Race For Your Faith

How many people here are familiar with the idea of Sport’s days? Sport’s days are days in which elementary, middle and high schools pit their students against one another in a competition to see who is the better athlete. Usually the students would be grouped in teams that are color coded. In my high school we had yellow, red and green. I was on the yellow team which was called Morgan’s house. In my senior year of high school, I decided that I would try out for the spot of house captain. I had been training to try and get fitter so that I would be a better racer and people would elect me house captain. I started to go on short runs in the evenings. I started to drink more water and tried to eat healthier. I even started going to the gym to try and get a little more muscular, so I would look the part of a house captain. On the day of captain elections, I submitted my name on the ballot and I was up against the former house captain from last year and a new comer who was captain of the soccer team. Both of these individuals were very athletic and were much more qualified for the position of house captain than I was. So, the school took a vote and the captain of the soccer team became the house captain for Morgan’s house. He was chosen because the entire school had already seen him compete before and he was a mighty competitor. The school had yet to see me compete for anything and therefore, they decided that a sure competitor would always beat out someone who has yet to prove himself. I had overlooked the fact that in order to be a proper contender for my house captain spot, I had first had to prove that I knew how to contend, why I was contending and who I was contending against!

Transition: Likewise, in order to properly contend for our faith, we must know how to contend for it, why we are contending for it and who we are contending against.

Point 1: In order to contend for our faith, we must understand why we must train for the race we are contending in!

I found myself losing out in the race of team captain and I was wondering why I had lost. I thought that because of the fact that I had been doing training on my own time, I was sure to be picked for the position. I thought that if I prayed hard enough, I would definitely be picked, but I did not really take into consideration why I had wanted this position and why I had been training for it. Jude helps me to understand a few reasons why we need to train for the races that we are contending in.

The first reason that we must train is because Christ is our master. Jude opens this book by explaining that he is a slave of Jesus Christ. Please don’t pick up your stones and stone the preacher yet. Let me explain. Slavery in the Greco-Roman world was a little different than 19th Century slavery. In first century slavery, slaves had basic human rights. First century slaves had four rights that were denied to them. These rights included the right to be his own representative in legal matters, to protection from illegal seizure, to work where he pleased and to freedom of movement. This slavery did not necessarily involve abuse and murder like the slavery we know and despise so much. Jude uses this idea of slavery to help us understand how our relationship with Christ is supposed to look like. Typically, we like to call on Jesus when we are in trouble. Or we like to call on Jesus when we need something. We like to look at Jesus as our savior when we are going through something and we can’t see a way out, but we often neglect the idea of Jesus as our master. Jude is telling us that in order to understand why we are competing in this race, we must first understand who our master is. Once we understand that Jesus is our master, we will be motivated to train for the race!

Secondly, we must train for the race because our master did. Christ as our master is the example that we are to follow. When Christ was on earth, He was constantly in communication with God the Father so that He could minister to us. His race wasn’t for the swift, but His race was for Him who would endure to the end. Christ endured all the haters in His day. He endured the Pharisees trying to correct the way He lived. He endured the Martha’s doubting His power. He endured the Lazarus’s who were dead and needed to be revived. He endured the Jews yelling “crucify Him.” He endured the Roman’s nailing Him to a cross. And at the very end He endured death so that we can have life! If Christ had not contended for His faith by giving His life, we would not need to, but because Christ contended, we have to contend also!

Thirdly, we must train because if we do not, we will not gain eternal life. Our spiritual training is what is preparing us for eternal life with Jesus. If we neglect our spiritual training now, then we will not be able to reap the rewards later of eternal life. The sum of our spiritual training should be to get us to a place where we understand that Christ is not only our Savior, but He is also our Lord and Master. We must train ourselves until we get to the point where Jesus is the only person who can make our decisions for us. We need to train until we get to the point where if Jesus does not tell us to do it, then we will not move. We must become trained to trust completely and solely upon Jesus if we ever want to receive eternal life which is only given by Jesus.

Point 2: In order to contend for our faith, we must know how to properly train for this race!

Jude metaphorically paints the Christians journey as a race, with Christ as the ultimate goal to get to. He uses this idea because the idea of running races were very popular in Jude’s day. The Olympic games that we have today stemmed from the Olympic running races that they had back then. In order to get ready for a running race, one would have to go through a long process of conditioning his body. He would have to train his muscles by lifting weights and condition his body by doing practice sprints and long-distance runs. One simply cannot show up to a race untrained and expect to win. Jude is telling these Christians that they must do three key things to develop themselves to be ready to contend in the running race for their faith. First, they must build themselves up in faith. Second, they must pray in the Spirit. Third, they must keep themselves in the love of God as they wait for His mercy which brings eternal life.

