Sometimes I think, I find myself
pondering whether or not life imitates art or art imitates
life. You ever heard that? And I'm
going to go out on a limb and actually suggest that Hollywood,
I'm not saying Hollywood is art. Some of it can be. But I think
a lot of times what we see in the media, what we see on the
screen, what we see in our entertainment. Greatly affects what we believe.
About how Scripture is understood and simple things. For example,
when we hear the word contend, as we'll see here in Jude three,
we think of a contender, one that stands. As. Ready to defend and even die to maintain a position. For example,
in boxing, the contender of the title wants to keep that belt,
wants to keep the crown. The contender in a race wants
to be first. We want to fight, we want to
compete. And so I think a lot of times when we hear that word
just unknown to us, we pop into this reality that while contending
for the faith means I've got to take swords and go to war.
And it's right, but it's wrong in the way we envision war. What
about you? How do you envision what it means
to contend for the faith? What it means to stand up in
arms for the sake of truth? Well, I would say that historically,
Christendom has proven what it thinks continuing for the faith
is. We see the Crusades. We see the senseless murder of
millions at the hand of the sword. Convert or die, the church said. We see the Crusades of other
faiths. Whereas they would go into certain
areas and convert or die. And oftentimes I think we feel
as though because we live in a civilized world, we live in
a place where there is technology and civility and running water
and sewage, that we often think, well, what we should be doing
is being barbaric and going out and continuing for the faith
in that way. But because we live in a different
world, we just have to do it differently. And what that looks like church
is disturbing to me. And I say that as a fighter.
I'm a fighter. I like to fight. I like to win. I like to compete. But those
things are different in me today than they were when I was 20.
Twenty years ago, fighting for the faith meant just that. Putting
a finger in your face and poking it. putting a finger in your
chest and poking it. Now, why would you say such a
thing? Because that's how I was fought against the faith. When men of God, deacons and
pastors and others, would put their finger in my chest and
poke it and say something like this, Boy, I've been here before
you were born and I'll be here when you're gone. Boy, we don't do things like
that around here. Boy, you know. And when you're
20, when you're 25 even, when you're 30 even, then there's
fighting words. Especially when you study the
defensive arts and you know very well how to quickly, within two
seconds, take a man's finger off your chest and put it in
his eye. You know? I'll show you how to contend
for the faith in the name of Jesus. That's what goes through your
mind. You're thinking, I want to take control of this gospel
truth and I'm going to tell everybody what they need to do if they
don't believe it. And somehow we feel vindicated. Touch not
thine anointment, I would say at times in my ministry. And
the men of God standing for truth are the anointed of God. So if
you don't believe what we believe, you see the door. Don't let the
good Lord, don't let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord splits
you. You know, stuff like that. And you feel pretty proud when
they all walk out. You're like, yeah, that's right. They don't
come back neither. Unless you're ready to repent.
I mean, you see how I'm exaggerating the heart of the matter. But
that really is the heart of the matter. It's just a punk response
to wanting to be right. And it's the same reason people
fight truth. It's because of the pride of
their hearts. So when we contend for truth, we have to kill pride.
You can't have pride and stand for truth. It's stupid. It's
like saying, I'm going to be healthy, but I'm going to drink
bleach. Because bleach kills germs. You're going to live for
about three minutes. I'm going to liquefy, or I mean,
I'm going to sanitize myself. Because you know, fire, it takes
care of all kinds of germs. You can walk into a furnace.
I don't have any germs on me. Yeah, you're just a ball of ash
now. Because pride does that. And
the Proverbs very clearly says pride comes before the fall.
Even when we're right, church, friends, I have readily confessed
through the years that I have sinfully preached in the pulpit.
And it's not because I've preached heresy or because I've stood
in an apathetic or complacent way on a specific doctrine. It's
because the heart through which I preached was angry. Much like
Moses' heart. Much like when I knew the Spirit
of God wasn't leading me to deal with an issue, but I preached
it anyway. And though the words were true
and right, what happened is you take, it's like having a bull
bat and whacking the body over the head. Why would we hit ourselves
in the face? You know how you play with children?
I never really understood that. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting
yourself when they're real little and you make them hit themselves.
I don't understand that. And I know some of you uncles
like to do it. And that's okay. Keep doing it. It's fun. And
then when you're over there and being preached to by Jesse, then
we can hit you in the face and say, why are you hitting yourself? But why would we do that? Why
would we hit ourselves? And when we do things improperly with
the wrong heart to our brothers and sisters in the body, we are
actually doing it to ourselves. We are condemning ourselves,
we are being hateful to ourselves, we are doing things to ourselves
when we are callous and cold and prideful and apathetic. We are hurting us as well as
them. That's what it means to be crucified
in Christ. As Christ was crucified, so we are crucified. As Christ
was raised, so we are raised because we are the body. Let's look at this text for a
minute. This is one of those texts that really preaches itself.
And starting in verse one, go through verse three. Jude, a
servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James to those who are called.
Beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy,
peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was
very eager to write to you about our common salvation, and that's
what we talked about last week, I found it necessary to write
appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all
delivered to the saints. And we stop. That's where we're
going to be. To contend. We want to contend, and we see
places like Titus. You know, we spent some time
in Titus. We see places in Titus that says when those people don't
listen, have nothing more to do with them. We see Paul's pastoral
instruction to Timothy where it says to just ostracize the
brethren who are continually causing division. We see the
places, we see the examples in the prophets where people were
sort of sent outside the camp. And so we have this instruction
to where there is a necessary time and a necessary place to
actually take people and push them away from the body of Christ
because they will not live according to the way Christ has commanded
them to live. And in doing so, they are a detriment to the gospel
and a detriment to the body. It's not just because we want
people to behave and believe rightly. It's because people
who don't believe rightly and don't live according to that
belief are a cancer to the ones who do. They're the ones who will cause
division among the brethren and bring other people into apostasy. That's why we do it. If you breed
dogs and you have 20 puppies and one of them has this cancer
or this sickness, you say, oh, well, I don't want to isolate
him. He'll be lonely. Well, then all of them are going
to die. Fish raising, the same thing. I'm in an aquarium and
I've got some fish that are floating upside down. You take him out and you
put him in another bowl or you flush him or whatever because
you don't want that fish's sickness to run through. You say, well,
he'll be lonely over there. It's just not fair. So you love
the loneliness, you care more about the loneliness of one than
you do the health of all. I mean, these are bad examples,
but you see what I'm saying. The same thing with in our body.
