As you know, we finished our three-week series on Romans chapter 8 last week. And trying to decide what to do this week, I felt as if I shouldn’t do another series, but a stand-alone sermon, but I was led to do something similar where I looked at a whole, and the Lord reminded me that there are a couple of one-chapter books in the Bible–actually five, and one of them is Jude. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn with me there.
Someday, I may just do a sermon series on these five books–Obadiah, Philemon, John 2 and 3 (are both one chapter), and Jude. I did that by memory!
One of my hobbies that I can’t afford (we all have those, don’t we, men?) is movie poster collecting. Original, authentic posters made for movie theaters–not Walmart or Kmart or whatever. Ones made for the entryway of a movie theater. I’ve always loved those ever since I can remember. And I love classic movies from the 1930s all the way up to the ones that I grew up with. But you know, I’ve never seen any Marlon Brando movies, other than his small role in the first Superman movie.
But even though I’ve never seen any of his movies, we all know probably Brando’s most famous line, “I coulda been a contender” from On the Waterfront.
And since I hadn’t seen it, I had to look up the context of his famous line. Of all places, I found it on macmillandictionary.com. This is what it said, “In the movie On the Waterfront the person played by Marlon Brando says, “I could have been a contender” because he had failed to become a successful boxer.”
So, what is a contender? According to the same website, a contender (noun) is “someone who competes with other people for a prize or job.”
According to Dictionary.com, to contend (verb)
- to struggle in opposition: to contend with the enemy for control of the port.
- to strive in rivalry; compete; vie: to contend for first prize.
- to strive in debate; dispute earnestly: to contend against falsehood.
- to assert or maintain earnestly:
So, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this. Well, in The Book of Jude–and no, Paul McCartney did not write this book. He was born about 70 years after this was written…I’m kidding. That was Keith Richards.
Anyway, this is written by Jude, brother of James, and if you remember, James was the brother of Jesus; so Jude is also a brother of Jesus. And Jude is writing to not just one church, but to many churches spread around the known world at this time. A lot of paganism had been infiltrating the churches, and Jude wanted to make it clear that there was one gospel, one salvation, one God, and he wanted the churches to stand up for that gospel and preach that gospel and not let false doctrine infiltrate the churches and let their church turn into a cult.
I know you’re probably getting sick of me preaching on this topic, but the more I look around, the more I see modern paganism infiltrating our churches. I shared a quote on Facebook the other day that got me into a debate with a homosexual, and we got nowhere with each other, because he was adamant about his stance, and I was adamant about mine. I think it ended well, though, I hope I gave him at least some food for thought regarding the reliability of The Bible. But the meme that I shared came from Ben Shapiro. You may have heard of him, he’s a well-known political commentator, and if you didn’t know or can’t tell by his name, he’s Jewish, he’s not a Christian, and still hits the nail regarding churches on the head better than some pastors do.
He said: The idea that everyone is welcome in a church is pretty obvious. The idea that a church should change its moral standards in order to make everyone feel welcome is not and is paganistic.
So not only did Jude or churches within the first century have to deal with paganism entering their congregations and influencing their church culture and theology, so do we. We have that happening now.
So let’s take a look at Jude. Instead of reading the whole book, we’ll split between some verses. We’ll look at verses 3 and 4; then skip down to 17.
Scripture:
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Verse 17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
So Jude is warning the people that he’s writing to, to be careful of the worldly influences infiltrating their churches. He’s telling them not to fall for their tricks. And he’s encouraging believers to encourage each other. But, you’ll also notice that he’s telling his churches something else. What? To not just shove aside these bad influences. To not just consider them evil, to not just consider them the Devil’s people doomed to Hell, but to be patient with them, gentle and loving and be the agent of change that snatches them from the Devil’s Hell.
In other words, he’s saying, “They’re already here, in front of you. They have your attention. They’re already in the church. Do what you can to patiently minister to them and bring them fully over to the cross.”
This is what it means to contend for the faith. We have to fight for the church, we have to keep our guard up so that we, and others in the church don’t slip into worldly doctrine. And we have to fight to set free those who are in the church and have been entrapped by the Devil. That’s part of contending, too. It’s not just contending for us and for this church, but it’s contending for the lost who want to hear, too.
The homosexual man I mentioned earlier, considers himself a Christian and doesn’t consider people such as myself very Christlike. We have to contend for people like him. It’s not only the truth that we have to contend for but souls. He wants to be a Christian. Maybe he is, I don’t know where he actually stands when it comes to being saved, but we have to lovingly contend for the true faith so that we can lovingly contend for souls that want to know the true Christ.
Here’s another quote going around social media, “I’d rather be hated for speaking God’s truth than hailed for trying to redefine it.”
So let’s go back and take a look at our first set of verses: I’m going to spend a lot of time there today:
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about[b] long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Jude gives us two traits here about false teachers: First, they pervert the grace of God as a license for immorality; and second, they deny Jesus as our only sovereign lord.
Very briefly, let’s take a look at those two things. First, perverting the grace of God as a license for immorality. What does that mean? Paul addressed this issue to the Church in Rome. We just ended Romans 8, but let’s take a look at Romans 5 and 6.
At the end of Romans Chapter 5, Paul states:
20 God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. 21 So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Then at the beginning of Chapter 6, Paul’s thought continues. He says:
1 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
Paul says this again a few verses down, to make his point clear and to emphasize it one more time: “15 Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not!”
