Called to Contend
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Called to Contend
Called to Contend
3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write and exhort you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.
We’ve been going through the Bible in these studies of each book and we’ve now come to the 65th book, the next to last book of the Bible, — the book of Jude. If you have been reading each book of the Bible, you may have noticed a remarkable connection between the 3 epistles of John we just finished and Jude’s epistle.
In 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, the central message is the truth.
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true One. We are in the true One—that is, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
1 The Elder: To the elect lady and her children: I love all of you in the truth—and not only I, but also all who have come to know the truth —
2 because of the truth that remains in us and will be with us forever.
2 John 1
and
1 The Elder: To my dear friend Gaius: I love you in the truth.
3 For I was very glad when some brothers came and testified to your faithfulness to the truth—how you are walking in the truth.
All three of these marvelous letters centered on the truth. The truth is essential to knowing God, knowing Christ, knowing ourselves, knowing sin, knowing God’s wrath, knowing God’s justice, knowing the Holy Spirit, knowing salvation, knowing justification, knowing forgiveness, knowing reconciliation, knowing sanctification, knowing glorification.
Our whole relationship to God is that in fullness it is based on the truth. We hear the truth, we believe the truth, we assent to the truth, we live the truth, we learn the truth, we proclaim the truth. Jesus said,
17 Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
John 17:
Truth, therefore, is more precious than anything, more precious than everything.
But there has been a long war against God and against His truth.
1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Did God really say?
The Devil has always attacked the Truth by attacking God’s Word because he knows that God’s Word is truth.
And so let me answer the age old question of the Devil: Yes! God did say.
The book of Jude is a Call to Contend for that Truth.
I. Jude and His Readers
I. Jude and His Readers
1 Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ.
2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Jude
Jude
It’s interesting that Jude is actually the name Judas. We know of a few Judas in the New Testament. Two of the disciples were named Judas, Judas Iscariot and Judas, son of James. Paul, shortly after his conversion, met Ananias at the house of Judas of Damascus. There was Judas Barsabbas, a leader in the early church who joined Paul, Barnabas, and Silas in carrying the letter from the Jerusalem Council to the believers in Antioch. There was also a Judas of Galilee, who led an uprising in Palestine we’re told in .
This Judas was none of these. tells us who he is.
55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t His mother called Mary, and His brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?
Matthew
Judas, Jude here, is the brother of James. But did you notice he did not mention he was half brother to Jesus. Rather — he identified himself as “a slave of Jesus Christ,” indicating that the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ had transformed his heart. He went from being an unbeliever to being a slave, one who trusted Christ as his Lord and Master. He humbly chose to identify himself as Jesus’ slave, rather than a more impressive fact that he was Jesus’ half brother. He desired to be identified as a grateful, willing slave of the Lord Jesus Christ — a sharp contrast to the apostates who denied Christ’s lordship.
Readers
Readers
And look how he identified his readers. 3 Ways — Called, loved, and kept.
Jude
1 Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ.
The Called
The Called
He identified his readers as those the called of God. God had set them apart and chosen them as His children. This is not a General Invitation to sinners that Jude speaks of here. This is the Effectual Call God makes to His own. This is God’s special, internal call through which He awakens the human will and imparts spiritual life to once dead sinners to embrace the gospel by faith.
29 For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.
30 And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
30 And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
Romans 8:
In God’s sovereign wisdom, He chose believers based not that they would choose Him, but solely on His gracious purpose in Christ from before time began. His call was not rooted in anything He saw in them. But rather His call was motivated by His own glory and good pleasure, that His mercy might be eternally put on display.
And the article The Called identified them as particular, specific ones, not merely general in nature.
See how special you are to God, if you are indeed His?
Believers are called by God.
And look at the next one.
Loved
Loved
God chose them and called them to save them — Because He loved them.
“Loved by God the Father.”
He set His love on them. Scripture says in .
8 But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!
The beautiful thing about God’s love on believers is that it is in eternity past.
4 For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love
5 He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will,
This particular word in is a perfect passive participle emphasizing the perfect time of it — eternity past — WITH results that continue in the present and into the future. John wrote about God’s love for believers.
1 Look at how great a love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know Him.
Stuart Townend wrote of this love:
How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure.
Believers are loved by the Father.
Kept
Kept
Kept means to keep under guard, to maintain. Jesus Christ has promised to keep believers secure for all eternity.
27 My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish —ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand.
John
5 You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
There is no person or power in the universe greater than God. No force that could ever break His loving grip He has own His own. And we can rest in the great assurance of the eternal safekeeping of the omnipotent hands of Christ.
39 height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
38 For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers,
39 height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Romans 8:
Romans 8:
6 I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Believers are Kept by Jesus Christ.
II. Necessary Exhortation
II. Necessary Exhortation
3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write and exhort you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.
