Contend for the Faith

To those who are called, beloved in God the Father, kept for Jesus Christ.

Those are three aspects of salvation that we all have in common. The called, the loved, the kept. Let's think about what those three would be saying about all of us. To call is an invitation. You're invited to a special event and you plan accordingly as to how important that event is and what the dress code might be and what's expected there. This is God's invitation to himself. This is God's invitation out of sin. This is God who has personally called out to those he made in his image and rebelled against him to bring them back to himself. It's a powerful, loving declaration. To those who have received the opportunity to hear the gospel, to those who have been blessed with a heart to believe it, to those who come together rejoicing in it. It's a loving call. It's a keeping call. We wanna think about these three words together, but those three words are informing one another. This call is common for all believers. It's precise, it's powerful, it changes their lives. We come together. to remind each other of this call. We come together to practice this call. We come together to remind each other and encourage one another that we have all been called. And one of the reasons we actually open up our whole worship, service of worship with a call to worship is to remind you God has called you to himself. God's welcomed you to himself. God speaks with great clarity and kindness to save us. I fear too often Christians grow to a point where we actually treat this as if it were common, as in ordinary. We've heard of grace over and over again. We've gone to church, we've gone through the motions where our hearts aren't stirred up. It must be, you know, the music isn't lively enough, or there's not enough passion in the preaching or teaching, or there's something wrong with those people. They're just not welcoming the way I want to be welcomed. We take for granted that church doors are always open on Sunday. So, you know, you could miss a couple Sundays or just come back another Sunday. I think we're all in danger of thinking this call is ordinary. It's what we all share, but it's God speaking to invite us to himself. And the reason we come together is because we are so forgetful. We just heard the warning that Paul says is meant to be a warning for us, that too long of a distance can cause us to get all kinds of confusion like Aaron did with that golden calf. Well, this is a special, unique call of salvation that we hear, we receive by faith, and we come to encourage each other with. The second word there is beloved. Beloved in, specifically, God the Father. We see the first two persons of the Trinity very clearly here, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. The word here, love, has a unique part of speech to it. It doesn't mean, oh, he once loved me. It doesn't mean that maybe he'll keep loving me. No, it's a perfect love. It's been perfectly and absolutely declared and given and will be kept forever. God's love isn't fickle like ours. He doesn't stop loving. He doesn't hold back love. When He declares He loves us, He pours Himself out towards us. He doesn't ever even fall in love with us because we're filthy in sin. He loves us because He loves us. We're loved by God. Now, this is a key word. Love and keep are two of the key words that really go throughout Jude. And I want you to see just how the word love is used. Beloved in God the Father, that perfect, absolute, forever love. Then in verse two, he prays that love might be multiplied to the church. Then verse three, he actually addresses the church as the beloved. You can see how love is a significant part of our understanding of who we are and what we have in common from God. And we can drop down to verse 20 as well.

But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith.

Verse 21, keep yourselves in the love of God. This is where we get to have a lot of fun. God has loved us perfectly, absolutely, without end. And that same love that has perfectly poured out upon us, we're gonna pray that it's multiplied? And then we're gonna hear the warning and the instruction, you need to keep yourself in that love? Jude, carried along by the Holy Spirit, gives us all three. And Christian, if you hold all three of these as true together in a healthy tension, you will do well. God perfectly and absolutely has loved you. He has demonstrated that perfect and absolute love by sending his son to die on the cross for your sin. We now pray, having received that love, Lord, multiply your love. And maybe that's, multiply it so that I might experience it more, but then that declaration, keep yourself in the love of God. Oh, that danger we see in the warning from the accident story we read earlier. How easily our hearts can go aside. How quickly and easily we fall in love with things that are lovely. Oh, we will do well if we hold with great assurance we are loved by God without any earning of. We do well if we regularly pray for each other that his love would be multiplied. And we do well as we are intent in keeping ourselves in the love of God, not going wayward after our sensuality. As we consider these truths, you cannot do anything that would cause God to stop loving you. You didn't do anything to cause God to love you. If anything, you've done everything possible to make sure God would not love you, and yet he still says, I love you. He's not fickle. He's poured himself out. He's given himself to us. The love we receive from God is why we can now love him and grow up in love for him and to him. It's important we see God so loved the world that he sent his only son to die for us, to forgive us, to restore us, to demonstrate his absolute perfect love. We are love. Because we have received that love, we desire to keep ourselves as close to that love as possible. We'll look at verse 21 more next week. Kept. So the common salvation is we've been called, we've received an invitation, that invitation comes because God has loved us, he's given himself over to us, and now there's a kept. Salvation is kept for us. This is a promise. To say I love you is a promise. To give an invitation is a promise. You can come. Here there's a specific promise. God will not lose you. We're kept. We're kept here for Christ. Jesus prays to the Father in John,

I have kept all those whom you have given me, now keep them.

