So our verse today is Jude, verse
three, but we'll read the first few verses together. Jude, chapter
one, verse one. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ
and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the
Father and preserved in Jesus Christ 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 ye should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. 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 ye should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Amen. May the Lord bless this
short reading. In this one verse, Jude uses
two phrases to describe the gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ. He calls it our common salvation
and he follows up that little phrase with the phrase, the faith
which was once delivered unto the saints. And both of those
terms direct us to the gospel of God's grace and the covenant
purposes of God in saving his people from all eternity. The former, the first of those
two descriptions, the common salvation, it incorporates and
it emphasises the great stages or the steps by which God's purpose
of love for his elect is revealed in the covenant of grace and
the covenant of peace. And the second phrase, the faith
which was once delivered to the saints, It points to the experience
of faith in the lives of those for whom the Lord Jesus Christ
died. So there is this aspect, this
dimension of our salvation, which was formed in the purpose of
God in eternity and is common for all believers. And there is the experience of
that purpose in the lives of God's people. And that is the
faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Now, of course,
these two things overlap, but it's interesting to see how Jude
brings these two thoughts together in this one verse. Both phrases
are a kind of shorthand because although Jude does not unpack
the elements of this great salvation, yet he Nevertheless, by referring
to it as common to all those to whom he writes, now remember
who it is that he is writing to. He is writing to the sanctified
by God the Father, the preserved by the Lord Jesus Christ and
those who are called by the Holy Spirit. So he has already identified
this covenant purpose of God in his eternal will to save this
people, to sanctify them, to preserve them and to call them
in time. So having identified these people,
he says that the salvation that he was planning to write about
is common to all of those, all of those people, all for whom
Christ died. And he shows it to be a general
collective term embracing all the parts of a sinner's salvation
worked out and accomplished by our triune God. First, salvation is accomplished
for us. First, salvation is secured for
us. Then, it is applied to us according
to the mind and will of God in Christ. And I think it's very
helpful for us to understand this eternal dimension to the
work of salvation, to see it as God's purpose in eternity,
that it was accomplished in the mind and will of God and that
God treats his people on the basis of the work of Christ from
eternity and applies that work of Christ which took place in
time to his people in their own personal experiences. And here
we see, of course, the eternal purpose of God. So that these
parts, these different parts, let me just specify a few of
them. The justification of sinners
by the imputation of righteousness to them. The cleansing of sin
by the cleansing of sin. by the blood of Jesus Christ,
the pardoning of sin. by the redemptive work of the
Lord. The transformative work of conversion
whereby every elect child of God is made a new creation in
spirit and soul and indwelt by God the Holy Spirit and brought
to a knowledge of the truth in believing and trusting in the
Lord Jesus Christ for personal salvation. These are the parts,
these are the components of this common salvation. in the mind
and will and purpose of God. And all the parts are true for
all God's people. We have them all in common. We
are all justified with the same imputed righteousness. We are
all cleansed by the same precious blood. And Jude can rightly call
God's saving grace our common salvation. because it is common
to us all. And similarly, though separately,
each one of God's elect experience God's grace in our own lives,
but we do so in completely different ways. So there is a common work
of salvation which applies to all God's elect, but it is individually
brought into the experience of God's people throughout the history
of time in various and different ways. No two of us have the same
experience of the Lord, whether that's in our conversion or in
our Christian life, because God deals with us as individuals. And if I may use the word that
Jude uses, he delivers our knowledge of the truth. He delivers our
knowledge of our sin. He delivers our knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel.
