God's Eternal Glory

All grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We turn once again for the very last time to Jude's epistle. So we finally finish Jude today and we're ending of course with verse 25 and this will be our second half of Jude's beautiful doxology that gives glory to God. Our subject today will fittingly, I think, be God himself. I've titled this sermon, God's Eternal Glory.

And I want to consider the eternality of God and how he is who he is with all his glorious attributes, eternally, unchangeably, and timelessly. So let's go and we'll pray and then we'll read the text. So let's address our holy eternal Lord. Lord, you are good. Your steadfast love endures forever.

As we open our Bibles, Lord, and we read this wonderful epistle once again, Lord, I ask that you would speak to us through your word. And by your word, Lord, sanctify us. We have very deep matters before us, matters that are beyond our comprehension. But Lord, nevertheless, may I speak clearly, may your people follow easily. May your word work powerfully in our hearts.

Grant us all the spiritual wisdom and discernment that we need to hear what we need to hear. May every thought, Lord, be taken captive to Christ. May our minds be renewed. Indeed, may our minds be enlarged to receive something more of your eternal glory. Not, Lord, that we would be puffed up with knowledge, but that would be humbled before your greatness.

Yes, Lord, may we be humbled in the contemplation of these great mysteries. May we be moved to praise you. May we be moved to rest secure in your perfections. Lord, as always, we stand in desperate need of your grace. So be with us.

Teach us by your Holy Spirit. I pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. So let's read the epistle of Jude. For the last time, at least for this series, I can't guarantee we won't be back.

This is Jude's epistle. May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he is kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Woe to them, for they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain, Balaam's era and perished in Quorra's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires. They are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.

But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, And the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. For you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. and have mercy on those who doubt.

Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. To the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.

So we're finally on the last verse of Jude. In the beginning of his letter, Jude told us that what he really wanted to write about was our common salvation, but he's been regretfully compelled by the necessity of the situation to address this problem of false brethren instead. And indeed, in the course of exploring this book, we've followed his condemnation of these people. We've seen that they pose a significant threat to the church. He's equipped us to be aware of this threat, prepared us to respond urgently with real, robust, biblical mercy.

But we can also observe that Jude never entirely abandoned his desire to talk about our common salvation. He couldn't help himself. He's actually given us a lot of reason to reflect on the gospel, about the grace of God, and about the work of Christ on our behalf. And we see this nowhere better than in this wonderful concluding doxology with which he concludes. his letter.

In my previous sermon, several weeks ago now, we began considering the beginning of this doxology and the promise that will be kept from stumbling and presented finally blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. And we were able to reflect on the profound joy indeed that is promised to each and every believer of that blessed side of God that we are to have forevermore. This brings us now to verse 25, which reads, 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. Jude here identifies the one to whom he is addressing.

his praise, which is the only God, our Savior. He also identifies the one through whom he is addressing his praise, and that's Jesus Christ, our Lord. He's approaching God the Father through the Son, as we must do, because he is our mediator, the only mediator between God and man. And then we have this list of attributes that are ascribed to God. Interesting how he says this.

He says, to God be these things. Have you ever thought about what he means by this? It's almost as though he's saying, God, I would like you to have these things. But that's obviously not quite what Jude means. Not only because we already know that God has these attributes far apart from whatever Jude's desires are, but also that Jude clearly believes that God has these attributes before all time, now and forever.

Instead, what Jude seems to be saying, I think, is I desire these things to be ascribed to you or attributed to you. He's saying, Lord, I know you have all these attributes eternally, and I want to acknowledge that. And I want everyone to acknowledge that and to worship you in light of that. And so in that spirit, that's what I want to do today. I want to ascribe these things to God.

Let's acknowledge His eternal glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. And in the contemplation of these things, let's be led to love Him, to praise Him, to trust Him all the more. We'll first look at each of these attributes in sequence. So we can understand what is to be ascribed to our God. We then reflect on the fact that God has these attributes eternally and unchangeably and timelessly.

I'm especially intrigued by what Jude says in this verse, before all time and now and forever. This raises the question, what is God's relationship to time? How should we think of God's eternity? Does God ever change? And having considered the biblical teaching on these matters, we'll finish by considering some implications and I suppose applications of this biblical truth.

I want to highlight in particular how the eternal glory of God should give us so much peace and comfort and security because He is that solid rock on which we can rest. He is who He is eternally. His glory is unchanging. His steadfast love endures forever. So let's look at each of these attributes that are to be ascribed to God.