Paul tells us nothing can separate us from the love of God. It's the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit who together are keeping us as the one God. You can't lose it. He keeps us. What an assurance that God keeps us even as wayward as we are. But as we look at Jude and the purpose of Jude, we need to be very clear, this assurance cannot be used as an excuse to sin. God will not stop loving you. God will not lose you. That cannot be an excuse for sin. that the problem Jude has to address is somehow those who are taking the gospel of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, and using it as a excuse to sin, using it as a foundation for just pursuing sensuality. Remember last week, fear God, keep his commandments. We do not dare trample upon the holy God who has called us, who has loved us, who keeps us by thinking it's so absolute I can just live however I want. No, this is why it's so important we also hear that call, keep yourselves in the love of God. So those are the things we know that are common for all Christians, though. Called, beloved, kept. Something else that's common is the prayer, the blessing in verse two.

May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

And as he's writing that, it appears more like a prayer. It's the church that needs to receive more mercy, more love, and more peace. Well, mercy is tied to the steadfast love, covenant love of the Old Testament, chesed. There's a sense in which God would keep that faithfulness, God would allow us to experience more and more of his faithfulness. There's a desire that it'd be multiplied. The prayer that the church would be more and more overwhelmed with God's covenant faithfulness. I think this is what we should see is the more we walk The more we desire to walk with Christ, the more we desire to come up to Christ, the more we desire to grow up to him, the more we see how faithless we are and how faithful he is. Peace is a significant part of the gospel. We once had a right relationship with God in the garden, with each other, with this earth. Because of sin, we've caused disruption to all of that, and something Christ gives us more and more of is peace. Right relationship with ourselves, actually know how to love ourselves properly. Right relationship with God, know how to love him with all our hearts. Right relationship with our neighbor, to love them as ourselves. Right relationship with the church, to love them as Christ loved us. And then love again. That it'll be multiplied. The perfect love poured out more and more. There's one other place, or a couple other places we could look at to think, what does it mean to be the church? What is it that we all have in common? Still within our own text, notice he's written to the called, the beloved, the captain. He gives the church one more title at the end of verse three, to the saints. Raise your hand if you're a saint. Yeah, see, this is one of those things that's gotten confused over the years, as if that's some kind of special, absolute, unordinary thing. If you're a united Christ, you have the common, the shared, you've been declared holy. You've been taken out of the domain of darkness and placed in the kingdom of light. You've been taken out of sin and put into righteousness of no work of your own. You're declared, you're made holy. That's the declaration. There's another way we usually think about saint or sanctification, and that's pursuing holiness. And that, again, that's one of those, that's the aspect of we're now, we've been called holy, and now we're trying to live up to that holy calling, and we're seeking to put off sin and put on Christ. We're seeking to put off filth and put on righteousness. That first declaration, that sin's penalty destroyed. You're declared righteous, forgiven. That second one we're able to do because sin's power has been destroyed by the power of the cross. The third way in which we think about ourselves as holy or saints, we long for the day that we would see Jesus face to face and so to be transformed like him. That isn't just the penalty of sin being moved. That isn't just the power of sin being moved. That's the very presence of sin being moved. And the more we're growing in sanctification, the more we're frustrated that sin keeps keeping us as close as we want to be to Jesus, the more we're saying, come Lord Jesus, come quickly, that we might have sin removed so that we might worship him more fully. God has declared you holy. He has bought us with his own precious blood so that we might be holy as he is holy, saints. The last thing we can look at in the letter from Jude about what this common salvation might entail is, well, it comes from verse five. We'll look at it again next week more fully, but he writes to the church,

I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt.

