Good morning. I'll be speaking
to you again this morning from Jude 1-2. Last time I preached, I preached
on sanctified by God the Father. Today we'll be on eternal union. Jude verse 1 and 2. Jude, the
servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them who are sanctified
by God the Father, preserved in Christ Jesus and called, mercy
be unto you, and peace and love be multiplied. I hope this morning
that the message I bring will show you the mercy of God. And
that your appreciation for that mercy will be multiplied. That
I can show you the peace that we have in Christ when we rest
in Christ. And that that peace will be multiplied. And that the love that God has
for us, the great love wherewith He loved us, that your love for
Him will be multiplied because we love Him because He first
loved us. Every once in a while, something
will happen that will impress a truth on you that you'll think
about for days or weeks or months. And last week, this week, I guess,
or last week, a next-door neighbor came by. And I'm building me
a little carport, and I was going to put a canvas on it. He said,
I'll help you with the canvas. He said, we'll do it tomorrow.
I'm going to be busy until Sunday. I'll do it Monday." Well, what
do you got that's so important it's going to tie you up until
Sunday? I said, I'm bringing a message. I have to get ready.
Oh, you're a preacher. I said, yes. I'm not a full-time
preacher, but I preach whenever I can. Well, he said, the Bible
is an old book. Really old. I said, yes, it's
an old book. He said, we don't know for sure
who wrote it. Now, where most children of God
go wrong is they'll quote Him a Scripture. They'll say that
God and the holy men of God in old times spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost. That's a quote from a book He
doesn't believe in. So I said, well, that's where
faith comes in. He said, faith? Yeah, there is
faith. I said, yes, faith is a substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And then
he said the worst thing in the whole world. He said, well, if
there is a God, why does He allow good things to happen and bad
things to happen to good people? And you want to reach over and
slap him in the face and say, who do you think you are that
you'll tell me if there is a God? But you can't do that because
he don't know. And I said, well, there's two
things, Mike, that you need to remember. Number one is this. There are no good people. And
number two is this. God does not allow things to
happen. God causes things to happen. And he took off. And I was reminded
of Samuel Clemens. I'm sure I've told you this before.
The man we call Mark Twain. A preacher came to his town.
He was a young preacher, and he was puffed up with pride,
and everybody bragged on him. They said, you've got to go hear
this preacher, Mr. Clemens. He's the best ever.
So he went to hear it. And the message was over, and
they were leaving, and he shook hands with the preacher. And
the preacher said, what did you think about the message, Mr.
Clemens? He said, well, I've got a book at home with every
word of that message in it. And the preacher said, I don't
think so. I made that message up myself.
I don't think you've got a book with every word I said in it. The next morning, he knocked
on the hotel door. He opened the door, and there
was a little kid standing over the package, and he handed it
to him. He opened it up, and there's a book and a note. The book is a dictionary. And
he opened the note and it said, Words, preacher, that's all it
is. Just words. And that was what
happened whenever Mike asked me if there is a God. It's just
words to the unbeliever. He preached on Noah this morning.
Noah preached righteousness according to the Scripture for 120 years.
And no one heard it. It was just words. Just words to the unbeliever. But words, when you apply them
to gospel things, are so weighty. They're so important that it's
hard to believe. There are three words. Three
words that separate us from the rest of the religions of the
world. Three words between truth and
a lie. Three words between heaven and
hell. Three words between an eternity
with God and an eternity in hell. You know what they are? It's
not Jesus as Lord. I've seen that bumper sticker
on three-wheeled people's cars. It is finished. That's the three
words that separate truth from a lie. And when you apply them
to common everyday things like my little carport, I can put
the canvas on the carport and tell Deanna, well, it's finished.
And five minutes later, the wind will blow the whole carport away.
