Biblical Talks with Elder Michael Tolliver Podcast
When the term Reformed theology is used, it often refers to something less historical. Often it refers to a theology that acknowledges the doctrine of predestination and holds to a high view of the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. Sometimes it is also identified with the so-called five points of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. These are all important teachings of the Reformed tradition, but they do not fully encapsulate or describe Reformed theology.
A better starting place is five statements that have been called the five solas of the Reformation. These five solas (sola is the Latin word for “only” or “alone”) are sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo gloria (God’s glory alone). Put together, these solas clearly express the central concerns of the Protestant Reformation, which was about worship and authority within the church as much as it was about individual salvation. The “alone” in each is vital, and they emphasize the sufficiency of God’s Word and the gracious nature of salvation, received by faith alone, in Christ alone. The last of the five solas, soli Deo gloria, is the natural outworking of the first four. It reminds us that Reformed theology understands all of life in terms of the glory of God. To be Reformed in our thinking is to be God-centered. Salvation is from the Lord from beginning to end, and even our existence is a gift from Him.
Biblical Talks with Elder Michael Tolliver Podcast
Biblical Talks: Let's Conversate: Jude Pt 2: A Call to Persevere
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Welcome to Biblical talks, Let’s conversate deep in. Last week we look at Jude verses 1-19, how false teachers had infiltrated the church. How Jude wanted these troublemakers to be identified by their false teaching and false living because the former inevitably leads to the latter. Saints of the living God, it’s imperative that believers learn to distinguish truth from error.
Today let’s look at the exhortations Jude gives to believer’s verses 20-23, and the Doxology in verses 24 and 25.
In verse 20 Jude says but you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit.
“But ye, beloved”—Jude is talking to us, the blood‑bought, the called‑out, the beloved of God. And the question on the floor today is this: What are God’s people supposed to do in times like these?
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From Warnings To An Action Plan
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's unpack this. We've spent um a good bit of time in the early verses of Jude, where the air was just thick with warning.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02The focus was all about defense, you know. Yeah. Identifying the false teachers, the wolves who had slipped into the flock, and exposing the uh absolute certainty of their judgment.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. But Jude doesn't just leave them there. He doesn't just say, here's the problem, good luck. Right. If Jude 1 through 19 was about raising the alarm, distinguishing truth from error, you know, recognizing the false life that always, always springs from false teaching, then these last six verses, they're like the emergency broadcast system for the faithful. He pivots immediately from defining the problem to prescribing the cure. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02An action plan.
SPEAKER_03A direct action plan. He's answering the most critical question. Now that you know the danger is out there and even in here, what specific practical steps do you take to survive and even thrive?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And that is precisely our mission for this deep dive. We're getting into Jude versus 20 through 25, which gives us these, well, four essential assignments.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell You could call them spiritual disciplines. They're non-negotiable for perseverance.
SPEAKER_02Right. And it all culminates in what is frankly one of the most powerful, confident, and just beautiful statements of God's preservation power in all the scripture. The doxology. So our goal is to really distill what God's people are meant to be actively doing to maintain their faith, their purity, especially when the world and even parts of the church are just full of conflict and confusion.
SPEAKER_03It's that shift, isn't it? From contending for the faith to cultivating the faith. Jude starts addressing the beloved, the called out, the ones who belong to God.
SPEAKER_02It's personal.
Build Up Your Most Holy Faith
SPEAKER_03Very personal. He moves from this huge corporate warning about apostasy to the intensely individual imperative. It's the roadmap for how you, the believer, and you, the local church, sustain yourselves against that spiritual gravity of falling away.
SPEAKER_02So let's start at the very bedrock of it all in verse 20. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. Right. That first assignment, building up on your most holy faith. It sounds like constant, hard construction work. What does that actually look like, you know, in daily practical terms?
SPEAKER_03Qt is giving a clear mandate for deep, comprehensive study, but crucially, it's also about the application of that study. Okay. The sources are really clear on this. It's not about just nibbling on the word or, you know, sampling your favorite comfortable verses that give you a quick emotional hit.
SPEAKER_02We have to study the whole council of God.