He delivers our experience of grace and our faith in Christ
to us individually in ways as diverse and varied as the total
number of his elect people. The Lord's dealings with you
and your experience of his ministry in your life will be quite different
from mine. Maybe you were a great sinner,
and came to a knowledge of the truth of God's grace through
a period of great conviction and guilt. Not all come like that, some
do. Other believers feel they've
been hounded by God for years, while others are surprised by
grace. Some struggle against the claims
of Christ until every redoubt has been stormed and every stronghold
has been taken by force. Some try to make themselves good
enough for salvation and go to the law only to find that it's
a crushing experience for them and gives them no peace. Some
feel like they've been plucked from the jaws of hell in the
nick of time. And nor do our varied experiences
end with our conversion. Our pilgrimage in this world
is unique. Our trials are all different. be it our battles with residual
sin and temptation, be it the sicknesses that we have, the
lonelinesses that we feel, the anxieties that we harbour, all
of them are different. We have all of them at different
times in our life and we have periods of peace and joy in the
Lord. Our times of refreshment and
our times of encouragement are different as well. So that for
each believer, no two pathways are the same. And neither are
our experiences of Christ. Consequently, our measure of
faith, the faith that God gives us, our supplies of grace, The
intensity with which each of us have a felt sense of our need
and a felt sense of God's love is also different. Supplies vary
with need. Provision is granted according
to the requirements. Let me just give you one example
and I just leave it with you. Recently, a widowed friend of
mine told me that she had never felt the presence of the Lord
so close as she has done since her husband went to glory. Now did not the Lord say, I will
not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. So that when the
Lord even takes away one source of comfort, one natural, familiar
source of comfort, he comes, personally he comes, and he supplies
a comfort. that is nearer and dearer than
she had ever felt him to do before. In such ways, varied and individual
ways, the Lord fulfils his promises to his beloved people. The bottom
line of all of this is that Jude is gathering up, in this little
verse, Jude is gathering up all these ideas in these two shorthand
phrases. And he tells us that he had originally
taken up his pen to write diligently about these matters and to set
out, as others had done before him, a declaration of those things
which are most surely believed amongst us. It seems as if Jude's
purpose in writing was to think about this common salvation and
the things most, the faith most surely delivered to us. But something
happened, something occurred to him. The Holy Spirit, it seems,
laid something upon his heart. Rather than write about the common
salvation as he had first planned and the faith once delivered
to the saints, Jude was constrained by the Holy Spirit to go in another
direction. He realised in his own mind and
heart that it was needful for me to write unto you about something
different. It was needful for me to write
unto you. So that he had purpose to write
about the common salvation but then he needed, he realised it
was needful for me to write unto you. And Jude's letter then becomes
a call to arms for the purity of the gospel amongst the people
of God. His letter then starts to speak
not about the things that perhaps Paul and Peter and James and
John had written about before concerning the nature of salvation,
the ways in which it is applied and understood, but rather his
letter takes a specific direction And here we have this call to
arms for the purity of the gospel. Now I mentioned in the little
note yesterday, this is not a physical fight that we are talking about,
like some modern day crusader who takes up the weaponry of
this world to try and overthrow and overcome opposition to the
gospel. That's been tried many times
and it was wrong then and it would be wrong now. but also let me just spin that
a little bit. It's not even to engage in vain
arguments with people or to employ intellectual debates which have
no real value because all it's doing is testing men's, I don't
know, ability to understand concepts or their memory at remembering
theological niceties or their ability to speak and debate well. That's not, we've seen examples
of that in the past week, how so much emphasis is put upon
debate. Does it really change people's
minds? Rather, We are to contend for
the whole evangelical testimony of revealed religion. We are to stand fast for the
gospel that God has revealed to the men and women of this
world, especially the doctrines of God's grace in Christ and
the full and free salvation accomplished by Christ and bestowed to sinners
according to the mercy of our loving God. Therefore, I want to highlight
what it means to earnestly contend for the faith. Why we must so
contend? Who should be contending and
against whom? should we be contending? So I'm
just going to take these four points quickly and just touch
lightly on each thought as we come to think about this matter. Jude's call, first of all, to
earnestly contend shows us that this contention must be real. It has to be earnest. It has to be genuine and sincere. We've got to mean it. The gospel
of God is not something inconsequential. It is the most important part
of our lives. I hope The gospel of God is the
most important part of our lives. I hope that the revelation of
the Lord Jesus Christ by God is the most important thing to
us, that the person of Christ himself is the most important
thing to us. Everything in this world could,
I should probably say will, everything in this world will be taken from
us. but the revelation of God and
the glory of God and our love for God in Christ shall never
be removed. That is what will remain. Men and women like you and me
have lived and died for the faith, meaning the body of revealed
truth. Men and women have lived and
died for that faith. And men and women have lived
and died for their faith, meaning their personal experience of
Jesus Christ as Saviour. They've lived and died refusing
to deny the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are the latest generation
called to follow Christ in this sinful world. and we are no less convinced
of the truth of the Gospel than those who have gone before and
are now entered into their glory. And soon it will be us, soon
it will be us who are following them through the gates of heaven
and into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is us who
will hear those words, well done, good and faithful servant. And
we have that calling to uphold this gospel in our generation,
to contend for this gospel. to resist and oppose every effort
to deny and to diminish and to detract from this gospel because
this gospel reveals God's grace in Jesus Christ. And we contend for this gospel
by professing our faith, by supporting the truth by engaging with error
wherever the Lord has placed us and in whatever way we can. Such contending as this requires
that we know the truth and we know when we hear something that
is not the truth. Let me give you an example. Some
people ask me if they should join a church where they know
the gospel is not preached. And I say emphatically, no. Why would you do that? What good
can possibly come to you by doing such a thing? What good could
it possibly do your soul to be under the sound of a message
which is not the gospel? Should I listen to a man who
doesn't know the gospel? No, he can only teach you error. Why support a ministry with your
time, with your money? Why suggest to others that you
agree with what is being said from that tool pit by your presence
and attendance at it? earnestly contending for the
faith means at the very least publicly separating from error
and being ready to give a reason why you do so. So that's the first thought that
I have here. What does it mean to earnestly
contend? There's a second thought. Why? Why? Why must we earnestly contend
for the faith? Well, because the glory of God
is at stake. Let me qualify that. Not the
essential glory of God. Not the intrinsic glory of God. That can never be diminished. That can never be changed, never
change or be changed. But our perception of that glory,
that the glory of God can be tarnished, the way in which so
much religion presents God these days is a disservice to the testimony
of God. Again, let me give an example.
