As you may have already noticed, I have "post-dated" many of these posts. But what an appropriate one to fall on Christmas Day! Merry Christmas!
As I worked through this study, I kept running into "gold" that I found tremendously encouraging as they led me to Christ -- (yes, brought me to Jesus!) I'll call them "Sightings of Christ" ...
Jude 24 “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, 25 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.”
This word for joy used here is different that the previous passages. It means rejoice in exceeding degree. It is a rarer word for joy only seen in a handful of places in the New Testament.
-Luke 1:44 The baby John the Baptist “leaps for joy” when Mary greets
-Luke 10:21 Jesus “rejoices exceedingly” when God reveals Himself to ‘babes’
-John 8:56 When revealing His deity to the Pharisees, Jesus says, “Abraham rejoiced exceedingly to see My day.”
As we see in Jude 24, abundant, exceeding, overflowing, bubbling over joy is our future…joy in Christ. In this special word for exceeding joy, the object of joy is almost exclusively Christ and the realities of eternal life with Him. There is joy, and then there is abundant, "in Christ" joy!
Now that’s some promise to be telling yourself!
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