SPEAKER_03The whole thing.
SPEAKER_02And that idea of the whole council is, I mean, it's a huge challenge to our modern habits, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Oh, completely.
SPEAKER_02We live in an age of theological snippets. We read a verse on a pretty background on Instagram and call it our quiet time. But if God gave us 66 books.
SPEAKER_0366 books full of history, poetry, prophecy, law, letters.
SPEAKER_02He must have meant for us to integrate the entire structure.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. We have this tendency to become what one of our sources called spiritual tourists who never leave the gift shop. Laughing slightly. I love that. It's so good, isn't it? We just keep circling the same comfortable, precious chapters, you know, John 3, the comforting psalms, maybe a bit of Philippians.
SPEAKER_02Because they're easy to digest. They give you that immediate emotional payoff.
SPEAKER_03Right. But the vast majority of the Bible, the parts that deal with covenant, complex history, uncomfortable prophecies, challenging doctrine. It just sits there on the shelf, untouched.
SPEAKER_02And that's the danger he's pointing to.
SPEAKER_03That's the whole danger. You can't build a strong, sturdy house with just a foundation, no matter how solid that foundation is.
SPEAKER_02A foundation is essential, but it won't keep the rain out.
SPEAKER_03It won't keep the rain out, it won't resist the storms of trial, and it certainly won't provide shelter against the cold wind of false doctrine. The other 60 plus books have the beams, the walls, the roof, the sturdy superstructure you have to build, layer by layer.
SPEAKER_02So the implication is pretty clear. Failure, falling away. It often traces back to a house that was never really built in the first place.
SPEAKER_03That's it. The seed, the word, it never sank deep enough into the soil of the soul.
SPEAKER_02It's stony ground.
SPEAKER_03It's stony ground. Just like Christ described. If that seed stays on the surface, the first trial, the first persecution, even just the ordinary pressure of life.
SPEAKER_02The first footstep that crushes it.
SPEAKER_03The first heat of the sun, it'll burn it out, and the believer has nothing to stand on when the hard days come. And this isn't just a theory, it's why the apostles were always calling for diligence. Paul tells Timothy, Study to show thyself approved. Peter talks about the word being a more sure word of prophecy, a light shining in a very dark place. Without that structure, you have no framework to even interpret the darkness.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of taking the whole picture, I remember the source material had this fantastic anecdote about making sure the whole portrait is captured, even the flaws.
SPEAKER_03Ah, yes. The Abraham Lincoln story. Yeah. When an artist was trying to paint him, he kept trying to smooth out Lincoln's facial features, maybe to, you know, improve him for posterity.
SPEAKER_02Make him look better.
SPEAKER_03Right. And Lincoln stops him and insists paint me just as I am, wart in all. And that's the approach we have to take to the scriptures. We have to accept the Bible just as it is.
SPEAKER_02Even the parts that challenge our preferences.
SPEAKER_03Especially those, the parts that step on our toes are the parts that seem really difficult to reconcile with how we see things right now.
SPEAKER_02Because sound doctrine can't be built by picking and choosing verses like you're at a theological buffet.
SPEAKER_03No, that selective approach is exactly how people end up with a crooked, unbalanced theology. It's how they excuse personal sins or ignore their duties.
SPEAKER_02So when Jude talked about your most holy faith, what is he really pointing to?
Praying In The Holy Spirit
SPEAKER_03He is not talking about a personal belief system. It's not your subjective feelings or your private convictions about God.
SPEAKER_02It's something objective.
SPEAKER_03It is the objective body of truth, the doctrine that was handed down to the saints. And it's called most holy because everything about it, its author, its purpose, its promises, its commands, is sacred. So growth is this steady, progressive building process until that structure is complete, stable, and can bear the weight of all 66 books.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And that structural foundation of the word, it leads perfectly into Jude's second assignment, which feels like the necessary partner to study. It is praying in the Holy Spirit. This is the engine that drives the whole thing forward, right? Especially when the church is facing all this pressure.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell It is. And this is a critical distinction we have to make really clear. Jude commands praying in the spirit, not praying to the spirit. And this kind of prayer, while it's impossible for someone who doesn't have the spirit, it's still not automatic, even for every believer.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Why isn't it automatic? I think a lot of us assume that if you have the spirit, then all your prayers are automatically spirit-guided.