So it was only finished for five minutes. But when the Lord Jesus
Christ said, it is finished, it was finished forever. Forever
and ever, there's nothing we can add to what Christ has done. There's nothing we can do to
establish our own righteousness before God, because it is finished. Now, there's another phrase that
I'm going to be speaking on this morning that I could never explain
if I wrote a million books about it. And it's the eternal union. It's our union with Christ that
came about in a covenant of grace before the world began. It's
an eternal union. Jude said when he began his letter,
he said, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ. And it would have
been better translated if it would have said, Jude, the bond
slave. of Jesus Christ. Because that's
the word used. Now I'm not going to spend all
morning telling you the rules and regulations that the Jews
had concerning servants and slaves and bond slaves. I'll just say
this. A servant worked for wages. They could come and go as they
pleased. You remember the vendor. He hired them in the morning.
They went to work, he gave them a penny. He hired them afternoon,
they went to work, he gave them a penny. They were servants. They worked for wages. They could
work or they didn't have to work. They were free to go as they
pleased or what we would call a free agent. And there were
bond servants. If a man owed a debt to another
man that was greater than he could pay, he'd look around and
he'd find someone that had a lot of money and he'd say, I owe
this man $15,000. If you'll pay him the $15,000,
I'll work for you for three years. If it was agreeable, he'd pay
the $15,000. If you could pay the debt off before that, you
were free. If not, you worked for three
years. That's a bond servant. But a bond slave was bought at
the slave market. Bought and paid for. They were
owned by whoever bought them. And we are bond slaves to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Say, oh no, no, no, no, no. I
don't hold slavery of any kind. I'm not going to be a bond slave
of Jesus Christ. If you're a child of God, you
are. 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 18
says this, Flee fornication. For every sin that a man committeth
is without the body, outside the body. But he that committeth
fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you,
which ye have of God? Ye are not your own, ye are bought
with a price. Glorify God therefore in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. So we're bond slaves. The Lord Jesus Christ bought
us for the highest price that's ever been paid. The highest price
that could possibly ever be paid. Say, well, I'm not in bondage.
We're like the Jews. We be Abraham's seed. And we're
never in bondage to any man. But the book of Hebrews said
that whereas the children were partakers of flesh and blood,
he himself also likewise took part of the same. That through
death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that
is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were
all their lifetime subject to bondage. Don't tell me we're
not in bondage, never have been in bondage, never will be in
bondage, never be a bond slave. If you don't feel like that,
you're going straight to hell. We are the bond slaves of Jesus
Christ. Now the good thing is this. The
owner of a bond slave was responsible for everything. He furnished
your shoes, and your clothes, and your food, and the place
that you slept. And He was responsible for the
bond slave's well-being. And the Lord does that for us. In Him we live and move and have
our being. He's the vine and we are the
branches. Without Him, we can do nothing. So it's no big thing to be the
bond slave of the ruler of the universe. Jude, the bond slave
of Jesus Christ and brother James. Paul tells us in Galatians chapter
2, that when God called him, he conferred not with flesh and
blood. But he went to Arabia. And he came back to Damascus. And he said, after three years,
I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him 15 days. But other apostles saw I none
except James, the Lord's brother. He didn't say brother in the
Lord. He said James, the Lord's brother. More properly, his half-brother. Now if James is a half-brother
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jude is James' brother, that
makes him the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he
never mentioned it. Neither did James. If it wasn't
for Paul, we wouldn't know it. Probably they knew it was not
that important whose brother you were. They knew that the
Lord Jesus Christ was in the world and the world was made
by Him and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own and
His own received Him not. But to as many as received Him,
To them gave He the power to become the sons of God, which
were born not of blood. It doesn't make any difference
who your brother is, or your father, or your mother, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Oh, it's not important. The Lord
said that if you don't hate your father and your mother and your
sister and your brother, you're not worthy to follow Me. That's