As much as I love my left hand, because I want to play piano
tight, play my horns, do all sorts of things, lay down laminate.
Maybe there's a remedy for that. Whatever. I want to be able to
do the things that I do, but if the doctor said, James, you're
going to die, Or your head's going to fall off because your
hand is sick. If we don't take your hand, you're not going to
live more than a week. Chop, chop, chop. Get it off. Jesus even used the same example
in the hyperbolic expression of sin when he says that if your
eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. If your hand causes you
to sin, cut it off. For it's better to go into eternal
life partly with a partial body with no hand or no eye than it
is to have your whole body into hell. And so there are extremes, there
are measures that we see in the Word of God where we are to actually
have opportunity to do some things that seem very abnormal in the
culture of kindness. But what I'll suggest to you
today is that there's a time and a place for it all. And this
text really preaches to us an incredible truth about contending
for the faith. And the reason that Jude's letter
is written here in the Scriptures is so that you and I could actually
be intimate, holy, and healthy as a people. That we could actually be a people
for God's own possession and rightly understand what the boundaries
are for our lives and how to protect those boundaries. Friends,
I don't preach so that you can have something to occupy your
Sundays. I don't preach so you can actually Say you've gone
to church. We don't gather so we can feel
right with God. Oh, we did the church thing.
Now we can do our thing. We gather so we can grow more
as a people for the sake of God's glory, by the power of His grace. The church is not here to instruct
and go home. The church is here to grow through
instruction and worship together. It's just like in an organization.
If you have an employee on a particular organization who just gets away
with not working, what happens to those who do work? They become
bitter. Whether it's wait staff, you've
got the waitresses, you've got five waitresses on staff, and
you've got the one that sort of stands around and smoothes and talks,
gets all the tips, but doesn't do a daggone lick of work. Doesn't
even bring the food out. Just enjoys having conversation. And then the other waitresses
are out there, and they're busting their butts, they're mopping
the floors, they're busting the tables. They're back there laying the
plates. They're doing all sorts of things and they're sweating
and they're tired and they get home in the afternoons or they
get off their shift and they go straight to bed or they go to another
job while this girl just sort of hangs out and has all the
happy times and everybody stands in one corner and she's out there
doing it and they say, look at her, she doesn't help us at all. She just gets away with not doing
what's required of her. It creates bitterness in an organization.
How much more does it create bitterness in the body of Christ?
When we allow sin to go unchecked, worse, sometimes deceit can be
blind. Sometimes bitterness can be blinded
to us. We don't need to see it until
it comes up, starts sprouting fruit. And even worse, what about
some other types of jobs, like farming? I spoke to a farmer
yesterday, and he says one of the greatest things that he's
ever done on the farm is fire somebody. I'm looking at him like, okay.
Yeah, my daddy never would fire anybody. All the years he farmed,
45 years he farmed. Farmed, farmed, farmed, never
fired anybody. And people would curse him out and quit, run off
the job. He'd bring them right back, keep
them on. He said, and after a while, the entire lot of all the employees
of the farm worked at her pace. And then when I got the farm,
I put up with it for about a month. And I went out there one day,
and they told me, well, this is what's going to happen. And
she told me to get off that land where she'd been working it longer
than I had. And I reminded her whose land it was and I told
her to get in her truck and go home. And everybody started standing
up for her and I said, well, anybody who doesn't think that
she should go home can go with her. And even her husband said,
well, you better go home, honey. And from that point forward,
he said, I didn't have to worry about it because they knew if they
didn't do what was required, they were gone, you know. Why are you why are you introducing
this? Because I really think it's important for us to understand
that sometimes when we contend for the faith, I'm not talking
about church discipline, though it very much apply to these examples.
Sometimes when we contend for the faith, we throw people away.
And sometimes when we contend for the faith, we have to cut
people off. Because there is some issues of doctrine and division
that are not compatible. Let me give you a few, just get
your motor running. The free will of man is not compatible
with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the context of its liberty.
The free will of man in the sense that he is able to come to Jesus
Christ without a supernatural infusion of God's grace is absolutely
absurd. Because not only explicitly,
but directly explicitly, perfectly explicitly, even in that verbiage,
Paul and Peter and all of them, they write against it. No one
is able, no mind, All are hostile. No one seeks after God. The prophets
knew that. Abram wasn't seeking after God.
God found him. Worshipped in what? The moon. Another one is the idea of perverting
the grace of God. That's one of the ways we pervert
the grace of God. The grace of God is either the
work of God, holy, or it's nothing. Because the grace of God is not
something that you can just be offered to dabble in and stir.
The grace of God is not something to sift. It's given to you or
it's not. It's either effective or it's not. But what's some
of the things that we don't vivide on? Well, should I baptize my
baby? Well, we don't do that. But you can agree that it's okay
to do so. Just don't expect it in our church. It's not an issue
of salvation. It's not a salvific issue. It
may be an issue of covenant. We are covenant baptists. We
are people who believe in the covenant of Jesus Christ, the
covenant of the gospel. We covenant together as a people because
the Bible commands it. The Bible expressly shows that
it's done. But we don't divide over those issues as long as
we're willing to submit to that which this body holds as truth
in those practices. The doctrine of substitutionary
atonement is one that you cannot exist with somebody. I had an
article that I read, not an article, a response that I read to an
article just this week about a man who was saying that the
basic tenets of Christianity is that every sin is equal and
that you're condemned for stealing gum just like you are for murdering
somebody, and that's stupid. And in order to be a Christian,
you have to believe that the only way you can be forgiven for stealing
a pack of gum is for somebody to die for you. And I responded
back, you hit it right on the head. Absolutely. And it blew
their minds. That's it. That's what the Bible
teaches, that all sin, the frustration when our shoe can't be found,
is enough to condemn us to judgment. The very nature of going, is
it really, is enough to condemn us to judgment. Because God is holy and righteous. And when we start paving over
our humanistic ideals about what is wicked and what is not, then
we've missed the mark. Ha! Guess what? That's what Paul
says in Romans 3. We've missed the mark. That's
what the word sin means. You realize that, don't you?