Once again, our verse reads like this. 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. So have this list of four attributes that we are to ascribe to God as belonging to him eternally. Glory.

majesty, dominion, and authority. But let's not overlook how Jude first addresses God in the first part of this verse. We have the only God, our savior. Some manuscripts say the only wise God, hence the reading that you'll have in your King James version. Other manuscripts, which are judged by many scholars to be the older and more reliable manuscripts, say the only God.

But either way, we have this affirmation of an essential truth. There is one God. The only God. He is utterly unique. His being is singular, undivided.

There are not many gods. We believe in the Trinity, but there are not three gods. That would be heresy. Lord our God is but one only living and true God, as our confession says. And this one God is, as Jude says, our Saviour.

More often in the New Testament we'll be familiar with the title Saviour given specifically to the Lord Jesus rather than to the Father or to the Trinity broadly. This shouldn't confuse us because, of course, We know that salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is the united work of one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit together. I think it helps to remember that when we have one attribute ascribed to one particular person of the Trinity, that should never be understood to exclude the other persons. Three persons share one and the same being.

We talk about being, of course, talking about what something is, its nature, its essence, its substance. So what the Father is simply is what the Son is, simply is what the Spirit is. What belongs to the divine nature belongs, properly speaking, to each one of the persons. That's when we get to this idea that Jude is ascribing these things to God through Jesus Christ, We're not to understand that Jesus Christ is not also our only God and Savior, just as the Father is our only God and Savior, so the Son is our only God and Savior, and so the Spirit is also. If you look at the rest of Scripture, you'll know that that certainly has to be true.

But what we're talking about here particularly, when we address God through Jesus Christ, is the distinct role and office that the Son plays in our salvation. It was the Son specifically who took on flesh and dwelt among us. It was the Son who is both God and man, and who can therefore act as mediator between God and man, reconciling God and man through his sacrifice and his heavenly intercession as he prays on the behalf of his people. So in worshipping God, we, like Jude, have to approach through the Son. We come to God the Father through the Son.

We worship through the Son. And of course, in the Holy Spirit, though Jude doesn't mention him explicitly in this particular text. So while we ascribe these attributes to the Father through the Son, we know to understand that these don't equally apply to the Son and the Spirit also. Lord willing, we'll talk a little bit more about these matters in some future messages. But that being said, let's consider these four key attributes that Jude ascribes to our one God, our Saviour.

These four seem to me to be closely connected. They concern the intrinsic greatness of God and his sovereignty over creation. Let's consider them one by one. First, we have glory. We considered this briefly a few weeks ago, and we considered what it meant to be presented before the presence of God's glory.

In this context, glory signifies greatness and awesomeness, praiseworthiness. God is intrinsically glorious because he is supremely great. He's majestic. He's worthy of all honor. We give God glory, or we glorify God, or we honor him as glorious and proclaim or show forth his great glory.

But once again, God's glory is intrinsic to himself. He's not dependent on any creature to be glorious. Because God is the only God, as we've just read, his glory is uniquely and exclusively his own. Remember what the Lord says, my glory I give to no other. The next attribute is majesty.

This again captures this idea of greatness and power. Kings are called majestic, but God is supremely majestic. Majesty is so essential to God's nature that scripture can sometimes use majesty as a title. Like in Hebrews, where it says that the Lord Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Majesty on high, of course, just refers to God the Father.

After majesty, we have dominion. Other translations say power or might. To have dominion is to have strength and to exercise that strength. We see this strength in God's rule over all creation. He brings all things into being from nothing, nothing but his own might.

And in his perfect strength, he rules over everything that he's made. This brings us then, finally, to authority. This is God's perfect right to rule. God is the only being with perfect right and power and privilege to do whatsoever he pleases. Without restriction, without answering to any higher law or higher power, he is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings.

Absolutely everything that isn't God himself is under his authority. All must bow to him. And that's not because God is some great cosmic bully who imposes his will by force. The authority of a bully or a tyrant is wrong, of course, because it is an improper authority, imposed unnaturally against the created order, in wicked rebellion against true authority. But when it comes to God, his authority is a natural and intrinsic authority.

All things belong to him. He has authority over all things because he made all things. All things are for him. All things are from him and through him and to him. All things are so utterly dependent on him that nothing could exist at all apart from his rule and his reign, not even for a single moment.

