Jackie Hill Perry: What You Need to Know About Jesus and Your Sin | Praise on TBN

He ends up ending this book with this doxology. A doxology is a short hymn of praise. It's basically the shortest worship song you'll ever read. It's a beautiful doxology. I'll read it verbatim. He says in verse 24, he says, to him who was able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before his glorious presence with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be dominion, authority, majesty. I mixed that up. You can read it. Forever and ever, amen. To walk through that, he says, to him who is able to keep you. If you have any understanding of yourself, any self-awareness, then you know that you are hard to be kept because you're difficult. You got Israel, who one minute, they worship in the Lord thy God with all their might. Then the next minute, they want to go back to Egypt because they hungry. We are fickle people. You have David, who one minute is worshiping God. He is called a man after God's own heart. Then the next minute, he is killing Uriah just because he had the man's baby. Well, not his baby. You get what I'm saying. Then you got us. You have Peter, who asked Jesus to walk on water. Then as soon as the wind and the waves get a little crazy, he starts to doubt his God. It shows us that consistently, people of faith have a very hard time staying faithful. That's the emphasis. For you to say to him who was able to keep you from falling is to say that you have a God whose hand is stronger than your legs. You might not be able to keep yourself in the will of God as much as you try, but he going to do it for you. He is that strong and he is that powerful. I think that would encourage me. I'm in this culture and this world where everybody around me wants to do what they want to do. Everybody around me is just falling by the wayside, but I have a God who is saying, no, I am more than able to keep you from falling. This is not just saying you won't fall. You will. This is an eschatological fall. God is able to keep you falling finally. For example, you have Peter again who Jesus told him, hey, when the rooster crows three times, you will deny me. What did he do? He denied him. And then when Jesus restored him over dinner, he says, hey, I pray for you that your faith would not fail. Somebody could be confused by that because they could say, Jesus, he denied you though. So his faith failed. But I would say his faith did not fail eternally. It failed momentarily. So even my momentary falls will not exclude me from being able to stand before God's presence faultless. He says that God is not only able to keep you from falling, but that God is going to present you without fault. So he's playing with contrast by saying God is not only able to keep you from falling, but God is able to keep you standing. Not only that, he's going to present you as if you've never done anything in your entire life. If you know anything about being without fault or without blemish, you know that that's connecting back to the Old Testament. One of the things God always demanded of his people in their sacrifice is that they could not have any blemish because God wanted that which was presented to him to be representative of himself. God has no faults. God has no blemishes. He is perfect. He is spotless. He's so pretty. He is just a perfect God. But we know enough about ourselves that we know the moment we were born, we had faults. Why? Because we were all born in sin and shaped in iniquity. Half of us got faults right now in our mind that God himself is going to deal with. And so that's the predicament, is that if God is holy and we are not, how in the world will I be able to stand before him without being judged by him? But that's the beauty of Jesus, is that Jesus became the spotless lamb without blemish who took on your blemishes so that you wouldn't have to before God and be judged. Jesus took on the burden and the wrath and the dirt and the nastiness so that when we stand before God, we stand purely on the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. This is why Jude has the audacity to say that God will not only be able to keep you, but when you stand before him, you will stand as if you have never committed a sin in your entire life. That is the lavishness of grace that these people want to pervert. Beautiful. Wow. Jackie, right there is a good time to tell somebody that's ready for that. They want this good news. How do they accept this? How do they seal this deal? I think they have to know who they are and who Jesus is. Who you are, how you started was that you were born in sin. But before you were born in sin, you were thought of in the mind of God. You were born as an image bearer, which means that you have dignity, which means that you are important, which means that you have purpose. Your primary purpose being to love God with all your heart, mind and soul. But you were born in a lineage of people with bad blood. You were born after Adam. And so because you were born after Adam, your default is to distrust God. Your default is to believe that your affection should have the final say over how you how you live your life. Your default is to believe that you know better than the all wise God. And so because of this, you most likely have went through your life making decisions that God would not have you to make. You have most likely picked up a few idols on the way, whether it be pride, arrogance, ego, greed, lying, pornography, addiction, adultery, all kinds of things. Even if you've never committed any of these grievous sins, the fact that your heart is not submitted to God is the primary idolatry for which you are to repent. Repentance is a good word. It's good news because it says that you actually have the ability to change. To repent is to turn from something. What you are turning from is your sin and the unbelief that fueled it. It's the unbelief that says that I know better than God. God is calling all of humanity to repent, to turn from worthless things, to turn from idols, to turn from unbelief, to turn from pride, to turn. But you don't turn towards yourself. You don't do a 360. You do a 180. You turn towards somebody and that somebody is Jesus. Who is Jesus? Jesus was born after Adam too, but different from you in that he was born as the God man because he existed before anything existed. He is the creator of all creatures. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the Lord of hosts. He is the beginning and the end. He is the one that Isaiah saw in Isaiah six, when he saw the train of his robe fill the temple and the angel saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. This is the Jesus that we're talking about that was born as a baby. And this Jesus lived a life submitted to the real God. He lived a life perfect and acceptable and righteous and pure. He loved his neighbor. He prayed and he healed and he resurrected Lazarus. He did all of these great things, but then he had the audacity to die. And he didn't just die for anybody, but he died for all of those that would call on his name on the cross. Jesus took the penalty of your idolatry. He took the penalty of your sin on himself. It says even in the Bible that it got dark for a couple hours. That wasn't because the sun left. That was because the wrath of God was present. There was darkness because judgment was in the room, but that judgment was on your sin. Therefore, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and believe that he is all that he says that he is and has done all that he will do all that he has done, then you will not face the judgment of God in the same way that Jesus did. You will actually be empowered to love the Lord thy God in a way that has always been impossible for you. But not only that, he not only lives, he not only died, but he resurrected. That's super important because if he was still dead, we wouldn't have any hope. But the fact that Jesus rose from the dead means that I who believe in him have the power to overcome sin and death in the same way. But not only that, he didn't just live and he didn't just die and he didn't just raise, but he also sent us somebody. He did not send us an angel. He did not send us some random. He sent us himself in the person of the Holy Spirit to empower us to love God. And so if you never knew, that was the gospel. Paul said that if you believe in this gospel, you'll be saved. And so the challenge is believe it. If you don't, ask God to help you because even that is belief. It's the belief that God is able to help you believe. Faith is a gift. You can't work it up. It's not a feeling. It says in 2 Corinthians 4 that the enemy has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light that is in the face of Jesus Christ. But it is God who said, let there be light who was shown in our hearts to give us this light. So we need God to unveil our eyes where we can see that Jesus is the most beautiful being in all of the earth. You will not turn from your sin because of fear of hell. You will turn from your sin when you see that Jesus is better than everything you have ever loved in your entire life. That's it.