All right, let's just stop there. Out of the land of Egypt, that's referring to Moses and the Exodus. Jesus the human was born 1,500 years later. What's going on here, Jude? We go up to the top. We already know that you're beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. We see the first two parts of the Trinity. We have the Father and the Son. Jesus is translated, Yahweh saves. Here, Jesus is being identified with the God of Israel, the covenant name of God, Yahweh, who said, I will take you out of Egypt, I will have glory over Pharaoh, I will save you, I took you over the river, through the river, rather. Jesus saved. The one God. It's actually an incredible assumption here in that Jesus is eternal. He is the eternal Son of God, the covenant-making God. It's an incredible verse for the deity of Christ. If you look at the reference, Jesus saved a people out of Egypt. The people of Israel, they were finally saved because a lamb was slain. and the blood was put over the doorpost. Jesus is that true lamb who died not just to cover the sins of Israel so the judgment would go over, but to take the sins of all who believe in him upon himself, that he would suffer in our place, that he would be able to provide that perfect sacrifice. As we think about what Jude is doing here with this exit story, the whole point here, so many who were saved grumble right afterwards, complained, murmured. We received salvation, a deliverance out of sin, and near to God, together. As we think about what this means for us, a healthy church needs to know how to talk about what we have in common, not what we differ on. A healthy church needs to be able to know how to regularly have our regular discussions, our fellowship, rejoicing in Christ. We use the word fellowship too often. Fellowship isn't when you get together with the Christians and watch a basketball game. That's basketball gameness or fullness. No, that's just you encouraging one another and your discipleship of following whatever team you think is great or not liking a certain player. No, fellowship is when you come together and enjoy Christ with one another. And it means we've got to get past just the word salvation. We've got to know how to talk about adoption, redemption. reconciliation, justification. There's a way that we have such a full vocabulary by God's grace. He's given us so many words because our sin problem was so big. There wasn't just one word to capture sin. His salvation is so great. There's not just one word that captures salvation. We've got to learn how to talk with one another, to stir each other up in this common salvation, to give each other encouragement and confidence in all that Christ has accomplished for us. Our goal is to continue to strengthen the center, where we're having healthy, godly, biblically-based, Jesus Christ-exalting and glorifying conversation with another, so that we're growing up into that common salvation. Well, that's what Jude wanted to write about. Second point, contend for the faith. Contend for the faith. And as we draw near to one another in that common salvation, we need to be training up one another in that common salvation so that we're ready when we need to protect that common salvation. Or here, Jude says it's necessary. A problem has come that is so important, I can't do what I want to do. I can't just simply encourage you. I've got to appeal to you. Contend for the faith. The church should never want to fight. Notice here, there is a battle. We're always in a battle going out to the nations. We're going up against the gates of hell. There is a fight, but here, for this moment, that fight isn't out towards the demonic world and seeking to save sinners. The contention is turned inward because, well, the enemy's crept in. The letter's what we call polemical. Most of the letters in the New Testament are what we call polemical, that is trying to address a problem. The church regularly has problems. The folks who always wanna say, let's go back to the New Testament church, have you read Corinthians? These people got so confused so quickly. And the sad thing is we haven't learned from them quite yet. There's two basic problems that are always being addressed by these letters, by these polemical declarations that are trying to help the church get nearer to that common salvation by removing the falsehood. One is legalism. If you want a good example of that problem, you read Galatians. The other one is licentiousness. If you want a good example of that problem, you read Jude. Legalists want to add something to the gospel. They say works are necessary, to earn, receive salvation. Lysicists want to subtract works. They say they're not necessary to grow up in the faith and demonstrate your faith. You see, we have to hold together. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and we're saved for good works. Most of our problems are all about confusing how grace and works relate to one another. The word contend, that's the main action. I write appealing for you to contend. It's the word we get agony from, to agonize. It's not easy. It's not pleasant. It's not comfortable. It's strenuous. It's your training to make a great effort in an exercise, in a competition. Think about this word contend. One of the qualifications for an elder is they cannot be quarrelsome. That means we're always arguing about everything. A quarrelsome church is exhausting. That's why we need to realize there's a time that is necessary to contend, but if you're always contending, you're getting something wrong. Here, the idea of contention is that we're growing up in a healthy, regular pattern, and we're able to recognize and see the problems and then contend against them. It's a high calling to receive the common salvation. It's a high calling to contend for the faith. Notice it's the church. He's not writing to the elders, not writing to the deacons. He's writing to the church. Church, a high calling you have. is to hold fast our common salvation and contend for the faith. Don't assume the next person's gonna do it. No, it's our responsibility, it's a high calling. One, the name of Christ is tied to our union together in him. One of the ways we worship Christ is to contend for the faith when necessary. The church is supposed to be the display of the glory of God to the heavenly hosts, the angels, and to the nations. It's a high calling we have, where we're seeking to grow one another up into the one faith, the one form of Christ, the head. We're guarding off every possible imposter. Sadly, churches are known for contention, but not contending for the faith. There's two basic errors. We've got the problems of legalism and licentiousness when they come in, There's two ways in which churches can get too distracted. It's by making what Paul calls civilian affairs, our affairs. We're very guarded against making the world's problems, the church's problems, that they affect us, but the church has very specific marching orders and instruction orders. Paul says, insist on these things. We were once foolish, away from God, but God saved us. Our instruction is meant to be building up the church to be worshipers. That the church can too easily get focused on outside things that are not the primary purpose of the church. The other one is the church becomes so lax. We don't warn anybody, we don't confront anybody, we just water it all down and then we stop being the church eventually. We hear this idea of contend. There's a faith worth fighting for. It's the common salvation we've received. Notice there we're contending for the faith. Now let me be very clear, we all believe in Jesus Christ, that is our subjective faith. We believe in the faith, that is the object of faith, the truths God has handed over. When faith has that definite article, it's the truths, it's the declarations, it's the summary of all God has said. We have the faith right here. It's written for us. Notice the faith delivered.