So these are the attributes that Jude calls on us to ascribe to our God. Majesty, glory, dominion, and authority. What a God this is. The gods of the nations are worthless idols, but this is our God. This is our almighty sovereign God, who alone is worthy of worship.

If we read on, Jude continues. He says these things, these attributes, should be to God before all time and now and forever. The idea is that in ascribing to God these attributes, we're acknowledging that they belong to God eternally. They have always belonged to God. They always will.

Now we do have here another textual variant, King James, which I hold in high esteem, just says both now and forever. But this still conveys the idea of eternity, although our other versions, following what we find in some of the earliest manuscripts, are even stronger on this point. We have this intriguing phrase, before all time, or before all ages, as you might translate it. This is profound because of what it suggests about God's relationship to time. We are creatures inextricably bound to time.

We live in a world of constant flux. We each came into being at a particular point in time as a consequence of a great succession of previous events. A conscious experience is one of are constantly moving now. We gain, we lose, things get better, things get worse. Time slips us by like a rapidly flowing stream, never to return.

Time is fundamental to our existence. Yet it's also very mysterious, hard to define. Augustine famously wrote in his confessions, well, that is time. No one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know.

I feel the same way, I think, some of these deep questions. These reflections on God and time are actually really good. I do recommend you have a look at that. But time is hard to get your head around. Modern physics hasn't really made things any easier because we've discovered that time is not absolute, but relative.

Time in one part of the universe might speed up or slow down relative to somewhere else. Two events that occur simultaneously in one reference frame might occur at different times when observed from a different reference frame. Like two explosions, you can imagine going off at once, bang. But in a different reference frame, perhaps one moving relative to that particular location, you might see them happening at different times. Bang, bang.

Time is very strange. Speed reflects how time flows for you. Gravity affects time. It's all very bewildering. Time is weird.

But because we're all so used to life in time, it's very difficult to imagine what it could even mean to be before time. And yet this is what Jude affirms about God and his attributes. What he affirms is that God is who he is, all glorious and majestic and everything else, before time, now and forever. That is, he's never been other than what he is. He'll never change.

And this is an absolutely essential affirmation of the Christian faith, that God is eternal, unchanging, and timeless. So I want to explore this. You need to first understand that time is a property of this creation. Time began. And this is what we see the scripture affirms from the very first verse.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There was a beginning, an absolute beginning, and God was there. Creation began to exist, and time itself began to exist. But God did not. Scripture makes this point in a variety of ways, so I want to point you to a few examples.

I want to start with Psalm 90, that is Psalm 9-0-90. This, according to the superscription, is a psalm or a prayer of Moses, man of God. Here, Moses compares the eternity of God with the ever-changing, time-bound creation. So I wanna read a few verses from Psalm 90, and we'll start from verse one. So Psalm 90, nine zero, 10 fewer than 100, just in case you're confused.

Psalm 90, and we'll start with verse one. Lord, you have been our dwelling place, In all generations, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust, and say, return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning.

In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers. So before the mountains, the earth, before the world ever came to be, God is God. From everlasting to everlasting. The passage of a thousand years is nothing to God, just like yesterday is to us.

God simply doesn't relate to time like we do. Men come and go, like grass that withers and grows in a single day. Through it all, God remains unchanged forever. I have to imagine that if this was indeed Moses writing this His wonderful son, he would have been thinking about how God describes himself from the burning bush. Moses asks for God's name.

He is told, I am who I am. It's a remarkable statement. God simply is. He is himself. No further explanation can be given.

He doesn't depend on anything. He's self-existent, self-sufficient. It means he could never not be. He must be himself everlastingly. Indeed, that's how Abraham understood the Lord.

It says in Genesis 21, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. The prophet Isaiah uses the same language. If you like, come and turn to Isaiah chapter 40. It's 4-0, chapter 40 of Isaiah. And let's read from verse, or let's read just verse 28.

Isaiah 14, verse 28. He says this. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. This is an interesting passage because a few key ideas are here being associated with this idea that God is everlasting. First, we have this idea that he is the creator. This is key, I think, because only a truly eternal God who existed before time, as it were, could have been the cause of all creation, including time itself.

Isaiah elsewhere says that God inhabits eternity, which I think is a wonderful way to put it. We inhabit time. Our existence is restricted and bound by time, but God dwells in eternity. His existence is perfectly boundless, transcending time. And this is absolutely necessary if God is to be the creator, the first cause of all things, and truly sovereign over time.

