The great philosopher Merle Haggard once wrote,
“I read about some squirrely guy
who claims he just don’t believe in fightin’
An’ I wonder just how long the rest of us
can count on bein’ free
They love our milk an’ honey,
but they preach about some other way of livin’
When they’re runnin’ down my country, hoss
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Sometimes you have to fight. And if you are the Church of Jesus Christ in this world you are going to have to fight. “Fight the good fight” Paul told Timothy (1 Tim 6:12).. Paul told the Corinthians he would cut the ground out from under false apostles. He said anyone who preached a different gospel would be anathema.
But we don’t fight with fists, guns or explosives. Second Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.”
So Jude is not an NT anomaly when he writes, “I felt compelled to urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” In other words, Jude urges the believers not to be a “squirrely guy” who “don’t believe in fightin” and instead to have a little “Merle Haggard” in themselves and take up the fight when the fight becomes necessary.
Our sermon today is titled: Contend For The Faith. Lets pull out several points:
#1: DEAR FRIENDS
He addresses his readers as “dear friends.” It’s a term loaded with affection and love. The NASB actually translates it as “beloved.” It’s the same term used by the Father when he said, “This is my beloved Son.” It’s a phrase used for someone who is dear to your heart.
What we can see here is that connection between loving someone and watching out for them. The motivation for writing the letter as I’ve been saying is that they would have a glorious time when they are presented to Jesus. But the only reason Jude cared about that is because he cared about them! He loved them. You see the principle of love at work here: when you love someone you care about their well-being.
APPLICATION: Who are your “dear friends”? They’re right here with you in this building.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Not everyone can be your “dearest” friend. So seek out one or two here to be that for you.
APPLICATION: Measure your love by your concern for the growth and flourishing of those you love.
#2: EAGER
Jude was eager for something. “Eager” means “making every effort” or “all diligence.” He says “I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share…” “I was making every effort with all diligence to get a letter over to you guys discussing our shared salvation.” Is not the great topic of our salvation among the most delightful topics for us to converse about? It is, just like it was in the early Church. One example is 1 Peter 1:3-9. Turn there with me and follow along, “…” I will explain along the way how influential Peter is on Jude, and it is my belief that Peter mentored Jude. And this is one of countless reasons why: Jude wanted to do what Peter did and dive into the wonders of our salvation.
Which makes me have an interesting thought: think about how close we were to having a Jude 1 and a Jude 2. If Jude had ever followed up this first letter and went back to finishing writing “about the salvation we share” we would have two letters from Jude, the NT would have 28 letters in it, and the whole canon of Scripture would be bumped up to 67.
One of the motivations of NT authors is to explain in greater detail what our salvation is all about so that their readers would not only understand their salvation more, but appreciate it more. All believers have salvation, but mature believers understand it more.
Whether its Romans expounding on the aspect of “justification,” “but now a righteousness apart from the law has been made known, a righteousness that is by faith.”(3:21-22) Or 1 Corinthians where salvation is by God’s wisdom and power and not achieved by man’s wisdom or power, and famously Paul resolved to preach nothing except Christ and Christ crucified. Or Ephesians showing us that salvation is our being adopted, elected, brought near, and made alive, “for it is by grace you have been saved, not by works…” (2.8). Or Galatians incisively explaining that salvation does not come from the Law or lead us to the Law. Or Hebrews explaining how our Savior the mediator of a New Covenant, and through His blood He washes us clean of sin and cleanses our conscience, and now is our High Priest. Or Peter’s letters where he explains our salvation means an inheritance awaits us in heaven, imperishable. Or John who says that our salvation is our being now in the light, and pardoned from all our sin.
Jude was trying to do what all the authors of NT letters were trying to do: help his readers have a deeper grasp of their salvation. Call it moving on from the ABC’s, or going from milk to meat, or from beginner to novice, to matured expert. Jude wanted to talk about justification (Romans 3 & 4, Gal 2-3); he wanted to expound on adoption (Rom 8, Eph 1); he wanted to dig into redemption (1 Pet 1) and regeneration (1 Cor 3, 6 and Titus 3); he wanted to dissect being reconciled to God (2 Cor 5; Rom 5); and dive deep into being loved by God (Rom 8 and 1 John 4); he wanted to open up on works being the fruit of salvation and not the other way around (Eph 2, Jms 2, 2 Peter 1 and 1 John). Maybe he wanted to go where Hebrews went and show that our salvation comes from a different priest, a different sacrifice, a different blood, a different temple, a different covenant.
But like the Hebrews author, Jude could not talk more about salvation with his readers. But the reason Jude could not is different than the reason the author of Hebrews faced. Turn to Hebrews 5:11-14 with me… READ…. The Hebrews author chastises his readers for being immature and slow to understand and slow to grow. A lot like Paul chastising the Corinthians for also being immature, worldly, fleshly and still on “milk” teachings.
But Jude wasn’t facing that problem. Jude saw that the problem was not with his readers, but with their circumstances and that false teachers were an immediate threat, and those circumstances needed an immediate response. It wasn’t that his readers weren’t ready for meat teaching. It’s that they needed to deal with some bad actors around them – even among them! It’s similar to the returning Jews from Exile who needed to stop building the wall at times to fight off enemies who threatened to tear it down. Jude wanted to be able to say what Jesus said to Ephesus: “I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.” (Rev. 2:2) He wanted them to be Bereans, of whom it is said in Acts 17:11, “They were more noble than the Thessalonians, because they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures everyday to see if what Paul said was true.”
