Defend the Faith

“Code blue! Code Blue!” Have any of you heard that while at a hospital? When you hear this over the intercom it means that an adult is having a medical emergency, usually a cardiac or respiratory arrest. Our churches may not be having a cardiac arrest, but someone needs to be yelling code blue for the church today.

Sadly, not many Christians desire a revival like you have desired. We live in a time now that all we need is just a little bit of Jesus. The relativism of our society would have us think that we can believe whatever we want and do whatever feels good. Beloved, I am here to warn you that is not our faith.

Jude writing nearly 20 centuries ago, appealed to believers to contend for the faith and to beware of those who were distorting the Gospel by exchanging its freedom for license. Jude’s words are an unpopular teaching, yet it is critical for us today just like it was for them 20 centuries ago. Christians must stand firm for “the faith,” neither adding to it nor subtracting from it, trusting that true freedom is found in Christ alone.

God’s Word and the gift of eternal life have infinite value and have been entrusted to Christ’s faithful followers. Today many live in opposition to God. They twist God’s words, seeking to deceive and destroy the gullible. But God’s truth must go forth, carried, and defended by those who have committed their lives to his Son, Jesus Christ. It is an important task, an awesome responsibility, and a profound privilege to have this commission, because the Christian life is a battleground, not a playground!

As you see the transition from 2 into 3, from 3 into 4, I want you to imagine Jude having an urgency in his voice. He’s sounding a wakeup call to the church, to people who have, half-asleep, allowed people to creep in unnoticed into their congregation; not just certain people but ungodly people, who, Jude says have an evil agenda.

Jude is saying to the church that the challenge you are facing isn’t an external one, but internal. We Christians likes to point the finger at the world for our problems, but the world is just being worldly, that is all they know. The Church knows better. Jude says, “If you want to know how a church will collapse, it won’t be as a result of what happens from the outside but from within.” The Bible bears testimony to that.

So, Jude is appealing to his sheep, that something is coming, and you cannot take this stand in a kind of willy-nilly fashion. You’re going to have to be prepared to defend the faith. Now, you’ll notice: “the faith.” In other words, he’s not here about the fact that they believe this faith, individually. He’s talking about the faith factually—in other words, an actual body of truth that is unchanged and unchanging; that it has been expressed, settled once for all, and entrusted to these believers.

The faith Jude refers to is not something that has been invented, but given; not found out by us, but delivered by God himself, and delivered to our custody that we might keep it for eternity. It’s a faith that we must believe cannot coexist with other faiths.

Now, the attack that comes is various but largely on two fronts. People would attack it by way of deletion: “We don’t have to be so bold. We don’t have to be so firm. We believe in the resurrection, but we don’t need everybody to believe in the resurrection. We believe in the purity of the Scriptures, but people have various interpretations of the Scriptures.” I have heard this statement so much in the last few years.

What is happening? It is the tampering with the faith, either by addition or by deletion. The teachers of the faith in churches are playing fast and loose with the Bible.

Well, that’s the appeal in verse 3. Now we come to these “certain people” in verse 4. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that he just refers to them as “certain people”? I’m sure he could have named them. For whatever reason, he chose not to. Probably a good reminder to us: this is not a personality issue. And the men that we’re about to meet in verse 4 will actually be very likable people in our culture, very likable people in our community that has become nontheological: a sort of “Happy time for the family, raise your teens, figure out your finances, and try your best to have a nice day, and be as positive as you possibly can, but whatever you do, don’t start into any of this stuff. No, no. Uh-uh.” No, they’ll be very likable.

And, in fact, if you’re going to take the side of Jude here, then I need you to know that you’re actually going to be unpopular. Unpopular. Which is a real challenge for some of us. But the fact of the matter is that it is when push comes to shove. “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

If you simply set out to be liked then you’re going to have to fudge on things, let go of that, agree to that, and enjoy being affirmed, and recognize that, you’ll be accomplishing nothing.