If God existed within time, then it would follow that there's at least one thing that he isn't sovereign over, that didn't originate with him, that in fact is sovereign over him. Scripture simply does not permit us to say that about God. He is the king of the ages, as Paul says. Absolutely everything that is not God was created by God. That has to include time itself.

Looking back to Isaiah chapter 40, and that verse we looked at, 28, notice also that the eternality of God is also associated with the eternality of his strength. He doesn't faint or grow weary like we do. That's what the passage of time does to us. changes us, but God doesn't change. He's eternally, unchangeably mighty.

That God doesn't change is another key affirmation that goes along with his eternity. We sung that today. This is often called the immutability of God. Something is mutable, but can change. Think of the word mutation.

Thus to be immutable means to be perfectly changeless. There is no mutation in God. James affirms this explicitly when he says that with God, the father of lights, there is no variation or shadow due to change. Similarly, when the Lord addresses his people through the prophet Malachi, he says, for I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.

The immutability of God is the basis for the trustworthiness of his purposes and promises. Hence it also says in the book of Numbers, God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? That God doesn't lie or change his mind, and is faithful to his covenant, is grounded in his being.

Man is mutable, tragically mutable, but God's being is altogether different. Psalm 102 explores this truth very powerfully. So come over to Psalm 102. I want you to look at this with me. This is a wonderful psalm that illustrates this point that we've been talking about.

This is a prayer of one afflicted, as a superscription says. It goes on to describe one's suffering under the changes of time. It's pretty bleak, actually. Let's look at Psalm 102, and let's first look at verses three and four. The psalmist says, for my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace.

My heart is struck down like grass and is withered. I forget to eat. My bread. It's the same in verse 11. My days are like an evening shadow.

I wither away like grass. So this is a picture, quite a heavy picture, of decay and loss. Our days pass away like smoke, vanishing never to be recalled. It's pretty hopeless for the psalmist. That is, until he turns his gaze to God.

Look at verse 12. But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout all generations. So here's hope. Here's something that we can hang on to.

Something permanent. Come down to verse 25, and we'll read to the end. 102, verse 25. Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain.

They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away. But you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure. Their offspring shall be established before you."

So we have this wonderful idea that though all creation is subject to the ravages of time, its creator is not. He is always the same. He does not change. And this is the source of the psalmist's hope and peace and security. the children of your servants shall dwell secure.

He knows that whatever happens, whatever his present sufferings might be, God is the same. He is immutable, therefore his covenant promises will be fulfilled. Now some people want to restrict God's immutability to merely his character or personality. They want to say that God is unchanging only in the sense that he's dependable or covenantally faithful, while leaving the door open to other ways that he might change. But I want to say very clearly that this is simply not right.

There's no reason simply not to take these passages in a perfectly literal and absolute way. There simply is no variation in God. That's what the scriptures teach. And consider if this were not true, the implications would be absolutely disastrous. Because as soon as we say that God changes, that he passes from one state of being to another, then you've once again placed him within time.

You've bound him, you've restricted him, you've made him creature. Any change would imply that God must pass from one state of being into a state that he didn't have before. That means God either was previously lacking something that he now has, or had something that he now doesn't. That's blasphemous, because you've made him something less than perfect, infinite. You've placed him, therefore, on a level of creatures.

So let's not go there. God's eternity means he does not change. Finally, I want to emphasize that God's eternity is not only changeless, but also truly timeless. We've already talked about this briefly. We discussed that the creator of all time must not be within time.

That is, when we say that God is eternal, we shouldn't imagine God as existing along this infinite succession of events. I think that's how we often think of eternity. You can imagine God existing along an infinite timeline that stretches into eternity past and into eternity future. And this is why people will often ask, but what was God doing before he created? Why didn't he create any sooner or any later?

Why at that particular point in all of eternity? But what this does is assume that God's experience of eternity past is just an infinite number of moments. What we're doing when we think that way is projecting our own experience onto eternity. But this is wrong, because it subjects God to time, rather than allowing him to be the beginner of time, the lord of time. Instead, it's much better to consider that God is outside of time, beholding all time and space and all creation in one timeless, boundless existence.