We've missed the mark of what? God's absolute perfection. Not
just God's absolute expectation of perfection. God's epitome,
His fullness, His holiness is the intrinsic display of His
work. And sometimes we have to realize
what is it and when is it necessary to contend for the faith? Look
at the words of Jude. I find it necessary to write
appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all
delivered to the saints. Let's break some of these words
out and then we're going to expound on the principles. The first
thing I want you to see is that he finds it necessary. necessary. What does he say that he wanted
to do? We look at it last week. I wanted to write to you. I was
eager to write to you about our common salvation, our common
faith, our common Lord, our common hope, our common rebirth, our
common joy, our common good, our common community, our common
unity, all of these things. I wanted to write to you about
those because in writing to you about these things is how we're
built up. It's how we're machined, if you
will, by the Holy Spirit of God into that glorious, beautiful
bride that He keeps, verse 24, without fail for His presence,
as we see in Ephesians 5, that Jesus Christ did to prepare the
church for glory and for beauty and for holiness. So this is
the work of God. But He wanted to talk about the
work of God. That was his drive. So in Like
Manor Church, our job, our goal, our joy comes through expressively
moving through life together as we go, whether we're plunging
toilets, laying floors, sweeping sidewalks. As we go, we're enjoying
the gospel of Jesus Christ together, not just in academics, but in
the fullness of our soul as we share and live out that joy and
live out the power of God through the gospel together. That's the
point. That's what we're supposed to
be doing. But when somebody drops a stink bomb in the middle of
the buffet, We have to take Paul's own. We
don't just ignore it. We don't ignore it. In the sixth grade, there were
several things that I enjoyed eating at lunch at school. And anytime they had those homemade
biscuits, I just like, man, I'm about to be salesman. And I wouldn't
talk to people mostly. Sort of stayed shy of myself
about that age. But I would talk to people that day. I would talk
to people if they had pizza. I would talk to people if they
had biscuits. And I'd talk to people if they had steak nuggets. And
what I would do is I'd walk around with these girls who like ate
one thing a week, and I would look at their plates and they
would always throw them away. I'd say, hey, you going to eat that
biscuit? You going to eat that biscuit? Well, it got to be where,
you know, James wants a biscuit. I love a biscuit. And so a lot
of these girls would just bring me biscuits. They'd walk by my
table, bring me a biscuit. I looked like the Don Juan of
a biscuit. They're paying for protection.
I'd write, I thank you. You know, and just have a bunch
of it. Well, the law of averages in any large commercial kitchen
is that there's some contaminants inside some foods. It's just
going to happen. What is it? The FDA says you
can have like two percent rat inside a jar of peanut butter
or something like that. They allow that much because
they can't get it all out. It's not crunchy. So the point
I'm making is this. I've got three or four biscuits,
and the girl sitting across from me is actually Miss Paula's daughter,
Holly, the owner of Miss Roger's restaurant. And she says, here,
you can have my biscuit, too. And I opened up her biscuit,
and inside that biscuit that I broke open was a half of a
bug that had been cooked into it. And I laid it, and I put
it over on the table. And she says, what is wrong?
And I said, put it on your plate. So we got this little argument
about not putting it on my plate, or put it on the table close
to her, or whatever. Disgusting, but I wanted a biscuit. So I
went up there to the line and I said, I need another biscuit.
She said, what's wrong with the biscuit? I said, just open the
biscuit. She opened the biscuit, flicks it off, hands it back
to me. I said, now ma'am, I need a new
biscuit. So I don't know. I just decided not to eat any
more biscuits. What's the point? Would you ignore that? Would you have
opened up that biscuit and seen that half-baked bug and flicked
it off and put some jelly on it and ate it anyway? I know
some dudes who would, and they're weird. The same guy that I'm thinking
of eats out of the trash can at the movie theater because
he won't pay for snacks. He goes around going, hey, that's
about full. Ew, I don't like that pepper. Orange, I'll drink
that. I'm like, never been sick a day
in his life. I don't know how he does it. Gross. But for most
of us, normal people with common sense and a mind that's not deserving
of incarceration in some type of hospital, we would not do
that. Maybe if we were starving to
death. But we would not go over there today and be dipping, and
they got ribs today, and we wouldn't dip a rib and it started squirming
and squeaking and go, and then put it on our plate. Would we? No. We wouldn't tolerate that
in our food, but we tolerate that in the bread of life in
theology and doctrine. We tolerate that among our body.
If we went home today and some stranger was laid up in our bed
with his shoes, get off my bed with your shoes on. We'd be like,
who are you to get out of our house? Or if somebody that was hanging
out with us turned out to be the FBI most wanted. Hey, we
were rocking in our swing last week, just drinking sweet tea,
and now I'm calling the police. That's what happens. We don't
tolerate intrusion that's dangerous into our lives, do we? The same
thing should be true in the context of what we know is absolutely
necessary for salvation. Now, there's a way and a place
and a time for doing it. There's a necessity here. Jude
says, I find it necessary. It is necessary for me to take
and infuse this thing that I'm having to deal with instead of
doing all that I want to do to teach you and to build you. I
must protect that which has already been built. So the necessity
of dealing with false teaching, the necessity of dealing with
the faith and contending and standing up for the faith, means
that sometimes it comes in contrast to the normality of moving as
a body. But now what you don't want to
see is this. What you don't want to see is that every week we
come together, we're dealing with false teaching. What you
don't want to see is that God called me to be an apologist
against false teaching. That doesn't happen. I know a
lot of them personally, and I have this conversation with them privately.
I just don't see it anywhere in Scripture that it's a call
of God. Because if that's what you and I do as a primary, 80%
of our time is constantly like spiritual police officers going
after all these false teachers, it's a never-ending battle. And
I'll tell you the consequences of those in just a minute. And
then that person specifically is living in complete disobedience
to the commands of Christ to actually grow the body together. It's like monster drink. Have
you seen that video? Who cares? Who cares? You think the devil's
going to sneak into your life because you're drinking some
energy drink with some satanic symbols on it? Take a look around. Satanic symbols are everywhere.
And if it bears witness to your conscience not to drink it, don't.