SPEAKER_03That's the common misconception, isn't it? The sources point out that so many of our prayers, even from believers, are driven by formula, by habit, or just by centering on our own earthly wants and anxieties.
SPEAKER_02They become predictable.
SPEAKER_03Predictable, repetitive, and ultimately they just lack the power and the spiritual effectiveness that God intends for prayer.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so let's define it then. What does spirit-guided prayer actually look like when the spirit is truly energizing and guiding it?
SPEAKER_03It's prayer that transcends just my personal needs list. Is when the spirit and the believer align their focus and they start asking God for what advances God's work, for what glorifies Christ, and for what lines up with the eternal will of the Father.
SPEAKER_02Can we break down the mechanics of that? How does the Holy Spirit actually intervene in our weakness to shape what we're asking for?
SPEAKER_03This is where Romans 8 gives us incredible insight. It talks about the Spirit helping our weakness and interceding for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Right. The Spirit takes our often self-centered, clumsy, or fearful petitions, our groanings, and he lifts them, he shapes them, he refines them into alignment with God's perfect will.
SPEAKER_02So if I'm anxious about a big decision and I pray for a specific outcome, spirit-guided prayer might refine that into a prayer for faithfulness.
SPEAKER_03For wisdom. Exactly, for alignment with God's ultimate purpose, no matter what the immediate outcome is.
SPEAKER_02That's a huge shift.
SPEAKER_03It transitions the prayer life from being, you know, a way to get my requests met into this profound act of worship and spiritual alignment. It becomes a power source. The study of the word gives you the content of God's will. Praying in the spirit gives you the power to execute it. They're inseparable pillars.
SPEAKER_02That synergy between the structure of the word and the engine of the spirit, it leads us right into the goal of it all in verse 21. The ultimate purpose of all this discipline, keeping yourselves in the love of God. The sources call this the engine of holiness itself.
SPEAKER_03And this third assignment is so fascinating because, as an imperative, keep yourselves, it immediately throws us into that profound tension you see all through scripture.
SPEAKER_02Divine security meets human responsibility.
SPEAKER_03That's it. It's the constant question of the perseverance of the saints. God sovereignly preserves his people. That's his promise.
SPEAKER_02But Jude commands us to actively engage in that preservation ourselves.
Keep Yourselves In God’s Love
SPEAKER_03Yes. It perfectly mirrors that incredible paradox in Philippians 2. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.
SPEAKER_02Both to will and to do for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_03You're commanded to actively endure, to persevere through obedience, knowing full well that your ability to do it comes entirely from God's work inside you. Divine security and human responsibility, they walk hand in hand. You can't separate them.
SPEAKER_02So practically speaking, what does Jude mean by keeping yourself in the love of God? Because we know God's love for us is unconditional, it's unshakable. We can't actually lose his love.
SPEAKER_03That's the key distinction. It's not about keeping God loving us, it's about keeping ourselves in the place where God's love can reach us and shape us and strengthen us.
SPEAKER_02Staying in the sunlight of his blessing.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Staying in the place of warmth. The source material uses these really vivid metaphors for what happens when we disobey.
SPEAKER_02I remember that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Disobedience is like raising an umbrella of disobedience or building a roof of rebellion.
SPEAKER_02You can't stop the sun from shining, but you can definitely step out of its warmth.
SPEAKER_03You step into the shadow. And when a believer does that, they step outside the place of communion and blessing, and they invite God's discipline.
SPEAKER_02Which, as Hebrews reminds us, is a painful but necessary part of his love for us.
SPEAKER_03It is. So the command is simple but demanding. Stay out in the open, stand continually in the sunshine of God's love.
SPEAKER_02And Jude has already given us the roadmap for how to do that. He's showing us how the first three assignments are really the pillars of this perseverance.
SPEAKER_03That's right. How do you keep yourself in the love of God? One, build yourself up in the Word, strengthen your mind and soul. Two, pray in the Holy Spirit, align your will with God's.
SPEAKER_02And three, look for the completion of eternal life. Let hope fuel your present holiness. It really does feel like keeping yourselves in the love of God is the single, simple principle that collects all the other demands of the New Testament into one.
SPEAKER_03It is the heart of Christian duty, but it's a truth that requires a deep dive into what that love really is. This is the truth that elevates Christianity, the revelation that God is love, and that his love is the lens through which we have to interpret every other attribute and demand.
SPEAKER_02Which brings up a crucial question. Why does Jude command us to keep ourselves in love and not, say, in justice or holiness or commandments?
SPEAKER_03Because for the renewed heart, for the spirit-filled heart, those other things justice, holiness, obedience, they are only safe, they're only sustainable if they are rooted in the former, in the fierce, committed love God has for us. Right. A lot of believers are afraid that emphasizing God's love will somehow weaken morality or excuse sin. Jude insists on the exact opposite. God's love is the very soil that nourishes everything else.
SPEAKER_02But this means we have to challenge our common idea of love. We tend to project human love onto God. We think of love as soft, sentimental, easily swayed.
SPEAKER_03Impulsive, frail. We assume divine affection might just excuse our carelessness or compromise.
SPEAKER_02Then that's a huge danger.
SPEAKER_03It's the greatest spiritual danger. We have to consciously fill that word love with its full, God-sized meaning. We have to understand God's love as Christ revealed it, holy, searching, unrelenting, and absolutely inexorable.
SPEAKER_02So this love is actually the most exacting, unyielding, and fierce force imaginable.
SPEAKER_03That's the paradox. That's the reframing we need. When we say fierce love, we are talking about a commitment to our absolute best, even if it requires painful training.
SPEAKER_02It's not just comfort.
SPEAKER_03No. The source material puts it so profoundly. No judge is as exacting as love. No law is as unyielding as love. No holiness is as fierce as love.
SPEAKER_02Why is that?
SPEAKER_03Because a human judge might be satisfied with a token penalty, but love. Love demands total purification. Love will not stop until the believer is perfectly consecrated, until they are whiter than snow. This reframes God's affection not just as comfort, but as a commitment to our perfection.
SPEAKER_02And if that's true, it changes how we interpret every challenge in life.
SPEAKER_03It has to. If this fierce perfecting love is the atmosphere we're breathing, then we hold the key that unlocks the meaning of every trial, every burden, every loss, every piece of discipline.
SPEAKER_02He trains his children because of his love, not despite it.
SPEAKER_03That's the critical link. The realization that God is committed to my total holiness, even through suffering, should be the supreme impulse toward obedience. I mean, if human love can constrain us not to grieve a friend, how much more should the fierce, unyielding love of God constrain us?
SPEAKER_02It makes me think of Paul when he explained his entire life's work with the sentence, the love of Christ constrained us. Wasn't just duty that drove him.
Live With Eager Mercy-Fueled Hope
SPEAKER_03No, it was this overwhelming sense of being held and secured and purified by divine affection. But this fierce love is also sensitive. It's easily grieved.
SPEAKER_02Which is why we get practical warnings.
SPEAKER_03Yes. The sources list things that actively pull us out from under the shadow of God's love.
SPEAKER_02So what are the primary dangers? What makes us step out of that warmth?
SPEAKER_03Pride and self-reliance are huge. Believing we can handle spiritual challenges on our own, intellectual arrogance, where our reasoning is more important than his revelation.
SPEAKER_02Indulgence of the flesh.
SPEAKER_03Indulgence of the flesh, unbrotherliness, and maybe most of all just general unwatchfulness. Any careless act, even a small compromise, pulls that umbrella of disobedience up just enough to dim the light.
SPEAKER_02So if you feel like you've drifted, Jude is calling you back under that shelter.
SPEAKER_03Back into the keeping place of God's heart.
SPEAKER_02And this command to keep ourselves in God's love, it brings us to Jude's fourth and final assignment in that same verse: looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ into eternal life.