With him, there is no before and after, only infinite, boundless being. This fits exactly with what we have in this passage in Jude, where he says that these things belong to God before all time or before all ages. If you think about it, It's almost a paradoxical statement. It almost doesn't make sense. Because there can't be a time before all time.

There can't be an age before every age. That's exactly the point. Jude is kind of stretching the limits of human language to get at this remarkable point about God's being. The word before can't refer to a time before time. So it has to mean that God's experience must somehow transcend time.

It's like he's telling us, go back to the very beginning. The very first moment where there really isn't any before to speak of, because that's the beginning. Even there, that's not where God begins. God is beyond this whole system. He didn't count down an infinite number of moments before he decided to create.

He simply creates when time began. He's not in time, but outside time, before it, beyond it, whatever language you can find to communicate this idea that God is timelessly eternal. Even apart from time itself, Before the beginning, God is who he is. So that is the testimony of the scriptures. God is eternal, and his eternity is changeless and timeless.

We have to say changeless because God is who he is, perfectly and infinitely, without any possibility of change. We have to say timeless because God's eternity doesn't involve him enduring through an infinite number of moments. And so when Jude calls for glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, to be attributed to God before all time and now and forever, he's acknowledging this essential truth. He's telling us these things are God's eternally, without beginning or end, without time or change. God is who he is permanently.

Now, I apologize. That was all a little bit technical, difficult to follow. You can be forgiven, I think, if your mind is a little bit boggled. Mine certainly is with these things. But really, I'm not really asking you to understand in the sense of being able to imagine what God's experience is like.

Don't even try. I think you'll get it wrong. All I'm doing is asking you to understand what God's eternity isn't. You'll know, you all know, we all know what it's like to change and to be changed. Well, that's not true of God.

We all know what it's like to pass through time, having a before and an after. Well, it's not true of God. You all know what it's like to have a beginning and a middle and an end. Well, it's not true of God either. If you can grasp those denials and simply stand in awe of our everlasting God, and I think you're doing well.

What I finally want to emphasize here today is that this isn't some isolated philosophical doctrine that we maybe need to affirm to be technically orthodox, but we just leave it in a little pile somewhere. What I want you to understand is that there are actually vast life-changing implications from this doctrine. God's eternity directly informs so many other doctrines. It informs how we worship, gives us an unshakable foundation for our hope and peace, So I want to give you just one doctrinal application, an application for our worship, and an application for our peace. So let's start with the doctrinal application.

I think there are many doctrinal truths that flow out of the fact that God is eternal. But I want to consider just one, and this one's really important. This is at the very heart of our faith, and it concerns the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. Understanding the eternality of God will help us to avoid some common errors, even heresies, that are sadly common among the Christian church. So let's consider this and hopefully avoid some of these errors about how our Lord became man for us and for our salvation.

So scripture teaches that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. He who was in the form of God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. It is central to Christian faith that the eternal son of God became man, taking on human nature, This is all very true, but too often I think we misunderstand what this means. Too many Christians, I think, assume that becoming flesh means that the divinity of the sun somehow transforms into humanity, or that in emptying himself, The son gives up his deity, or in some sense, gives up certain divine attributes in order to become man. We might imagine him stepping out of heaven, giving up what he had, leaving eternity, ceasing to be timeless and entering into time.

But I want to submit to you that all of that is wrong. We've seen today that God is God, eternally, unchangeably, and timelessly. Thus, in becoming man, there can be absolutely no change to his deity. This has to follow from what we've heard today. So let's think this instead.

In the incarnation, the son assumes a human nature, while remaining eternally God. And thus he is one person, one son, one Christ, existing in two natures. These two natures are not mixed, they're not confused. The characteristics proper to each nature remain distinct, although united in one person. We have one Christ who acts according to both natures.

This is just classical Christology. This is the first time you're hearing it. I'm very sorry, but hopefully you'll consider this a little further. So just to recap, according to his divine nature, which he shares with the Father and the Spirit, Jesus is utterly unchanged in his eternal glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, and any other attribute you might think of. And yet, according to his human nature, he does change.

He does indeed dwell within the limits of time, and so we have to clearly distinguish the two natures of our Lord Jesus. As God, he had no beginning. As man, he began in the womb of the Virgin, conceived of the Holy Spirit. As God, he is all-knowing. But as man, he grew in knowledge and wisdom.

As God, he is omnipresent. Not even the highest heavens can contain him. But as man, he's confined to one place, the real physical body. That's true even now as he reigns from heaven, as a Messiah. As God, he's in need of nothing.