But when's the last time you shared the gospel of Jesus rather
than the monster of monster drinks? You're not going to save any
soul sharing about the monster drinks. You're not going to save
any soul sharing about the wickedness Cult holidays. You're not going
to save any souls or grow anybody in a state of worship by showing
just how bad the NIV is. If you've got an NIV, read it.
Read it all the time. It's a necessity. There's a necessity
here, which means there was an occasion that you'd had because
people were rejecting Christ. They were rejecting the gospel. They were rejecting the grace
of God. And so they were rejecting the
holiness of God. And we'll see all that through
the weeks to come. So he says, because it was necessary, I appeal
to you. I write appealing to you. What
is an appeal? An appeal is an expression of
urgency, an expression of necessity. I appeal to you. Please listen
to me and contend for the faith. So church, please listen to me
and contend for the faith. What does Peter say about how
we should contend for the faith? We should do it at all times
in any way. Always be prepared to give a
reason for the hope that we have. How? With gentleness and respect. And that's part of contending
for the faith. When people doubt, when people question, when people
come right out and say, you're just crazy, this is the good
doctrine. We do it with gentleness and
respect. So there's a necessary urgency here to contend. Now what does that really mean?
Well, I would suggest to you that think about the time in
which Judah's writing. When Rome or the Greek people,
they participated in the events in the Colosseum. And so to contend
for the prize, we see Paul writing that to Timothy. What does he
say? Only the athlete who participates wins the prize. Only the farmer
who plants and takes care of the crop yields the harvest.
They didn't have subsidy insurance back then for farms. You either
did it or you didn't. So in order for the church to
receive the crown of life, which is what? The faith, they must
contend for it. We contend to stand up for the very thing which
is the prize. There's a glorious example of
what an amazing faith it is. That it's not only that which
we defend, but it's that which we win. So we stand up, we defend, we
work, we war for the faith. Last week we looked at the common
faith. We don't have to go through all that again, but we see that
this faith has some expressive adjectives here. What is it?
It's the faith delivered once and for all to all the saints. Sort of preaches itself, doesn't
it? It's pretty simple. So we see
that this faith was given to whom? The saints. This epiphany
hit me. Back a little over a decade ago,
when I'm sort of coming to my understanding of the power of
Scripture. And then I'm realizing that what
I had blindly accepted as true is that the Bible was written
to the lost, the gospel was for the lost, that they may be saved.
And then it was sort of for me to get it in myself so I could
take it to the lost. And no one ever just sort of
sat me down and said, well, this is what you have to think. But
by practice and exposition, or the lack of exposition, then
we started trying to get creative with text or Scripture so that
we could then take those who had already received it to whom
it no longer applied and actually mold their life into behavior
modification. And so we had to get creative.
And it's not that hard to get creative. You just sort of think. the most amazing thing and you
go and you find scripture that matches it. That's how it works. It's called scripture twisting.
It's a sin. It's a sin just like Philippians
4.13 has nothing to do with competition. It has nothing to do with winning.
Overcoming in that particular context was being able to be
successful and victorious in suffering and death and imprisonment
and poverty. You get my point? This faith is to all the saints, once and
for all, delivered. So this faith is to the saints.
It's to the people of God. Those who are the sheep of the
fold of Christ. In John 10, verse 36, you see
these words. Jesus says to His audience, you do not believe Me. because
you are not My sheep." What does he mean there? You
know what he didn't say? You're not My sheep because you
don't believe. He says you don't believe because you're not My
sheep. For My sheep know My voice. They hear My voice. They follow
My voice. And they come in and out into
green pastures and eat and are filled and have joy. You see
that? The Gospel of God is written
to all who believe alone. It has no application for those
who reject it. That's hard to stomach. It's delivered to all the saints.
That's why we as saints and others who profess to be saints, when
we start finding ourselves not with small nuances, not, oh,
when does regeneration happen? I mean, we don't want to get
into those little things. Is it like that or that or, you know,
is it the same thing? But is it required? Is the rebirth
required for eternal life? See, there's the crux of doctrine. Yes. You can say any prayer you
want. You can come down any aisle you
want. You can breakdance, moonwalk, backflip, acrobat. You can do
whatever you want. You can jump through a hoop of
fire and say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and jump into a vat of baptisms. You can do anything you want. You can stand on the mountaintop
and say, Jesus, cross this Lord, and it won't save you. You must be born again. Nicodemus confessed Jesus as
coming from the Father. Nicodemus expressly showed that
not only he, but other of the Pharisees believed He was from
God, and yet Jesus says it doesn't matter. You've got to be born
from above. And it's delivered once for all.
You know what that means? Once for all. That means, number
one, it was delivered. It was given. See, we think of
delivered as I ordered it and you brought it, right? You order
pizza? Ding dong, it's coming. If it's
late or cold, you'll need to pay for it. You're aggravated. You
paid for that. You deserved it. It came to you because you demanded
it. You go on Amazon. You go on the Internet. You order
something. You expect it to be there. You pay shipping to get
it there. Who orders salvation? God does. And it comes to you. It comes to you by the grace
of God. Not by the will of man or the decision of man or the
blood of man or the genealogy of man, but it comes according
to John chapter 1 by the will of the Father. And it doesn't matter how we
expressly see that played out in our lives and what our belief
looks like or what the expression of our faith looks like. We cannot
put our faith in the expression of our faith. What's that mean?
In other words, we can't say, I know that I'm born again because
I said the sinner's prayer. We cannot say, I know that I'm
going to heaven because I know in my heart that I am. We cannot
say those things. We can say that I am born of
God because his spirit in me has testified to me that I am
a child of God because God in his goodness has declared that
I am not an object of wrath, but an object of mercy to be
born again and live eternally through Jesus Christ resurrection
from the dead. that Jesus is my only hope, that Christ is
the God who created all things, even the womb from which He was
born, came to earth, lived as a man, obediently, wholly, and
absolute perfectly, and obedient to the Father, and He put Himself
willfully on the cross, and God the Father, not the Jews and
not the Romans, killed Jesus Christ for the sovereignty of
His own name, so that in putting Jesus as the suffering Lamb to
pay for the sins of the saints, He could rightly and justly and
wholly say, You, dear Son, are forgiven. And I give you this faith. I've
delivered this message to you. God, what does Paul say to Titus? When the mercy, when the grace
of God appears. You see that? No one has ever
seen God. He at His side has made Him known. John 1. So Jude is saying here that it's
delivered and it's once and for all. Do you know what that means?