Jude’s desire was to write about their common salvation he briefly described. However, a more pressing issue came up. The issue was apostasy.
Apostasy
Apostasy
Sound doctrine is under seige. The attack is on the truth of the word of God. It began in the Garden of Eden when Satan twisted God’s Word and convinced Eve to doubt God’s Word and then disobey her Creator. The father of lies has tirelessly continued a bitter offensive against divine truth.
Sound doctrine is under seige. The attack is on the truth of the word of God. It began in the Garden of Eden when Satan twisted God’s Word and convinced Eve to doubt God’s Word and then disobey her Creator. The father of lies has tirelessly continued a bitter offensive against divine truth.
His greatest weapon is to infiltrate the church. Look at verse 4.
4 For some men, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into promiscuity and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.
“For some men…have come in by stealth.” Or “crept in unnoticed.”
They infiltrate the fabric of the church, and orchestrate as much harm as possible. Genuine worship, fellowship, ministry, and evangelism fade away as the church succumbs to devastating error in both doctrine and practice.
As Prophesied
As Prophesied
— “those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation”
From the earliest times of redemptive history, God promised to judge apostates — severely. God pronounced damnation against all apostates. Jude referred to their judgment in verses 14-15
14 And Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied about them: Look! The Lord comes with thousands of His holy ones
15 to execute judgment on all and to convict them of all their ungodly acts that they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things ungodly sinners have said against Him.
The OT prophets had prophesied their judgment — , , , and
Peter spoke of their judgment as well.
3 They will exploit you in their greed with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep.
4 For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment;
5 and if He didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, when He brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;
6 and if He reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to ruin, making them an example to those who were going to be ungodly;
As Illustrated
As Illustrated
Verse 8 begins, “Yet in the same way these men...” So, in verse 8 Jude begins to describe what an Apostate is, which we’ll discuss momentarily. But before he did this he gave them examples of apostates in verses 5-7.
Apostate Israelites
Apostate Israelites
5 Now I want to remind you, though you know all these things: The Lord first saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe;
those who did not believe
Apostate Angels
Apostate Angels
6 and He has kept, with eternal chains in darkness for the judgment of the great day, the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling.
These were angels who rebelled with Lucifer and God expelled from heaven. They continued their downward fall to the point of taking on masculine human form and cohabiting with human women to produce a generation of demon-influenced, thoroughly corrupt children. God sent those particular apostate angels to a place under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Peter said, God “delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment.”
4 For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment;
Apostate Gentiles
Apostate Gentiles
What is an apostate?
7 In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them committed sexual immorality and practiced perversions, just as angels did, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
The people of Sodom and Gomorrah are used as an example that God will certainly and severely punish apostates.They will be punished in eternal fire.
What is an apostate?
It’s ironic that in God’s providence the Holy Spirit chose a man with the same name as Judas Iscariot, the most infamous apostate of all time, to write the New Testament epistle on Apostasy.
Let me show you how Jude defines the apostate by giving you a number of brief descriptions of an Apostate.
Profile of an Apostate
Profile of an Apostate
Ungodly — vs 4, “they are ungodly”
Morally perverted — “turning the grace of our God into promiscuity”
Deny Christ — vs 4, “denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord”
Defile the flesh — vs 8, “these dreamers likewise defile their flesh”
Rebellious — vs 8, “reject authority”
Revile holy angels — vs 8, “and blaspheme glorious ones”
Dreamers -- vs 8
Ignorant — vs 10, “these people blaspheme anything they don’t understand”
Corrupted — vs 10, “they destroy themselves with these things”
Grumblers — vs 16, “these people are discontented grumblers”
Discontented — vs 16,
12.
Self-seeking — vs 16, “walking according to their desires”
Arrogant — vs 16, “their mouths utter arrogant words”
Flatterers — vs 16, “flattering people for their own advantage”
Scoffers — vs 18, “in the end time there will be scoffers”
Create divisions — vs 19, “these people create divisions”
Unbelievers — vs 19, “and are unbelievers”
Without the Spirit — vs 19, “not having the Spirit”
Apostasy continues today
In March of 1887, Charles Spurgeon published the first of two articles entitled “The Down Grade.” The articles were published anonymously, but the author was Spurgeon’s close friend and fellow Baptist pastor, Robert Shindler.
Shindler traced the state of evangelicalism from the Puritan age to his own era. As he demonstrated within a generation or two of true revival, there came a drifting away from sound doctrine that ultimately led to wholesale apostasy. He likened this drifting from the truth to a downhill slope and labeled it “The Down-Grade.”
