The Book of Jude
Part 1: The Call To Contend
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Finished a series called the habits of a healthy heart. We did that for five weeks. And now we're starting a new series and something that we do here at Spring Valley Church is that we'll kind of go back and forth between a topical series and something more expositional, just going through verse by verse a book of the Bible. And that's what we're going to do now for the next three weeks. We're going into the book of Jude. If you've not heard of Jude, that's okay. It's like one of the shortest books in the Bible. It's tiny. It's the second to last book in the Bible. It's right before Revelations. And we are going to be diving in just three weeks and kind of the theme around Jude is contending for the faith. We'll get into what that means today. But I want you to, let me start with this question here. Can you think of a time in the church history where the truth of the gospel was under attack? Where the truth was taught by people whose lives actually promoted sin? A time in church history where the truth of the gospel was being polluted, where the truth had been hijacked for corrupt purposes and selfish gain. The reality is we may be thinking of multiple times in church history because this is a common problem and it was a problem all the way back in the early church. It existed even in the time of Jesus' ministry. As Jesus was going around, this problem started rising. And multiple authors in the New Testament had to address this issue. And Jude is one of those authors. He sees what's going on in the early church and says, "This is not okay. I got to say something about it.”
And so again, in our three-part series in Jude, we're going to look at how Jude calls believers to stand firm in their faith, to discern truth from falsehood, and to persevere and walk with God. And through this series, our hope is that we as a church will be inspired to live boldly for Jesus, living a life that is founded in truth and filled with hope. So before we again get into it, I just want to give a little bit more about the background is that Jude was originally going to write a long letter. We see these short letters and we're like, "What happened there? Everyone else's New Testament book is a little bit longer." So he was going to write something longer, but he saw the issue of this false teachers and he said, "I got to address it right away." So I'm going to write this short little memo, but it's still very thoughtful and very powerful. And what Jude does, pardon my voice, by the way, sickness is going through our family. Wife and baby aren't here because they're sick and I'm getting over it. So I'm here, don't worry. I'm okay. But this is new. I haven't sounded like this yet. So yeah, Jude in his message, he doesn't just get into how to address false teachers, but why we should address false teachers. Psychologists today have a preference for people understanding the why over understanding the how, because it reaches humans, it reaches us on a deeper level. By knowing the reasons behind events or behaviors, people feel more equipped to navigate situations more accurately. So Jude is saying, "Hey, you believers, you church, if you understand why these false teachers are doing what they're doing, you're going to be more motivated and better equipped to navigate those situations. Rather than me just telling you how to navigate it and how to do everything, let me tell you why." We see this in parenting often, right? At a certain age, there's a need to simply say, "Don't do this. This is how you do it." But when they get a little bit older, you start to tell them why we do it so that they can understand, so they can make that decision in the future on their own. "Wow, thank you so much. All the service. Lead pastor right there. That's a lead pastor just serving. Is there honey in it too? Just a little bit? Oh, there's not. Okay. That's just me. It's just our water. It's great water. Okay." It's like I said, when we parent, you tell your kids at a certain age why we do something because you want them to understand so that in other situations they can do it on their own. The why is important. We'll see in the next couple of weeks, Jude explains what is happening, why it is so important to address this and how to take action.
So if you guys want to open your Bibles or follow along on the screen, you're going to flip all the way to the end of your Bible. Well, not quite, Jude. I'm going to read the first four verses of Jude. Also, there's no chapters. I put one in there just so we don't confuse us if you're looking in your bulletin, but it's just one chapter. All right. One through four. It says, "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who have been called who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance. 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. 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 Lord." Let's pray together. God, thank you again for our time. And God, I pray that you would be with us this morning and help us to understand your word and that we would understand why it is so important to have a true grasp of your gospel and why it is so important to constantly be growing in our faith and our understanding of who you are and what you do. And God, I pray that through your word this morning, we'd be drawn closer to you. We'd be encouraged to live boldly for you and that we would be filled with hope. We give this morning to you. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right, let me just drink a little bit more. This is good. Yes, thank you. This morning, just short verses right here.
