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. 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."
We'll stop our reading right there with those three verses
in the Epistle of Jude. The title of our message today
is Contending for the Faith, Where? Contending for the Faith,
Where? We read in the statement in verse
3 where Jude says, it was needful for me to write unto you and
exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith. What is meant by the faith is
simply the truth. The truth. That you earnestly
contend for the truth. Galatians 2.20, Paul calls it
the faith or truth concerning the Son of God. Philippians 1.27, Paul calls
it the faith or truth of the gospel. Titus 1.1 is called the
faith or the truth given to God's elect. And here, Jude calls it
the faith or the truth which was once delivered unto the saints. Not to the world, but to the
saints. It was once delivered by Christ himself and his apostles and recorded
by the Holy Spirit once and for all. Now when you hear somebody
use the terminology extra-biblical revelation, you'd be sure to
run the other way. You see, that's what Joseph Smith
claimed to have had. He was presented on these silver
gold tablets or something, you know, all this message. Many cults claim to have had
what they call extra-biblical revelation. But I want to tell
you something. If God had it to say to us, it's in this book. The faith, the truth, was once
and for all delivered unto the saints. And Jude writes to exhort
God's people in his time and in our time to earnestly contend
for the faith. Now, I have heard this little
statement, this little saying, contend for the faith. I've heard
this quoted through the years by religious people to justify
their fleshly religious works. They call their campaigns to
march on Washington contending for the faith. They call their
picketing the abortion clinics contending for the faith. In
our local area, I've heard it quoted concerning religious efforts
to fight alcohol. We're contending for the faith.
Well now, while all these things may have their place, that is
not contending for the faith in any sense. It's contending
for morality. It's contending for decency in
society, and I'm for that. But it's not contending for the
faith. It's not contending for the truth. This word contends. found only here in the New Testament,
only place. It means to struggle or wrestle
with. It means to do combat with, to
battle. And you notice Jude adds the
descriptive word earnestly, earnestly contend, stressing the importance
and the necessity of the contending for the faith or for the truth.
Now, most religious folks I know don't even believe the truth,
let alone contend for it. But that's what we're exhorted
to hear. I want to be very clear in what
I'm about to say. The real place you and I need
to be contending for the faith, contending for the truth, is
not out yonder on the street, but it's in our own hearts, in
our own hearts. It grieves my heart to see folk
whom I once thought had a strong conviction concerning the faith,
the truth, to see folk just lose interest, walk away, and quit. And the question I have is this,
are we any better? Are we any stronger? And the
answer is, left to ourselves, no. We're not. And don't misunderstand me. I'm
not saying they're all going to hell. Sometimes God's children
get tripped up and mess up. I know that. But it's not in
our keeping ourselves, but God's keeping his children, and wherever
they are, whatever mess they may make in life. He comes after
some in the gutter. He comes after some behind bars.
He comes after some in the sick bed. But he never deserts one
of his own. So I'm not saying that. Don't
misunderstand. So when we say contending for the faith, where? What do I mean? I mean that in
our own hearts is the where. And there's just two things I
would talk about this morning and stress as being very needful
things to be keenly conscious of and vibrant in our hearts
today. One is negative, something that would fight against
the faith. The other is positive, to feed
our souls in the faith or in the truth. And the negative is
this, that we need a keen consciousness that there is a real devil, an adversary, which Peter said
is loud, loose, and looking. He is walking about to and fro
in the earth, seeking whom he may devour. Thank God, God's
elect are not among those that he may devour. But he does give
us a lot of trouble. He's an adversary which we and
ourselves are no match for. And the second thing, the positive
thing that we need is a strong conviction of true doctrine. that God's children are for certain
chosen, redeemed, secure in Christ forever. So those two things. First, we'll talk a minute about
the need for a keen consciousness of a real devil. Just one of
the great heresies and errors of the modern charismatic movement
has been to convince millions of people, like you and I, that
we have the right and we have the authority to command the
devil to do our bidding. Well, part of Christ's ministry
in this world was to cast out demons, and he did. Part of the
apostles' ministry was to cast out demons, and they did. But
I do not find in the New Testament where you and I are supposed
to converse with the devil at all, let alone command him. He's
bigger than we are. What I find is, James 4 verse
7, resist the devil. Ephesians 4, 27, give no place
to the devil. Now our Lord is a match for him.