SPEAKER_03This is the assignment of living with expectation.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03The Greek word here, prosdecomi, is so rich. It means to expect, to wait for, to live ready, to anticipate eagerly. The Christian life is defined by this posture of expectation. You fix your eyes on the finish line and you let that hope fuel your holiness right now.
SPEAKER_02So expectation isn't just passive waiting, it's an active posture that changes how you behave today.
SPEAKER_03Precisely. If you know a royal visitor is coming at any moment, you don't keep your house a mess. You clean, you prepare. That expectation forces watchfulness and holiness.
SPEAKER_02And the incredible stabilizing truth here is that eternal life is reached by mercy, not by merit.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02It takes away all the stress of trying to earn your way home.
SPEAKER_03That is the ultimate comfort, especially when you're dealing with this onslaught of false teaching and internal struggles. There's a great anecdote about a seminary professor. Oh, yeah. He was asked on what grounds he expected to be taken up at the rapture or to enter heaven. And he didn't list his teaching career, his books, his spiritual resume. His simple answer was I was saved by mercy, and when the Lord takes me out of this world, it will still be by mercy.
SPEAKER_02That just settles everything, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_03It settles every doubt. It completely dismisses any pressure to reach the destination based on your own righteousness. And it directly refutes these ideas, which were around even then, that suggested some kind of hierarchy and salvation. Right. The idea that only the super duper saints who achieve a certain level of holiness would be taken first or even taken at all.
SPEAKER_02Why would an idea like that even pop up in the first place?
SPEAKER_03Well, ironically, it came from a desire to motivate greater holiness. The thinking was if the reward of glorification depends on my behavior now, I'll strive harder.
SPEAKER_02It tries to replace the security of grace with the anxiety of achievement.
SPEAKER_03And Jude just destroys that anxiety. He affirms that salvation or homecoming, it depends entirely on God's abundant sufficient mercy.
SPEAKER_02It's so important for us to get this.
SPEAKER_03It's critical. When the Lord comes for his church, we're leaving not because of the quality of our perseverance, but because of the quality of his character. It depends on mercy alone. And that hope is what steadies us, and it makes the pursuit of holiness a response of gratitude, not a desperate attempt to qualify.
SPEAKER_02So we've established these internal disciplines for preservation. The structure of the word, the engine of spirit-guided prayer, the atmosphere of God's fierce love, and the fuel of merciful expectation. Mm-hmm. Now Jude shifts gears in verses 22 and 23. He talks about how we apply those disciplines to others, especially those who are struggling or lost. And this is where he gets into the delicate but difficult truth of tailoring our treatment.
Tailoring Mercy To Different Strugglers
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell This is such deeply necessary wisdom. Jude understands that a true shepherd can't be indifferent to any soul, but that compassion has to be universal while the treatment must be specialized.
SPEAKER_02Right. Not everyone needs the same spiritual medicine.
SPEAKER_03You can't give everyone in the clinic the same dose. Not all people are in the same spiritual condition.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So he gives us two main categories that need really different approaches. First, have mercy on those who doubt. Who are these doubters?
SPEAKER_03These are the sincere, honest, painful, searching doubters. They're often believers or at least seekers who are genuinely troubled.
SPEAKER_02By what?
SPEAKER_03Intellectual questions, tough life circumstances, the perceived silence of God. They are not rebels. They're confused, maybe they're wounded, and they're struggling with this deep spiritual disorientation.
SPEAKER_02And what do they need from us?
SPEAKER_03Patience, tenderness, genuine compassion. They do not need condemnation or a quick judgment. They need understanding and firm but gentle instruction. If you condemn an honest doubter, you just push them away from the very truth they're looking for.
SPEAKER_02Then there's the second category, which requires a much more urgent interventionist approach. Save others by snatching them out of the fire.
SPEAKER_03This describes those who are sinning boldly, habitually, and proudly. They are fluting with destruction, they're already near the edge, or maybe even willfully ignoring the truth they once knew.
SPEAKER_02The language is so dramatic, snatching them.
SPEAKER_03Like rescuing someone from a burning building. Here, the treatment isn't gentle restoration, it's emergency intervention. Pity has to be mixed with a righteous indignation against the sin that's destroying them. The language has to be urgent, alarming.
