13 minute read
my Pulpit Message Notes: PRAISE THE PRESERVING LORD
from TT 189
by TIMES TODAY
PRAISE THE PRESERVING LORD
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I remember in the year 1980, it had rained so much and my father and I went out and I held my father’s hand and he held it. And as we were walking sliding was real and on a number of occasions I almost fell, but I was holding my father. But do you think my holding was so helpful? It is my father’s holding that kept me going without falling.
When we talk about praise the preserving God, it is that moment our Father holding us. So we may slide, but we are secure in His hands.
Three points:
1. Preservation of God | Jude :24
2. Presentation of God | Jude :24
3. Person of God | Jude | :25
Preservation of God | Jude :24
When we come to this God it is important to know that He is the One who preserves us. Yes, we contend for the faith. Yes, we are aware of the false teachers. Yes, we are persevering, or enduring in His love. But when all is said and done, He preserves. He keeps us. He holds us to Himself. He keeps us from falling into temptation, from sinking into the temptations of Satan and from being devoured by the evil one and from falling into sin. He keeps us from being devoured and destroyed eternally.
If this was the first time we are talking about this, then we would be introducing a very controversial subject of only God playing His part and not us. But I am aware that last week and days gone by, we have talked about us playing our part, contending for the faith, building ourselves in the most holy faith. But having done our part, we must get to a point of saying, we are limited, we can only focus on Him Who is limitless, to keep us from falling into ... heresies, and from unbelief and total apostasy. He is able to keep us.
So I do not walk around in fear of losing my faith. I know there are challenges, struggles, temptations. I know the devil is there, I know the battle is real, but my heart shall be at peace, because He keeps us. And one day, the old Paul writing to Timothy, and most likely Timothy was so much worried about Paul and he reminds him of God’s ability to deliver him from evil and to bring him safely at home.
2 Timothy 4:18
This is not just for Paul, but for everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord. The Lord will keep us, deliver us, and bring us to His heavenly home.
We are safe in spite of challenges that we face, but in the Lord we are safe. He secures us. That does not underestimate the challenge and brave face. Jesus Christ speaking to His disciples in John 6:37-39
God preserves. We do not walk in fear, but in faith, because we are secure in the hands of God. He preserves us.
Presentation of God | Verse 24
This word “without fault, faultless” it is an acquittal term which not only talks about being acquitted, but lack of charge. You are not going to be prosecuted because there is no charge against you. And God is treating us as if we have never sinned before. That is how He presents us to Himself.
Though we have sinned in Adam, though we have walked in sin, a number of times we have fallen, we are prone to backsliding and guilty of so many things after conversion, and though a point of sin and death is started by us to the grave, yet we would be presented by Christ in perfect ordinance, in complete righteousness and in shining robes of immortality and glory when that Day comes.
The critical part is not waiting and being sure that we are going to be perfect, because we will not get there, but we begin our journey with the Lord and as we continue in this journey, God will justify us and He sanctifies us and then He will glorify us. And that is the day we are talking of, the day of presentation. The He will present us not to someone else, but to Himself. A people without fault/ blemish/spot/wrinkle.
O the imperfect me, when that Day of presentation shall come, I shall be perfected and I shall see Him face to face, and ill be translated, i’ll be changed, i’ll be glorified and i’ll be like Him. He’ll present you and I to Himself, a righteous, holy, perfect people.
To know He will present us, remember in the book of Leviticus - talking about this lamb that is to be sacrificed. It should be a lamb without deformity, without blemish, a lamb that is not lame and limping. The lamb that was to be presented was to be presented to the Lord.
One day John points his disciples to Jesus and he says, ‘this is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world’. And in the book of Revelation we find the Lamb of God that was slain before the foundation of the earth and sealing the seven seals. We shall be like Him.
This aspect of, ‘without blemish’ and I remember when I was in college and taking my undergraduate studies and we had this controversial discussion, if the lamb was to be without blemish and so those who were to serve were to be straight and upright not only morally, but also physically.
And Paul talks about the failing hand that he had and at one point he talks of; if these people had the power to pluck their eyes and be inserted in his eye socket so that he could see. And sometimes we struggle with our health, and we are at that place of despairing and we wonder how long shall we struggle with health?
And I do not necessarily have good news for you that God is going to heal you tomorrow or today. You may just have to live with this challenge, but a day of presentation is coming when we shall put away the body of limitation, sickness and ailing and the body of deformities and we shall put on a glorified body where we shall be with the Lord. There shall be no sickness, no ailment, no struggle when we shall be presented to the Lord.