It's a sermon in itself right there. Once and for all means
this. There is no more to get. There's
no more truth, no more knowledge, no more revelation. Anybody who
says the Lord told me to tell you are liars. Except they say
in John chapter 4. I've been told recently, God
told me you're going to have a blessing. They're liars. They're listening
to the spirit of enemy, not the spirit of heaven. That doesn't happen. God told
me I was going to have a blessing in Ephesians chapter 1. I didn't
need John, Boy, and Billy to tell me. He told me that in all things,
in all spiritual realms, in every aspect of all creation and in
the metaphysical realms, I have all blessings in Christ Jesus
now. All of it. Well, you know, for years, people
have looked at this account and this thing and this account and
this thing and this account. And today, in my study, I have
discovered we've been wrong for 3,000 years. No, we haven't. You're wrong now, man. God doesn't
give new revelation to one single person. He never will. He never
will. He never will. Once for all,
given to the saints. That's why anything that is new
outside the apostolic teaching of the Scripture, even new, interesting,
archaeological finds of letters that may have been written by
people during this time, they are contradictory to the Gospel
message. There is one faith or there is
no faith. Paul says in Galatia, who has
bewitched you? I deliver to you the faith given
to the saints. I'm still away from Jude here.
And you have believed something else. Not just that, but you
have taken the foundations of the fullness of the faith of
God and His Gospel and Jesus Christ and His Gospel, and you've
added two little trinkets on the top of it. Adding two absolute
truths is creating an absolute lie. You need to write that in
your heart. Adding to an absolute truth is
creating an absolute lie. So, Judah is saying that there
is an occasion when the church must take a pit stop, must take
a sideline from the norm of preaching and practicing and praising the
gospel in order to defend it. So there's several things I want
you to see about this defending. First, I want you to understand
that it's not the norm for the church, but it's a necessity
of the church. It's not the norm. We don't need
to spend all of our time going around talking about all the
bad things that are happening against the gospel. But sometimes
we have to. Sometimes we have to go sit down
with people who are publicly saying things that are wrong. Sometimes we have to go to our
brothers and sisters and say, hey, I saw on Facebook that you
posted up this particular teacher and I want to show you a few
things that they believe. Now, let me share what the Bible
says about it. See, that takes like three seconds. I'm going to be
realistic. That takes three minutes and
then three hours to show the truth. In the same proportion,
we defend the faith by looking and going, oh, something's wrong
there, this is why. And we're not even having to worry about
the person or the mouth from which it came, but we worry about
the error and then we show the truth. It's not the norm in the
sense of longevity. In other words, it is normal,
but it's not the norm of practice. We don't always do this, but
it is necessary. Secondly, I want you to see that
the occasion happens when wolves or false teaching or doubting
comes among the brethren. When I say brethren, it means
the brotherhood, the sisterhood, all of us. And so when it pops
up in our lives, in our engagement, then we can deal with it. What
do we not need to do? We don't need to just go looking
for it. Because guess what? There's more of that out there
than there is truth. It's not hard to put a bet on 90%. Oh yeah, I'll bet that. You can
still lose, but I'll bet you if you close your eyes, spin
around in a circle and lay down on the ground and throw a dart,
you'll hit false teaching. I bet if you take a map and lay it
up in your house and put you a laser pointer on a table point
it wherever it touches on the map unless it's in the middle
of the dead sea. There's probably somebody on
a boat teaching false teachings. It's not hard to find. So I said,
I need to find dirt. Just bang the carpet a little
bit. Hit the back of these chairs.
You'll see dust. Thirdly, I want you to understand
that the continuing of the faith is done by the body. By the church,
not the soldier. Now, that doesn't mean that we
aren't responsible individually, but why do we defend the faith
in the first place? Why do we stand up for truth
in the first place? For the sake of the church. And it's holding
us. Not for my sake or your sake.
Because if it's for my sake and your sake, and it's not for the
sake of the church because it's our sake, then we're missing
the boat. We're becoming too self-centered in our approach. And we find a lot of people who
don't want to attend church because they are a better soldier than
the church that they attend in their own minds. That's pride,
friends. Fourthly, I want you to understand that contending
is not what I call making notes and
making noise. about falsehood. Now what does
that mean? Making notes is publishing, proclaiming, making noise, always
preaching. I mean, it's been recently brought
to my attention that there are pastors in this area, several
of them, three that I can think of by name, who have for the
last year been preaching sermons against things. When they can't
find any text in Scripture, to even back up what they're preaching.
They're just preaching against things. I've even heard, it was a joke
at the time, but I found out it was true, that a particular
pastor a few years ago, for almost 30 straight Sundays, preached
against alcohol. Well, alcohol, right, right,
right, right, right. And so, nobody in his church
drank, but nobody knew Jesus. And Scripture doesn't say you
can't drink. Scripture says you can't be drunk. And Scripture
also calls to have wisdom with what we do. And Scripture says
to do all things but it's putting on your socks or drinking a glass
of water for the glory of Christ. So we don't want to make notes
and noise. We don't need to create websites and YouTube accounts
for the sake of showing all this false teaching because it will
never end. Fifthly, it is for the protection
of the brethren. It is for the protection of the
church. It is for the rights of the beloved. It's not for the sake of the
law seeing that it's false. For example, if we go to somebody
who is selling drugs on the street and say, hey man, selling drugs
is bad. It's like, hey dude, you're a liar. Hey, man, you're
breathing air. I knew that. It's not about a campaign that's
showing what's wrong. And I'm not saying we don't stand and
say these things are wrong, but that's not our purpose. There's
an occasion. There's an opportunity. And when
it comes in our lives, we go, no, that's wrong. I'm not going
to be a party to that. I don't think you should be a
party to that, brother, sister, because we love each other like
that. Finally, continue to the faith.
Ultimately, it's for the building up of the body. Because if we don't build up
the body in proclaiming the truth against falsehood, if we focus
on the falsehood, we starve the body. Does that make sense? Starve
the body. Have you ever seen these fad
diets? I don't think every diet is a fad diet, but there are
some fad diets. Tired diet. A starvation diet,
things like that. A tired diet is you just ride
around and you never eat. When you get hungry, you just
go someplace else where there's no food. I mean, you just get hungry.
