Jude Pt 5: One More Move

 

May 29, 2022                 NOTES NOT EDITED
Jude Pt5:  One More Move
Jude 24-25

SIS:  When it looks like there’s no way out for you, God always has one more move.

The story of the Checkmate Painting has been around a long time.  “According to legend, and probably fact, the story goes like this. A chess grand master along with a group of friends came upon this intriguing painting in the Louvre museum alongside other famous art such as the Mona Lisa.

The grand master stared a long time at the chess board in the painting and finally noticed something surprising. The typical interpretation of the painting (that the devil had the man in “checkmate”) was incorrect.

Though the devil seemed to be the obvious victor, he was in fact not winning. The man, who thought he was losing, was actually winning.

According to the arrangement of the pieces left on the chess board, his king had one more move. This fateful move would make him the winner of the game.

The grand master called the curator and determined that the title “Checkmate” did not fit the scene because the forlorn-looking player actually had the ability to defeat his opponent, though he didn’t realize it yet. His king had one more move.”

And so, we come to the conclusion that the Sovereignty of God will always maintain the Security of the Believer.

These two powerful doctrines, like two mighty rivers merging into one great confluence of joy for the believer, find a rich expression in the concluding doxology in the Book of Jude.  Let’s Read that Doxology together: Jude 24–25 (NLT)

²⁴ Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. ²⁵ All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.

This Doxology—Hymn of Praise—is packed full of dynamic doctrine, particularly the two great doctrines of the Sovereignty of God and Security of the Believer.  The former guarantees the latter.  When the Sovereignty of God guarantees the Security of the Believer the result is eternal joy—hence, my subtitle, Doxology of Joy.

So many Christians are saved but they have no joy.  Their joy is devoured by doubt.  They once believed they were saved, but for whatever reason, now they just don’t know.  The false teaching that a person can “lose their salvation” will disintegrate their joy faster than a blow torch can melt a snowflake.

There are two great lies the Devil uses to trip up believers.  One is that you must “work for your salvation.”  The other is that you can “lose your salvation” by what you do or don’t do in life.  Both these are “damnable lies of the Devil” and must resoundingly rejected.  Jude ends his book on defeating the dangers of false teachers with a Doxology of Joy—joy unspeakable and full of glory (1Pet. 1:8).

We are “eternally secure” in our faith, not because of our ability but because of God’s ability.  Look again at Jude 24:  “Now to Him that is able to protect you.”  The word, “able,” translates the original word, dunamenos.  This is a word group formed from the base verb “dunõ which has a very wide range of meaning, but generally refers to “the power or ability to do work.” 

In 1867 Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist combined an explosive substance, nitroglycerine, with and absorbent material which could be pressed into a small stick.  That small stick was more stable than nitroglycerine, but just as explosive.  He named the new explosive stick “dynamite” from the word, “dunamis,” meaning power.  Since 1867 many mountains have been moved to create roads by the use of “dynamite.” 

This is what Jude refers to when he says, “GOD IS DYNAMENOS!” God has the “supercharged, explosive power to secure our salvation for all time against all challenges.”  It is impossible to feel “100% secure” about our salvation without understanding the sovereignty of God.  And, it is impossible to have the “joy unspeakable that comes from salvation” if we are not 100% sure we are saved, are being saved, and will forever be saved.

The Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God and the Doctrine of the Security of the Believer merge together to form a bottomless Lake of Unspeakable Joy in a believer’s life.

That’s why, when it looks like all hell has broken lose and we are backed into a corner with no way out – God always has “One More Move.” 

As we move up the Mountain Peak of Jude’s Doxology of Joy, there are three issues Jude touches on that give us great encouragement in these dastardly dark days.

1.  God Is Sovereign (24a)

Jude describes God’s Sovereignty as, “God is able.”  As we have already seen that means, “God has explosive power and unending resources” to secure our salvation for all eternity.  In a single word we can summarize Jude’s view of God as, “Enough: E N O U G H.

Now think of the human dilemma.  When we find ourselves in a terrible financial situation—as so many do these days—we begin to question whether God will be “enough to meet our needs.”  When we find ourselves facing some tremendous health issue, we might begin to question whether God will be enough to bring us healing.  Whatever the challenge of life might be at any given time—and we live in a time when challenges come at us like a blast from a fire hose—in times of great trial we often question our salvation and wonder if the God who saved us in the past will be ENOUGH to come through in the present, and even secure our future. 

Trouble brings doubt because it makes us question whether our faith in God or the God of our faith is going to be enough.

In the midst of the darkest clouds of our doubt, The Doctrine of the Absolute Sovereignty of God “thunders, “I Am More than Enough!”

Our Sovereign God is more than enough in three important ways.

One, Our Sovereign God is ŒOMNIPOTENT—He has more than enough power to explode and incinerate any obstacle in our way.  Second, Our Sovereign God is OMNISCIENT—He has more than enough knowledge to know what move to make next.  The Sovereignty of God means God is never in “checkmate” to the Devil.  God always has one more move.  Third, Our Sovereign God is ŽOMNIPRESENT—there is more than enough of Him so that He can be everywhere we need Him to be all of the time.  God is never stretched to the limit because an OMNI-God is limitless.

That’s the key to understanding the Sovereignty of God.  He is limitless in power.  He is limitless in knowledge.  He is limitless in His ability to be anywhere and everywhere.  When we have doubts we are falling into one of two errors:  1.  We doubt because we feel we are not performing well enough to be saved.  That is the error of  “DENYING GRACE.”  2.  We “doubt because we somehow do not think God is going to be enough or do enough to save us.  This is the error of “DENYING GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY.”  Jude could not state the matter of where our security and confidence lies in regard to our salvation more strongly than saying, “God is able!”  That means, as bad as circumstances may look in life, God always has, “One More Move.”

