There is just a oneness amongst
believers. There is a common faith. And
at the end of the day one of the things that we have come
to realise is that the children of God all do believe the same
things and they hold to the same things because they have met
the same Lord. So we are back in Jude and we
are looking at verse 3 this morning, this evening, but we will begin
in verse 1 and just read down to that. that verse and a little
bit of the next. Judas, the servant of Jesus Christ
and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the
Father and preserved in Christ Jesus and called, mercy unto
you and peace and love be multiplied, beloved. When I gave all diligence
to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for
me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,
for, because, There are certain men crept in unawares who were
before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning
the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God
and our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the reason for Jude writing
and as you can see from verse 4 he had intentions to write
about our common salvation but then he was led by God the Holy
Spirit to move from that common salvation to exhort you that
you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once
delivered unto the saints. There is a common faith and there
is a call from God to earnestly contend for that faith. And people will earnestly contend
for that faith when they have met the Lord God. The people
who don't contend for the faith and who conjoin with all sorts
of other people, ultimately the one cause of it is that they
haven't met him. To stand for the faith, to stand
as the apostles did as we see in Acts chapter 4, to stand as
the saints of God did, is to actually stand because you are
motivated by someone who stands there with you and stands beside
you and stands alongside you. What was the cause of Moses'
strength to go back as an 80 year old man and confront Pharaoh? The simple reason for him doing
that is because he had met the Lord Jesus Christ. He had met
the God of all creation, the One and True and Living God,
and he was drawn there. He was drawn there by the power
of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have been looking at
the life of Elijah and just reading lots of it recently. He came from Gilead. He was on
the east side of the Jordan. He lived in mountain country
and he wore common clothes. But he actually went down, led
by God. This man, this stranger, went
down to Ahab. Ahab's wife Jezebel had just
wiped the land of Israel clear of all the prophets of God. And
Elijah goes down there. Elijah goes down there, sent
by God. And what he says is, as the Lord
God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand. As the Lord God of Israel liveth,
before whom I stand. That's the motivating factor,
isn't it? A standing, of contending for the faith. It is, it is, something which is the great
honour of God's people. As we've seen in Acts, we'll
see at the end of Acts Chapter 5, that the apostles, all the
apostles, it seems as if 12 of them there, were taken into that
Sanhedrin and they were flayed, is what the word says, they were
beaten. It means they were skinned. They were skinned with whips. And then they left there rejoicing,
why? Because they had been counted
worthy to suffer for the name of our God. There is a call from God, from
our God in this verse, to contend. And God's commands in the scripture
become the promises of God's people, aren't they? They are
the promises of what he will do in the midst of his people. As David said, I love what David
said when he went to deal with Goliath. He, as it were, came
upon that situation there and when David went down he made
that remarkable statement in his meeting with Goliath. I have
to find it, I'm sorry, I should have it ready for you. It's in 1st Samuel, surely. I
had it written down in 1st Samuel 17, I think it is. And David
comes to meet David comes to see the situation
and he sees Goliath there defying the armies of God, isn't he,
and mocking the God of Israel. And David says, when his brothers
are saying to him, what's it got to do? Why do you come down
here? Why have you left the sheep? You've come down here because
of your own haughtiness and your pride. that you might actually
see the battle because you were just this lad. And David said,
David of course anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, he says,
is there not a cause? Is there not a cause? There is a cause in this world,
isn't it? David said to the Philistines,
said to Goliath, he said, You come against me with a sword,
with a spear, with a shield, but I come to thee in the name
of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom
thou hast defied." The people of God are moved by love for
Him, love for Him and love for His people to stand and contend
for the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Jude's case, the
cause, as it nearly always is throughout the scriptures, the
cause to stand and be counted for the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ is because there is opposition from within the people who profess
to be believers. There are certain men crept in
unawareness. They are people who are professing
to be believers and in the context of that God is calling upon His
servants and His people to contend, to contend. And He calls them,
in verse 3, He calls them beloved. Three times in Jude He refers
to the children of God as beloved. in verse 17 and verse 20 he calls
them beloved beloved of the Lord and beloved of Jude He said he was constrained. He
says, I had a necessity. It was needful for me to write
to you. And this contend earnestly means to strive even when you're
already strong. It comes from our word agony.
