Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

-{Jude}

-I am excited that we are making this morning’s worship service a part of our DNOW weekend, so that the whole church is able to learn what the students have been learning.

Their theme and message important for all Christians.

We live in a day and age where truth is relativized and where Christians have become more swayed by culture than by God’s Word.

And that needs to change today.

-The theme of the weekend is ROOTED.

The concept comes from Psalm 1 where we are told that a BLESSED PERSON is one whose DELIGHT IS IN THE LAW OF THE LORD (the Word of God) and they meditate on that Word DAY AND NIGHT.

When you delight in God’s Word and you take in and meditate in God’s Word, you become rooted in the faith, rooted in truth, and as the psalmist says, you become like a TREE FIRMLY PLANTED BY STREAMS OF WATER THAT YIELDS ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON, AND ITS LEAF DOES NOT WITHER, and you PROSPER IN ALL THAT YOU DO.

Listen to what it’s saying: WHEN YOU BECOME ROOTED IN THE WORD, YOU BECOME ROOTED FOR LIFE.

-When your life is rooted in God’s Word, you will not be influenced or conformed by the culture and the world.

When your life is rooted in God’s Word, you will not be tossed and turned by every event and circumstance that happens around you.

You are firmly planted by streams of living water when you are rooted.

-But, I have to give you a warning today.

There are enemies out there who will try to cut you off at the roots.

There are enemies out there that do not want you rooted in truth and in faith.

If they are able to take you out at the roots, they know that they can deceive you and influence you and eventually destroy you.

And so you must guard the roots that you have established.

If you do not guard your roots, they are vulnerable, which makes you vulnerable.

-It makes me think of something from several years ago.

At our first house in Southaven, MS we lived near a large park.

Almost every weekday we would drive through the park to get the kids to school.

One night there was a large storm that had come through.

That morning on the way to school we found that several very large trees in the park tumbled over.

Why didn’t the roots keep them standing when the storm came?

There may be several reason.

The roots may have been rotted.

The roots may have been diseased.

The roots may have been plagued with bugs.

The roots may have been tampered with by man.

Something happened to the roots, so that they were no longer strong enough to keep the tree standing.

-This is a warning to us.

Yes, we may have planted some roots in God’s Word, but we cannot ignore our roots.

We cannot let up constantly building our roots and feeding our roots and strengthening our roots, lest some enemy or some sort of rot come in and undo everything that we have done.

We have to guard our roots.

-So, the main idea of today’s message is for us to know that we are called to guard our roots of faith because there are enemies who threaten our foundation of truth.

-{pray}

-So, what do we need to know about guarding our roots?

1) There is one, single faith that holds the truth

-Jude tells us to guard THE FAITH THAT WAS ONCE FOR ALL DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS.

The faith in this context it is the body of doctrine and teaching that God revealed to His prophets and the Holy Spirit inspired to write down.

It is talking about God’s Word that is God-breathed (according to the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy) and which we now have preserved for us in the Bible.

-Jude says that the body of truth was delivered to God’s people, being passed down to the faithful century after century, without any deviation from its message.

It is the body of faith once for all delivered to us.

That means that it will not change, it will not disappear, it will not be added to, and it will not have anything taken from it.

It has been given once for all.

Jude teaches us that the Bible, and all it contains, is truth from God that is eternal.

It is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.

And it is as truthful today (within its context) as it ever has been or will be.

-This is important in our day and age where truth is constantly called into question.

This is an age where it is taught that truth is fluid and can change, even to the point where you can make your own truth.

But this goes against the whole concept of truth.

And we know and hold that the Word of God in which we root ourselves is truth.

It tells us the truth about man’s fall.

It tells us the truth about Christ’s life and death and resurrection.

It tells us the truth about the gospel and the way of salvation.

It is the only body of faith that tells the truth.

Truth is important and keeps out falsehood.

-Imagine if one person says that the tablet that I have on the pulpit here is an Apple iPad.

And another person says that it is an Amazon Fire tablet.

And another person says that it’s a Samsung Galaxy.

They cannot all be right.

The truth is whatever corresponds with reality—this tablet was made by Apple, it runs an Apple Operating System.

It has all the Apple apps.

That means it’s an Apple iPad.

That is the truth of the matter.

-The Bible is either true or it isn’t, and it has shown itself to be historically accurate, theologically accurate, and existentially accurate (which means accurate about life).

All other religions contradict the Bible.

If the Bible is true, that means that they aren’t.

And so, it is important to know and live out the fact that there is one, single faith that holds the truth, and it is the Christian faith as given to us in God’s Word.

But next we need to know...

2) There is a call for us to defend the truth

-Jude says that he originally was just going to write a letter to Christians to just talk about the faith that we hold in common.

But there was so much false teaching and so many enemies of the faith that he had to completely change the subject of the letter.

Things were so desperate and urgent in his day that he had to call Christians to spiritual warfare because their roots were at stake.

And that is the day we live in right now.

We need to raise up spiritual arms and prepare for spiritual warfare because the body of truth is at stake and our own roots are at stake.

-So, what Jude tells them is that they need to contend for that faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

The word “contend” means to struggle, to wrestle—it literally means to fight as a combatant.

You are out in the field of battle and it’s either you or your enemy.

In war, you are fighting for your life, you are fighting for your family, you are fighting for everything that you believe in.

You fight with every ounce you have to defend what you love, what you have, what you believe in.

-The struggle for the faith, the struggle for truth is no less important.

Just because it is not a physical fight doesn’t mean that it’s any less of a battle or that you should put any less effort into the battle.

The only difference is that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood and our weapons are not earthly.

Our battle is in the realm of the spiritual and our enemies are from the realm of the spiritual, so we fight with spiritual weapons.

We fight on our knees in prayer.

We fight by knowing God’s Word and believing that it is truth, and settling within ourselves that we will not be convinced by someone telling us any different.

Because if we don’t, not only will we be cut off at the roots, those around us will be hurt as well.

-Imagine that someone breaks into your house to do you and your family harm, and you have the means to protect your family and your house and your property and your life.

Would you not do all you can to defend since so much is at stake?

Or would you just stand there and let them kill you and your family and burn your house down?

-Christian, there are enemies to the cross of Christ that are trying to cut you off at the roots, that are trying to undermine the faith of your family, that are trying to prevent others from coming to Christ—are you just going to sit there and let it happen?

Or will you get up off of your pew and go to battle for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the faith, for the sake of your family, for the sake of truth, for the sake of Christ?

There is a call for us to defend the faith.

The reason this is so important is because...

3) There are enemies trying to undermine the truth

-There are real enemies to the truth of the faith, but they aren’t always so obvious.

It’s not like back in WWII where the enemy had a Nazi swastika on it’s uniform or the Japanese flag on the uniform, so you knew it was an enemy.

Jude warns us that sometimes the enemy will look exactly like us—meaning they will look like they’re Christian and believe in the same faith that we do, but they actually don’t.