What's Happening to the Church Part 2: Contend For The Faith

Introduction

Spiritual Terrorism

1 Timothy 4:1 NKJV

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,

1 Timothy 4:2 NKJV

speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

1 Timothy 4:3 NKJV

forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

2 Timothy 3:1 NKJV

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:

2 Timothy 3:2 NKJV

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

2 Timothy 3:3 NKJV

unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,

2 Timothy 3:4 NKJV

traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

2 Timothy 3:5 NKJV

having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

The Theme of the Letter

Jude 3 NKJV

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.

1. What’s Happening? Some Are No Longer Contending For The Faith

Jude 3 NKJV

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.

2 Timothy 1:14 NKJV

That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

1 Timothy 6:20 NKJV

O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—

2 Timothy 2:2 NKJV

And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

2. What’s Happening to the Church? There Are Apostates in the Church!

There Are Terrorists in the Church

Jude 4 NKJV

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.

3. What’s Happening to the Church? History is Being Repeated

Jude 5 NKJV

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.

Jude 6 NKJV

And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;

Jude 7 NKJV

as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Jude 8 NKJV

Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.

Jude 9 NKJV

Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

Jude 10 NKJV

But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves.

Jude 11 NKJV

Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.