The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

There's a stewardship God has given you, church. He's entrusted us, knowing how wayward we've been, knowing how many golden calves we've built, knowing how often we like to either reduce His law or improve it. He's delivered His truth to us, to Stuart. The church is called the pillar, the buttress of truth. There's a protection of God's holy word that tells us who He is and what He expects of us. The faith, once for all delivered, it's a stewardship, it's been given over to us. And let's just be very clear, the faith in the new covenant is all explicitly focused in on Jesus Christ, the name above all names, the head of the church. We can think about what the faith is in many ways. The early church wrote creeds to try to summarize the faith, to make sure the church knew how to focus in on and protect what the faith is. It's interesting, if you go back and you read some of these early creeds, they're all very patterned similarly. They begin with the Father, and they have the Son, and they have the Holy Spirit. The one God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And to go a little step further, They all focus in on Jesus specifically. Especially what he did. There's five parts to these creeds regarding Jesus and the faith that we're supposed to be contending for. He came. He was born of a virgin. He died. He came to be the Lamb of God to take away sin. He rose again. He is risen. Contend for the faith, come on. He is risen. That's more like it, troops. Those are three past tense. Those are what he has fulfilled. Those are the things we know with certainty. He loves us because he came to save us. He loves us, he died for us. He is powerful to love us and keep us. He rose again. The fourth one is present. is ascended. He's at the right hand of the Father, where we get to go into the presence of Almighty Holy God in his name and pray from where he sends the Holy Spirit to regenerate us, to convict us, to change us, to conform us to his likeness. Three past, one present, one future. He's coming again. Come, Lord Jesus. There we go. This is where we, Christian, we need to know those three past events, but oh, the call, the invitation you have right now because of where Jesus is right now and where the Holy Spirit is right now. Be empowered and encouraged in your prayers. in your ministry of making disciples, in being faithful disciples. He has handed to us the faith to contend for. Now why is it necessary? Why is it necessary? We see his explanation in verse four. is necessary because we've got a licentious problem. We have a problem that people have crept in and they've said, you have a license to sin. What a corruption of the gospel. Notice verse four,

for certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, They're ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