But as man, he needed food, and sleep, and drink, and everything else, just like us. As God, we know he's immortal. But as man, he died. He could go on. My point is just that we consider the eternal nature of God, we can think more accurately about our Lord Jesus.

The incarnation didn't involve any change in his divine nature. Any change that we see must be understood of the human nature that he assumes. My plea is simply that we keep this in mind and we'll be able to avoid so many mistakes that we see concerning our Lord Jesus. So if this was new to you, I simply ask that you would take some time to think this through and perhaps talk to some of us about this, because I think this is very central to the faith. So that's a doctrinal application.

I next want to give you a quick application for our worship. Jude's doxology is all about worship. We're praising God for his eternal glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. I think worship is hurt very badly when we have too low a view of God. As long as we imagine God to just be some big powerful version of us, we'll really struggle to truly worship.

For one thing, that's not the real God. Real worship needs to be in spirit and in truth. We need to worship in light of the truth of who God has revealed himself to be. We need to be driven by an overwhelming awareness that he is supremely great. We need to stand in awe of him.

We need to tremble before his glory. The key part of this is acknowledging his eternity. A being that ever became glorious, or merely took dominion and authority at some point in time, might be interesting, might be honourable in some sense, but not worthy of our worship. The one who is who he is, who is of himself, utterly independent on anything outside himself, creator of all, who is before all time. Only he is worthy of ultimate praise.

So I just want to encourage you to consider these things. Do you have a deficient view of God? Do you have a deficient view of Christ who is God incarnate and worthy of our worship? Do you take the time to contemplate who this God is who saved you? Is your love for him grounded on who he has revealed himself to be?

Is your heart moved by his eternal glory? Is your heart moved by the glorious gospel of the incarnation of our Lord? and what it means that he condescended to assume a human nature, again, not leaving eternity, but truly as man to live in time and to die for our sake. Consider at once the glory and humility of the Lord Jesus and fall on your knees before him. May the Lord help us to worship him in the light of his eternity.

I finally want to consider how this affects our sense of peace and comfort. You remember this came up in almost every passage that talks about how God doesn't change. We can trust God because he doesn't change. We can trust him to fulfill his glorious promises, to be faithful to his covenants, to be who he is forever with glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, because it is utterly against his nature to change. He is eternal.

He is timeless. He cannot change. It's inconceivable that he could change. See how stabilising this could be to the troubled soul. So much of this life involves us coping with change.

Places change. People change. Beautiful things fall into ruin. So-called progress continues at such a rapid pace, but only seems to make everything worse. We ourselves are slowly dying.

Our flesh will one day fail us. In all of this, where is a stable place to rest my soul? Everywhere I stand seems to be sinking sand. Is there anything I can depend on? No being that could change could ever be fully trusted, because you never know what the future will hold.

Changing God could turn his back on you, renege on his promises, change his conditions, but we can depend on our eternal God. He is our solid rock. We can place our trust in his eternal glory. He is good. His steadfast love endures forever.

Let his eternity be the very foundation of your peace. Moses says this just before his death, addressing the people in Deuteronomy. The eternal God is your dwelling place and underneath are the everlasting arms. So what comfort we should have if we rest in his everlasting arms. So let's join Jude in ascribing to our God, our only God and saviour, all glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now.

forever. God is all his attributes, perfectly, unchangeably, and timelessly. Let this biblical truth correct all your misunderstandings that you might have about God, especially about our Lord Jesus. Let this inspire your praise, standing in awe of this God who is utterly unbounded by time. And let him be your peace and comfort and rest, your dwelling place of perfect security, because he is eternal.

this will be a good place to finally end our reflections on Jude's epistle, our minds filled with thoughts of our glorious eternal Lord. So let's pray. Lord, you are our eternal sovereign God. I give you thanks for the word that we've considered, for the wonderful truths that we've Heard, thank you for revealing yourself to us, for sending your son to us, who entered time to be among us, yet without leaving eternity. Such good news indeed.

Thank you, Lord, for all this time that we've spent in Jude's epistle, a short letter but brimming with heavenly wisdom. Let us truly be on guard for everything that Jude has warned us about. Let us be ready to contend for the faith. Let us be ready to praise you for who you are. Looking forward to that future day, I will stand for the presence of your eternal glory with great joy.

Thank you, Lord. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.