02 - Fighting for the Faith - 2011 By Pastor Jeff Wickwire Notes

Jude—Postcards from the Past

Part 2

“Fighting for the Faith”

Last time we saw that Jude’s letter was aimed at the heresy of Gnosticism (for a refresher on what Gnosticism is, see last week’s notes or CD). Jude also showed us that we have been sanctified, secured and selected in Jesus Christ.

Next, Jude commences with his head-on confrontation with heresy, and a passionate defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ:

The Sin and Doom of Ungodly People

“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”—vs.3

Jude lets us in on the fact that he had originally intended to write about “our common salvation” to his readers. But a grave outbreak of apostasy had changed things. The phrase “I found it necessary” is not a strong enough rendering. “I was constrained” might be a better rendering. It means “a compelling need for immediate action.”

Jude was under the strong constraint of the Holy Spirit to switch gears and exhort the saints to fight for the real faith. The faith that has been “once delivered” does not refer to a creed or a formula of articles of belief. It refers instead to the substance of the complete New Testament teachings concerning the gospel and the church.

Jude tells us that this faith has been “delivered once for all.” It is the sum of the things that we must believe. It is something with which we must not tamper. Revelations warns,

“And I solemnly declare to everyone who hears the words of prophecy written in this book: If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book. 19 And if anyone removes any of the words from this book of prophecy, God will remove that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city that are described in this book.”—22:18

This is why we can safely and categorically reject any attempt to add to that “once for all” body of belief, as, for instance, the heretical Book of Mormon. The Mormons try to pass their book off as “another testament of Jesus Christ.” It is nothing of the kind, but is part fiction, part forgery, and total delusion.

“The faith…once delivered to the saints” did not need gradual additions over the centuries in order to perfect it. Nor does anything in it need to be subtracted, which theological liberals love to do. Cults like adding to it, and liberals like taking from it. Liberals see the chief doctrines of Christianity as repulsive and absurd and want to discard them in favor of humanism, psychology, and a lethal mixture of other religious philosophies.

This is true of the latest outbreak of heresy that teaches the whole world was saved by the death of Christ on the cross, whether one believes it or not. Repentance is not needed. Confession of Christ isn’t needed either. Hell is not forever and God’s love will win in the end, no matter what ones belief or lifestyle is. This, of course, null and voids the core of N.T. teaching and renders turning to Jesus unnecessary.

No wonder Paul warned in Col. 2:8, “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.”

In a nutshell, we have a perfect, completed Bible comprised of 66 books. It is God-breathed and is profitable for godly living. Jude says, “earnestly contend” for the faith contained in its pages, knowing that the dogs of war have been unleashed against the gospel of Christ, and compromise is out of the question.

The expression, “earnestly contend” occurs only here in all of Scripture. It means to contend about an issue as a combatant. The word earnestly is added to convey the intensity of the verb, contend. When the great truths of Christianity are attacked, it is criminal for the church to sit on the sidelines doing nothing!

Next, Jude describes the men and the method of those teaching the heresy.

“For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”—vs.4

First, we’re presented with creepers; men who had “crept in unnoticed.” The phrase means, “to slip in secretly,” “to insinuate oneself by stealth.” These apostates were and are very good at coming into the church stealthily under the radar. They are likable. They know how to charm. They were and are today secret assassins of sound doctrine, professional hit men sent by Satan to undermine and destroy the church.

They might hold degrees in theology. They are usually charismatic and persuasive. They have strong personalities and winning smiles. They are good at oratory, skillful in shading words with different meanings. They use the church’s vocabulary and seem to be saying the things that we believe, but they have redefined the terms.

The latest teacher of universalism (everybody is saved) admits there is a hell, but redefines hell as the misery we create for ourselves on this earth by rejecting God’s love. There is no eternal hell for the lost. They (the teacher of this) “just can’t imagine such a thing.”

Unfortunately, false teachers like this infiltrate both church and seminary, ultimately seizing control of decision-making and curriculum. Jude calls them “ungodly men.” This does not simply mean “irreligious.” It means that they deliberately do things that God has forbidden.

