Jude 1:3b

The book of Jude, verse three, we looked at the first part of the verse last week. I want to look at the second part of the verse tonight. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write under you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith, which was once delivered under the saints. God bless to us His sacred and holy word this evening. Years ago there were three young men who decided to hop a slow-moving freight train as it was departing from a town in the Pacific Northwest. It was supposed to be just a lark, something to do on a spring evening. The train was barely moving. As the three feet were, friends rode the rails, the locomotive began to pour on the power, and the next thing they knew, it began to really pick up speed. It was going 40 miles an hour. And they had left the city, and darkness was settling in out in the boondocks, and soon the three friends were cold and lost and scared, didn’t know what was going to happen. After about half an hour, they decided they had better do something. So they’re lined up in the box car opening, in which they were. They were riding and decided they were just going to bail out, which they did. They had a rough tumble down into some bushes, but they were okay. But now they were terribly lost, and it was dark, and they didn’t know where they were. But often the distance they saw some light, a little glow of light anyhow, and decided it would move in that direction, and hopefully they’d run into some pound there, which they did. and eventually we were able to call for help, and someone came and picked them up. You know, when you first embrace a false doctrine, it doesn’t seem to be that dramatic. It may only be a small deviation in your mind, but you never know how swiftly it may lead you far astray. Like those three men, you may find yourself in more serious trouble than you realize very quickly. The book of Jude candidly deals with unjust and wicked men. As we shall see, those who claim to be Christians, but really are counterfeits. False teachers abound. Satan is always active in trying to undermine the true faith. This is why the church must contend for the faith that was once delivered. onto it. You have a duty to watch against error and to pray to be kept from being swept away by the error. I want to talk about contending for the faith tonight from this text of Scripture. Now, you possess essential doctrinal truth. He talks about the faith here in this passage of Scripture. Now, when we think about faith, faith, you think about faith. In scripture, the word faith is used for belief. Belief. Faith is sort of, I think, a Latin derivative. Belief is the Greek derivative, such as have faith in God, as the scripture speaks about. An absolute trust in God, the God of the God of the Bible. Sometimes it’s used for a profession of faith. Your faith is spoken off throughout the world, Paul. told the Romans in chapter 1 and verse 8. However, you’ll notice when Jude speaks of the faith, which was once delivered under the saints, it has an article in front of it, the faith. And when we ever have the article in front of faith, it refers to the things which are believed. In other words, whatever is revealed in the truth of the truth of faith, God, the contents, the propositions of the scripture are what are believed. And it’s very more specific about what is believed. Thus, the faith is the whole scope here of Christian doctrine, as it is revealed in the scriptures. We read in Acts 6-7, a great company of the priest were obedient to the faith. It came to believe. The trust in Christ. Acts 2424, he heard them concerning the faith in Christ. Galatians 1.23, he now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy. Speaking about Paul, how dramatic his salvation was. And the idea here is there is a body of vital doctrine that is associated with the Scripture, that’s revealed in Scripture. and this is what is to be believed. Now there are a lot of doctrines found in Jude which make up the content here of your faith. We could talk about sort of a little mini-confession if we go through the book and point out some of the doctrinal truths. For instance, we have the doctrine of the Trinity. In verse 1, we read about the Father, God the Father. We also read about the Son in verse 1. verse 4, for instance. And in verses 19 and 20, we read about the Holy Spirit. The deity of Christ is pointed out in this path. Verse 25, to the only wise God, our Savior. Speaking of Christ, who is the Savior, but he’s also divine, as we see. We read about the depravity of man here. Men are called ungodly in verse 4, defiled in verse 8, like brute beast in verse 10, sensual in verses 18 and 19. We read about salvation by sovereign grace in verse 1. how that we are set apart by God the Father. Here we are sanctified or elected by God the Father, preserved in Christ Jesus, called and so forth, and also in verse 4, for there are certain men crept in on a, on a, wares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation. Here’s a doctrine of reprobation that laid out for us. Ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. We have the testimony here that those who believe are saved and those who do not believe will perish. Notice verse 5. He says, here, I will therefore that you remember, that you put, I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. How they died in the wilderness. Paul, the writer of Hebrews, tells us, that they had the same gospel preached to them that has preached to us, but they died in unbelief, their carcasses fell in the wilderness. In Hebrews chapter 4, we read about that. The existence of angels is spoken off here. We see in verse 6 about the angels which kept not their first estate. This is the fallen angels. But also we read in verse 9 about one of the holy angels here, Michael, the archangel, if you would. The historical truth of the Old Testament narratives is pointed out for us. The Exodus and the wilderness journey is found in verse 5. Sodom and Gomorrah is spoken of in verse 7. In verse 11, we have Cain, we have Balam, we have Cora. Verse 14, we have Enoch and Adam that are mentioned. Indicating to us that we were to believe all these accounts, we find in the early books here of the Bible. The personality of the devil is mentioned in verse 9, where he fights over the body of Moses with Michael, the Archangel. the personal return of Christ is mentioned in verse 14 that he cometh with 10,000 of his saints. The doctrine of eternal punishment is found in verse 6. When we read about the everlasting chains under darkness under the day of great judgment, when we read about the Sodom Gimor in verse 7, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. In verse 13, we read about those who are reserved to false teachers. to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. And on and on we can go, but here’s the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell. We read about the preservation and perseverance of the saints. Verse 1, that we are preserved in Christ Jesus. Verse 24, unto him that is able to keep you from falling, to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding. joy. So as we go through this book, you see all these these teachings with regard to doctrine. And so when we these propositions are mentioned here, we’re to believe these things. We’re to trust in what the Bible says about these things. There are other vital doctrines that could be mentioned with regard to the faith. where we could talk about the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. We could talk about a particular redemption, the resurrection of the dead and things of this nature. Perhaps not touched on by Jude. But you get a good feel here for the doctrines of scriptures. You go through this short one chapter book, and there’s a lot of doctrine in it. So you possess essential doctrinal truth and he reminds us of some of those truths here. Secondly, this doctrinal truth has been delivered unto you. You should realize the divine origin of the truth that we possess, of the faith. Have you ever received a package from UPS, or maybe it’s it comes to the post office it’s special delivery or something, and perhaps it’s your birthday or your anniversary? Maybe it comes out of the blue. Now, you didn’t mail that package yourself, somebody mailed it to you, and it was delivered to you. You check the return address to see who sent it. The origin of the package is listed as well as the destination of the package. And so, when the word delivered is used here, and certainly implies to us that this gospel of salvation of which Jude is speaking is not humanly devised. It is not humanly imagined. It has been delivered by God himself. It is originated with God. And it was delivered by him to holy men who were the recipients chosen for the very purpose of transmitting this truth to others. You would never know the source of your misery and unhappiness except for the truth that the description. Reveals about the fall of Adam. You wouldn’t know it otherwise. You would never have known the means of recovery from sin unless the planned salvation or redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ was revealed to you in the scriptures. You would never know how to worship God, how to please God unless such truth was delivered to you in the sacred word. you must acknowledge God’s hand in the truths granted to you in the Bible that he put his words in the mouth of these holy men that wrote the scriptures. They were written by the power of the spirit upon them. Whatever means God used, whether he used a vision or whether he used a dream or whether he spoke directly, God is the author of this faith. These truths that are laid out for us are not cunningly devised fables to deceive and manipulate you. The gospel then that we hear proclaimed by June and by others is to receive, be received. Not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, as Paul tells us, it’s the Word of God. In 1st Thessalonians 2,3. Jude here is not writing some, you know, skillfully devised human philosophy on a par with Aristotle and Plato and Yume or something of this nature. But it is a divine philosophy. It is a God-given truth that he’s laying out for us. So when Jude here speaks of the vengeance of eternal fire in verse 7, the judgment in verse 15, eternal life in verse 21, these things are divinely revealed to us. God is telling us these things. This is very important for us when we come to the scriptures. So it behooves you when you read the scriptures that you fully realize the message comes from God. It is a sacred in a holy book. Every word of God is precious. It’s more valuable than silver and gold because it comes from God himself. So we have God-given truth. This is not on a par with Grimm’s fairy tales or some folk tale about Paul Bunyan and his blue ox or some Indian legend or something of this nature. This is a divinely given truth that we have laid out for us. So you should realize the divine origin of the faith. The faith. third thing here is you should realize the faith is once delivered under the saints. Scientific journals constantly are in a state of flux. What is written 10 years ago is considered out of date. Obsolently, obsolete, no longer true today. New discoveries are taking place all the time that change the view of science. As a Old theories are abandoned and new ones are always devised. For instance, Steve and Jay Gold in natural history, April 