There's a few truths that I want us to focus on and meditate on together. All right. So here's this, in the first two verses, we see Jude address our identity in Christ, our identity. As I mentioned before, we can learn something important about knowing the identity of Jude himself. So Jude says, "Is a brother of Jesus Christ." Well, he's a brother of James, but we know that James, we do some research. I did the research for you. James is a brother of Jesus. And so you're wondering, why didn't you just claim to be a brother of Jesus himself? I think it's showing humility, right? It'd be easy for us if we were the brother of Jesus. Wouldn't we want to put that on every book we wrote? To be like, "Hey, by the way, we all love him. You guys love him. You'll love me too. I'm the brother." But he shows humility by saying, "I'm a servant of Jesus." And there's really even a deeper story behind that. If we go to John 7-3, we understand that Jesus' family was not always so supportive of Jesus. It says in John 7-3, "Jesus' brother said to him, 'Leave Galilee.'" This is the brothers telling Jesus, "Leave Galilee and go to Judea so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world, for even his own brothers did not believe him." So they are mocking Jesus right here. Jude is one of the brothers that is mocking Jesus, saying, "I don't believe." If you want to go do this thing, go show the world who you think you are. They're not encouraging. We can read them and be like, "Oh, they just want him to go." No, they're mocking him. They're saying, "Go do your thing if you want to." They're doubting who he claims to be and saying, "Yeah, go show the world. Maybe they'll accept you." And so there's unbelief and there's a failure to understand who Jesus is and what his kingdom is about. And we don't know the story, but we now know that Jude wrote a book. So somewhere in between, there's a transformation that happened in him, going from doubt and disbelief to belief and the utmost belief to say, "I'm a servant of Jesus. I believe so much about who he is that I am wanting to be a part of his kingdom now." So what a beautiful picture of transformation and redemption. And he writes this knowing that other people will have felt the same way. They'll relate. They'll say, "I once had doubts. I didn't believe, but now I do." And he wants to strengthen their faith.
So then he turns his attention to the audiences, which is us, to our identity, to those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Called, loved and kept. This is about the church then and it's about us today. Called shows that our salvation begins with God. Loved shows that his love, God's love for us is the foundation for everything that we do and how we live our life. And then we are kept. I love that. We will see how our eternal security can empower us to be bold in our faith. We don't have to fear anything in this world because we know that we have a future in heaven with God. You see, our identity changes as believers to be united with the person of Christ. This is our identity today. And other New Testament authors talk about this. Galatians 2 says, "I've been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." 2 Corinthians 5 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here. All this from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ." So all throughout the New Testament, we see, and Jude puts it right here, so compactly as believers we are called, we are loved, and we are kept. Your entire spiritual life is initiated by God, is sustained by God, and your eternal future is promised and kept for by God. Our identity is found solely in him. We live in a world today that is vying to say, "Hey, put your identity in this. Put your identity in work, in your family, in your success, in sport," whatever it is, all these things that are vying for like, "Hey, plant your flag of identity, put it here." And Jesus is saying, "No, your whole identity is in me. Once you believe in me, your whole life has changed, all of it." So I just want this to wash over us today and to give us comfort, to be a good reminder, to give us security in our faith and hope for our future. So church, God has called you. God loves you, and God is keeping you. Your identity is aligned with Christ, who was the suffering servant, the one who loved the orphans and the widows, who ate meals with the outcasts and the rejects, who defeated sin, who conquered death, who ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God. This is who our identity lies in. We are first reminded in just those first couple verses of our identity in Christ.