You never know how precious life is until you are unwell. And you can never come to a place sometimes of appreciating perfect health until you have been crashed to a certain level in life and you feel worn out. And Paul encourages these people. And Jude talks about presentation before the presence of His glory.
And the manner in which we shall be presented is with exceeding joy, because we have been freed from sin, sorrow, from the enemy and from everything that works against us. We will have been freed eternally and we will have entered into the glory and happiness of God, not for one year, or two years, or a season, but eternally. We shall enjoy perfect health. I wait for the day of glorification, the day when I shall be presented to the LORD. I long for that day.
I love the song, ‘Soon and very soon we are going to see the King’. We shall be presented before the King. This world is not our home and soon and very soon we shall get there.
When I was young and would look at people in the 50s, 60s and 70s, they were very old! Now I’m there. My daughter keeps reminding me I am an old man and that reminds me that I am leaving this world. I am on the way home, I closer than I ever started. And my heart rejoices every single day as I count one more year, one more day, because I am drawing closer to my salvation than ever before. And the Day of presentation is drawing close.
I don’t look at old age with nostalgia, with fear. I celebrate. I love that grey hair because it tells me that I am no longer that baby boy and I love it.
The Person of God | Jude : 25
“To the only wise God, our Saviour…”
In this context, Jude is not just talking about the holy trinity in general, nor God the Father in particular. But he is talking about the Lord Jesus Christ who is truly God, though not to the exclusion of God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit. And He is the wisdom of God and the author of all wisdom. Natural and spiritual wisdom and He is the only Saviour of us. We have no other Saviour other than Jesus Christ.
He is the Saviour. He is the One Who laid down His life for our sake. He is the One Who was hanged on that tree. The One Who died for us. He is our Saviour. The One Who died in my place. He is my Saviour. We have no one else to save us, but Jesus Christ.
You remove the person of Jesus Christ from the Bible and the Bible falls apart. It cannot stand. The doctrine of the advention falls apart. It cannot stand. I am not insinuating that we can remove the person of God the Father, nor God the Holy Spirit they have their role, but now i’m talking about the person of God - Jesus Christ. He is wise and bears all the wisdom both spiritual in natural.
And because of what He has done, because of His person we ascribe to Him and Jude tells us, ascribe to Him glory. In other words splendour, beauty and magnificence because of His deity, His Sonship, work of mediation and salvation. We ascribe to Him glory.
We ascribe to Him majesty, dignity and opulence which belongs to Him as God and which He has in His human nature being crowned with glory and honour and enthroned and seated down the right hand of God the Father. He is dignified. He is majestic. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. He is in charge. And when he talks about dominion, it is about the rulership of Christ, the reign in His kingdom which is not only the earthly, but the heavenly kingdom. He reigns over all the kingdoms. And this gives me comfort.
As a nation we know how we struggle. We don’t know whether to go to work on Mondays, or not. We don’t know how safe we are, we don’t know whether to use Ngong Road, or to work from home, we don’t know. And it can inflict fear and pessimism. But we have One who reigns over all kingdoms and Kenya belongs Jesus Christ. And I do not lose hope and so I lift this nation before Him, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, would you reign in this land.’ We are not alone. We are not left on our own. We have the One who has dominion. He rules.
I love what Jude says finally, what we need to ascribe to Him, and he says, ‘power’. And here he is talking about the omnipotence of our Saviour. He is talking about Him not only having the ability, but also the capacity of doing all things. In other words, there is nothing that is impossible with our Lord. Nothing!
So the other day coming to the house, and I told my wife of something bad that had happened and my wife got so disturbed. And I told her, ‘My dear wife, relax. There is nothing much you can do now. The Lord will sort it out.’
Sometimes we get to a place feeling like, I must move, and shake myself. But moments come when we realise that we serve an All Powerful God. The One Who has power and authority and can cause things to happen. And He doesn’t need the help of humanity. He doesn’t need my help.
So my wife looks at me, she sits back and continues with what she was doing. And at the end of her engagement she comes and tells me, ‘Daddy’, that’s how she calls me sometimes, ‘you have saved me. You have just calmed my emotions.’ The thing hasn’t been sorted as I speak right now? Not yet, but we are at peace. We are okay because we serve an all powerful God.
As we close, I will remind us of what our elder, apostle as he was taken to heaven what he saw in the book of Revelation 5:11-14