Jude uses the idea of building one another up in faith. This term means both personal and corporate development on a spiritual level. We as fellow believers need to spend time with God personally, but we must also help one another to get closer to Jesus. In order to do this, we must all be transparent with each other. We need not hide our sin from one another out of fear of being judged, but come openly with our sins to one another and to God so that we can be healed. In my freshman year at Oakwood, a few friends and I attempted to do this. We started a friend group called the brotherhood. This group was a safe spot that we could talk about anything that was bothering us; any sin, any struggle. We would then offer ways to overcome these sins and pray with and for one another. We were in the practice of building one another up in holy faith.

The second way we can condition ourselves to contend is by praying in the Spirit. This means that the Holy Spirit is to direct us on what to pray about. We must ask the Spirit to direct our prayer lives. Also, we must be willing to pray consistently every day. We do not need a specific prayer time or a specific amount of prayers daily, but we need to be constantly praying over every decision that we make so that the Holy Spirit can direct us on the path that the Father wants us to be on. This was something that I did not do when I elected myself for the position of house captain.

Finally, we must keep ourselves in God’s love. The word translated “keep” means to cause a state, condition or activity to continue. It means that because we are followers of Christ, we are automatically in the love of Christ, but it is up to us to continue in His love. This is a direct reference to our character. We are the agents that live out the love that god has for us. We are to live out this love by building one another up in the faith and by seeking after lost souls. We should be burning with love for people who do not know Jesus and this love should be our motivation to bring the lost back into the fold of God! Jesus earthly mission was to seek after the souls of the lost people who did not have a relationship with him. Likewise, as His followers, it is our duty to go out and seek after the lost souls who need to find Christ!

Point 3: In order to contend for our faith, we must know who we are contending against!

Jude is calling out some false teachers in this text. The deceitful teaching that they are promoting is that because of God’s grace, He will allow us to continue sinning. In other words, there is no consequence for sin. We as believers in Christ need to be at war against false teachings. We need to stand up, get grounded in the Word of God and recognize when people are spreading incorrect doctrines. Christ’s life was the payment required for forgiveness of sins and if we abuse this grace that is offered in His death, then we crucify Him again and again. A lot of times we place the blame on the Romans who nailed Jesus to the cross, but in actuality our blatant disregard for grace and our use of grace as an excuse to keep sinning is nailing Christ to the cross all over again. We are contending against false doctrines that are designed to keep us sinning and keep us away from a relationship with Jesus Christ!

Secondly, we are competing against an adversary that has secretly snuck in. This enemy is trying to disguise itself as one of us. They are wolves that are putting on sheep’s wool. They have snuck in with the sole intention of changing the condition of the believers who are faithful to Jesus. Their mission is to get the believers in Christ to leave Christ’s love, grace and faith. When I was younger, my cousin and I used to love playing soccer. We used to play soccer every Saturday morning in a soccer league. This was before I became Adventist. When I turned 16, I got baptized and started to go to church on Sabbath mornings and I had to stop playing in the soccer league. My coach and my cousin both tried to persuade me to break my faith and continue playing in the soccer league. To do this, they reminded me of all the fun that I was having while I was playing soccer and tried to discourage my desire to be in church. I said all of this to let you know that if you are rooted in your relationship with Jesus, whatever external force that tries to get you to give up on your love for Jesus will not succeed. Because I was developing a relationship with Jesus, I was able to withstand the attacks of the enemy.

Finally, we are not competing against other people. Jesus wants us to love the sinner but hate the sin. We are not to exile the person who does not compete on the same team as us. We are to “snatch them out of the fire”, give them the same mercy that Christ has given us and love them as Christ loves us. Just as we too were once lost, wandering far from the peaceful shore, we should treat the lost the same. Every lost soul is an opportunity for Jesus to find them and it is partially up to us to find these people. We need to change the way that we view our competition and through Christ, we need to try to win them over to our side. This brings me back to my high school sports day.

I was angry that I was not chosen to be house captain. I was angry at the soccer player who was chosen as captain. I had no intentions of working with him to try and win sport’s day. I had intended to sit on the sideline and watch, but near the end of the day, my team was in second place and we were down by a few points and we needed a few more runners to enter a sprint and win so that we could get first place. My captain had asked everyone who were good sprinters, and everyone was exhausted from competing all day. At that moment it all clicked in my head and I came to the realization that I had the wrong enemy in mind. So I got up, put on my spikes, laced them up and wrote my name down for two sprints. I ran my heart out in those races and all the extra training and eating healthy and weight room work paid off because in the end I won two blue ribbons and my team won sport’s day! When I recognized why I was contending, who I was contending against and I put my training to good use, I was able to overcome the obstacle that stood in the way of my victory. In the same way, when we contend for our faith, our prize will not only be a blue ribbon, but will be eternal life with Jesus!

Transition to Appeal: Today my appeals are simple.

1. If you wish to get a better understanding of why you must contend for your faith, I ask that you raise your hand.

2. If you want to understand how to better identify who you are contending against, I ask that you stand with me.

3. If you want to learn how to better train for the race that ends in everlasting life, I ask that you come down to the alter so that we can pray.