In this introductory sermon to a verse-by-verse exposition of Jude, Pastor Joe Babij introduces the author and occasion of the letter and also examines the profound salvation truths presented in the letter’s greeting.
1. Salvation and Its Order (v. 1)
2. Salvation and Its Security (v. 1)
3. Salvation and Its Abundant Blessing (v. 2)
Full Transcript:
This morning let’s take our Bibles and turn to the epistle of Jude, right before Revelation. There’s only one chapter to Jude, but it is an epistle that is packed with things. In this short letter that Jude wrote, it’s amazing how much he said in it. Once you start to unpack it, you realize there is a lot there, even though it is so short. But as you are turning there, let’s have a word of prayer, and then we will be looking at this portion of Scripture.
Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ. As Jesus went back to heaven, He sent the Spirit of God for us to indwell us, to be the temple that encompasses the church. I thank You, Lord, that You’ve given us the Word of God in its entirety. We don’t really have to wonder about what You want us to do. We don’t really have to search out from other places Your will. Your will is found right in the Word of God. It’s prescriptive for us. And the part of Your will that just has to do with you, Lord, we don’t have to really be concerned about that. You’ll take care of that. And Lord, thank You for the Word of God that we’re able to open it up, have it in our hands, read it, think about it, meditate upon it, study it, and live it, Lord. I pray that today we would learn and begin to think through what Jude wrote to the church. And I pray that we would be able to use it in our life and examine ourselves by it. And I pray in Christ’s name, amen.
So the epistle of Jude, the letter of Jude, Jude had actually originally intended to write to his audience a general letter about believer’s common salvation. In other words, the salvation that we all share. But he changed his plans when he received word about false teachers. He wanted to write a treatise on salvation. But when he heard the grim news that some supposed Christian teachers were denying Christ as Lord and using the grace of God to justify immoral behavior, Jude had to write. He had to change the direction of his letter and actually rebuke those who were teaching these things and then warn the church, do not get pulled in by every wind of teaching that is being flown around out there in the world, and then gets into the church as somehow important. In verse number 3, if you notice, it says:
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
That very word there he uses, the word contend, it is a term that really quickly brings to our mind the thought of a boxing ring, where two fighters contend against one another to see who is the more skillful, who is the more trained, and yes, even the more hungry in order to win against the other. The biblical term, contend earnestly, he even adds a word to it to emphasize it, it really means to make a strenuous effort for something. One contends for something when there are antagonists or in order to fight for something that’s worth fighting for. And that’s really what he does here in this epistle. It is a human characteristic, actually, to fight for survival, to defend that which is most precious to us. We will defend our home, we will defend our family, we will defend our freedom.
But there’s something else he’s asking for us to defend, God’s truth, because God’s truth, as found in the Bible, is of infinite value to us, but it’s under attack. It’s always been under attack. It always will be under attack. And the only ones that are going to keep the truth is his true church. So we need to contend for it.
Jude is intensely concerned about the threat of heretical teachers in the church and the response that Christians should have concerning this threat. Now, maybe you don’t even recognize there is a threat, but there is. It’s a threat that we always need to be fighting against. So that means that Jude is a hard-hitting epistle, which really seeks to motivate Christians to wake up from their complacency and to do battle against that which is false and those who reject the truth. Jude was really calling for the faithful to go to war against the intruders because these people, as he’s writing, have already gotten into the church. They have already gotten into the mainstream of teaching in the church, and they’re already spewing their teaching. So he asks us to contend for the faith. Don’t let anybody rob from you the body of truth that was once delivered to the saints.
Now, the two basic charges against false teachers are in morality and rebellion, especially rebellion against the submission to the lordship of Christ. Salvation is really submitting to the authority of our sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, and without that submission, there is no salvation. Subsequent to those two basic charges of immorality and rebellion really comes two other charges, and that’s the charge of greed and slander. Look at verse number 16. It says:
These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
These are the kind of people they are, but they are claiming to be Christians. They are claiming to have the truth, and there’s where the deception really lies. How do I really know the difference between what one person is teaching and what another person is teaching? Is it actually true to the Bible? Does it line up with Scripture? Am I preaching God’s Word?
So the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints included separating ourselves from the impurity of the false teachers and false teaching who, by their sexual misbehavior, have the potential of bringing pollution into the fellowship of believers. So the church must not allow them to bring in their contamination. And if a contamination is actually detected, something needs to be done about it. Yet we live in a world filled with false hopes, half-truths, fake news. Things are not always as they seem, are they?
I came across a humorous illustration to bolster that thought, and it really was illustrated by a statue of John Harvard that sits in Harvard Yard at the University of Harvard. Remember, the university motto of Harvard is Veritas, which means truth, right? So you would expect the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. But the statue of John Harvard that stands right in front of the university hall, the informal name of that statue is the Statue of Three Lies. And why? Here’s the first lie. The inscription beneath the statue reads, John Harvard, founder, 1638. Not a word of it is true. John is not the founder of Harvard University. Second, is the date of the college, or college then, university now, was found to be incorrect. The college was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in what was then the village of Newtown, which finally became Cambridge. So John Harvard was an early benefactor of the college, and it was named for him in 1639 after he donated his library to the school. A third lie is that the statue itself is not the likeness of John Harvard. There are no pictures or images of him, so the sculptor, Daniel Chester French, randomly chose him as a model and dressed him in 17th century garb. So the statue sits in front of Harvard University Hall with the motto, ironically, Veritas, which means truth. See, things aren’t the way they seem, right?
It’s a lot like false teaching. It claims to be truth, but on closer examination, there’s no truth to be found. See, and that’s where the church comes in, because actually, Jude is like a big sandwich. It starts off with the sovereignty of God. In the middle is really human responsibility, and it ends with the sovereignty of God. So that’s what he wants his audience to get, that it always starts with God, and it leads out from there. The Bible, remember, also claims the title of truth. The Bible does not give us the false impression of who God is. His attributes are described in His Word. They are the essence of who He actually really is. His word is true because He is true, and we can wholly trust in Him. See, biblical hope is true hope. It can be embraced with confidence because of our God who guarantees it.
So then the church must maintain purity of doctrine and building up Christians to know the truth from error. That’s the job of the church, to know the truth so we can detect everything else that is error. However, the church can never forget from where they actually were rescued from. If they do forget that, they will only become judges who desire to throw people out of the church. That’s a point that Jude is going to make too in his epistle. That while purity issues are not to be ignored, the main point is not, when you find out error, to kick those out of the church, but actually to rescue them from the error. See, that’s the job of the church also.
So for the believing community, they should not fear the pollution that is really all around us propagated by false teachers, but to be focused on the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ in order to bring eternal life to those who have not yet received it. So in the process of fighting for God’s truth, we are to show compassion to those who deserve it, and if necessary, to pull others out of the fire of false teaching with the mindset of being fearful of being defiled. If you look at the last two verses of Jude, it says:
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
But then look at verse 23. It says:
save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
He’s saying, listen, it’s our job to rebuke false teaching but to rescue as many people as possible from it because once Christians get false teaching in their head, it produces a wrong kind of thinking and a wrong kind of behavior. So we’re to watch out for that ourselves and then watch out for it in other people.
Before I go any further, I want to introduce to you our author. And if you notice in verse number one, it says this, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. That’s who’s writing this letter. Now Jude has a spiritual relationship to Christ. He calls himself here a slave, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Jude is not an apostle. He doesn’t hold an official office that we know of. He places himself in a lowly position. So Jude had really earlier rejected the Messiah and he most likely was part of the family members who thought Jesus needed to be restrained from his craziness, as recorded in Mark chapter three, verse 21, where it says this:
When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.”
This is Jesus’ early part of his ministry, and this is his own family. Hey, this guy’s nuts. We’re talking about Jesus. Jude was in that crowd because he was the brother of Jesus. So Jude, along with his other three half-brothers of Jesus, were really converted after Christ’s resurrection. So Jesus was now his Lord and he was now His bondservant. This could be just a sense of humility that he wasn’t claiming to be the brother of Jesus but the bondslave of Jesus. Just like us when we come to Christ, right? We are adopted into the family of God but really we’re servants, we’re slaves. And we’re slaves to a good master. So a bondservant meant that a person was a willing slave. They weren’t there under any duress. They were willing to serve Jesus Christ and that’s how he presents himself.
Also, Jude had a physical relationship to Christ. It says, he says there in the text that he is a brother of James. Now James was also a brother of Jesus and so Jude does not really mention the other brothers. He just mentions the better known brother, which was James. And so the scripture really tells us that James was a leader in the Jerusalem church and author of the book of James, the half brother of Jesus. And because Jude was an eyewitness of Jesus’ life, of Jesus’ ministry, and finally of Jesus’ resurrection, Jude has a burning passion for the salvation that comes in and through Jesus Christ because of the gospel. And because of that, he doesn’t want that message to be corrupted, because then there would be false conversions. People would think that they’re Christians and they’re not. He doesn’t want that to happen. So he changes his direction in writing this and he exposes the false teachers.
The letter begins with God’s sovereign actions on behalf of His people. And what are those actions? He calls us, He loves us, and He keeps us. And He keeps us by His power. For what reason? That one day we will enter the eternal kingdom of God. So that’s why we’re kept. And that’s God’s doing. He’s doing those things. And so that’s where Jude begins his letter.
There are important facts to grasp concerning God’s sovereign actions in the realm of our salvation. And here’s the first one, found in verse number one. I call it salvation and its order, because there is an order of salvation found in scripture, right? What is the order? He mentions it more specifically in Romans, but here he says, look what he says in verse number one:
Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,
To those who are the called,
That’s the first thing. Those who are called. Now, I wanna stop on each one of these because I’m only doing two verses this morning, because we have to understand what he means by called. He’s really talking about the effectual call by God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The very word called itself really means generally one who has accepted a calling or an invitation to become a guest or member of a select group. Like Paul said to the Corinthians, he says to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling. Those two things you’ll find always go together in Scripture, that we’re called to salvation in Christ Jesus, and we’re called to sanctification too. Same package. It’s not something that comes later. And so here, it also means a designation of a Christian that has been called to something, like in Romans 1, verse 5 through 7:
among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;
to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints:
See, again, there is this calling. It’s a distinction. Other words, like in Ephesians, the word elect or chosen indicates more than a superficial response to God’s invitation of the gospel, but something much more necessary.
Someone being called presupposes several things. First, they must hear the call and understand what they’re being called to. And then secondly, they must respond to the call. I can hear the call, but I’m not always going to respond to the call. You can hear a call, but even though when you have kids, you can call them, but sometimes they claim deafness, right? No matter how loud your voice is or how strong it is, it’s like they didn’t hear you. That means that this operative word here, called, we have to understand what it means in scripture.
There are two distinct calls for a believer. The first one is the outward call of the gospel. That simply means that while you hear by your ears the gospel message, this is how you get saved. This is how you get born again. This is what the Bible says about salvation. You can reject that call many times. It even says in Matthew, for many are called, but few are chosen. So all who hear are invited to come, but that call is ineffective by itself because all men are totally depraved, and really, in their heart, they are opposed to God, and they resist his call and the work of the Spirit when it comes. I don’t know about you, but probably I heard the gospel at least three or four times before I actually believed it. Now, I believe the content of what they were saying, but there was no change in my life. There was no desire for the word of God. There was no desire to leave my life behind and go follow Christ. There was no desire like that. I believed it. So in your case, many times, you’ve heard the gospel many times, right? But there was a time that you heard it, and something drastically changed. So there is this outward call that comes to us, and really, it’s the way the Lord designed it. I like what it says in Corinthians chapter 1, where he says to us:
For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.
See, that’s how God done it. And why did He do all that? So no man could boast before God. No man could say, no person could say, I did this, I saved myself, I cooperated with God to save me. No one can claim that.
So by our experience, we all know that not everyone who received the call of the gospel were justified, because not all believe the gospel when they hear it.
Now, you could ask the question, why is it that this is good news? Why would somebody reject good news? Well, there are several reasons, actually, scriptural reasons. The first is that people don’t believe the gospel because they have hard hearts. I mean, right in the book of Acts chapter 7, it says in verse 51, you men are stiff-necked, talking to the Jews there, who knew the Word of God, and yet they weren’t listening to what He had to say. They were stubborn, they were obstinate, they were in rebellion to the truth.
And then another reason is that he was speaking to a Jewish audience in Acts chapter 7, is that they had uncircumcised hearts. Now, no label could have been more exasperating to the pharisaical Jewish leaders than to refer to them as having uncircumcised hearts. And the reason why is that these Jews bore on their flesh the sign of the covenant. They were physically circumcised. So that was really a slap in the face, but they were not receiving the message of the gospel.
There is a third reason why people do not respond to the call of the gospel. Ephesians tells us that we’re spiritually dead, right? We’re dead. You are dead in your trespasses and sins. And there’s no better word than dead to describe us in our fallen and depraved condition. Ultimately, dead means to be ignorant of God, to be people who don’t know God, because real salvation is where in John 17, verse 3, it says:
This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Remember, because of man’s fall into sin, people are spiritually dead. Unregenerate people can no more choose Christ or spiritual truth than a rotting corpse can play football or debate philosophy. There’s no middle ground between being alive and being dead. Unregenerate people are not just sick. They’re not just wounded. They’re not just handicapped or impaired. They’re dead. They cannot respond to God unless God does something on their heart. See, that’s what the call is, right?
So that brings me to the second meaning of this word called, and that it is the inward call. It is what theologians have described as the irresistible call. You cannot resist it anymore. You have to respond to it. So this inward call usually takes place when the outward call of the gospel is being made, whereby God, the Holy Spirit, calls His people to Himself effectually by working a miracle in their hearts, bringing them from spiritual death and raising them to spiritual life. See, that’s what God actually does to us. The Holy Spirit transforms the mind, the heart, and the will and causes us to understand the gospel and then receive the gospel. And when we receive the gospel, that inward call becomes an inward reality where the Spirit of God now indwells us, and now we are being changed from that moment on for the rest of our Christian lives, and our desire is for the truth and for the Word of God and for honoring Christ and for following Christ.
The question is, have you received the inward call? If you have, that is what a real Christian is. A real Christian is not someone who just assents to the facts of the gospel. A real Christian has received those facts, and the Spirit of God has convicted them of sin, of righteousness, of judgment, and they have called out to Christ to save them. Now, that doesn’t mean at that point you know all the theology or you know everything that you’re actually doing at that moment. But you do know this – you’re turning from your sin, and you’re turning to the one who could save you from the consequences of that sin, and that’s Jesus Christ. That’s what you’re turning to. And you know that. You’re conscious of that, but in very minimal amount of details. So Jesus effectually obtained redemption for all His children who received the call by Himself, and He did so for those who are called.
Your called status is really more clearly understood as a result of what he says next in the next part of verse number one. Notice what he says:
to those who are called, beloved in God the Father,
This is where we understand now that the reason why anyone becomes a believer is because behind all that is the love of God the Father. Specifically, he says that here. So your called status is more clearly understood as a result of God the Father’s love, His past, His present, and yes, His ongoing love for the called ones, for the real believers. So he wants his audience to know, listen, are you called? And if you are called, then you are beloved of God. You are beloved of God the Father.