It's where we get our word agony from. But it has an epi in front
of it. It means to strive even though
you're already strong. There is a striving in the Christian
faith and the striving for the faith. for the faith which was
once for all delivered to the saints." See the faith, the faith,
this common salvation, this faith is delivered. It actually comes
from God. So the origin of true saving
faith is not from men, it's from God and God's ambassadors are
just speaking the words of God to the people and God is responsible
for the response to it and God in His sovereignty brings about
the contention in it. It was once for all delivered. It was delivered once and it
was delivered for all time and it doesn't ever need to change.
It is the faith of God. It was delivered, and the apostolic
witness is all the witness we ever need. It was once for all.
There is no need for new revelation. There is no need for God to speak
anything other than what He has spoken. In these last days, He
has spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ and He doesn't have to
say any more, and it doesn't ever need to be true. The reality is that God takes
his people into places of contention where they must stand and fight
and stand together and stand for this one faith. How did Paul
describe his life? He's fought the good fight, 1
Timothy 6.12, I've fought the good fight of faith. And now
he lays hold of eternal life in 2 Timothy 4, 7, 8. I have
fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith. Wouldn't that be a lovely way
to finish your days here on this planet? To have kept the faith,
finished my course, I have fought the good fight. There is a cause. There is a cause, and as we see
in Acts and as we see throughout the rest of the scriptures, where
the true Gospel comes, there is a division in humanity. God
makes a difference between Israel and Egypt. God separates His
people, His true people, from those who are pretenders. God
causes His people to stand. And if our Gospel If our Gospel
is not a matter of life and death, then we don't have the Gospel.
If our Gospel is not a matter, believing it is not a matter
of eternal life and eternal death, then we do not have the Gospel.
That's why the religious world can all join together in one
way or another, can't it? because they don't have anything
that is a matter of life and death, otherwise they wouldn't
join with them. There is a need to contend for
the faith because there are deceitful people there. There is a need
to contend for the faith because the heart of natural man is enmity
against God. And it will be unless and until
our God steps in with omnipotent power and creates a heart, a
heart to love Him, to love His Son, to love His glory, to love
the fact that He is worthy of worship. That's what worship
means, isn't it? It's the worth-ship of our God. You see, God's servants are called
upon to contend, because not to contend is to accept a lie. To accept a lie. That church,
the Laodicean church in Revelation, are called of God as a church
which makes him want to vomit. Why? because they're lukewarm. To be lukewarm is to be comfortable. If you're cold, you're uncomfortable.
If you're hot, you're uncomfortable. If you're lukewarm, things are
just fine. Woe to those who are at ease
in Zion. It is the honour, it is the honour
of the Church, as it is the honour of a wife to defend her husband. It's not something she has to
be coerced into. It is something that is just
normal part, a normal response of love to someone that you've
met, to someone that you care about. I love what the Shulamite,
the Shulamite was asked that question, wasn't she, in Song
of Solomon, what is your beloved? What is your beloved? What is
your beloved to you more than any other beloved? What is your
beloved to you more than any other beloved? She responds,
doesn't she? She responds, in the absence
of his presence, when his presence has been withdrawn from her in
Song of Solomon, Chapter 5, what does she do? She speaks in the
most glowing terms of the glory of her husband, from the top
of his head to his toes. She says, he's altogether lovely. This is my beloved, she said. She defends him. See, the reality
is there is a common faith. There is a common faith. There
is a common faith that's declared in the Gospel, declared by the
apostles. But the common faith is a description
of the Lord Jesus Christ. In every point of doctrine, And
practice, there is something revealed about him. There is
no issue of doctrine that doesn't relate directly to the person
and the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we can't stand,
we are repulsed when he's spoken ill of. I love what our friend Mr Hawker
said about defending the faith. He said, what is that faith in
the New Testament, this faith, these inspired writings of the
evangelists and the apostles, what does it show? What does
it most plainly and fully show? The great and leading doctrines
of the gospel in the everlasting love of God the Father The Son
and the Holy Ghost more or less are in every page of the Scriptures.