In other words, as Warren Wiersbe said: “The believer has died to the old life; he has been raised to enjoy a new life. The believer does not want to go back into sin any more than Lazarus wanted to go back into the tomb dressed again in his grave clothes!”
At the end of this chapter in Romans, Paul says,
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right.21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul was addressing this to the Romans, and in our verses today, Jude was addressing this to various other churches who needed to hear it. The false teachers were saying, “Okay, we live under grace. That means we can do whatever we want and get away with it.”
There are a lot of people who go to church and say, “The Bible is wrong. This is the 21st Century. We’re more open-minded. Jesus was open-minded. Jesus loved everyone. So I’m okay and you’re okay.”
I wasn’t planning on this when I had that conversation on Facebook, but let me read to you what the homosexual said in response to that quote from Ben Shapiro. He said, “Progressive churches sharing the Love of Christ and not condemning homosexuality is a moral standard all churches should have! If you truly wanna follow Christ then you should share love and not condemn others who are different than you!”
And he also believes that the Bible’s passages about homosexuality are mistranslations. And a lot of our conversation had to do with the reliability of the translation of the Bible more than anything. But do you see how progressive churches teach? They’ve been blinded by Satan. I know that sounds harsh, but what did Satan do with Eve, and tried to do with Jesus? Make them question the true meaning of the Word of God.
Do you see why we need to contend for this faith? It’s not just believing in our hearts for ourselves, we need to know how to contend for it. We need to learn how to teach others to see God’s truth, not Satan’s lies that sound like truth.
Have you noticed how Satan lies? He finds what we desire, and then finds a passage in the Bible that he can twist just a little bit, or sometimes a lot, to make that thing we desire so appealing. The Tree of Knowledge–being ‘like God,’ was the temptation for Adam and Eve, to be ‘like God.’ Or for Jesus, the Devil knew how hungry Jesus was, so he tempted Jesus to turn a stone into bread. And he twisted scripture to do it.
The homosexual also said this: “Current translations will never remove themselves from the influence of the mistranslation in 1946!” So he believes the Bible was mistranslated in 1946, and all Bibles follow that mistranslation. I tried to correct him on it, but he wouldn’t listen.
He ended his conversation with this: “We are a truly diverse, loving, and accepting community! We take in people who have been shunned from their communities for being who they were born to be. We create a found family and show unconditional love! Now try to sit here and tell me that does not sound like the life Jesus lived!”
See how compelling that sounds? See how people can be pulled in? Is that the life Jesus lived? With every good lie, there’s a little bit of truth. Jesus did eat and drink with sinners. But he also called them to repentance. And we are to do the same.
And that leads us toward the end of Jude’s letter:
18 “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
See, I believe that we are in the end times. Why? Because of instances like I just mentioned. People who call themselves Christians, but who do not have the Spirit. It sounds judgmental, I know. How can I say whether or not someone has the Spirit? Simple. The Holy Spirit–I mentioned this just a few weeks ago–is one. He may be divided into all of us, but He is one entity. One person of the Trinity. Therefore, He cannot contradict himself.
That’s how I know whether or not someone has the Spirit.
Here’s a quote from Mark Mattis on this subject. He said, “If you cannot identify any voices you hear as false, it’s not because you aren’t being exposed [to false teaching], but because you’re falling for it in some way.”
If the Spirit of God is not alive and active in your soul, there’s something wrong. The World does not have the Spirit of God alive and active in their souls, that’s to be expected, but when the church doesn’t have the Spirit of God alive and active, there’s something wrong.
Jude says: “22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
I hope and pray that my conversation with the homosexual was productive. I was not trying to argue or shout him down or anything like that, I was just trying to point him in the right direction. We have to be gentle in how we approach people because, in an effort to do the right thing, we can end up doing more harm than good.
I remember a number of years ago, there were some friends of ours, two sets of families, both are Christians–that’s important to remember–and one has been trying to ‘preach the Word at’ the other in such a way that you could probably call it legal harassment. The one thinks the other is falling for false doctrine and going to Hell. But the problem is, in addressing it, they are not giving that other family grace, love, or breathing room. It’s constant phone calling, personal drop-ins, you name it.
Now, maybe the one family is falling for false doctrine, I don’t know the whole story, I’ve had a brief chance to listen to them, and from what I have gathered, they have some legitimate questions on some points that in many churches over the years might have been a bit legalistic and they’re rethinking some of things, and I think they’re swinging the pendulum into the progressive side. So maybe they are falling for those false doctrines, just like what I’ve been preaching about today.
But to talk with them over it would require listening and gently answering their questions and giving them some space to think about it. It would require a lot of time and patience and it would require a lot of love. Like I said, both families are Christian. But one family believes it’s their duty to behave in an overbearing manner in order to snatch them from Hell. But who is worse? The overbearing one or the one who doesn’t have their theology correct? I would say it’s the overbearing one. They think they’re doing God’s will. But, they’ve only caused division. They’ve unnecessarily lost a relationship. The other family is humbly serving God and others in love. They might not have everything understood just right. But guess what? They’re receptive to the truth if you speak the truth in love.
We need to make sure that when we contend for the faith, we need to do so in a gentle, loving, and shepherding manner. Will you commit with me to stand for what we believe, to be on guard, to make sure sin and false doctrine don’t infiltrate our church and our lives; and to show those around us a better way? Doing so in a resilient, yet patient and loving manner?
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Valentin Tikhonov from Pixabay
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