APPLICATION: Be eager to keep learning about the salvation you’ve been given. Jude was eager to talk about it – nothing would’ve been more joyful than to know they
#3: CONTEND
Thirdly we see the point “Compelled to contend.” Look at verse 3, “…I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” Let me point out three things here.
First, Contend! It means to fight with zeal, to struggle, or earnestly contend in a contest.
This is the only place in the whole NT that the word appears so there are no other places to see how it is used. However, the whole idea of guarding truth from false teachings and contending for the faith is ALL OVER the NT. Turn to 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 with me….. Timothy was instructed “guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 2:14). He was also told, “If you point these things out to the brothers you will be a good minister of the Lord Jesus Christ” Point out what? Everything he just warned about and taught in the first 5 verses. The Ephesian elders were warned that “savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from among your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after themselves” and they were to “watch over the flock whom the Holy Spirit had made them overseers.” Watching over the flock involves protecting against false teachings (Acts 20:29-30). Titus learned that he must “refute those who oppose [sound doctrine]” (Titus 1:9).
Contending for the faith and protecting it from false teachers is a daily task of pastors. Why? Because Satan has many ambassadors he sends to the Church in an effort to degrade it. “Many false christs have gone out” John warned, “Many false christs will come” Jesus warned.
This is why Jude felt “Compelled.” He said in verse 3, “….I felt compelled to write you and urge you to contend for the faith…” I was compelled. Jude understood the threat of false teachers and therefore because of his love for his readers (remember they are his “dear friends” or “beloved”), and his desire for their glorious presentation to Jesus Christ, he was compelled to urge them to fight against these false teachers. Compelled means you feel a strong necessity to do something because of the circumstances. We see the word used that way in 1 Corinthians 9:16, when Paul says, “I am compelled to preach.”
But the word “compelled” also has the idea of “distress” where it is used in the verse, “There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.” Putting the two ideas together, its the idea that a person is so distressed about something they have a heavy feeling of having to do something about it and they are driven to act. Jude was distressed about the situation of false teachers already among his readers polluting them. Jude could not sleep until he had gotten this letter off to his beloved friends in the faith. He is like Paul in this regard when Paul said to the Thessalonians, “When I could stand it no longer I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain.” (1 Thess 3:5).
APPLICATION: Be compelled to protect yourselves and the church from false teaching. Be driven by the desire for godliness.
Second, notice “The Faith. Jude says to contend for THE FAITH. What does that mean? Well it means all the teachings that have come to us from Jesus and the Apostles. It is the complete body of teachings given to us found in the NT.
“The faith” is what Acts 20 says is, “the whole counsel of God’s will,” or 1 Timothy 1:11 which says “the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God,” or Matthew 28:20, “make disciples and teach them to obey all my commands,” it includes both the “milk” and the “meat” of Christian teaching(1 Cor. 3:1-3; Heb 5:11-13) and 2 Timothy 1, “What you have heard from me keep as the pattern of sound teaching” (v13).
The faith includes the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified, buried and raised again and that is what you must believe to be saved. But “the faith” includes all the extended teachings of truth and righteousness related to the Gospel, or as Paul said, “the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God.” “The Faith” is an all-encompassing term meaning the whole body of ALL the teachings in the Bible that 1) lead to salvation and 2) lead to righteous, wise, God-pleasing living.
This comes home to you even more when you read the next verse and see how “the faith” was being threatened. In verse 4 there were false teachers who had slipped into the ranks of the church. What were they doing? They were “perverting the grace of our God into a license for immorality and denying Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” See they were teaching that immoral behavior was permissible in God’s eyes because God was a God of grace and grace means permission to live a hedonistic life. We’ll get there next week but see right now that these wolves were like “Jezebel” in Revelation 2:20-23. Turn there with me.
The thing to notice is that much of the positive teaching of our faith in the NT is written in the context of responding to the false teachings they were facing in their day. The legalists in Galatians helped ground us in grace and faith; the gnostics in 1 John helped root our understanding of Jesus as a real, physical man in his birth and resurrection; the mystics and ascetics of Colossians helped us be humble and know true spirituality; the charlatans in 2 Pet 2 helps us demand leaders are genuine , and here we see
Thirdly, ENTRUSTED. Look again at verse 3, “….”
The word for entrust is a word that means to give over into the custody of another, or to hand over something to someone so that they are trusted with taking care of it. It has a wide range of uses from delivering people over into the custody of authorities, to putting the collected offerings into the hands of a group of men who are charged with delivering it.
But it also refers to giving people the commands of God. For instance, turn to 1 cor 11:2 with me….Luke 1:2 says, “just as they were handed down to us by those who were from the first eyewitnesses and servants of the word.” and 2 Pet 2:21 says, “they turned their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” When we read for communion we always read 1 Cor 11:23 where Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you”…1 Cor 15:3
Here we have the idea of stewardship. We are stewards of revealed divine truth. It has come to us and we are to protect it and pass it on as we received it. There is a powerful sense of responsibility for the knowledge we’ve been given. And part of being a good steward of divine truth is promoting it and protecting it; teaching it and guarding it.
APPLICATION: Entrust means Responsibility, and Accountability. We are accountable to obey what we’ve been given. We are responsible to
- obey, luke 12:46-48
- Hold on to teachings, John 15
- Letting go of teachings
- teach
- defend
How this trust is handled will determine what it will be like on the day we are presented to Christ
- Galatians departing from what they were entrusted with
- Corinthians not living up to what they were entrusted with
- Hebrews were slow and lazy with their trust
- 7 churches were given messages …what would they do?
This is why teaching Gods word is so serious. james 3:1 people should not rush to become teachers of God’s word.
CONCLUSION