why they never mentioned it. Because out of all the unimportant
things in the world, that was the most unimportant. Whose brother
you are. The genealogy was only important
until the Lord came. Because it was a literal, written
fulfillment of the promise of God that He would come through
the lineage of Abraham and David. The lineage of Joseph goes all
the way back to Abraham. The lineage of Mary, His mother,
goes all the way back to Adam. Because she's His mother and
He's the Savior of the world. Boaz begat Obed of Ruth. And Obed begat Jesse. And Jesse begat David the king. And David the king begat Solomon
of Hur, who had been the wife of Uriah. And it went on and
on and on. You could go to the temple and
you could look at the temple genealogy and tell everyone in
the whole Jewish nation who they were kin to and where they came
from. It doesn't matter anymore because the temple, when it hit
the ground in 70 AD, the temple genealogy burned up. Nobody knows
who's a Jew anymore. That's the purpose of God. But if we had a genealogy, it
would be the shortest one ever. You know why? Because James said
of his own will, begat he us, that we should be a kind of firstfruits
of his creature. All the children of God got the
same Father. Now that makes for a short genealogy. Jude, the bondslave of Jesus
Christ and brother of James, to them who are sanctified by
God the Father. Now you can't preach on eternal union without knowing
what started all of it. This is the very beginning of
our salvation, if you can use that terminology. You have to
remember that preachers speak with words that we know and understand. We don't have the words to discuss
the things of God like we should, so we use what we have. This is the beginning of our
salvation. when God looked out over all
of mankind. And it's nothing but a hog pen. No one there is clean. Their
hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it? They're conceived in sin and
shaped in iniquity. They're rebellious against God. They're self-willed. Everyone
in the whole human race. And God chose out some. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessing in heavenly places. Ephesians 1-3. According as He
has chosen us in Him, before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blame before Him. He reached
down and chose me and pulled me out of the miry clay. He took
me away from the power of darkness and translated me into the kingdom
of His dear Son. When God chose me and took me
out of that miry clay, I was not I was not a potential child
of God. I was not a future child of God. I was a child of God right then. Right then. And He ordained me
and predestinated me to be adopted. You know what that means? That
means that everything connected with me becoming a child of God
has been taken care of. Everything. There's nothing left
for me to do. God has foreordained everything
concerning my salvation. All of it. And then He did the
most marvelous thing. He placed us in the safest place
in the whole universe. He gave us to Christ. He made
us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to His grace. So now we belong to Christ. And Christ said in the book of
Hebrews, Behold, I and the children God hath given me. We were already
children when God gave us to Him. We are now in a place where
neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God which
is given us in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are in the safest imaginable
place. We are in the hands of Christ.
And Christ said, I and my Father are one, so we're also in the
hands of God. Nothing, nothing will ever take
us away from the Lord Jesus Christ. And everything has been foreordained
for my salvation, for your salvation if you're a child of God. It's
all been taken care of. Everything God demands that I
be holy and without blame before Him, He will provide. It's all
been taken care of. Now, do we really believe in eternal
union? I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the
flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me
and gave Himself for me." We were in union with Christ when
He was on the cross. Ephesians 2 and verse 4, But
God, who is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith He loved
us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together
with Christ. For by grace are you saved."
We came out of Joseph of Arimathea's tomb in Christ. But, we hear about being given
to Christ before the foundation of the world. And then we hear
about being on the cross with Christ. And we never ever give
a thought to where we were in between. And that's why it's
called eternal union. We were always with Christ. Always. We were always in Christ. We always belonged to Him. Job chapter 38. Job has been
making excuses. Job has been telling what a good
boy he's been all of his life and everything. And all of a
sudden in verse 38 and verse 1, God spoke to Job out of the
whirlwind. And said, Who is this that darkeneth
counsel with words of no knowledge? And then He proceeds to tell
Job, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?
And he goes on down to verse 6. And he said, when I stretched
the foundation and laid the cornerstone. And verse 7 says, when all the
morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for
joy. Who do you think the sons of
God were that shouted for joy? If we have an eternal union with
Christ, it was us! We were the ones that shouted
with joy. Look! Look! The cornerstone of
creation is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Look at that! That's marvelous! And we watched
as He created the world. And we shouted for joy because
that's us! We were without form and void
until God chose us out of humanity. Darkness covered the face of
the deep. And Colossians chapter 2 and
verse 7 says that God hath delivered us from the power of darkness
and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. And the sons
of God would all say, Amen! That's us! And the Spirit of
God moved upon the water, and we saw when we were born again,
when God brought us up from the deadness of sin, and woke us
up to the fact that He is our Creator, He is our God, He is
our Savior, He owns us. And then, let there be light. And all the sons of God shouted
for joy, There is Christ! Let there be light! And there
was light. And then we watched as Adam gave
away the whole human race. Sold us out for a woman. And
all the sons of God, they were like John was in the book of
Revelation when they couldn't open a book. We wept much because
we know that He's given us all a way. We're all in Him. We're going to all be born in
sin. We're going to all be conceived
in iniquity. He's done this and then we shouted
for joy because Christ is the seed of the woman that's going
to bruise the head of the serpent. And we were glad because He's
our Redeemer. And He loves us. And He's going
to do this for us. And we watched whenever the rain
came down. When Caleb preached this morning,
we watched when God put all of Noah's family in the ark. And
we shouted with joy because that is a picture of Christ, our Redeemer. There's no safety anywhere else
from the wrath of God except in Him, and we are in Him. And then we watched as history
unfolded. And God gave the law. Christ
gave the law on Mount Sinai. And we looked down on all of
these hundreds of thousands of Jewish people. And we marveled
at their hardness of heart. and their unbelief. Because we
knew that we would have a hard heart. And we would be in unbelief. But we're in Christ and He would
heal us. And we watched as the Lord on
the ground called down fire from the Lord out of heaven on Sodom
and Gomorrah. And we knew there was a day of
judgment. We knew that the wrath of God
would come down on the ungodly, and we knew that we had already
been judged in Christ. Because we're with Christ during
all of this. If you believe in eternal union,
you have to believe we were with Him. And we watched as the Lord
was born. And the whole host of heaven
was singing and we were in on it. We really were. Here is our
Savior. We know that our redemption draweth
nigh. We know that the Lord is preparing
for the hour. When He said, Mine hour is come,
everything led up to that. And we watched Him lead a sinless
life and we knew He did it for us. We watched Him as He loved
the Lord His God with all His heart and all His soul and all
His mind all of the time. And we knew we're going to get
credit for that because we belong to Him. And we watched our Lord whenever
they beat Him. and put the purple robe on him. You don't know for sure. The Lord said, don't you know
I could have called twelve legions of angels? If He would have,
none of us would be here. It would have been the end of
all things. He can't do that because He had taken upon Himself
our iniquities. He can't call twelve legions
of angels and still be the Christ. But I'm reasonably sure that
twelve legions of angels would have come down and made a waste,
howling wilderness out of this world if God would have let them.
We watched as they ridiculed Him. If you are the Son of God,
come down off of that cross. If there is a God, why does He
let bad things happen to good people? And we marveled that
He had the strength to go through this. And we watched as God made
Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
cried, it is finished, you talk about a shout of joy. Everything is done. All the work is over with. There's only rest in Christ. We don't have to do anything
because there's nothing we can do. He has taken care of everything. And we watched as all this went
on. And then, three days and three nights later, we came out
of the tomb with the Lord Jesus Christ. He raised us up together
with Christ. And we knew, we knew that everything
is alright, or we'd still be in the tomb. Our salvation is
secure. We know that no one can lay anything
to the charge of God's elect because it is God that justifies. We know we can never be condemned
because who is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died. We are secure. And we also know
that Christ loves us. He loves us enough to be forsaken
by the Father. He loves us enough to go through
death to the resurrection. And He loves us enough to come
back after us. Because the Lord will appear
in the sky with the voice of the archangel and the trump of
God. And the dead in Christ shall
rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the air and so shall
we ever be with the Lord. We're like the prodigal son. Did you know that? When God separated
us from our mother's womb, we're in a far country. We're as far
from heaven as we can get. And we wasted our lives in riotous
living. All of us did. You don't have
to be a major sinner to waste your life in riotous living.
All you've got to do is be indifferent to God. And your life is a waste. So we wasted our lives in riotous
living like the prodigal son did. And we lived in the hog
pen of this flesh. And we ate the dry husk that
all the rest of the hogs fed on. And then Scripture says when
He came to Himself, when the Holy Spirit of God borned us
again, and we came to ourselves, we're headed home. We're headed
home. And our Father sees us from a
long way off. And He's got a fatted calf ready.