A fad diet, you lose a lot of weight and you die in your car.
I made that one up. The book comes out next week. But sometimes these fad diets,
in a spiritual sense, are these fad... I got a... well, Tuesday
night we looked at an article that was posted up on a Facebook
post in reference to baptistic doctrine and how wicked it was.
And I look at it and it's five years old. And all of a sudden
it's fresh. Oh, look at this. It's just been
written. Look at this copyright. You know, I like to talk to somebody.
Oh, I think it was Brother Jesse. And I didn't even know that Adrian
Rogers was dead. Because he's always on the radio.
He's been dead ten years. Maybe more. As a matter of fact,
he died in my second year. He died in 2004. Yeah, that's
ten years. J. Vernon McGee. Died in the
1980s. But he's all over the world.
He's being broadcast all over the world. Sometimes we don't even know. As old as J. Vernon McGee, he's
still talking about the Cold War. Yeah, because when he was speaking
on the radio in 1971, it was pretty powerfully engaged. That's
the point. If we continue that we starve
people, we keep them in the past. There's nothing, there's no new
doctrine. Rob Bell and all these guys, there's no new doctrine.
That's not new. Universalism is not new. A hyper expression of God saving
every human being no matter what is not new. Joel Wallstein about
living your best life now is not new. It was happening in
the days of the prophets. It's happened in the days of
Jesus and will happen today. It's not new. If we continue to look
and make this our game, then we're going to starve each other
and ourselves. And when we starve the church,
it happens because in continually focusing on the evil and the
wrong, we put that top of mind and it's not a biblical standard. And it's also a failure to trust
in God's power and sovereignty. It's falling prey to what I call
the devil's lies, that God is not in control of the wicked.
We know very well that the Bible teaches that He is, that not
one thing happens outside His hand. Not one thing. When we starve the church, it
breeds isolation. It breeds paranoia instead of fellowship and faith
and worship. You know what that's like. We've
all been there. You ever heard some blobs tell
about something and you're thinking, oh, great day. It's on your mind
all day. Oh, did you hear so-and-so? It's
what keeps people in such turmoil about me. Oh, if I drive by that church
on Sunday, I might catch some cooties. I don't need that on me. I don't need that stain on me.
I've got a business to run. I've got a life to live. It creates what I like to say,
finally, in the sense of starving the church. Starving the church
for the sake of seeking after error. It creates a God complex. What's that mean? It means we
feel so good about our journey to see all this stuff. We haven't
found anything. We're just regurgitating like
ditto heads. Everything else, everybody else has put up. Because we get a million people
looking at it and liking it and sharing it and talking about
it, we become the resident expert in negative. We become God as if God doesn't
have it. We become a hero. So what is
contending and closing? What does it look like? First of all, you need to understand
that this is not a game to win. It's a war that's won. It's a
war that's already won. And so contending is a serious
issue. It's a grave issue. Contending
for the faith of God is the most important battle you'll be a
part of as a Christian. And it's going to never end until
Christ sets it all straight. So we don't need to feel like
we're the hero to fix all the problems. How many hundreds of
years before the Reformation was the gospel hidden? Hidden. Friends, don't kid yourself.
History does not show a massive expression of gospel explosion
before the Reformation. You don't see during that season
of the 14th, 15th, 16th century, you don't see The Catholic Church
and multitudes of people living faithful lives and expositing
faithfully. Pockets. And the Reformation came and
men died for the sake of the Gospel. That's contending for
the faith. And the martyrs who stood on
pyres, who were once bishops and cardinals, pastors who stood
there praising and singing hymns as their bodies burned under
Catholic England and Ireland and Greenland and
China and India and in Afghanistan and Iraq today. It's a serious game to stand
for the faith of Jesus Christ. And it may mean that you die
in doing so. Are you ready? So be sure we're not dying, being
the mouth-house of continuing to preach a false gospel by saying
that this gospel that I just preached is wrong. Let us at
least die for preaching the true gospel. Contending looks like this. It's
a response to those who are creeping into the church. You see that? For certain people have crept
in unnoticed. See, these are the ones that
are out there with their own websites, their own TV shows,
and they're spew, spew, spew, spew. We don't have to go, ah,
false teacher. Those are not the ones we're
worried about. That's not having a bag full of snakes in a cage
in the back of a truck inside a container on a boat in the
middle of the ocean. There's snakes out there. Who
cares? They're not getting to me. We
know it. They're there. They're in check. Well, what
you want to worry about is the guy sitting in that chair right
there on the front row who is loved by everybody, who continues
to make more and more friendships in the church. And after a while,
you start seeing that some of the things he's saying are not
matching up with orthodoxy. And they're causing division.
And the brothers and sisters are getting calls. And the elders
are getting calls. All of a sudden, hey, somebody just... A lot of
Bible studies. Somebody was praying and said, hey, we believe this.
They've been listening to this guy. Or they just handed out
books by this man who was a false teacher. Then we got to say,
whoa, whoa, whoa. Somebody crept in here unnoticed.