But we're not. And here's why we need to understand
this clearly. We really need to understand
this. The devil is not concentrating out yonder in the honky tonks. It's not the drunks and the dopers,
the prostitutes and the gambling joints. That's not where he's
concentrating. He's working over at your house.
Did you know that? Stirring things up, anything,
everything, little things, big things. Why? In effort to rob
you of your conviction concerning the truth. That's why. Jude exhorts us to contend. Why? Because Satan is contending. That's why. Now, the devil is not waving
a flag saying, I'm the devil. I hope you know that. The devil
is not waving a flag saying, I'm the devil. I'm here to hurt you. I'm here
to do you harm. No, no. He comes in a subtle
way through people, through other people, and would have you blame
people, and would have you fight people, and would have you hate
people, and never realize that it's Him in His deceitful way
doing all the damage He can do to your soul. You young folks
this morning here, especially you teenagers, you do not realize
that the pressure you're under to be cool, to be popular, to
go along, to experiment with things you ought not, you do
not realize that it's the devil's work to addict you to things
that will plague you and hurt you and control you for life. It's the devil. You think it's
about your friends. You think it's just them. No. No. It's the devil. And if you give in, guess what?
You'll be just like them. Then they'll have no reason to
respect you at all. But if you don't give in and
do what you know you ought to do in your heart, do what's right,
I promise you the day will come when they'll wish they'd been
like you. Sure will. Sure will. So it's not really
them. It's the devil. It's the devil
using them in effort to destroy your life. And not just young
folks, but many older folks, parents, and even grandparents
in this congregation today do not realize The pressure to have
more, to do more, to keep up with the times is really the
devil convincing you that the answer to happiness is make more
money. Do this. Do that. Be financially
able to do anything you want and buy anything you want. And
today's society and the commercial world has promised us that happiness
is in things. But the word of God tells us
that godliness with contentment is great gain. People would turn that around.
We'd think great gain. is the contentment. But no, godliness
with contentment is the great gain. So happiness is not in
things. True happiness is in Christ and
in love for and obedience to him. Another thing I need us
to know today, the devil is not dressed in a red suit as the
world pictures him. with a long tail and horns and
a pitchfork. That's not him. That's not him. 2 Corinthians 14.11, Satan himself
is transformed into an angel of light. It is his business
to make what's bad look good. To make what's wrong look right. To make what's unacceptable acceptable. That's the devil's business.
There is a devil. He is the enemy of your soul. Now the world jokes about it.
They mock at the idea of a real devil. But he is real. And he is destroying lives every
day that dawns. Thank God he cannot destroy a
child of God. He can plague us. tempt us, give
us all kind of trouble along life's way, but he's the loser. He has his messengers to fight
against the truth. Verse 4 here, Jude said, there
are certain men crept in unawares, crept into where? Crept in among
God's people. who were before of old ordained
to this condemnation. Ungodly men. They're doing just
what they're supposed to be, giving God's people a hard time,
trying to stop the truth, stamp out the truth. And they're ordained
for this. Sure are. If you don't believe that, go read
the story of Pharaoh. Romans chapter 9 tells us that
God raised him up to do exactly what he did and be exactly what
he was. To make life for God's children,
hell on earth. And he was ordained for that. 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. The accepted view nowadays is
there's really no God and really no devil. You're your own God
and you're your own devil. And your life will be what you
choose it to be and what you make it to be. That is not true.
That is not true. Peter said, we do have an adversary,
the devil. Don't take him lightly. Don't
think he's over at the neighbor's house. Don't think he's messing
with somebody else in your house. You need to be concerned with
right in here. Don't think you know who he is,
where he is, and what he's doing. You don't. He won't come through
people you don't like. He'll come through people you
admire to deceive and destroy. There is a devil. Now the positive
thought will go our way. Jude gives us in the latter part
of verse one, some fundamental truth, fundamentals of the faith.
Things were to believe and contend for the truth of these things.
