Profound Certainty

We are less than a week from Palm Sunday. Next week, I ignore all politics and news in my daily writings and focus only on the most important week in human history. Whether one accepts Jesus as Lord, Easter Weekend is the most profound week in human history and Christ’s crucifixion, if not his resurrection, routinely shows up on secular lists of the most important events in history.

First, a thank you to my paid subscribers. I try to make it worth it with the show notes, clips, etc. that only you get. But more importantly, I literally could not do this without all of you. It is an unusual thing indeed, even in conservative radio and punditry, to openly profess Jesus and be blessed with a platform like I have. I dare say, as culture grinds down to the end, even within conservatism being a Christian willing to profess orthodox Christianity and all that comes with it is increasingly a minority position. So thank you.

Second, I’ve been kind of overwhelmed with career stuff these last couple of weeks. My wife and kids were able to get off to the beach last week and I stayed home and worked and stewed over work. At some point, I decided the only way to turn off my brain and focus on more important matters was to turn to scripture.

I come back again and again to one of the most important of all the verses in the Bible. “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe,” Jude wrote in verse five of his letter.

Jude identified himself as the brother of James and servant of Christ. That James is important because history tells us it was not James the Apostle, but James the brother of Jesus. Jude was Jesus’s half-brother or, some would say, his first cousin. They were related.

More importantly, the Apostle John recorded Jude was one of Jesus’s brothers who told him to get out of town. Jude did not believe Jesus was the son of God. Jude would not even show up at Jesus’s execution. He was nowhere to be seen at the resurrection. But then Jude becomes a leader in the early church. Luke notes in Acts that Mary and Jesus’s brothers were there together with the apostles in worship.

Jude, the brother of Christ who rejected him in life, says Jesus is the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who rescued his people out of the land of Egypt. Jesus was the pillar of cloud and fire — this is his brother whose own execution Jude would not even attend.

Eusebius, in his history of the Christian Church, writes that Jude and his children were eventually killed as the Romans set about exterminating the entire earthly bloodline of Christ. But before his death, Jude wrote that his brother, Jesus, “saved a people out of the land of Egypt.” So modest now, he would only identify himself as “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.”

Tim Keller, in his wonderful book Hope in Times of Fear, wrote that the word “hope” in Hebrews, such as Hebrews 10:23, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful,” is better translated as profound certainty. When Paul writes about our hope in the resurrection, he does not mean our wish, our want, or our desire as the word “hope” is often translated, but our profound certainty in the resurrection.

Jude had profound certainty in the resurrection. He saw his risen brother.

I’ve been overwhelmed with work and career stress these past two weeks. A lot of you have more going on and more worries. All of us are dealing with the ordinary stresses of these times. Others have real fear about war, illness, suffering, and more.

I find real comfort in Jude, the brother of the Lord, reminding us Jesus rescued his people out of Egypt. I have profound certainty he’ll rescue us out of all our travails too. Easter is coming. The tomb is going to be empty. That matters more than every single thing you’ll encounter today.

Next Friday is my Good Friday Show on radio. I hope if he is well enough, that I’ll have another conversation with Tim Keller to talk more about our profound certainty in Christ’s resurrection.

Now, go listen to this: