Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

In a scene in the movie We Were Soldiers we see Sgt.

Major Plumley standing tall amongst many wounded and one non-combatant journalist.

He tosses that journalist an M16 and ammo.

He stays standing tall and ready for the charge that is coming from the Vietnamese.

He only has a 45 caliber 1911 side arm that only holds around 7 rounds.

He never flinches and never yields.

He continually is moving amongst the men firing and standing strong in the face of immense danger.

But before this attack hits while all you can hear is the whistle calls and see a few faint Vietnamese soldiers coming forward he famously says, “Gentlemen prepare to defend yourselves.”

Then things get real dicey for a while.

Yet he stood tall and did not weaken or give in.

He fought and so did they.

He knew that the soldiers had been trained because he was one who trained them.

He knew they knew what to do.

He knew he was standing with men who would fight.

He knew that they all had a common goal and it did not matter who the man next to them was, they were there to win and survive and it took all of them for this to happen.

Those men were prepared to defend themselves.

They had been trained and equipped to defend.

Many in the church today are not prepared.

They believe and are saved yet they are not prepared to stand strong knowing they have what it takes to win.

Many become confused and feel as if they are wrong or that God has abandoned them only to then settle into a belief that there is not a God.

The sad thing is that many leaders in the church are the ones who cause people to come to this conclusion.

Take for example a woman named Alisa Childers.

She wrote a book called Another Gospel, and I think all of us here should read this work.

In it she speaks of how her pastor then was teaching a “seminary” type class that would take 3-4 years to go through.

In this class he taught how the Bible was not true but only a good story to follow and act like.

That and that one can live how they want to basically because God is love.

Many were deceived in the class it caused her much grief too.

It took her a long time to come to grips with what was taught and reorient herself back to the true word and teaching of the Lord.

She was unprepared to face the attacks that came.

She was not like those soldiers were.

She was not Prepared to Defend Herself.

This book we will study through for the rest of January is all about us contending for the faith and defending the truth of Christianity.

Jude develops this magnificent opening of how we are kept in Christ and that we must defend against the enemies of the Lord.

This brief book has so much in it for us and it could have been written yesterday it is so relevant for the world now.

So let us look at Jude 1-4

We see that we are...

The Army (1-3)

We are the Army.

That is everyone who has ever believed in Christ.

We are beloved by God and kept for Christ and as such we are called.

In our calling we must stand for the truth and what is right.

We cannot waver or weaken on this.

We are soldiers in a war that is going on everywhere.

It truly is a world war.

Jude here places himself right along with all of us when he says he is a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James.

He was the brother of Jesus Christ too but he knows that he is indebted to Him as much as the rest of us are.

He is humble and not arrogant in this introduction.

He knows that arrogance does nothing but cause problems.

He identified with the church then as one of them and not anything more than them.

He prays for mercy, peace, and love to be multiplied to them and by proxy us.

This is the method for which we wage war.

We do not go out guns blazing taking on the enemy as the soldiers from We Were Soldiers did, or any soldier from any war.

We do our warfare through mercy and love and peaceful interactions.

This does not mean we shy away from difficult situations and hard discussions.

No, we engage but with grace and love.

That is why Jude prayed for that to be multiplied to us.

We can have courage in this war because we are beloved in God the Father and kept for Christ Jesus.

We are secure and because of this nothing can separate us or remove us from this.

If we die then we are in the presence of our savior at that moment.

This is not a deterrent for us but something that should embolden us to serve the Lord.

This world cannot do anything to us of eternal harm and that is motivation.

We are God’s in Christ and as such we can push forward and move on without fear or anxiety.

Just like the man from the opening story.

Sgt.

Major Plumley stood and showed great courage in the battle of Ia Drang.

He charged up and down the battle lines encouraging by his fearlessness and organizing his men for the battle.

He stood and moved when others were wanting to take cover.

He showed no fear in the face of extreme danger and struggle.

That is how we can be as believers when we know that we are kept for Christ that we are in Christ and cannot be separated from Him.

We can defend or contend for the faith when we know this.

Verse three tells us that Jude wanted to write about the common salvation held by him and other believers.

He could not do so because of the urgency of the appeal to defend the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Not only does Jude’s opening lines give encouragement to have no fear but it is also to demonstrate that we are to do this as one together.

We are to “with one mind strive together for the faith.”

Much like Paul wrote in Phil.

1:27

With one mind.

When we are together just imagine what we could do for the faith.

That is what the military and coaches in sports strive to get their soldiers or athletes to be: one mind together.

John Wesley has famously said,

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

This is what can happen if we are all of one mind together and striving for the same thing.

We as believers are on the same team.

We need to work together and not be like the young child who takes the basketball to the other teams goal.

Or be like the football player who is running towards the other teams end zone.

We need to strive together because there is only one faith that has been delivered once for all to the saints.

It is the true faith and it is the only faith that saves.

It is faith alone in Christ alone.

Nothing else saves and nothing else is the faith.

This faith is that Christ died for sinners 1 Tim.

1:15

1 Corinthians 15:1-4 tells us that Christ was crucified, was buried, and was resurrected for the forgiveness of our sins.

John 14:6 tells us that Jesus is the only way to the Father.

That is the one faith and anyone who holds to that and that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone are on the same team as we are.

We are together as one because there is Eph 4:5-6

This is the faith we must defend and stand for.

It is of the utmost importance.

Only around 6% of the of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.

This means that many who claim to be Christian are either not saved, or they do not have knowledge of what Scripture teaches.

We need to know what God has said and what God desires if we are to contend for the faith and have mercy, love, and peace for those who are against us.

Some of these people are on the outside looking in but some of them have crept into the church.