SPEAKER_02It shows there are degrees of danger, degrees of spiritual decay.
SPEAKER_03Which means there have to be degrees of treatment. Those who fall through wintness, you have to handle them with tenderness because their hearts haven't fully hardened yet. But those who sin deliberately, who are standing right on the edge, they require the moral shock of confrontation.
SPEAKER_02The source material actually provides a really detailed categorization for this. It's like a spiritual physician's guide to illustrate the nuance here.
SPEAKER_03It is, yeah. Let's walk through these six classes of people because they really illustrate the different treatments that are required.
SPEAKER_02Okay, first up, the ignorant. These are the people who've just never received proper instruction, raised in an irreligious home, maybe never opened a Bible.
SPEAKER_03They need teaching, not scolding. You can't rebuke someone for not knowing what they were never taught. They need the foundational structures we just talked about. If you assume malice where there's only ignorance, you'll alienate them immediately.
SPEAKER_02Second, those who deny moral distinctions altogether. These are the false teachers Jude already condemned. They call evil good and good evil.
SPEAKER_03To them, you have to proclaim God's unyielding holiness, his ultimate rule, his justice. They need a confrontation with the reality of a holy God whose standards are absolute. They need that moral shock.
SPEAKER_02Third, those who believe in God but reject revelation. They accept a kind of natural religion, a vague sense of a creator, but they deny the specific gospel revealed in Christ.
SPEAKER_03For them, you have to show the profound difference between the duty required of an innocent person, which is just theoretical, and the salvation required for a guilty person, which is our reality. They need to see that good intentions aren't enough.
SPEAKER_02Fourth, those who accept the gospel but corrupt it. They're inside the fold, but they've polluted the pure water with superstition or tradition or error.
SPEAKER_03They need clear, pure, unpolluted truth, a steady stream of pure doctrine to wash away the cultural stuff they've added. It's a battle for theological clarity.
SPEAKER_02Fifth, those who believe the truth but live wickedly. Their doctrine is correct, they can recite all the creeds, but their lives are fundamentally ungodly.
SPEAKER_03They need to hear about the preaching of God's wrath against ungodliness. They need the warning that just having the right ideas isn't saving faith. True belief always produces transformation. Their problem is a moral crisis.
SPEAKER_02And finally, sixth, the tender-hearted saints, the ones who believe and live rightly but are just crushed by fear or anxiety or spiritual heaviness.
SPEAKER_03These are the ones who need the deepest compassion, the gentlest words, patient love. They need to hear about the relentless mercy of God and be reminded that their standing is based on Christ's perfection, not their unstable feelings.
SPEAKER_02That whole approach, especially for the first and sixth categories, requires so much empathy. You have to distinguish weakness from wickedness.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and that is not always easy. Let me give you a scenario. Consider two people who have fallen away from church. One is a person crushed by debt who, out of desperation to feed their family, compromise their integrity with a morally questionable job. They're struggling, plagued by guilt, ashamed to come back. That is often weakness, a will compromised under crushing pressure.
SPEAKER_02And wickedness.
SPEAKER_03Wickedness is the person who, maybe seeing a chance for power or influence, starts actively promoting false teaching, sowing discord, and justifying their indulgence, all while knowing the truth. Their issue isn't a compromised will, it's a hardened, rebellious intent. Gentle remedies for the weak, urgent confrontation for the wicked.
SPEAKER_02And this leads right to that stark warning for the rescuer in verse 23. To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Hate The Stain, Love The Soul
SPEAKER_03It is absolutely necessary, because reaching into the fire carries a severe risk of contamination. The rescuer must hate the sin the garment while loving the soul.
SPEAKER_02Let's be crystal clear on what Jude means by the flesh that contaminates the garment. It's not just our physical bodies.
SPEAKER_03No, it's the psychological, unredeemed part of us, the old natural operating system that keeps running even after conversion. It's the old nature. And it's subtle because the flesh can appreciate culture and talent and generosity, but at the end of the day, it cannot please God.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like a sophisticated mimic. It can produce something that looks righteous but has no spiritual substance.