The person, the glory, the bloodshedding, the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ with redemption only in His blood and regeneration
only by God the Holy Ghost. These are the bottom and foundation
of all our mercies. To contend for these and with
earnestness is to contend for the very life of our souls. To contend for these, and with
earnestness, is to contend for the very life of our souls. Any
indifference or coldness to the open profession of these glorious
truths in ourselves, or to the denial of them in others, is
wounding the Redeemer in the house of His friends. It is high
treason to the majesty of God, It is traitorously admitting
the enemy into our citadel. There is a cause. So there are no insignificant
issues. There is in this common salvation,
there is in this faith which was once delivered to the saints,
there is a necessity of God's people to
stand, to stand for the glory of God, to stand for the glory
of their husband. There is no neutral ground. There
is no neutral ground. There is no place of safety. Things are always moving in one
direction or another. People don't love him. If they
don't love him, they really do hate him. How does Paul finish
1 Corinthians? If anyone doesn't love the Lord
Jesus Christ, if any man love not the Lord
Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha, the Lord is coming. There is no neutral ground. There
are no insignificant issues. There is a call from God to contend. There is a call from God in these
apostate times to stand, to stand against the religion of this
world, to stand against the declarations of who they say the Lord Jesus
Christ is, they deny him. Billy Grahams in his 100th year
now, his son Franklin was asked the other day about what happened
at the shooting in Texas. And his immediate response was,
and the question of course is a poor question, it's a loaded
question, how could a loving God allow innocent people How
can a God who loves everyone allow innocent people to go through
that? And Franklin Graham's immediate
response was, God didn't do it. The devil did that. Our God reigns, our God rules. There is a Jesus, there is a
Jesus of that whole world, a Jesus that they can control, a Jesus
they can manipulate and they can mould his character to suit
the purposes of men. So they can have all the comfort
they want, they can preach peace to themselves and preach peace
to each other in this world. But in doing so they deny his
deity, they deny his sovereignty and they declare things as Franklin
Graham did. They declare things about man
that are totally contrary to the scriptures. The Lord Jesus
Christ suffered and died because he declared himself to be God
and his people love a saviour who reigns and rules. And that's
that common salvation, isn't it? It's a common salvation because
it's commonly delivered, it's commonly attested to by all the
apostles of God, it's commonly attested in all of the Old Testament
scriptures and it's commonly attested by God's people throughout
time. When Elijah went to see Ahab,
He went there in the name of the living God, and he had that
God in his presence. And he knew that that God was
absolutely sovereign. And for the next three years,
there was to be no rain, nor even dew in Israel. He just went. He went because
his God was there. He went there because there was
a cause. God was being mocked by the idolatry
of that world. And our God is being mocked by
the idolatry that floods this world these days. There is, there
is, in the blessed doctrines of the Gospel, there is not just
the glory of God, but there is the comfort of believers. Don't
you love the fact that our God is absolutely sovereign? That
even as Jude speaks, and he calls these people to give all diligence,
when he gave all diligence, that you should earnestly contend
for the faith. He immediately describes those people in verse
4 and then he wants to say, God is sovereign. They were all ordained
to this condemnation. He wanted them to see before
they caused any concern about it, he wanted them to see that
this God, this sovereign God that he was speaking of, but
they were sanctified and they were preserved in Christ Jesus.
They were secure. In the midst of all that, God's
people are secure. And that's why God's people love
to declare the absolute sovereignty of our God. The doctrines that
we love and find most comforting are the ones that cause the most
contention. We love the fact of particular
redemption. The only hope for my soul is
that when the Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary's tree, he died
there bearing my sins in his own body on that tree, and God
dealt with those sins in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ
until justice cried out, it is finished, and they are gone. To suggest To suggest that the
Lord Jesus Christ could die on Calvary's tree and people for
whom He died could end up in hell is to say that He failed. And He's promised that He won't
fail. We've looked at it a couple of times in this last little
while, haven't we, in Isaiah. He shall not fail nor be discouraged. Our great Saviour did all of
that work of redemption in such a way that He magnified all of
the characteristics of our God. He magnified the law and made
it honourable. And He moves. He moves in the
hearts of His people, doesn't He? He makes them willing in
the day of His power. He moves their hearts to believe. He moves their hearts to follow
Him. He moves their hearts to see
that He has put away that yoked bondage of the law. It is the
common salvation, it's the faith. The faith is a noun in so many
places in the scriptures. It's not a verb of doing, it's
a noun describing Him. It is this common salvation. Common salvation is common to
the core because they've all been called by the one God and
in the one Gospel and they've all been called to the one Saviour. They're all joined to Him. They love the fact that they
are sanctified, set apart by God the Father, and they're preserved
by this hope of ours. We love the fact that faith is
eternal, isn't it? It's a common salvation because
of its eternality. It's a common salvation that
declares the sovereignty of God, the absolute sovereignty of God.