The term beloved is really from the root word agapo, which means the divine love, agape, you’ve heard that. It’s in a perfect tense, meaning that you were not only loved once when the gospel came to you, but you are continually from that moment and before that moment the objects of God’s love and care. The love of the Father is behind His calling you to salvation. The love of the Father is behind all that. So God loves us, not because we are worthy, not even as some think, because he sees in us possibilities as yet unrealized. God knows our best righteousness is as filthy rags, and still He loves us.
He loves us because it is His nature to love. God’s great love for His children is found all over the scriptures. Twenty-five times the psalmist alone tells us that God’s love is called unfailing, that you can’t reach the bottom of God’s love. It is so vast it cannot be exhausted. It’s also reflected in the word all over scripture, loving kindness. Like, for example, in Psalm where David is writing, he says, Return, O Lord, rescue my soul, save me because of your loving kindness. And then again in Psalm 90, O satisfy us in the morning with Your loving kindness. And then what does it produce? Because You have seen my affliction and You have known the troubles of my soul. And then he says also that we may sing with joy and be glad in our days because of Your loving kindness. And then even in Lamentations, really it was a book on mourning, he says, For if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant loving kindness. So it was on account of the great love that God sent his son into this world. It was because of his love he did that. But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, He saved us. And then Christ’s death was the ultimate proof of that love, where it says in Romans 5:8,
But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
So it is out of His love that he predestined us to salvation. In Ephesians 1:4-5, he says:
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
Then even when God disciplines His children, it is God’s love, not His wrath, that motivates His hand. It tells us in Hebrews, For those whom the Lord loves, he what? He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. Why? So we would understand His holiness and live in that way. So if God, who is love, loves us, then we can be confident that He will never fail or forsake us. See, Jude wants the audience to understand, not only are you called by God in his sovereignty to eternal salvation, but in that call, and what’s behind that call, is the love of the Father for you. And if you just connect the dots, if God loves me like that, he will never, ever do harm to you or forsake you. You have to know that, especially if people are around you teaching things that are not for your benefit, but are for your harm. Satan wants to rob what you already have and what’s already been given to you by Christ. He cannot take your salvation from you, but he can take truth from you. He can pervert the truth that you do have and cause you to think wrongly. See, that’s what cannot let happen.
But there is a second thing. The protected status of being loved is found in Jude chapter 1. Notice what it says in verse 1:
and those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ.
That means salvation and its security were kept for Jesus Christ. That means God continually guards us. He watches over us. He keeps His people for Christ. We know from John 17 that the church, the called ones, are God the Father’s gift to Jesus Christ. And the Father gives us over to Christ as a gift. So Jesus actively protects His people for the day when Jesus will return, that Christians are kept in order to receive their full salvation and their inheritance that’s reserved in heaven for them. The epistle of 1 Peter already taught us that. It taught us that our inheritance in Christ is already certain. For it says:
to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away.
So what God gives us cannot wither. It cannot become old or worn. It will never lose its vibrancy and delight. God assures us, that our inheritance that comes in Christ will be free from the ravages of time.
Some people will sometimes say when they hear the gospel, that’s just too good to be true. And they think, of course, if it’s too good to be true, then it’s what? Probably not true. That’s how people conclude today. But here is something that sounds too good to be true, yet it is true because it is backed by the character and the promise and the power of God. I like what it says in 1 Peter 1:5, who are protected by the power of God, guarded by God, our inheritance reserved in heaven. So this is the power only the Godhead shares, that God is the only One who guards and keeps us. God is the Guardian who keeps us safe. He keeps us safe to receive our full salvation.