SPEAKER_03That's it exactly. The flesh contaminates everything it touches. It can sing beautifully in church, but it can't genuinely worship. It can think deeply, but it can't discern spiritual truth. It can imitate righteousness, but it can't produce holiness because its root is self. The child of God has to learn to hate that stain.
SPEAKER_02And if we don't heed this warning, the descent can be tragic. I remember the source material referenced Lange's commentary on this.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Lange described this chilling progression of a person who gives themself over to this nature. He said the natural man descends first into being wholly carnal, a creature ruled entirely by appetite and impulse.
SPEAKER_02Living just to satisfy cravings.
SPEAKER_03Right. But if he continues down that path, he becomes something far worse. A reasoning animal?
SPEAKER_02A reasoning animal. That's a terrifying phrase. What does that look like today?
SPEAKER_03It is intelligence enslaved to corruption. It's a person with a high intellect, sophisticated ability, maybe great charm, but absolutely no moral restraint. They use their reason only to justify their appetites and elevate their own fallen desires. This makes them far more dangerous than a simple wild beast. When the supernatural is dethroned and the flesh takes over, man descends, sinking beneath what he was created to be. And that's why Jude says we must hate even the garments spotted by the flesh. We have to hate anything in our lives, no matter how small it seems, that carries the scent of that old, corrupting nature.
SPEAKER_02After this heavy load of disciplines and warnings about apostasy and the stark reality of contamination, Jude performs the most beautiful transition in his entire letter. He does. In verses 24 and 25, he pivots completely from the peril of man to the preserving power of God, the triumphant doxology.
SPEAKER_03It's a fervent, confident burst of praise that just fixes our eye entirely on the deliverer. Jude has told us to contend and to beware and to rescue with trembling hands. Now he assures us the God who commands this is the God who guarantees it.
SPEAKER_02It's the ultimate shout of confidence, isn't it? Which is removes all doubt. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. Let's start with that first promise: able to keep you from stumbling.
SPEAKER_03The word able is key. It speaks to God's inherent strength, his competency. And the Greek word for stumbling is so strong, it's more than just catching you when you slip. It means to guard you so completely that you are exempt from stumbling, to walk steady in a world full of spiritual traps, never tripping, never making a false step that would compromise your testimony or your standing.
SPEAKER_02That is a staggering promise when you consider how frail we feel, especially surrounded by temptation. We stumble constantly in small ways.
The Doxology: God Who Keeps And Presents
SPEAKER_03But the promise is rooted not in our effort, but in his ability. This reinforces divine security in a practical way. God keeps his people from the great deceptions, from the corrosive influence of false teachers, from the schemes of the enemy. It's a complete protective guarding.
SPEAKER_02And that profound keeping power leads right to the magnificent destiny, presented blameless with exceeding joy. The climax is presenting us before his glory without blemish.
SPEAKER_03And that phrase without blemish is the sacrificial word amumus. It's the same Greek word used for the perfect, unblemished animals required for Old Testament sacrifices.
SPEAKER_02God demands perfection.
SPEAKER_03He demands perfection, and yet Jew declares that the God who demands it is the very God who produces it in his people. That is the definition of grace.
SPEAKER_02It is the destiny of the kept.
SPEAKER_03It is. We are being made to be like Christ, our sinless Lamb.
SPEAKER_02Paul used this same idea that God will present us holy and without blemish. We won't limp or crawl into heaven, you know, barely saved from the flames. No. We will stand before him, shining completely whole, completely holy in his blazing presence because he made us that way.
SPEAKER_03And the final result of all this is standing before God in exceeding joy. It's not just contentment or relief, it is exaltation.
SPEAKER_02It's the shout of the redeemed. Imagine the difference between the joy of merely surviving a hard journey and the joy of being welcomed home, triumphant, radiant, and whole. It's joy unspeakable, not only because we're saved, but because we are perfect.
SPEAKER_03So you see this beautiful chain of grace linking the whole process together.
SPEAKER_02You do.