We're not going to convince the world, but we're going to preach
it to the world. We're going to strive, we're
going to contend to convince our own hearts, maintain
these truths in our own hearts. Notice Jude says that he's writing
to them that are sanctified by God the Father. Now that don't
mean them that's quit smoking, chewing, and horn cussing in
traffic. That don't mean that. He's writing to them that are
sanctified by God the Father. The word sanctified here is in
the past tense. them that are sanctified. It's
something God has already done. And of course the word means
to hallow, to set apart, to consecrate, to make holy. I want to say that what makes
a thing holy is for God to say it's holy. That's pretty simple,
isn't it? What makes something hallowed
is for God to hallow it. What sets something apart as
being different from all the rest is when God does the setting
apart. It is God. And Jude is very clear. This sanctification is not a
work I'm to do, It's God's work already done to them that are
sanctified by God the Father. It's His work set apart, made holy. If I am in Christ this morning,
and I am, it is impossible for Him to be holy. and may not be
holy in God's sight. God does not look at His children
outside of His Son. Only in His Son. And in Christ
He sees no sin, no corruption, no imperfection. He sees absolute
holiness. And such it is that He sees His
children. Look with me to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 4. Paul said, Ephesians 1, 4, according
as he. Now the he is God the Father.
According as he hath chosen us, the us is believers. According
as he, God the Father, hath chosen us believers in him, that is
in Christ Jesus, before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him
in love. Now he's not saying that we ought
to try and be holy, though we ought to. What he's saying is,
according as he had chosen us in Christ before the foundation
of the world, he did that in order that we should be counted
holy and without blame before him. It's a done deal. Sanctified. Sanctified. To them
that are sanctified, set apart, made holy in Christ before the
foundation of the world. I'm telling you that salvation
is a gift from eternity to a chosen people in Christ is a precious
thing. But today's message that salvation
is an offer to everybody who's not even interested anyway,
it's not a very precious thing. It's so cheap, God can't give
it away. But that's not the faith I contend
for. I contend not for man's free will, but God's. It's not in man's power to choose
God, it's God that chooses men. Paul told the church at Thessalonica,
2 Thessalonians 2.13, but we're bound to give thanks always to
God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath
from the beginning chosen you to salvation. sanctification, setting apart
of the spirit and belief of the truth. I didn't say he's chosen
you to be offered salvation, but he's chosen you to salvation. He has chosen to change your
heart or else it wouldn't be changed. God did it. God did it. Well, Jude continues. He said, this sanctifying work
of the Father in eternity was His doing, His setting us apart. Not set apart by ourselves, but
set apart in Christ, made holy in Christ. And then Jude continues,
to them preserved in Jesus Christ. Watch the words carefully. Not
preserved by Jesus Christ. That's true too. But it's preserved
in Jesus Christ. This is so very vital to understanding
the gospel. Noah was preserved. He was not preserved by the ark
and him on the outside of it. He was preserved in the ark. See? God's children are not preserved
by Jesus Christ with Him one place and us another. No. We're
preserved in Jesus Christ. Can I say, in eternity, we were
in Him. At Bethlehem's manger, we were
in Him. On the cross, we were in Him.
In the tomb, we were in Him. When he came out of the tomb,
we were in him. When he ascended on high, we
were in him. And as he is seated at the right
hand of the majesty on high, we are in him. Our Lord prayed,
John 17, 24, Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given
me be with me where I am. Well, where was he? When he speaks
these words, he was still here in this world with his disciples
in the flesh. But he says that they be with
me where I am. Where was he? Where was he? He
was about to face the judgment of God for the sins of all who
were chosen in him from eternity. He was about to go to the cross.
And he was praying, really, Father, don't look at them anywhere except
in me. I want them with me, preserved
in Jesus Christ. Back in the Old Testament, this
is in Leviticus 16, I believe, on the Day of Atonement, only
one man entered into the presence of God into that innermost compartment
of the tabernacle, carrying a basin of blood to be sprinkled. He was called the high priest. He was not representing Adam's
race. He was representing 12 tribes
whose names were written in the 12 stones on his breastplate. And when the offering was accepted,
it wasn't just accepted for him, it was accepted for all whom
he represented. Nobody else had to go in there.
Nobody else could go in there, just this one, the high priest. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ is
our great high priest. When he died, rose again, ascended,
Hebrews said, he has entered into the holy place, not made
with hands, but into heaven itself, in the very presence of God.