You see the difference? Continuing is temporary. We contend
when it's necessary. One, two, boom! And we preach
to God and we build and we go and we continue to do the thing
that God has called us to do until such a time as something
else comes. We take a pause. We chop it down. We keep on moving. And I can't beat this horse enough. We do not need to make the manner
of our life about looking for and seeking and purveying falsehoods. so that by doing so, it might
help people not see them. That's silly. If at the bank,
though they may have a little training for about an hour about
how to spot a fake, if all they did all day long was look at
fake money, when a new one came along, they'd say, hey, this
is so different. I've never seen a real dollar. Why don't they just handle the
real so much that when the false comes in, they go, wow, this
is funny. contending for the faith is rested
and rooted in the Word of God, not the error. We respond with
the sword of the Spirit, which is, Ephesians 6, the Word of
God. So we don't come with reason and all of these things and trying
to show the error in this. We just say, this is wrong. This
is what God's Word says. How many of you, you don't have
to show me, have ever baked a cake or have some semblance of knowing
what's in a cake recipe? And if you were watching me bake
a cake right now, even though some of you probably have never
baked one, you've been around it enough to know when I start
grinding up potatoes and I'm making a chocolate cake, you're
going to be like, what's he doing? That's a food. I like potatoes. Not in my cake. Is this an Irish
cake? What's going on? Or what if I
started sprinkling, I don't know, black pepper in it? Was this
bread? And it may not be so obvious
to that bystander who's just walking by, but for people who
are paying attention, they'll see there's something wrong with
that recipe. And it may even come out and
it may even have a good taste. There's going to be a little
tinge there you can't put your tongue on. What is that? But if I started
grinding up rocks and pine cones, oh, he needs fiber. No, something's
wrong here. That's obvious. You get my drift? Contending in the faith is rooted
in the Word of God, not the error. It is established. Here's something
that we need to understand. The contending for the faith,
standing up for the faith, is established by God. He is the
one who has given the call and given the ability to do it. It's
established by God through His people, the body of Christ. The
church is to continually give the depiction of truth. To walk
and live and ride in a sense where the world sees truth. Talk
and live. Primarily. So the greatest way
we contend for the faith is to proclaim the right doctrine as
God's people and live it in the midst of false doctrine. When we do contend, it is in
response to heresies. Sometimes we have to contend
against heretics, people who are purposely being divisive.
But friends, here's what I've learned in my short life. A lot of times in the past when
I have felt the need to be a fighter, I have fought against a sheep
of God who was doubtful or confused, not a heretic. You see the difference? Can you
see the difference? I mean, a baby, when it picks
up stuff, it does what with it? Sticks in his mouth. Sticks in his mouth every time.
Sticks in his mouth. No, you don't put that in your mouth.
You don't put bobbles in your mouth. You don't put knives in
your mouth. You don't put shoes in your mouth. You don't put
rocks in your mouth. Well, that's just instinctive.
Why? Do we slap them and throw them out? That's a stupid baby.
They're worthless. They're not even a baby. They're
just a goat or something. We're patient. And we say, no,
no. That's a rock. Put it down. That'll
choke. Put it down. And we teach. We instruct. This is bread. Goes in your mouth. This is a
beetle. Doesn't go in your mouth. A few months ago, Abigail ate
a spider. She would have eaten that biscuit
I gave her. So, friends, keep that in mind.
I mean, I say, well, there's some people among my fellowship,
or me and my wife, who claim to be Christians, and they just
won't see it. God will give them eyes and time. But if all your relationship
is is a constant fodder back and between the tables of debate
over doctrinal issues, there's no fellowship there. And the worst place that can
happen is inside the home, between a husband and a wife. It happens.
It's happened with us. And I've learned to keep my mouth
shut and be patient. Robin had to learn to keep her
mouth shut and be patient. And we trusted that the Lord
would work each of us out when it was the right time. What makes us want to be right?
Pride. We can stay all day long. I just care for them. No, you
don't if you can't relax in the sovereignty of God. Be at peace
with Christ. Continue for the faith that's
necessary because the faith is always being challenged from
without and from within. So how do we do it? We do it
this way. First in the negative. And then
positive, negative, then positive, positive, positive as we close
our service. First in the negative, it's a restatement. and contending
for the faith, we never preach false teaching. We never share
the false teaching. We never distribute the false
teaching. Do you want to give you an extreme
example of what that looks like? We want to help young men who
struggle with adult material later in life through that temptation. So when they're younger, we're
going to give it to them and say, don't ever look at this. See how silly that is? That's
what we do when we share a video of a false teacher preaching
and say, look at this, don't believe it. I just spent 30 minutes
watching heresies. Yeah, make you want to throw
up. And then what do we do? We get
all bent out of shape. You know what's happened in that
time? We've wasted 30 minutes where we could be proclaiming
the good news, where we could be worshipping God, where we
could be fellowshipping together, where we could be interacting
Now, I'm not saying there's not a good opportunity sometimes
to discuss these things. But you know the problem. You
know the point. What do we thrive on? Why does
tabloids sell? Why does the news not tell people
about what a beautiful day it is and how awesome the old ladies
crossing the street at the market were? Because they want to show
you the stabbings, the shootings, and the burnings, and the fires,
and the rapes, and the pillaging, and the destruction. Because
we, in some sick way, in our depravity, even as Christians,
we're engaged in that. Oh, how concerned are we. And
I'm not saying turn the news off, but I mean, that's what
feeds society. I mean, even a good movie has
a plot that twists in some way where it causes conflict. Even
lifetime television, a woman's going to be beaten before the
show's over, before she triumphantly kills the guy in self-defense.
And then gets a national talk show. There's always some negative. So the first part of contending
And I'll move on, unless I contradict my very statement here, is don't
preach, share, and distribute false teachings. Stop. Don't. Don't. If you see a false teaching
in some area and you're compelled to respond to it, respond to
it without even mentioning from where it came, because the truth
will be proclaimed. It would be real easy for me
to get up here and say, well, you've called some names today. Well, I've
called some names that are openly heretics. But I haven't sat here
and told you about their doctrine and told you to go look at their
clips. It's just an example. Sometimes it's necessary. But
is that the norm? Would that be a good sermon?
If I jumped up and down and hollered and yelled and gave you a list
of false teachers? Put on your refrigerator in a
void? Just like a list of sins that you should probably work
on? Or list the commandments that you should probably follow.
Where's the gospel in it all? Never found. Secondly, positive
and negative. Be humble in your process of
continuing with the faith. Be humble. You're the beloved
of God. You have mercy and peace and love given you, delivered
to you, and now Jude prays that it be multiplied to you, so if
it's multiplied to you and you're kept for Jesus Christ, as we
see over in verse 24 and in verse 2, if you're kept for Jesus Christ,
then be humble. Jesus, who is the sovereign God
of the universe, came to become a slave. A slave. And Paul says, have this
mind among you. Peter says, respond with your
faith and gentleness and respect. That means we are not to look
at ourselves as better than anybody else who's an unbeliever or heretic.
We're to look at them and say, oh dear God, if it weren't for
Your loving kindness and mercy multiplied in my life through
Jesus Christ, I'd be right there with them. I'd be painting the
road with that same message. And I have. Be careful. Because if we're
not humble, here's the negative part of the second point, is
that we'll sin in the process. We'll start name calling. And
I've read some of Luther's stuff, and that dude could call names.