There's two very important descriptions. There's certain people that have crept in. They're ungodly people. And then we hear more about what makes them ungodly. What is the activity of ungodliness? They pervert the grace of God into sensuality. They deny our only master and Lord. This is a gospel problem. This is a what we come together and rejoice in together in our common salvation. They're denying certain aspects, the essential truths of what it means to have a common salvation. Notice how Jude continues to describe these people in verse four, they're certain people, they're ungodly people. Verse eight, these people rely on other sources like dreams, their own appetite, not God's word. Verse 10, these people blaspheme without understanding. Verse 12, these people are dangerous for your fellowship, hidden reefs in your love feast. Verse 16, these are grumblers. Malcontents, they follow sinful desires. Verse 19, these cause division. These are pretty easily identifiable. But notice they've crept in unnoticed. There's a sneakiness to their ways. You'll eventually see their ungodliness. Time is this wonderful truth teller of somebody's character and conduct. A maturity of Christ is measured when you don't get your way, when there's a disagreement. Is there a maturity, is there a way of reconciling? It's kind of like marriage. The measure of a healthy marriage isn't how many date nights you have, it's how well you disagree and reconcile. Here, the faithfulness of a Christian, These people probably come in unnoticed, because I bet they sound like the most spiritual people when you first meet them. They creep in unnoticed, but over time, their ungodliness, their grumbling, their division becomes apparent. These people are dangerous, and they need to be contended with. Now, I'm going to step back and give a qualification here. There are brothers and sisters in Christ who've fallen to sin, who veer off. That's not who these people are. The people here, these people, they were long ago designated for condemnation. They're not believers. But we're always called to watch for one another. We're supposed to warn one another. We're supposed to correct one another. And the key way you know someone who's one of these people versus a brother and sister who's still wrestling with sin or entangled with sin is that when you confront them, there's a desire to listen. That's what Jesus says is the key mark. There's a desire to hear the rebuke and repent to be restored to the faith. As we think about what that correction looks like, that contending looks like, The Word of God is your means. We don't correct with our own feelings. We don't correct with our ideas. We don't correct with our convictions. Because we're not trying to conform people to our own image. We're trying to conform each other to Christ. He's the head. And yes, we want to be more formed to the head so that we're helping others form more to the head, but if we come to contend for the faith, we might find a need to correct. We're seeking to correct for Christ's name according to his word so that we are all more conformed to the faith. Notice here these people, they deny Jesus, who was our master and Lord. They're not denying themselves. No, in the name of sensuality, in the name of seeking sensual self-satisfaction, they're denying Jesus. And the contrast is so clear. What is the first step Jesus tells us of being a disciple? A disciple denies himself to follow Jesus. These folks, by definition, have to deny Jesus in order to satisfy their own sinful inclinations. Their practices seek to twist the word of God to say, well, God loves you, God's grace is good for you, you can't lose your salvation, oh, it's okay, just take a bite. Church, I want us to see he is addressing the saints, the called, the beloved, the kept, those who are saved. This is a high calling for us, and I wanna put forth this desire to see the healthier we are in our common salvation, the more immune we are to this kind of infection, that the healthier we are in making sure the conversations we have are actually exalting Christ and encouraging one another from his word, the more immune we become from this kind of problem. That doesn't mean we won't have to contend at any point, but it's helpful. There's many diseases like this that they prey on the weak vegetable. No, the healthier you are, the more immune. The challenge here, we gotta hold the whole counsel of God. If we only hold the high standards of living, we're gonna attract the legalist and they're gonna fit in too easily. If we only proclaim the grace that saves every kind of sinner, we're gonna too easily attract and hide the licentious. We've gotta protect ourselves from both. By proclaiming the whole counsel of God, we're saved by grace through faith for works. If one of these creepers were to come in, it's all of our responsibility to identify him. Ideally, he gets no opportunity. And this is where we all have a part to play. The creepers, they're waiting and listening for where they're gonna hear someone grumbling. Because grumbling is always tied to idolatry in scripture. They're waiting and listening for the gossip. They're waiting and listening for the slander. They're waiting and listening for the kink to allow themselves in, and then they're gonna try to, they're gonna fester. No, the guardedness. What kind of conversations are you having and allowing? Are you enabling or protecting a creeper? The church is meant to be an open space for all people to come and hear the gospel. If you're a guest with us, we are so thankful you're here. But this is for the church especially to be built up in that common faith. What kind of conversations are you entertaining? How are we building each other up? Are we using the opportunities we have to confess our sins, to encourage one another, to serve one another? Are we putting away any and all kind of ungodly talk? That's how we can be more immune from this particular kind of problem. Jefferson Park, praise God that we've come together to be the people who are always under his word. Praise God that we come together and regularly want to hear the gospel, to rejoice in the gospel. There's no certificates this side of heaven. None of us are immune from walking into sensuality. None of us are immune from bending towards legalism. What we must do is stay near the cross, keep ourselves, love of God, by staying as close to Christ as possible with one another. We share in this common salvation. We don't contend with one other, we contend for one another. The goal here is that we would draw together towards that center, training each other, preparing each other, encouraging one another. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that we have the great promise of peace waiting for us. Lord, I pray we would know how to promote peace among us, as those who've been purchased by the blood of Christ, I pray we would know how to welcome those who are desiring to grow up in Christ together according to your word. We thank you that there are so many other churches that are also walking in the same way, desiring the same truths to be taught and protected. Lord, protect us. Lord, first protect us from our own sinful leanings. adding to your word some conviction we have, or neglecting your word, where we have a sinful delight we have not yet repented of. Lord, I pray that you would help us to know what it means to be your holy nation, your precious people bought by the blood of Christ. Lord, may we know how to draw near to one another to build each other up. and to protect the faith that you have given to us to proclaim to all the nations. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.