SPEAKER_03Kept from stumbling leads to being presented without blemish, which results in standing in joy unspeakable. The entire focus shifts from the anxiety of our frailty to confidence in his power. And the doxology then moves into this ascription of eternal praise. Jude calls God our Savior, and he positions the Father working through Jesus Christ our Lord the Son, showing this perfect unity in redemption.
SPEAKER_02And he crowns this work with four magnificent words of sovereignty, four pillars of praise.
SPEAKER_03Glory, the intrinsic radiance of his being, majesty, the overwhelming greatness of his presence, dominion, the inescapable reach of his rule, and power, the ultimate force of his will that sustains the universe.
SPEAKER_02And then Jude returns to his beloved cadence of threes in that closing line, just sweeping our minds across all of eternity, before all time, and now and forevermore.
SPEAKER_03This declaration anchors God's attributes across the ages. It covers the time before creation, the age we're in now, and the ages yet to come forevermore. Wicked men and false teachers can mock and rail at these glories, but long before they showed up and long after they fall silent, the glory, majesty, dominion, and power still belong eternally to God.
SPEAKER_02What's so remarkable is the context for this doxology. He's ending a letter that deals with the absolute worst of human failure and theological rebellion.
SPEAKER_03And that context highlights the superior wonder of redemption, which is often contrasted with the wonder of creation. Psalm 104 praises God as creator and sustainer.
SPEAKER_02Showing his mighty power over the natural world.
SPEAKER_03Yes. But Psalm 103 praises him as the pardoner and preserver of souls.
SPEAKER_02Creation shows his raw power founding the earth, setting the bounds for the seas. But redemption, redemption shows his heart, his deep personal mercy.
SPEAKER_03And the sources drive home this profound truth. It is a greater feat to make a saint out of a sinner than it is to make a world out of nothing. Wow. To take a rebellious will like that reasoning animal we talked about and keep it in the path of holiness, transforming it into the likeness of Christ, that is a mightier demonstration of power and love than keeping the stars in their courses.
SPEAKER_02And the doxology just gathers it all together. The God who rules the universe and the God who at the same time keeps and perfects his individual saints.
SPEAKER_03It is, quite simply, the music of heaven. It's the thanksgiving of redeemed souls. And it's the song that's best appreciated by those who have lived through the conflict, who know their own frailty, who understand that seductive pull of temptation and how easily they could fall. Only they can truly appreciate the terrifying and beautiful power of the God who is able to keep them.
SPEAKER_02That puts everything into perfect perspective. We cover the four disciplines: actively grounding ourselves in the whole word, engaging in spirit-guided prayer, persevering in the fierce purifying love of God, and living with merciful expectation, all leading to the ultimate assurance in the doxology.
SPEAKER_03God is able to keep us from stumbling and present us blameless with exceeding joy, and that profound knowledge of his preservation, it has to inform and energize every active step we take today.
SPEAKER_01So here is a final provocative thought to lead with you, based on that ultimate contrast Jude provides in his closing praise. Which aspect of God's preservation, his cosmic power to create and sustain the massive universe, as we see in Psalm 104, or his deeply personal mercy to redeem and preserve you from your own frailty, as in Psalm 103, which one inspires your confidence more profoundly in the face of today's spiritual conflicts and challenges. Think about that as you continue to build up your most holy faith.
SPEAKER_00In this neoclassic book, noted scholar and author Harry Blairmes perceptively diagnoses some of the weaknesses besetting the church with insights as fresh and relevant today as they were in the 1960s, arguing that a distinctively Christian reasoning has been swept away by secular modes of thought and politically correct assumptions. The author calls for the recovery of the authentically Christian mind. America needs a shot of intellectual insulin directly to its afty sleepy mind. Harry Blairman's is calling out to Christians to think once again. To Blairman's, Jesus is not some spongy source of giddy joy. Harry Blairman is a highly respected teacher and author of more than 30 books. He has won a wide following of both British and American readers for his provocative works in theology, education, English literature, and fiction. His other works include Where Do We Stand on Christian Truth and the Post Christian Mind. For any amount of donation to Biblical Talks, we will send you the book of the month. Please go to biblical talks.com and click the donate here tab. Thank you for listening to Biblical Talks.
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