We have many illustrations of that in Scripture. We think of Daniel who was kept safe in the lion’s den. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, the three men, in the triple heated furnace, were kept safe from the flames. Job was kept safe from the full force of Satan. Paul, being shipwrecked, kept safe from that and the hardships and persecutions he’s received during his life. Peter, kept safe from Herod’s prison. So faith trust the guarding and protecting power of God Almighty. The aim of this protection is salvation. Everything is ready and complete for full salvation to be revealed to us someday. Our eternal salvation will be made visible to all and the people of the world have no inheritance. They have no calling. They have no assurance. They have nothing awaiting them at the end of their existence on earth. Christians have everything waiting for them. So all this enduring love is yours. It’s yours in connection with God the Father and all this enduring love and this keeping of you is for Christ.
Jude is saying this cannot be ruined by false teachers. They can’t turn over your understanding of calling. They cannot mess up God’s love for you and try to pervert that. See,false teachers and their teaching disrupt the supply line of blessing that are available to Christians in abundance. He’s trying to, through false teachers, disrupt that. What does salvation actually lead to? You know what it leads to? It leads to abundant mercy, it leads to abundant peace, and it leads to abundant love. That’s what he says in verse number two. Notice what it says, salvation and its abundant blessing. It says in verse number two:
May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
It is the wish that if a Christian is not robbed of blessing by false teachers, then these three blessings will increase and multiply in daily life of the called of God. And who doesn’t need more mercy, right? Multiplied mercy here. Mercy, another word for it is pity or compassion, the attitude of emotion roused by the affection of another. It’s really the gracious action or demonstration of God’s compassion and loving kindness toward those who need it. A compassion that pities the wretched, pities the distress, pities the suffering, and then does something about it. So this is this mercy that has been given to us by God in His love that really motivates us to give ourselves over to God as living sacrifices, because Christians know very well mercy is God giving us what we don’t deserve. What do we deserve? We deserve God’s wrath because of our sin and rebellion, right? But what does God give us? He gives us his mercy. He has compassion upon us. We don’t deserve eternal salvation. Instead, what we do deserve, His wrath, He doesn’t give us. That’s what mercy is.
It leads to a second multiplied characteristic, and that is that of peace. Don’t we need peace? Everybody’s looking for peace. But where does peace really come from? See, the peace he’s talking about here is a peace that assures us that all is well between God and us. That’s the peace he means, a peace that is necessary for the enjoyment of life and growth. Why is that? Well, because false teaching wants to confine believers in order to stifle their spiritual growth, where they won’t have multiplied mercy and they won’t have multiplied peace.
Of course, the next one is multiplied love. And what happens is that when a believer doesn’t understand and receive multiple mercies from God, they feel judged and condemned. Wait a minute, I thought I’m not supposed to be condemned. I thought there’s no condemnation in Christ. There’s false teaching. They remain judged and condemned, and then if they don’t have peace, they are not restful and fearful. And then, of course, if they don’t experience God’s love, they feel unloved and they begin to question God. And they end up being a hypocrite. So false teaching actually causes Christians to pursue the idols of their heart. That’s what it does. So if that’s what’s happening, then they’re not going to grow like they should.
It was funny that Charles Spurgeon came across this young man who used to dive for exotic fish in aquariums. The man said to him, one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark, of course. He explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium. Sharks can be six inches long and be fully matured, but if you turn them loose in the ocean, they can grow to a normal length of eight feet. Spurgeon says, hmm, that also happens to some Christians. I’ve seen the cutest little six-inch Christians who swim around in the little puddle, but if you put them in the larger arena and let them grow in Christ and understand what God’s given them, they will become great. Understanding Scripture, authority, its clarity, its inerrancy, understanding God’s goodness in creation, understanding the origin of death and suffering, understanding the nature of sin, understanding the reality of salvation from sin in Christ Jesus, understanding really the patience of God in judgment. All those things are understandings that come to a believer because they realize that they are called, that they are loved by God the Father, and that they have a multitude of abundant blessings that come to them from God each and every day where they experience God’s mercy, they experience God’s peace, they experience God’s love.