You better believe that. And when the angels come after
me, and take me to the gates of heaven. I'm going to walk
through those gates and I'm going to look all around me and I'm
going to say, this is home. I've always been here. That's eternal union. That's
only a little bitty piece of what those two words mean. So words, when you apply them
to the Gospel, have meanings beyond anything we can imagine. Eternal union. You want comfort
from God's love. God loved you enough to deliver
us from the power of darkness. He didn't have to do that. He
could have left us all in darkness. And He translated us into the
kingdom of His dear Son. He didn't have to do that. Christ
didn't have to take us. They could get along without
us. But we were chosen to spend an
eternity with God. And everything it takes to make
us ready, God will provide. So do we really believe in eternal
union? Or do we read the Scripture and
say, well, yeah, see me in Christ whenever the covenant was sealed,
but I don't see me again until the crucifixion? Well, you think
there's a U-Haul storage place in heaven? He put us all in there
and left us until the crucifixion? No, no, no. No, no. We were with
Christ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. He would never let us go. Now I realize I've taken some
liberty with the Word of God, but there's enough Scripture
to make me think that. Besides, it comforts me to think
That I would go to heaven and realize I've been here all this
time. That this is my home. I belong
here. I've never, ever felt at ease
anywhere but in this church. And that's a hard thing to say
because I've been in other churches. This is a gospel church and maybe
they weren't. I don't know and I don't care
because I'm here now. But to be able to fellowship,
to be able to love one another, to not worry about inconsequential
things amongst brethren, that's just a little bitty taste of
what it's going to be like in heaven. And the reason for all of this
is Jesus Christ our Lord. is the reason for everything. To them that are sanctified by
God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ, you better believe
we're preserved from day one throughout all eternity. And called. You'd think it'd be enough. That
the Lord would die for our sins. That the Lord would organize
history to allow for us to be born. Don't let anybody kid you. God is not willing that any should
perish. This world is going to be here
until the last name in the Book of Life comes to Christ. Then
it's going to be gone. Global warming or nothing else
is going to change that. So we are assured that we're
going to be with God. The calling touches us personally
in the flesh. Everything I've told you this
morning occurred outside the body. But the calling is me. The Holy Spirit came to me and
called me by name. And I became a willing bond slave
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The calling is the most marvelous
thing. Because no matter where you are,
no matter where I am, no matter what the circumstances are, you
can be on a cross right next to the Lord, and God can call
you in the eleven and a half hours. You can be nigh unto death
and God can call you to a newness of life right before you die. You can be right at the top of
the ladder, as high as you're ever going to go in your profession,
and God will call you and bring you down. But you'll never, ever
regret it. You'll never feel like you lost
anything. Once you come to know God, nothing
else matters. Now the older we get, I speak
from experience, the older we get, the more we think about
these things. The more I think that God has
carefully watched over me all my life. God brought me to a
day of grace. God preserved me from false religion
and outright blasphemy. And God brought us to this church
where we could fellowship and we could worship the Lord. I
don't regret anything. Father, we thank You for calling
us, Father. We thank You for giving us to
Christ. We thank You, Father, for making
all the arrangements, doing all the work, and taking care of
it, and we receive all of the blessings. We ask, Father, You'd
be with each and every one of us, that we might feel the closeness
of Christ, Father, that we might go through the day rejoicing
and singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs in our hearts,
that we would be glad when they say unto us, let us go into the
house of the Lord. We ask, Father, You'd increase
our knowledge, increase our love, increase our fellowship, Father,
and our love for one another. We ask these things in Jesus'
name. Amen. We're going to close with the
hymnal number 296 in your heart back, number 296. All the way,
my savior, number 296. All the way my Savior leads me,
what have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy,
who through life has been my guide? heavenly peace, divinest
comfort, here by faith in Him to dwell. For I know what e'er
befall me, Jesus, do it all things well. For I know what e'er befall
me, Jesus, do it all things well. All the way my Savior leads me,
Tears each winding path I tread, Gives me grace for every trial,
Feeds me with the living bread. Though my weary steps they falter,
And my soul a thirst may be, Gushing from the rock before
me, blow a string of joy I sing. Gushing from the rock before
me, blow a string of joy I sing. all the way my savior oh the
fullness of his love perfect rest to be his promise in my
father's house when my spirit Wings that fly to realms of day. This my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way. This my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way.