Martin Luther could call names, but there's a context in which
he wrote those letters as names. He wrote them and delivered them,
and in history they've been published. There's a difference. And sometimes it's necessary. But I've yet to find a false
teacher, even in a public purview. I don't know, recently in the
news. We won't go there, but then the heresy of the church.
during the Reformation. That was a global issue. It was
a governmental issue. It was a universal issue. It
was a Catholic issue. And God purposed transformation
and reform across the world. With no Internet, I've done nothing.
Third, we contemporary the faith through prayer always. I mean,
look at this. And this is the final thing I'll
say. verses 20-23. But you, beloved, building yourselves
up in the most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, here's
the command. Keep yourselves in the love of
God. So, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that
leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt.
Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show
mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
So there's just a few things and then we're through. But you,
beloved, in contrast to those who were false teachers, but
you, beloved, they've acted this way, but you, beloved, you see
that? And I would say to you that there's
probably not a heresy that's evident today that's not already
been dealt with in the Scripture. We don't have to look to Nicaea
to see the standard. We can look to Christ. How do we contend in action? Well, we are to be building ourselves
up in the faith. How do we do that? We do that
by praying in the Spirit and by keeping ourselves in the love
of God by waiting for the mercy of God to come in two ways. We wait for the mercy of God
to come for us, even though it's given to us. The mercy seat of
God is Christ who's coming for us. This temporal place that
we live, even as worshipers, is awaiting that day of reconciliation
for when our justification and glorification will be complete.
We wait. And then most importantly, in
the context of this writing, Judah's saying, waiting patiently
for the mercy of God on those who are heretic. on those who
are doubters, on those who are in error, on those who are wrong.
Now, there are times when we have to get them out from among
us. But for the most part, friends,
we need to contend for the faith with patience. Look here. Fourthly,
have mercy on those who doubt. What does mercy mean? Mercy is
God's gift to us, unmerited favor, unmerited grace. Now, let me
give you some descriptors of how that looks. Mercy plays itself
out in this. Mercy is patient, loving, kind. First Corinthians 13 comes to
mind. It does. It sees no error. It keeps no
record of wrong. What is mercy? Mercy is an opportunity
for us to patiently endure, patiently instruct, patiently build, patiently
correct with gentleness, and righteousness and graciousness. What does Paul tell Timothy?
To instruct and rebuke and correct. That's what it means to have
mercy on others. Sometimes it may take years, friends, years
to get wrong teaching out of people. So as long as they're
struggling in it with you, as we're walking together as brothers
and sisters, we walk together. It is a prideful, wicked, in
some sense unregenerate response when we think in our minds just
because somebody doesn't agree with us that they are apostate. That's a little harsh. Well,
yeah, I've been there. Have mercy on those who doubt.
And finally, we see mercy again. And we see something here that
surprises me. And I'm going to take a stab
at it. I'm going to take a stab at it. And if I get it wrong,
I'll correct it. Because I don't want to see what
other people think of this. But in my mind, when it says
right here, snatching them out of fire, I think this is an intentional
Passionate, zealous, going and giving people who were called
up in error. I think this is a feat to the
prayers, to the passion. I got a brother who's falling
prey to this. I'm not just going to text him
and pray for him. I'm going to show up at his house.
I'm going to show up at his job. I'm going to get a TPO on me.
And I'm going to keep going until I get arrested because he is
falling away from Christ. You see that? See, that sounds
like cult talk, don't it? Put him down! I think that's
what Jude means. Zealous action. Where do you get that? I think
that's the point. I think that's the point of Matthew 28 in making
disciples. We don't let people get away
with acting and talking wrongly about the gospel of grace. But
we don't go to them and kick them in the face. We go to them
in tears, hoping they'll listen to the truth. Not so that their
behavior will change and then their mind, but so that their
mind can change by the power of the gospel who changes their
heart. We want both the mind and the heart and the body to
change. And we do all of this with a fear and mercy. We do it with mercy as we've
spoken. We do it with fear even that we hate the garment that's
stained by the flesh. We hate the flesh. We hate the
flesh. And we'll expound upon that really
deeply in weeks to come. Friends, we should take lightly
no sin and no error, no matter how easy it is just to say, well,
it's okay. But we should always know that
God in His grace has been merciful to us in our blindness and ignorance. And even though we are born again,
we will have opportunity for making error in our judgment,
in our understanding, in our worship, and in our doctrine.
And God is gracious. Let us be gracious with each
other. But we must contend for the faith once and for all delivered
to the saints. Now the final question I ask
you is are you of that faith? Are you born again by the faith
of God through Jesus Christ Do you believe that Jesus, and not
just in your mind, the word belief there is in continual, unreserved,
unquenching, eternal commitment to the Person of Jesus Christ.
It doesn't mean that you agree. It means that it's your only
essence. It's the essence of your only
hope. It's the hope of your only longing. And it's the answer
and the quenching of your only thirst. Are you believing in
the fullness of your being that the only hope you have This world
is Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. If you say, I just can't believe.
What are we supposed to do? I can't believe. I'm one of these
people who know it and have studied it, but I just can't believe.
I'll tell you what we do, and I'll tell you what you do. We pray for you that God would give you faith. And you pray for you that God
would open your eyes to see. There's nothing else we can do.
And as you hang on with us, we'll take you to a journey to see
Jesus face to face. And one day you'll look and you'll
see and you'll believe and you'll be transformed by the Gospel. Thank You, Lord, O Holy God of Heaven. Father, You have brought Your
Son into this world to give life to dead people who were unable
to be alive on their own. Lord, Your beauty Your majesty
and Your glory is incomparable and ineffable. Help us to see
You more every moment of every day. God, as we have prayed for
those who are not believing on the Son, would You bring mercy
to their souls that they may see and savor Jesus forever. And would You please bring grace
upon grace and multiply mercy and peace and love in our lives
as Grace Truth Church that we might be patient with all those
around us. Patient with those in our community.
Patient with those on a national level and an international level
who teach wrongly against You. But Lord, our response as we
stand even to death to contend for the faith is gratitude and humility as
we preach the gospel of Jesus, only through which one would
hear Your words and come to You. It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.