See one of the problems we have with time is that we think, when
we talk about eternal life, is that we think that it's something
that starts here when we make a decision or that somehow something
has happened. Eternal life is eternal. It means
that it has existed from before the foundation of the world and
what's happened in time is a manifestation of what God has done. We love
the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is that assurity in that
eternal covenant of grace. We love the fact. We love the
fact that He appeared there on our behalf in that covenant of
grace. And there He took responsibility. He took responsibility for sin,
for sinners such as us. Responsibility preserved we were. Then is when we were preserved. in that eternal covenant of grace. This common salvation declares
the sovereignty of our God. And also it's a common salvation
because you must be born again. You must be born from above to
see the Kingdom of God, to enter the Kingdom of God. You must
have a divine birthing from above. You must have God come and take
up residence in you. For God, 2 Corinthians 4.6, for
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now when God shines, when God
shines in hearts, are people going to see the same thing?
This nonsense that the Church is divided. The true Church of
God has a common salvation. They have a common saviour. And
they have a common way of this salvation coming. And the common
way of salvation coming, the common way of its entrance, is
the promised preaching of the Gospel. There is a birthing by
the preaching of the Gospel. But it's a common salvation because
there is just a common object, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is
eternal life, that you know Him. You know Him. You don't just
know about Him, but you know Him. I love what Paul said in
2nd Timothy, he said, I know whom. He doesn't say, I know
about him, he says, I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded
that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him
against that day. See the common salvation comes
because there is a common meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ and
when there is a common meeting, when people meet him, And when
they truly meet Him in saving faith, they meet themselves and
they take very happily their place in the dust. and very happily
they look to Him and they look to Him crucified and they see
the reality of our great God and our great God's redeeming
love for them. See Paul considered himself a
pattern of believers. He says in 1st Timothy 1.16,
he says, I'm a pattern to them that believe. So he was a pattern
in his meeting. In Galatians 1 he says, when
it pleased God, It was a pattern in his meeting, it was a pattern
in his revelation when it pleased God to reveal his son. It's a common understanding there
was a common abiding when he was pleased God to reveal his
son in me. And when that occurs, the child
of God has an assured reality. Paul didn't have to go and get
approval from anyone about what had happened to him. He had met
the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I consulted not with
flesh and blood. He didn't need the approval of
the apostles. He had met the Lord Jesus Christ
and he had seen in that extraordinary time, and the weeks that followed
must have been the most amazing weeks ever, I would imagine,
as all those Old Testament scriptures that he thought were about law
and he thought were about righteousness, he realized that it was all just
about the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is a common mission,
isn't there? There's a common mission. He wants to preach Him. There's a common salvation because
we just want to speak of Him and therefore we contend with
those who want to speak about another Jesus, another Jesus
who loves everyone, another Jesus who died for everyone, another
Jesus who wants everyone to be saved, another God and another
Gospel. pathetic, pathetic gospel. So that's the great thing, isn't
it? In the glory of eternal election and the glory of particular redemption
and the glory of the sovereignty of God, we have a gospel that
is common in its success. He shall not fail. He must reign. He shall save His people from
their sins. His sheep shall hear His voice
and follow Him. There will be an irresistible
power of grace. Thy people shall be willing in
a day by power. There will be a common, a common
salvation, a common salvation that will be contended for. So
they are one with Him. They are commonly one with Him
in His incarnation, in His suretyship from eternity, in His sinless
faithful life under the law and under all those afflictions,
in His death on Calvary's tree. We are one with Him in His burial.
We are one with Him in His resurrection. We are one with Him in His exaltation
to Heaven's glory. We will be one with Him in His
return and one with Him in the new creation. And He'll be one
with us as He takes His people through the manifold trials and
temptations in this world. And they are delighted to know
that they are bought. They are bought with a price.
We belong to Him. We delight in the fact that He
owns us and He calls us our own. And God's people are willing
servants. We long for opportunity to serve
Him. We long for opportunities to
honour Him. We long for opportunities to
speak. Just get an opportunity to speak something nice about
Him. Let me tell you about my Saviour. Let me tell you about
the everlasting righteousness that you brought in. Let me tell
you about everlasting eternal love. The grand design, the reason
for contention, the reason for standing for this one faith,
to contend for this one faith, is because there is in the hearts
of God's people a desire that he should be worshipped. as He's revealed in the Lord
Jesus Christ forever. That's the grand design, isn't
it? To glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, to the praise of the
glory of His grace, to show that great glory, how great His glory
is in our salvation. And He does it in remarkable
ways as we see in Acts. He'll take the weakest of His
vessels, Weakened by their frailties and their failures, he'll take
the weakest of his vessels, like an Ahab, like an 80-year-old
Moses, and he'll take them into the most difficult place that
is known for them on this earth. And there he'll be alongside
them. There he'll be standing with
them. I love how Paul finished his
life, didn't he? He knew that he was about to die, and people
had deserted him. It's an extraordinary thing to
think that people had abandoned the Apostle Paul towards the
end of his life. No man stood with me, but all
men forsook me. And he prays that God would not
lay it to their charge. And then he says, notwithstanding,
it doesn't matter about all of that. The Lord stood with me."