And he is also “unholy,” says Jude. They “turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.” This means they pervert the doctrine of the grace of God and actually use it as a license to sin. “If I am covered by grace,” they argue, “then I can live however I wish. Grace will cover it.”

The word “lasciviousness” means “lack of moderation, absence of restraint.” It is the word used to describe the lifestyle of the people of Sodom. In other words, the heresy of the apostates leads to a lifestyle of abandon to the lower nature. Such a lifestyle is an open denial of Jesus Christ.

But they are doomed, says Jude. They were “long ago were marked out for this condemnation.”

Jude next comes to grips with the apostasy that was threatening the church in his day and that will overwhelm the church in the last days. First, he draws some parallels, illustrating them with three O.T. incidents. He draws first from the pilgrim age, tracing the history of Israel, as God’s pilgrim people, in the wilderness.

Second, he draws an illustration from the primeval age, going back to the days of Noah and the invasion of this planet by fallen angels. And finally, Jude draws an illustration from the present age, foreseeing the decadence of the end-times.

Keeping in mind Jude’s observation that false teachers had snuck in through the back door and infiltrated the church, he now draws an illustration from the pilgrim age of subtle imitation. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares with the tares growing up right next to the wheat, even looking like wheat, fits into the illustration perfectly.

Two kinds of people came out of Egypt. First, there were those who were soundly saved:

“But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”—vs.5a

Jude begins with those who were genuinely saved. God had put them under the blood, brought them through the water, and gathered them around His table. They had been born in slavery, born under the sentence of death. They were in the power of Pharaoh, a type of Satan.

And they were saved, not by the miracles Moses performed against Egypt, but by the blood of the Lamb. It was the blood on the doorposts and the lintel and blood in the basin on the doorstep that saved them when the avenging angel spread his wings over the land.

Then they were separated. God brought them through the Red Sea. They “were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor.10:2). They were fed with bread from heaven, as Paul puts it, made to drink of water from the rock.

God came down and pitched His tent among them. The entire sacrificial system, the laws, the ordinances, the feasts, and the fasts were all part of their spiritual education. It was picture-book teaching for a kindergarten age, but the truth of the coming New Covenant under Christ was all there in picture, type, shadow, symbol, and ritual.

In short, there were those that were soundly saved and separated unto God. As we, by faith, look back to Calvary, so the Children of Israel—in however a hazy, vague, and limited way—looked forward by faith to Calvary.

But at the same time, there were those who were supposedly saved:

“…the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”—vs.5b

Among the genuinely saved were what the Holy Spirit calls “a mixed multitude,” those who did not believe. They were among them, but not of them; tares among the wheat. Moses writes about them:

“A mixed multitude went up with them (Israel) also, and flocks and herds—a great deal of livestock” (Ex.12:38).

These were the people that caused most of the trouble. They criticized, complained, accused and attacked Moses, and sowed unbelief in the camp. They were discord sowers and unbelief growers, and they were lethal to God’s people.

This mixed multitude had joined the ranks of Israel after the overthrow of Pharaoh. They were unbelievers who knew nothing about redemption by the blood of the Passover Lamb. They were worldly, carnal, rebellious, and self-willed.

God’s faithful dealings with His own was a part of everyday life, but the “mixed multitude” did not recognize it as such.

When the “mixed multitude” heard about the giants of Canaan, they cried, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!” (Num. 14:1-2). They crowned all their other sins by refusing, at Kadesh-barnea, to enter the Promised Land.

Their negative unbelief infected and brought judgment on an entire generation, twenty years old and upward. Only Joshua and Caleb escaped to enter Canaan.

The supposedly saved but actually apostates perished eternally; the backsliders who had been genuinely saved by the blood of the lamb perished physically and their calling was short-circuited.

For the apostate in all ages, the solemn lesson is one of sure and certain judgment to come. At any moment, the unseen line might be crossed. For the backsliders, the solemn lesson is that it is possible to have a saved soul but a lost life!

NEXT TIME: Close Encounters of the Demonic Kind