18, said that recapitulation, this is the evolutionary theory which argues that the developing embryo in the womb goes through all these various stages, the fish stage, the mammal stage, until it finally reaches the human stage, and it has different levels of human stage and so forth, until it becomes fully developed human, provided a convenient focus for racism of the white scientist. They looked to the activities of their own children, and compared them to normal adult behavior in the lower races. Gold also concluded the term Mongoloid, which became synonymous with mentally defective people because it was believed that the Caucasian race was more highly developed than the Mongoloid race, the Mongolia, China race, Chinese race. And I won’t even get into the black, the nigroid race that they talked about. All of this is, of course, totally absurd, racist, demeaning, and so forth. All men came from Adam, whether they be yellow or black or white or red. It doesn’t really matter. The nature of man is such that we all came from one origin. And now our pig, we might have more particular color pigment in our skin than others. And that determines perhaps the shade of color that we are or the color that we are. But we’re all the same. And so this recapitulation theory has thankfully now been cast aside. It’s been proven to be absolutely false. So what was being held as fact taught in our schools when I was growing up, the 60s and 70s and so forth, is now dismissed as total error today. You look at this and you say, but they taught it. This is what was taught. This is what they said was true. It wasn’t true at all. Now, in contrast to this, God says that his truth, the faith here, is delivered once. One time. In other words, it’s never going to be altered. It’s never going to be changed. There’s no revision. There’s no update to it. To say there is a revision or update means it wasn’t true originally. When the canon or rule of faith was closed up and the revelation of God was complete, there was nothing to be added to it and nothing to be taken away from it. Jude here is talking about the common doctrine that the apostles with one consent have published abroad in the world. Whether it was Peter, whether it was Paul, or whether it was John or Jude, they all agreed. Notice verses 17 and 18 of Jude here. But Beloved, Remember ye the words which were spoken before, the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lust. He says, what I’m telling you is the very same thing the other apostles have told you. There’s no deviation. There’s no change. The reference here in particular, we know, you know, 2 Peter 3, Peter mentions about these scoffers in the last day and so forth. but what he’s indicating in his writing is even though he’s writing later, it’s the same truth. I’m not teaching anything different than the other apostles taught. So the doctrine of salvation in Christ is called in the book of Revelation the everlasting gospel. Think about that. That means it can’t be altered. Effer. It was once delivered. It remains the same without variation, generation after generation after generation after generation. Paul rebukes the Galatians for embracing another gospel, which the apostle clearly says is not another gospel. It’s a perversion. There’s only one. There’s only one, he says. God is never going to edit or rewrite the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. Nothing becomes obsolete. That’s doctrinal truth found in scripture. Not one thing. You should realize the faith is once delivered. And you should realize the faith is delivered under the saints. The word saint means holy one or separated one refers to the people of God in particular. These words indicate that what was delivered was a sacred deposit given to the saints to preserve, to keep. You know, if you have a valuable family heirloom, maybe a gold ring, or perhaps you have a grandfather clock or a set of china or something, it’s passed down from generation to generation. It’s supposed to be kept, preserved by you. I’m a little girl. I was talking to her mom about the China. They had passed down for several generations. And she said to her mom, mom. Well, this generation dropped it. She had broken some of the dishes that she was carrying. 1 Timothy 620 says, keep that which is committed to thy trust. Or as we read in Revelation 225, hold fast till I come. The things you’re holding to hold fast to those doctrines till I come. This is why the Church of Jesus Christ is called in scripture the pillar and the ground of the truth. 1 Timothy 315. The church is the support. It’s the support and uphold the truth that is revealed to us. That’s its purpose. How much the world hates the child of God. And yet, think about this. If it weren’t for the child of God, they wouldn’t have the scriptures. God. God. has given the scriptures of the saints that their responsibility by God’s help to preserve the word of life that has been given. Now, God, of course, is the one who always preserves his word ultimately. But we have a responsibility here, not to deviate or to teach anything different than what has been revealed to us in Scripture. But the ungrateful world doesn’t appreciate that fact. The duty of the Church is teach God’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ has originally given by the apostles and prophets. Let it be clearly understood that only those who retain and keep this faith are really the saints. They’re the only ones that are true saints. So this doctrine of truth has been delivered unto you. And then he adds here thirdly tonight, you must contend for doctrinal truth which makes up the faith. Contend for the faith. The word here implies an earnest contention, a striving, a fighting, if