There he was in Rome, in Caesar's Rome, about to have his head
severed from his body, and the Lord stood with him. If the Lord
stands with you, brothers and sisters, Everything else doesn't
matter. It's the one thing that matters,
isn't it? It's the one thing that we gather
in church for, is that the Lord might reveal Himself, might reveal
Himself as standing with us. In all those trials that you've
been through, He's always been there. He never ever leaves you
nor forsakes you. It is. It is something to contend
for. He is the one that we stand there
contending for. And He stands alongside us in
the midst of all of that. As we've seen in our other journeys
through Acts, we've seen Paul taken again and again into places
where he just met with contention and he dusted himself off and
he went to the next town and he suffered the same things.
In 1 Thessalonians we looked at a couple of years ago, he
said, the Gospel came not only in word but in power in the Holy
Ghost and in much assurance. This word of God, this testimony
of the Lord Jesus Christ came in much assurance that this is
the word of God. And having received, 1 Thessalonians
1.6, having received the word in much affliction with joy in
the Holy Ghost. Where is affliction in these
contentions? There is joy in the Holy Ghost.
And their faith to God would sound out and spread abroad.
And you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true
God and to wait for His Son from heaven. He says, we are allowed
of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak,
not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts. There
is just one. In church there is an audience
of one that matters, isn't it? But our God is here bearing witness
to his Gospel. You received the Word of God
which you heard of us. You received it not as the Word
of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God which works effectually. work perfectually also in you
that believe." So this apostolic faith, this common salvation
works in believers today as it did in the apostles. What an
extraordinary privilege we have been granted by our God that
in the midst of the flood of apostasy and false religion that
spread throughout this world in the midst of the darkness
which is so akin to the darkness that Elijah went back into Israel
to confront Ahab with. But God has raised up a witness
to himself here. Believers have a common salvation,
a common faith. And that's why in Acts we love
to see, don't we, that they're all one heart and one soul. That's what believers are. They're
all believers in one heart and one soul. And again and again
it's spoken of that they're all in one accord. They had a common
salvation. There is a cause. There is something. There is a someone in this world
that is worth contending for. May God give us the grace to
be reminded that our fight is not against flesh and blood.
And as much as we have reason to be discouraged by so much
of what we see around us, we've got to look beyond what we see
with fleshly eyes. We've got to look again and again
and again to our great Saviour and say, use us for your glory,
Heavenly Father. Make us to stand in the midst
of this apostasy. Make us like the Elijahs and
the Elishas of your Old Testament. Make us stand alongside the apostles. There is a cause. There is a
cause worth contending for. The glory of our great God is
the cause. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we thank You. We thank You that You have come
in sovereign saving mercy to reveal the glory of Your Son. And we do pray, Heavenly Father,
that You would take us, a little insignificant band that could
be treated as a nothing, as Elijah no doubt was as he walked all
that path from Gilead to Ahab, seeming nothing to this world,
seeming nothing to the men that were esteemed. but Heavenly Father
we have a treasure in vessels of clay and we pray Heavenly
Father that you would use us and use this gathering of your
people here for the glory of your dear son in this world.
Take us Heavenly Father and use us, cause us to stand, cause
us to contend again and again for the faith which was once
delivered to the apostles. Father we praise you that there
is a common salvation and we see it throughout the Old Testament
and the New and we see it throughout this world and we are thankful
Heavenly Father that you have maintained your witness and you
promise that your witness will be maintained in this world to
the end. We do long, Heavenly Father,
as willing servants to be taken and used for your glory. We want
to acknowledge that we are unprofitable. We also want to acknowledge that
our great God uses vessels of clay and uses seemingly extraordinary
insignificant things and insignificant people for His glory, that all
of the power and the glory might be seen to be of God and not
coming from the power and the strength and the wisdom and the
ability of men. We thank You, Heavenly Father,
that this is how You have done things throughout time and we
pray for the glory of Your dear Son. We grieve, Heavenly Father,
over Him not being worshipped in this world and we grieve for
the lost in this religious world, Heavenly Father. And we pray
that we would continue to be reminded that our fight is not
against flesh and blood and we don't fight with karma weapons.
Cause us, Heavenly Father, to be used for the glory of your
Son. For we pray in his name. Amen.