One of the biggest lies taught in churches today is that the
Lord Jesus Christ died for everyone and that this universal redemption
is offered to all men and women, boys and girls, to be freely
accepted for salvation or rejected to damnation according to the
will of the individual. Now that, I think, would not
be far wrong in saying is a summary of the principles upon which
most churches operate. And not only does that deny God's
sovereignty in salvation, deny his revealed purpose and power
It also promotes man's spiritual ability and ultimately makes
man the author of his own salvation. It makes Christ a failure because
he died for some that he will never save. He wanted to save
them and he couldn't. and universal redemption strikes
at the heart of every biblical doctrine and it should grieve
every child of God. Tolerating lies is a shame and
contending against lies is the only honourable course for a
believer. We shall not hear such nonsense
silently because we shall earnestly contend for the truth. The glory
of God, the testimony of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the power of God the Holy Spirit is at stake in the minds
of men and women when we fail to stand for the truth. Third
point, who should contend? Who should earnestly contend? If Jude wants us to earnestly
contend for the faith, who is he speaking to? Well, he's already
identified those that he's speaking to. He's speaking to the Lord's
elect. We all should. We all should. those who are
sanctified by God the Father, preserved in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and called by God the Holy Spirit. It's believers he's speaking
to. But let me again qualify that. It is the role of the preacher
and the minister of the gospel. particularly, to be actively
engaged to advocate for the truth of the Gospel and to publicly
espouse the doctrines which have blessed the Church throughout
its history. I ought to just also say that
our ministry ought not to be a constant tirade against error. We have a message to bring to
the nations. We have a positive declaration
of the faith by which hearers will know the truth that will
make them free. We preach Jesus Christ and we
preach him crucified. We preach the need of a saviour. We preach the source of salvation. We preach the successful work
of Christ on the cross and the powerful spiritual work of effectual
calling. We preach looking for, desiring the impartation
of spiritual life. to men and women who, like us,
are sinners according to the sovereign will of God. We are
looking for men and women to be saved by the preaching of
Jesus Christ crucified. And that is principally the purpose
of the pulpit. It is to bring those who are
sinners, whether they are the Lord's people to be comforted
or those who are still outside of the fold of Christ, his wandering
sheep, in under the sound of God's word. Nevertheless, all
the Lord's people whether in the pulpit or out of the pulpit,
should be united in this fight, in this battle. We are to be
united in it for our children's sake. We are to be united in
it for our neighbours' sake. If a congregation does not love
the truth, do you think that they're going to be able to teach
their children to love that truth? Are we going to be able to direct
others to love the truth if we do not? Do you think the Lord
will supply a faithful preacher to an unfaithful people? Do you
not know that candlesticks are removed when those who should
know better close their eyes to the light that that candlestick
provides? If the faith has been delivered
to us, it is ours to defend and it is ours to uphold and support. What am I to think of a man or
a woman who tells me that he loves the Lord, but he supports
a ministry that mocks the Lord and despises the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ on the cross? And here's my last point. Against
whom shall we contend? Well, Judah's going to speak
more on this matter in the coming verses. But let me just say this,
we contend against error wherever it's found, whenever it's promoted. Jude's burden, however, is that
first we examine ourselves and guard our own pulpit and test
the guides and influencers with whom we are surrounded. Judah's
going to talk about men who have crept in unawares. We've got
to look to ourselves first, before we can look at all of the errors
and all the other denominations and all of the sinfulness that's
in this world and lament the wickedness that is in this world,
for it is mighty. We've got to look at ourselves.
To do this, We have to be discerning and we have to be informed. We have to know what we're talking
about. We have to know what the gospel
is. We have to be testing the things that we hear with the
word of truth. Now, a faithful pastor is a blessing
from the Lord. But we believe in the priesthood
of all believers, by which we mean that each person retains
a responsibility, call it a duty of care, for their own soul. And here we return to the word
earnestly. We are to grow in grace. We are to deepen our understanding
of the gospel. We are to mature in the things
of the Lord, moving from milk to strong meat in our spiritual
journey, in our spiritual diet for the nourishment of our souls.
And by all means, honour those amongst us who labour in the
word and truth, but let us not abrogate responsibility for our
soul's well-being unthinkingly to another man. If we approach
the Lord humbly, seeking his way, his gospel, his direction,
we shall not be disappointed. Christ said in John chapter 8
verse 32, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make
you free. So let us all take Jude's admonition
to heart. Let us learn Christ that we may
be able to stand when the evil day comes. that we may be standing
in the strength of Christ and the knowledge of Christ against
those who deny the glory of our God and the sufficiency of his
salvation. May the Lord bless these things
to us today. Amen.