Not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with his own precious
blood. And he was accepted. He wasn't just accepted by himself. But all who were represented
in him were accepted. This is why in the apostles'
preaching in the New Testament epistles, so often we find the
phrase, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. Left to ourselves. on the outside with nothing but
man-made religion to deal with, trying to identify with the Lord
is a hopeless, hopeless struggle. It's a dead end. But being found
in Him, being found in Him is a blessed thing. In Him, I cannot
perish. So I'm not contending today for
the popular religious idea that God's the desperate one, pleading
with you to let him in. I'm contending for the faith
Jude talks about, the faith once delivered to the saints, ignored
by the secular world, despised by the religious world, but delivered
to the saints and loved by the saints. It's the faith, the truth
that God chose a people, set them apart, sanctified them before
the foundation of the world, placed them in his son, and in
time his son came into this world, died to redeem them. Secured our redemption forever
Preserved in Jesus Christ and then Jude says one more thing
in this verse verse 1 and called and called Not ineffectually By the preacher year after year
after year I've done a whole lot of ineffectual calling It is only as God the Holy Spirit
calls effectually. And it's not that he has to plead
and beg. No, he's doing his work secretly
and certainly all the time. He's preparing. When they have these beauty contests
and the girls are all lined up and they call out the winner,
they don't have to beg the winner to step forward when her name
is called. She longs to step forward. That's
why she's there. She's hoping, she's praying,
she's dreaming that her name will be called. Well, can I say the blessed Holy
Spirit of God is not ineffectually pleading with unwilling hearts. He changes hearts. In Psalm 110
verse 3, the father said to the son, thy people, that is those
whom I have given you, thy people shall be willing in the day of
thy power. That's the only time anybody's
heart has ever changed is in the day of His power. The Holy Ghost does His work
in the heart and creates that desire to be called. It's only then that He breaks
it in on us that we are called. The conviction, the longing,
the yearning in that heart then is not, like religion says, it's
not to accept Christ, but it's to be accepted. It's to know
that I am accepted of Him. And the resulting joy is not
praising myself that I accepted Him, but it's praising Him that
He accepted me. What is the faith I contend for?
It's the truth that God the Father hath sanctified us, chosen us,
set us apart, sealed us for salvation from eternity. It's the truth
that in Christ, that is in his person, his purity, his perfection,
his precious blood, we are safe and secure. preserved in Jesus
Christ. And then it's the truth that
we're called, called affectionately to hear the shepherd's voice
and follow him, called affectionately to believe the truth and cannot
disbelieve it. And yet in this flesh, we're
so plagued with unbelief. Jude says, I had planned with
all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, that
is, to discuss the things that we have in common in Christ. But he said it was needful for
me to write something else. It was needful for me to exhort
you to earnestly contend for the faith. Why was it so needful? Because in Jude's day, just as
in our day, the church was infiltrated by those who would put salvation
in our own hands and not God's hands. In verse 5, Jude uses the example
of the Israelites. The same generation God brought
out of Egypt, he destroyed in the wilderness. Why? Because they made themselves
idols. And they said, these be the gods that brought us up out
of Egypt. Gods of our own making. And oh, that's so much the message
of popular religion today. We are what we are because we
got ourselves here. We have what we have because
we did it for ourselves. Oh, it's us, us, us. Men prefer and preach about a
God who can only do what we let him do. That's not him. He can only save those who let
him. That's not him. He can only call affectionately
those who choose to listen. That's not him. Jude says God chose, sanctified,
declared holy, and set apart a people. Paul said before the
foundation of the world. Christ died for that people.
They're preserved, that is, kept in himself. And the Holy Spirit
affectionately calls that people to repent and follow Christ. I bless his holy name for this
truth, for the faith we're to earnestly contend for. I'm not against pizza parties.
I'm not against movies. I'm not against puppets. I'm
not against games. I'm not against anything on earth
you want to do except in the church of Jesus Christ. We're
here to give Him all the honor and the glory and the praise
and to worship Him for who He is. He's the God of our salvation. Christ is our Redeemer. There's
other places and other times to play games. This is about
Him. This is about Him.