“Why is Jude making this appeal?” Answer in verse 4: because of this internal opposition. Secretly, crafty folks “have crept in.” They’ve “crept in unnoticed.” In other words, presumably these were itinerant members. These were people who had begun to make a name for themselves and would be able to be attractive to those who were seeking to follow the things of God. But these are infiltrators who have ingratiated themselves. They have befriended everyone, and everyone loves them.

Jude is issuing a strong warning. He’s not unique in this. And that’s why I want to remind you of the second letter of John, where, in the course of his letter, he writes to his readers, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching” which is, the teaching the faith once delivered “do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.”

So the issue is very clear. These individuals would not be coming to the church families that he is writing to saying, “At eleven o’clock, we’re going to have a séance in the classroom.” No, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t be saying, “If you meet me in the hallway, we’ll be down in the Kitchen, and as soon as we’ve had a coffee, I’d love to read your palm, and I brought my tarot cards with me.” No, that would be straightforward, wouldn’t it? Even the most unchurched person would say, “Wait a minute; I don’t think that’s supposed to happen here.” No, they won’t be doing that. No, they’ll be suggesting that they ought to teach a class.

So, what they actually do is they take the gospel call to sinners. What is the gospel call to sinners? “Come as you are.” Right? “Come as you are. You don’t clean up and come. You come dirty; I’ll clean you up. Come as you are.” And they change that to “You can stay as you are.” “You could stay as you are.” That’s what they’re saying: “Oh, you could still sleep with the lady up the street. No, you could still do that. Of course, you can! I mean, it might be a little tricky for a while, but there’s always forgiveness.” They don’t worry about that kind of thing. That’s what’s involved here: the gospel perverted, changed into a smokescreen for immorality.

Just the other week in Bible study I was teaching from Proverbs and dealing with sexual immorality and cohabitation. Did you know that in the last 50-year cohabitation has increase over 1,500%. Meaning millions of couples cohabitate before marriage or at least once in a romantic relationship. And the Church isn’t saying anything about it because so many of them are our own children, and God forbid we hurt their feelings.

You see what their message is: “God loves us. Everything goes.” Friends, that’s not the grace of God. When they ask the question “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”—Romans 6:1—the answer they give is “Yes!” And Jude says, “You’d better be really careful here.” How often do we hear today that God loves us the way we are. The truth is that since the fall of Adam God has loved only one person the way he is. We have lost sight of the fact that it is the way we are by nature that put Christ on the cross. God loves us despite the way we are.

That’s not just a subtle distinction. That is absolutely foundational. And that was what these folks were up against, and that is why he sounds out this note.

The great threat to the authority of Scripture comes not only by the addition of dogma in any form, but probably the great challenge to the authority of the Scriptures in our lives is the authority of our experience: “I know God says it’s wrong, but I’m sure he understands. After all, it just feels so right.”

The bottom line is this—and we’ll have to come back to this. But we have no basis at all… If we’re genuine Christians, we have no freedom to believe anything other than what Jesus taught. What Jesus taught he then gave to his apostles. The apostles then wrote it down in the Scriptures. They not only gave the revelation of who Jesus is and what he has done, but they gave the interpretation of that revelation: “Christ died”—revelation—“for sins”—interpretation—“according to the gospel” explanation.

We have no right to believe anything other than Jesus taught, and we have no freedom to behave in any other way than what he demands. How crazy would we be to step outside the borders of Christ’s protective love? It’s because he loves us so much that he wants to hold us together in that way.

Well, Jude the shepherd can’t sit idly by and watch the invasion and destruction of the flock. He offers not helpful advice but a strong, striking, prophetic word from God through him to the saints, urging them to wake up and “contend for the faith.” A necessary message, I think.

Father, thank you for your Word. Help us not to make application of this that takes us beyond the boundaries of our own lives. We are susceptible to denying you as our Master. We routinely seem to find it intriguing that we might be able to just minimize some of your straightforward demands in order that we might be able to justify our experience. Lord, grant that in tackling these issues, or being tackled by these issues, that we may have the gentleness and meekness of Christ and yet the boldness of those who took their stand in their day. We hear you say to us, “Wake up. Get up. Get on.” And we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.