Then Jude moves on to something else. In verse 3, he gives us the need to contend. Says "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." He's being a good shepherd here, looking out for the flock of the church, and he knows that wolves are on the attack, threatening the flock, threatening the church, something that many of the disciples and the apostles addressed, giving the early church a playbook. Believers need to know their faith. They need to mature and grow in their faith, to truly understand what Jesus says is truth and what's not true. Other authors put it this way. Hebrews 6 says, "Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from accidentally to death and faith in God." Ephesians 4 says, "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming." This one speaks to me. I'm a visual person. I don't know if you've ever been to the ocean and just been on an inner tube or floating out there, and you let the waves take you. They will take you. You will go farther and farther out, and you don't really have control. You're just letting the ocean take you where it is. That's what it can be like if we don't know our faith. The minute we hear something, we're like, "Oh, that sounds good," and we go in that direction. Someone else teaches this, "Oh, you know what? That sounds good too," and we're just being tossed back and forth. In this analogy, Jesus is saying, "I want you to be anchored. I don't want the waves to take wherever they're taking you. I want you to know what is true. I want you to stay right there." What does it mean to contend? To contend for the faith. Well, the word in Greek here really means to convey a struggle, a wrestling match. And we're not so much wrestling with someone else as much as we're wrestling with our faith to understand it more. We have to know that the faith we have in God is something that is living. It's not static. It's a relationship with God, and as we grow and we know more about God, there'll be things in the faith that are new, and we need to wrestle with those things. We have to wrestle with situations that arise where we know the truth of God, hey, to love other people. And we find ourselves in one situation, and we figure out, "All right, in this situation, this is how I love other people." But then, maybe 10 years down the road, you find yourself in a new situation. You say, "I need to love. I don't know how to love these people. I knew how to do it in that situation, but I need to wrestle again with the faith to figure out what it means to love others in this situation." Here's a couple of tools to keep in your back pocket when we talk about contending for the faith. As you wrestle with Scripture, remember these things. One, always use Scripture to understand Scripture. Does that make sense? Use Scripture to understand Scripture. If you read one passage and you say, "I think this is what this is saying," go find other passages that talk about the same thing and see if that is true. The Bible is consistent. It will not say, "Do this thing," and then do the complete opposite. So use Scripture to understand Scripture. Next, ask the Spirit to help you discern. Pray about it. "God, is this what you're telling me to do? Is this what your word is saying? I think in this situation, I understand your truth from the Bible, and I want to apply it in this way. Is this what you want me to do?" He'll tell you. And then use the body of Christ. Use the church. We all have different experiences that the Bible tells us the body of believers is made up of different parts to help each other. You may have lived through a certain situation that I haven't been through yet, and I'm going to go to you and say, "Hey, what did you do? How did you walk through that in such a Christ-like manner? Tell me how to do that. We're here for each other. How did you apply God's truth in that conversation? That was a hard conversation you had. How did you do that?" So he's urging the early church to wrestle with their beliefs, to understand how some things are true and some things are clearly not true. The call here is for believers to be proactive in their faith, not passive and nonchalant, but proactive in their faith. This faith we have, this gift of salvation, this relationship with God that we have is precious, it's powerful, and it needs to be prioritized in our lives.