you would, for the truth. Strenuous effort. You’re in the combat zone. You’re a soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone’s trying to invade the territory and conquer and you’re holding the line. That’s the job. that we have. These words priests appels a considerable and strong adversary who opposes the faith. We know that’s Satan and his agents, the false teachers that come along that we’ll see mention in verse 4. Satan is the ringleader, but he’s got many false teachers who go forth to undermine the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don’t wrestle with flesh and blood alone. we do wrestle with it. We also wrestle with principalities and powers. And as Ephesians 6 indicates. Faith is precious. The faith is precious. Christ’s blood bought the salvation that we have found in the gospel. And this faith is vital for doctrinal truth is essential to your salvation. And therefore must fight to hold the truth and view of these assaults that are going to come upon it. This is not merely the task of the minister, but it is the task of all the people of God. The minister may be in the forefront, but all God’s people are to contend for the faith. Now, you live in an age of indifference and compromise where doctrine is pushed into a corner so we can avoid conflict. You ever notice that there are non-denominational churches. What do they stand for? They don’t stand for much. We don’t want to have conflict. I had one person told me they called up churches and they asked about what they believed on certain things. Well, we don’t get into doctrinal issues. Or we don’t make a big issue about division. I’m thinking, you know, in other words, it’s not important. Let’s just all get together and worship. But that’s the exact opposite here of what Jews says. When he says, contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. Doctrine is given primary importance, isn’t it? The fundamentals of the faith are cast aside by many so-called Christian churches at an alarming rate today. As if it’s no big deal. The gospel of Jesus Christ has been abandoned. This idea that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, has been cast aside. Contending with others is not wrong when vital truth is at stake. When the issue of justification by faith was at stake in dealing with the Galatians, you remember that Paul rebuked Peter because what he was doing is separating from the Gentiles and not eating the meats and so forth. as he was agreeing with the Judaizers and Paul wasn’t going to have it. You know we’re all saved the same way. Justification by faith in Christ alone and not by any of the commands of the law and so forth. Do we have a zeal for the truth? Do you realize that false teachers are busily engaged in stealing away gospel truth? They are subtle. And they’re working all the time, day and night, it seems, to do so. We see this happening all the time. The only way that we can contend for the faith is we need to know the doctrines of the Bible. Which means we need to read the Bible and study what those doctrines are, to know them. And we have to be on our guard against false teachers because there are a lot of Christian books, and they’re so-called. Christian books, in lecturers, and preachers, and so forth, that are leading people astray. Pay careful attention when people try to redefine biblical terms, like the word faith. When they say, well, faith means not just belief, it means also works. Faith Plus works. No, that’s not what faith means. When they change the word justification, to indicate that this involves the works of the law. And we’re going to be judged by the works of the law in the sense that that’s how we are justified. Repentance. You know, for a long time, people were confused about repentance because the Catholic Church put the word penance in instead of repentance. Put penance in there. and deceive people. Try to evaluate the end result of the teaching you’re hearing because when you hear someone seemingly deviated, you have to think ahead and say, okay, where does this lead? Where does this go? What truth are they undermining here? Because remember, it all has to match up with what the scripture says everywhere. The scriptures are a unit. Those who have a new perspective on Paul will tell you, you can be one of the elect and lose your election and end up a reprobate. Now think about that a minute. What does that mean? That means election is absolutely valueless, isn’t it? Ultimately, it all depends on you. And so on and on we could go about these things, but you have to be on your guard. You have to pay attention to what is being taught. It was while men slept, unaware and unconcerned, that the Bible teaches Satan came along, and so does tears in the field. You must learn to love the doctrines of the Bible. The doctrines of grace must never be compromised in any fashion, because they are, in my opinion, the gospel itself in a nutshell. You must support the preservation and propagation of the faith once delivered unto the saints. That’s important. That’s important. Well, those three men who decided to hop the slow-moving train did not realize how quickly they’re going to be taken out of town and into the darkness and be totally lost. Embracing false doctrine can draw you away from the true faith from the gospel of Christ and lead you into serious trouble very quickly. False teachers abound. You possess the vital doctrine or truth in Scripture. The truth has been deposited to you. You’re to keep it. to preserve it. You must therefore see the gospel of salvation is precious. Something worth contending for. That’s the duty of every Christian, to fight for the faith, to contend for it. Let us close with a word of prayer tonight.