Now that the sovereign actions of God, called, love, and blessed, on behalf of His people have been laid out, God’s sovereignty always leads to something else. It leads to human responsibility. This is what God’s done, now this is what you do. Not to get saved, but because you’re saved. That’s what God wants us to do. And notice, what’s our responsibility now that we know these things? Look what it says in verse number three of Jude chapter one. Our responsibility is here:
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
So what is our responsibility? Contend for the faith. That’s our responsibility. Now we’re going to talk more about that, but the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints is coming under attack. It has always been under attack by enemies of the gospel, and this is the great danger of the church. Look at verse four. It says:
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
How are we to contend for the faith? We are to contend for the faith by remembering what God told us through the apostles, by keeping ourselves in the love of God, and by showing mercy to those around us, and that’s where he’s heading with that responsibility.
So ask yourself, what value do you place on God’s Word? What value do you place on God’s church and God’s people? You know, today, as the years gone by, many false teachers had infiltrated our churches, our Bible college, our Bible seminaries, and our Christian institutions. Many of the huge Ivy League schools that are pumping out socialistic-minded liberals had started out to train pastors. What happened to them? You know what happened to them? False teachers got into the schools. People who said they were Christians that were not Christians got into the schools, and did not have the Spirit of God. They were void of the Spirit. Jude’s going to talk about that. They were void of the truth, and what happens is the result.
The church, the true church, cannot let that happen. That’s why sometimes, some churches die because God lets them die, and He starts another one over here to lay the basic foundations of the truth again and to build on that, right? But we don’t have to let that happen. We can keep the truth by having believers who really are willing to defend the truth, and they’re willing to defend the truth is because they know the truth. They’re willing to defend it and know it because they live the truth. They’ve experienced real salvation. They’ve experienced the mercy and the peace and the love of God every day. They know that. There’s nowhere else to go. Where do we go? There’s nowhere else to go, and that’s a good place to be. That’s a real good place to be.
So are you ready to stand with Jude as a Christian soldier who have answered the call to fight the good fight of faith and engage the forces of evil for the souls of people? That’s what the church is about, and where do we start? Do what you must to know the truth. It’s going to take effort. It’s going to take discipline. It’s going to take fighting the good fight. It is a good fight. It’s worth fighting, but we are called to be soldiers.
Then, be careful that you’re not complacent. Complacency is not an option. It’s not an option. And so what we’re to do is we’re to get in the ring. Every time I went to a boxing match, I’d be so nervous sitting on the side of the ring saying, man, I couldn’t be in there. These guys are beating themselves to death, and yet that’s what he’s calling us to do spiritually. Get in the ring. Be willing to take some blows. But remember, you have the truth, and the truth always prevails. Always prevails, because God is behind it. So let’s get in the ring and earnestly contend for the faith. Grow strong in truth.
Remember, we have a men’s study on wisdom. We have a woman’s study on Hebrews. That’s a good place to get in there. Plug yourself in there and start really listening to the Word of God and putting it to practice. And believe me, you will get stronger as God sanctifies you. As you cooperate with what He’s doing in your life, you will get stronger, and you will know the truth. And as soon as you hear false teaching, the antennas will go up, the spiritual antennas. That does not sound right, and it doesn’t sound right because it says this in Scripture, right? Amen.
Let’s pray. Lord, thank You again for Your kindness. Lord, we’re so privileged here this morning because we have the Word of God. But I pray, Lord, because we have it that we would not get complacent. We would not stop listening. We would be always hungry for truth, always hungry for the Word of God. And I pray, Lord, that today if someone has not received the gospel, they have not responded to the inner call, maybe today is the day they come and repent and turn from their sin and trust You for eternal salvation. And Lord, if the people here have, I pray that every day they would experience the abundant blessings that come to those who are called, who are loved by the Father, who are kept for Christ, and that they would know Your mercy, they would know Your love, they would know Your peace, and that’s what will maintain them until the day we see You face to face. And I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.