So why do we do this? When we aren't proactive in doing these things, Jude addresses what may happen if this doesn't occur, and that is the threat of false teachers in our faith communities. Verse 4 says, "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 Lord." There's a reality that within church, people don't know the truth and don't understand the truth. That's a given. The scarier truth is that there are people who will rise up in leadership and start to preach and teach not truth, falsehoods. And we as a church are to hold each other accountable. If Pastor Chris or I ever got up here and said something that was a heresy, I would hope that you guys would see that, hear that, and do something about it. That you guys would not be just tossed to and from and be like, "I guess what he said is true even though the Bible clearly says otherwise." No, you guys, yeah, come on, call us out if that ever happens. And that's what wasn't happening in the early church. These churches didn't know the truth, didn't wrestle with their faith to understand, so that when false teachers got up, they were just going along with it like, "Oh, okay, sure." It's a scary truth when this happens because those people, Jude makes it clear, they're doing this knowingly. These false teachers do it knowingly. They know that what they're saying is a lie, that they are perverting the truth of the gospel and that they are giving license to sin. Their false gospel doesn't just allow it but might even encourage people to sin and also deny Christ. Here's a couple of thoughts. Next week, Pastor Lauren's going to really get into a lot of false teaching, so I'm only going to give like a tease right here because her section of Jude is all about it. But here's a couple of things to remember about false teachers from this one verse. False teachers can be subtle. It says they slipped in, right? This wasn't a came in with a big like, "Oh, we should have known because it was..." No, they slip in. It's subtle. While sometimes their teaching is outright wrong, oftentimes it twists the truth. So there's a nugget of truth in there, but they twisted in some way. And so you recognize like, "Oh, that part of it, yeah, that sounded good." And then some other part is obviously wrong. But it's small and it can be subtle. Something like, "Hey, a closer relationship to God should mean me experiencing more blessing in my life." You hear that and you're like, "Okay, not necessarily wrong, but I have some follow-up questions. What does that mean?" Are we just talking health and wealth prosperity gospel here? Are we just talking about God's going to be good to me despite whatever I go through? It can be small. We have to be careful. We need to be proactive in listening to what is being taught. We need to know the truth in order to recognize the falsehoods. This is why Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4, it says, "Preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction for the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine." He's already saying this is going to happen. "Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them with great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations. Endure hardship. Do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." You cannot just show up to church and just listen and like half listen and be like, "All right, got my fill of Jesus. I'm good." No, you need to listen, do the work, compare what we say to scripture, make sure that this is exactly, this is lining up with what God has said in his word. All right, so first false teachers can be subtle. False teachers look at the fruit they produce in their life.
John 15 talks about abiding in Christ and we'll know, the Bible tells us that we don't know the heart of every person. We're not meant to know exactly their heart status and if they're saved or not saved, but we can look at the fruit of their lives to say, "Hey, are they showing the fruit of the spirit? Are they loving? Are they kind? Are they patient? Are they compassionate?" If we see those things, we can be like, "Hey, I think that maybe they're a believer. Maybe they're following Jesus because their life looks like it." For those false teachers, look at the fruit of their life. If they're saying one thing, but they treat people terribly, or look at how they treat the poor. Look at how they treat those who are struggling. There's signs there that could be like, "Hmm, they say one thing and they sound kind of good, but their whole life just seems like a wreck. Their life doesn't have it together. They're not loving other people like Jesus would love people." Paul says in Romans, "I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way. They're contrary to the teaching that you have learned. Keep away from them, for such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people." Again, Bible tells us there are going to be false teachers and they're going to deceive people. So the warning is, look out for false teachers. Also, don't be the one with naive minds, right? We want to mature in faith. We want to grow in our faith. Peter says, "But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves." I once was at a pastors conference, and this is a room full of pastors, and someone was speaking to us. And I remember being a little bit shocked, because his message was, even in this room right now, and there was probably 3,000 of us pastors in this room, he's like, "Even among us, there are Judases in this room. People who are preaching, who think that they may be okay, or who know that they are preaching falsehoods. It is a reality that we deal with. We have to be vigilant, knowing we have to know the truth. And we have to know, that way, when we know the truth, this is a tease, this is going to get into next week, when we know the truth, we'll better recognize what's false. So, so important to know the gospel. And again, we're talking about inside the church, right? This is not, of course, there are false beliefs out in the world, that's to be expected. But inside the church, there are still going to be challenges that we face when it comes to false teaching, and heresies that lead people away from Jesus. And I think I've used this analogy before, but even if it's just a degree off, you think of being out at sea, and just a degree off, well over many, many miles, you're going to end up this far apart. Even though, it was just a degree off from the truth. And that's true of the gospel too. You hear someone's teaching, you're like, "That's just, it's a little bit off." That plays out in life, and they are miles away from Jesus.