We have not been spared in our present day. Incredibly, in our present day, there has never been such a wealth of information of truth. We have books and websites, youtube, sermon audio, podcasts, apps — just a number of mediums with good biblical, solid doctrinal teaching. And even still, with those same mediums there has never been so much false teaching by outright apostates.
Jude
How can we as believers practically contend for the truth so that we will be victorious in a day rampant with falsehood?
Acts 20:
Shindler raised the question: How did so many Bible-believing churches go astray? And why does this happen again and again in human history? Shindler examined there was always a first wrong step. What was that first step?
The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures. In other words, if a man bows to the authority of God’s Word, he will not entertain any sentiment contrary to its teaching. He esteems that holy book, concerning all things, to be right, and therefore he hates every false way. But let a man question, or entertain low views of the inspiration and authority of the Bible, and he is without chart to guide him, and without anchor to hold him. Where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result.
After two publications by Shindler, Spurgeon wrote the third publication and made this statement.
“Germany was made unbelieving by her preachers, and England is following in her tracks.”
And I would add to this — And American is following in England’s.
How do we stand against Apostasy?
Well, Jude tells us plainly.
The Strategy against Apostasy
The Strategy against Apostasy
17 But you, dear friends, remember what was predicted by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;
Or remember the words of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude cautions
28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock that the Holy Spirit has appointed you to as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.
29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
30 And men will rise up from your own number with deviant doctrines to lure the disciples into following them.
31 Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for three years I did not stop warning each one of you with tears.
What was Jude’s strategy?
To Remember the words of the apostles. That is Remember God’s Word. Remember the truth they taught. “The apostles warned you! Don’t forget and stand in the word.”
He then says — “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith.”
True believers have a sure foundation and cornerstone in Jesus Christ. The truth of the Christian faith was provided by the apostles and prophets — which again is the Word of God
And then — “Pray in the Holy Spirit.” This is not a call to some ecstatic form of prayer, but simply a call to pray consistently in the will and power of the Holy Spirit, as praying in the name of Jesus Christ.
Also — “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” This means to remain in the place of obedience to God.
10 If you keep My commands you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commands and remain in His love.
Finally, Jude gives one last strategy against Apostasy.
Jude 22
22 Have mercy on those who doubt;
23 save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.
Have mercy on those who doubt and save others by snatching them from the fire — and then have mercy on others but with fear.
Reach out to them. Preach the Gospel to them. Give them the truth. While Christ denounced the Pharisees He also sought to eat with them and proclaim the way of salvation. ; ; .
3 In response, Jesus asked the law experts and the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”
4 But they kept silent. He took the man, healed him, and sent him away.
5 And to them, He said, “Which of you whose son or ox falls into a well, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”
6 To this they could find no answer.
36 Then one of the Pharisees invited Him to eat with him. He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.
1 One Sabbath, when He went to eat at the house of one of the leading Pharisees, they were watching Him closely.
Have mercy on those who doubt.
Luke
Save other by snatching them out of the very fire of hell.
Have mercy on others. BUT — with fear! This indicates the sober awareness of the seriousness of apostasy. Jude puts an exclamation on this by saying “Hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.” This garment refers to their undergarments.
III. Glorious Guarantee
III. Glorious Guarantee
24 Now to Him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless and with great joy,
Jude 24
Ultimately it comes down to this. God is perfectly faithful and supremely powerful, and infinitely loving — and He sees to it Himself that NONE of His children fall away. This is the Assurance of the Believer.
But notice how Jude puts it.
“Now to Him who is able to protect you — from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless and with great joy.”
He keeps us. He’s the only one who can keep us. Were it not for the Lord, none of us could withstand the assault of the enemy. We would stumble into apostasy ourselves. But God makes us to stand and not stumble. And not merely stand in our religion, or stand in our faith — but stand in His presence. Imagine that — We will all, if you’re a child of God, you will stand in the presence of Almighty God — get this — Blameless! That is faultless, without sin. We will all enjoy a sinless state in the presence of God, not here on this earth, but in heaven.
How?
Well, this is all because of God again. He sent His Son Jesus to justify us, so we are now stand in the righteousness of Christ — blameless.
And that — only that — brings joy. But not merely joy — Great Joy!
And all of this — all of salvation, our protection from stumbling, our standing in God’s presence blameless, all the joy — that Great Joy! All of that — is to the glory of God our Savior! No one else is responsible, not you, not me, not any of us for ourselves or for others — only God and all of this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
“To God be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever.” Amen.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, our God,
Thank you again for Your Word this morning. It is so rich. It’s so rich and it floods my heart and mind in contemplation of these matters. Take it and use it. Use us for Your glory. In Jesus name. Amen.
Thank you again for Your Word this morning. It is so rich. It’s so rich and it floods my heart and mind in contemplation of these matters. Take it and use it. Use us for Your glory. In Jesus name. Amen.