Jude 24-25
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
As Jude finishes up his letter he seems to want to leave the readers with a word of encouragement. He accomplishes this with a brief declaration of praise to God that reminds us of how God cares for us and where we are headed. Jude began his letter saying he had somethings he wanted to talk about but quickly changed his mind to better fit the pressing circumstances of the time. His message was a warning that could easily be depressing and even discourage his readers so some might read the first part of this letter and think there is no hope with all the false teaching and immorality around them. We too can get those same feelings sometimes when we look around us and see the perversion and distorting of the word of God by false teachers of our day. But the words from Jude at the end of the letter not only encouraged his readers but still today encourages us. Jude reminds us:
  1. God is able to keep you. God has unlimited capacity and power to keep you safe. You don’t have to do this on your own. A matter of fact you can’t do this on your own. We have to depend on Him to keep us safe. When we trust in God to keep us from stumbling then He is able to present us as faultless and blameless before Him. What a great place to be. To be blameless is to be without blemish. That’s what we need. We have blemishes that scar us from sins of arrogance, immorality, fleshly living. But God is able to take us clean us up and we have no evidence of sin in our lives. We are blameless before Him.
  2. We are able to be in God’s glorious presence. It is a fact that sin separates us from God. Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” It’s a terrible situation to be separated from God. But the good news is found in Isaiah 59:1, it says, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.” His hand is able to bridge that gap that we have created by our sin and when he reaches down to us we reach out and He grabs us and brings us close to Him to be in His presence. The whole process is centered around the salvation He provides by the sacrifice of His son for our forgiveness of our sins. This causes great and exceeding joy for us.
  3. God our Savior and Lord alone is who deserves the glory, majesty, dominion, power  forever.  – Jude doesn’t want us to forget how all this is possible. It is because God possesses all of these descriptions for all of eternity. We don’t give God more glory, majesty, dominion, or power but when we recognize, proclaim and declare the truth about God it glorifies Him all the more, forever. These descriptions were before all time, now and forever. In the past, present and future, God is all!
The book of Jude is a letter warning us from the very beginning but it closes with great confidence in God. These were dangerous times not so different from our present time but Jude’s message encourages us to trust in the mighty hand of God. There are great enemies of the gospel and of sound doctrine yet God is greater. He wins and if we stay connected to Him and remain faithful we are included in the victory of God as His people.

~ Alexander