So, in the opening verses here, just the four verses, we see that Jude has reinforced believers to understand their identity in Christ. He's encouraged them to be proactive and wrestle with their faith. And he warns them of false teachers. I want to end today with a question for us to think about this week. How can you, today, live as one called, loved, and kept by God in a culture of compromise? Are you secure in God's call in your life? Do you see that your identity is found in him first and foremost? Or is your identity compromised because you're wrapped up in, fill in the blank, or you're wrapped up in your job, your role as a parent, found in your success? It can be good things, but they can't be the first thing. Our identity has to be in Christ. Do you live every day firm in your understanding of his love for you? Are you loving others because God first loved you? Are you living as someone who is deeply loved? There's a saying out there, you know, hurt people hurt other people. Well, the opposite is true, too. People who are loved are better at loving others. Guys, we're loved by God. And we have a responsibility to love those around us. Keep the question up there. Keep it up there for the rest of the time. Do you have hope that emboldens you to live for Christ in every situation? Uncertainty in the future can bring up fear and anxiety. But because we know that God has us, that he's sustaining us, that he has the most perfect future for us, we can live confidently knowing that no matter what happens around us, God's got us. How can you live as one called, loved, and kept? And then in a culture of compromise, you guys know this, we live in a world today of, hey, live your truth, you do you. What, well, all the other sayings that include compromise. You know, when no one's looking, we think we can live a certain life, but maybe we just feel the pressure to do that when we're in front of other people. But when no one's looking, we live a different way. Or we think, hey, it's just this one time. Or it's not that often. We all have our things that we get into. Hey, I go to church on Sunday, so that's good. That gives me some freedom for the way I live my life the other six days of the week. Or we say things like, hey, no one's perfect, so we all have a past in a way. I don't have to do the entire Christian life, just overall I have to lean that way. I gotta make sure I kind of head in that direction. But I don't have to be pursuing Jesus with my everything. We say it out loud, and you're like, oh, that doesn't sound great. But we say these in our head, and we're like, oh, I mean, yeah, kind of. And it can even creep into our churches and how we live life as a church, as a body of believers. And we don't want that. We want this to be a place of intentionality, of purpose. That we are together, and individually, but together as a church, giving our everything, striving for, sprinting towards Jesus with everything that we have. We want to live as people who are called, loved, and kept, despite the culture of compromise. We don't want compromise to come into this church at all. As believers who know the truth, the truth of the gospel, this is capital T, truth, we can't compromise on that. We cannot compromise on the belief that we have in Jesus and how we are supposed to live. The words that we say, the actions that we carry out, the faith that is inside of us should all align with scripture. And if we don't understand it, we should seek to understand and figure it out.
So this week, again, just want to leave you with this. How can you live as one who is called, loved, and kept by God in a culture of compromise? Before we pray, I want to fast forward to the end and read this doxology that Jude writes at the very end that we're going to cover in the third week. But I think it's such a perfect wrap up to, now that we have learned a bit about the situation, his words mean so much more. So it says this, "To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God, our savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and forevermore." Amen? Let's pray. God, thank you again for your word, for your truth that is uncompromising. God, I pray that you would help us to better understand how to live a life that is for you in all situations. And God, I pray that you would help us to know your truth, that we would grow in knowing your truth. And so when those false teachings come in front of us, whether we're scrolling social media and we hear something or someone says something and says, "Hey, doesn't Jesus say this?" And if it is at all false, we can know, say, "Actually, no, he doesn't." No, that's not what the Bible says. No, what it means to live like Jesus or to love like Jesus actually means this. God, we want to be witnesses for your kingdom, witnesses for your truth, a light in the darkness. And I pray that you would help us to grow in our faith and our understanding of who you are and what you do, that you would embolden us, God. Give us hope. Give us comfort. Give us peace. God, use us and give you all the praise and glory. Amen.