:12,
“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is ABLE TO KEEP that which I have committed unto him against that day.”
Paul had committed himself and all his labours unto the Lord and he was confident that his Saviour God had the ability to keep him and the fruit of his labours, had the ability to protect and to bless.
Do we manifest the same confidence in our Saviour?
Have we committed our whole selves to him?
Do we really believe that he can keep us in every situation we may find ourselves in?
Our text says “He is able to keep you FROM FALLING”. God has promised a certain and a sure salvation for his people. He will not let us fall into apostasy. He will not let us fall from grace. Here is that blessed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints! In Jeremiah 32:40-41, does not our God say,
“I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them. . . but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul.”
And Jesus Christ himself said, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Jesus Christ employs daily for your sake and for mine the whole power of the Godhead to keep us from falling away. The love of God that chose us from before the foundation of the world is the love that is with us day by day, keeping us for eternity. Our Saviour keeps us by guarding us from any temptation too great for us to withstand. He over-rules such temptation:
“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
“If God be for us, who can be against us?”
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” says Paul, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, (Romans 8:37-39).
What situation, what problem, what difficulty we may face in life, what temptation is too great for our Lord to handle? He is able to keep each one of us who truly belongs to him from falling. And not only is he able, he is willing, and he does keep us.
Where is your trust and confidence in the time of need?
Oh, let it be in the One who is able to help you eternally. Let it be in the One alone who can keep you from falling. Let it be in our Saviour God Jesus Christ.
But not only is our Lord able to keep us from falling, he is also able “to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” The ability of Christ our Saviour ex tends to the presenting of you and me before himself and before our Heavenly Father as though we were without spot and without wrinkle! Blameless! Unblemished! Without one fault! That’s how we are presented to our sovereign and holy and just God.
Have we the ability to present ourselves that way?
I couldn’t present myself before God as faultless, could you? I’m full of worthless faults. I’m full of sin. I can only say along with Augustus Toplady in his ‘Rock of Ages’,
“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me Saviour, or I die.”
But there is One who is able to do what seems impossible. There is One who has the ability, as Paul says in Colossians 1:22, to present me and “to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight” – in God’s sight. This he does in two ways: First, at this moment as believers in Jesus Christ we stand justified. We stand just and holy before the Throne of Grace. That is why we even dare to come before our sovereign and holy God. We have been enveloped, we have been covered, we have been clothed in the righteousness of our Saviour Jesus Christ. His righteousness before God has been reckoned to belong to each one who has saving faith in him. “Naked come to Thee for dress”, was how the hymn writer put it. In and of ourselves we stand naked, exposing all our faults, our fullness of sin. But Christ gives us a new ‘dress’ to wear. That dress is his righteousness which he obtained for us by his perfect obedience to God The Father. When that dress of righteousness by God’s grace is put on us then we are reckoned to be without fault, without spot, without blemish. We are reckoned to be just and holy. We are presented to Almighty God as such. This presentation takes place the moment we believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Oh what ability Christ has for our sake!
Now the dress of Christ’s righteousness, the dress of justification covers every spot and wrinkle, every fault. But, Christ does not leave it at that. Having covered our faults so that he can immediately present us before the Throne of God, he then carries on to completely eradicate those covered faults.
Secondly, then, by the work of sanctification Christ, through his Spirit, removes completely those covered spots and wrinkles, those infirmities and sin. As we carry on through this life Jesus Christ progressively moulds us after his own image, breaking down our sinful habits, gradually making us more holy, gradually taking away completely those covered spots and blemishes, so that he may present us to himself a glorious Church says Paul in Ephesians 5:27. Our Saviour sanctifies us so that we may enter into that full and perfect fellowship with our God. He makes us holy even as he is holy. On that great day when our Lord returns he will glorify us and present us to himself and to our Heavenly Father, every fault, every sin eradicated. We will stand before the glory of our Triune God. “For he is able to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”
“With exceeding joy!” Oh what gladness should be ours!
The ability of our Saviour God keeps us from falling, preserves us in our faith and hope, no matter what the situation may be or how great the difficulties we face. He is able to do exceeding abundantly for each of us. And beyond that he is able to present us as perfect, as his own glorious ‘bride’ on that great day when he comes again. He is able to present us holy before the presence of his glory.
Exceeding joy it will be when he appears and says to us, ‘Come ye blessed of my Father, enter into the Kingdom prepared for you’
‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.”
Oh what gladness it will be for us! What exceeding joy! We can joy even now in anticipation of that future glory, for by God’s grace we have already experienced the ability and power of our Saviour God. Already he is keeping us. Already he is taking us on that journey to the heavenly city. Already he has given us entrance to his Kingdom which will be manifested in all its glory on that day of his coming.
What is your response to all this? Surely we can only do that which Jude did: magnify and adore and praise our God and Saviour. To ascribe to the only God our Saviour “glory and majesty and dominion and power for ever”. With joy eternal to proclaim his glory, to adore his majesty, to declare his dominion, to rejoice in his power in his ability!
“Oh what a wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord,
what a wonderful Saviour to me,
he hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
where rivers of pleasure I see,
A wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord,
he taketh my burden away,
he holdeth me up, and I shall not be moved,
he giveth me strength as my day.
With numberless blessings each moment he crowns,
and filled with a fullness divine, I sing in my rapture,
Oh glory to God for such a Redeemer as mine!
When clothed in his brightness, transported I rise
to meet him in the clouds of the sky,
His perfect salvation, his wonderful love,
I’ll shout with the millions on high.”