We can never fully comprehend the Sovereignty of God, nor can we grasp that in God’s economy of things, stuff works out in ways we could not imagine.  Consider the case or Andre-Francois Raffray.  You might have guessed, this story takes place in France.  The story ran in an edition of the Chicago Tribune.  Raffray was a retired lawyer.  Arles, the town in which he lived had the equivalent of “rent control.”  Nice apartments were very hard to come by.  Raffray learned of a ninety years old lady living in a very nice apartment.  He established a contract to take over the apartment when the lady died.  He paid the property owner $500 a month for the opportunity to secure the apartment when the lady died.  The lawyer suspected that the mathematical probabilities of Jeanne Calment were on his side.  Thirty years later, he had paid $180,000.  On February 21, 1995, Ms. Calment celebrated her 120^th birthday.  At the time she was verified to be the oldest woman in the world.  For many years, every year on her birthday she would send Mr. Raffray a card saying jokingly, “Sorry I am still alive.”

God is Absolutely Sovereign.  Sovereign even over death. He is Sovereign over every aspect of the operation of His Creation, including the day of our birth and the day of our death.  We can be secure and confident in our salvation, regardless of our situation, because God is Sovereign.

Let’s look a little closer at the issue of

2.  The SECURITY of the Believer. 

What does it really mean to be saved?  What does the Bible say about “staying saved?”  Can a saved person ever become unsaved?

First, here’s a definition of the Doctrine of the Security of the Believer.  I like this definition because it uses similar language to Jude, and as we will see in a minute, Peter.  The true believer in Jesus Christ is forever kept safe from condemnation before God, no matter what he or she may do or experience. (Joseph Merriman, Pastor).

Jude mentions the “Security of the Believer” like bookends for his small treatise.  Jude begins by describing true believers as secure,

^{(CSB) 1} Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

Jude ends his work describing the security of believers by saying,

Jude 24 (CSB) Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy.

Many good translations translate the word “protect in the CSB” as “keep” (ESV, NASB, NIV).  The words,  tereō in verse 1 and phylaxi in verse 24 are synonyms.  They both express a “high degree of security and guardedness.” 

The word used in verse one to describe our security as believers and the assurance that “once truly saved we WILL persevere to the end,” is a very, very strong word.  It is written grammatically in the perfect tense in Greek that expresses an event that took place in the past and the effects of which continue without end. The common verb form, “tereō” becomes, tetērēmenois (τετηρημένοις).  This form is not only in the perfect tense meaning the effects of the action continue without end, but it is also a participle which describes a state of being or continuous action. Jude 24 uses a synonym,
phulaxai (φυλάξαι).  This word comes from the root, phylax, meaning a night watchman or sentinel.

This is powerful language to express a powerfully important doctrine.  Without a strong sense of security, doubt will transplant our confidence as believers and eliminate our joy. 

The Apostle Peter uses this same word in describing the Security of the Believer:

1 Peter 1:3–4 (CSB)  ³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ⁴ and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

Here Peter also uses a perfect participle to express the Security of the Believer in the strongest language possible.

God wants us not only to “be saved,” but to “know beyond any reasonable doubt that we are saved forever, no matter what we may or may not do, or may or may not feel, or even what we may think.” 

Our Security as Believers is as secure as God locking us up in the vault of His love and hanging the key around His neck.  This is why John declared with such great confidence that:

John 10:28–30 (CSB) ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

Paul joins Jude, Peter, and Jesus in declaring the absolute Security of the Believer by declaring:

Romans 8:38–39 (CSB)  ³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Without any doubt whatsoever the Bible teaches, “Once saved—Always Saved!” Our Sovereign God guarantees our Eternal Security.

Why is the Doctrine of the Security of the Believer important?  One writer gives at least three reasons:  Stability in life: Believers who have an assurance of their salvation will remain stable during difficult times, they will live with the confidence that God does not change, and therefore, His grace is sufficient in all circumstances and situations. An effective prayer life: Believers who have an assurance of their salvation will also have a practical prayer life, knowing that they can commune with God and approach Him with their requests.  Authority over Satan: Believers can be confident that they are “Hidden with Christ” (Col. 3:3). They can trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to help them resist Satan and stand firm under satanic attacks. (copied)

So, in a simple summary, knowing we are saved no matter what gives us a “Star Trek Boldness.”  You know what I mean by that.  In the introduction to each episode you would hear these words,

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!

Without a rock-solid confidence that our salvation rests on the ability of an Absolutely Sovereign God to not only save us, but keep us saved, doubt will whittle the mighty oak of our faith down to a toothpick. 

However, when a believer knows without a doubt that he or she is truly saved because God is Absolutely Sovereign, that believer is willing to “charge the gates of hell with a squirt gun!”

We began our study of Jude with a description of the dangers of false teachers.  We applied Jude’s call to “contend for the faith” with a lesson on the Disciples Duty.  Jude concludes with a Doxology of Great Joy because Our Sovereign God has granted us absolute Security as Believers, both in this life and for all eternity.

Now, it is time for us to proclaim the gospel confidently and boldly in the marketplace, contending against every false idea the Devil might toss into the ring of life.’

Jude ends with joy inspiring doxology of God’s eternal care for us as his children.  In Christ we are secure, “Before all time, now, and forever!”

With absolute trust in Our Sovereign God, let us as church, right here an right now, decide to “Boldly go where no church has gone before!” and when we get into a tight spot where it looks like there is no way out, remember:  God always has one more move!