Download the audio of this sermon here: Contend Earnestly by David J. Miller
The Scripture Readings
- Old Testament Lesson – Jeremiah 23:23-29
- Epistle Lesson – Jude 1:1-25
- Gospel – John 17:1-4
Meditation: The believer is a soldier of Jesus Christ engaged in earnest battles with the powers of evil. Hence, he is urged to put on the whole armor of God that he may retain his position in the Kingdom of God and frustrate the works of the devil. – Lewis Berkhof, Dutch theologian.
The epistle reading this morning was a first for this church in many ways. Not only because it was the first time that Mark has served us as liturgist, but also because it was the first time the book of Jude has ever been read during worship for at least 15 years, probably longer.
This is because Mt. Zwingli follows a scripture reading formula called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a three-year cycle of bible readings that cover carefully selected portions of scripture. The lectionary does not include the whole bible. Many verses are excluded, some entire books are left out like Obadiah, Ezra, Second and Third John and Jude; at least until today.
So you are in for a treat today as I am going to be talking almost exclusively about a book of the bible that you may have never heard before.
We’ll start with Jude 1 and work our way through. If you have your bibles, feel free to follow along. “Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,”
The writer identifies himself as a bond-servant of Jesus Christ. The Greek word for servant here is doulos, and it appears more than a hundred times in the New Testament. It is often translated with the word slave. When you read the English word servant or slave in the New Testament, please remember that these servants weren’t necessarily ‘owned’ by someone else like in American slavery. Most of the servants in the bible put themselves in this position for some compelling reason, In the Old Testament for instance, Jacob put himself into this role to win the hand of Rachel from her father Laban (Genesis 29:18). God the Son even put himself in subservience to God the Father’s will. And we must put ourselves in the role of servant if we are to claim the name of Christ as our own. What I mean by that is that if we call ourselves Christians, we are subject to the will of our master as revealed in Holy Scripture just as Jesus was when he walked the earth.
So the writer considers himself a servant of Jesus. He has put aside his own interests and is now devoted to Christ’s interests. Jude also says he is the brother of James,” his brother also wrote a book of the bible that bears his name. We find both of them mentioned in Mark 6:3 as half-brothers of Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph.
Finishing Jude 1 and 2 now: “To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.” We don’t know exactly to whom this letter was written, but Jude refers to them as “the called;” just as the twelve disciples were called; just as all believers were called by the sovereign will of God.
With Jude 3, we start to get into the meat of this short book. “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you concerning our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” The key words here are, “contend earnestly for the faith.” In boxing, a contender is someone who is a strong, experienced fighter. Webster’s uses the words struggle, argue and fight as synonyms for contend. So here in verse 3, Jude is calling on his readers to be fighters for the faith.
Being a fighter is part of being a Christian. Ephesians 6:14-17 tells us about how we have been outfitted with the whole armor of God; the shoes of peace, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Did you notice that all of the armor is defensive, but our weapon is the word of God?
What is this faith that is so worth fighting for? Our faith is the good news of Jesus Christ, the basis of the only true and complete religion in the world. As a matter of fact, you can often consider the word ‘truth’ synonymous with the word ‘faith.’ Here is why. In John 14:6, Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. This is what we have faith in; That Jesus spoke the truth. The Christian faith is the only religion that has God dropping a rope of salvation down to mankind; all others are humans trying push a rope of good works up to God. Have you ever tried to push a rope? It doesn’t work that way. Our faith is truth, our faith is life, our faith is the only way to the Father and fighting for the faith is fighting for the truth. The truth is worth defending and so is our faith.
So Jude tells us that we are fighters and what we are fighting for, now, what are we fighting against, and how do we fight? If you have your bibles open, we are in Jude 4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
This verse tells us a lot. First of all, it says that those we are to be contending with are among us. Verse 4 says they have “crept in unnoticed,” and are, “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness…” Licentiousness is simply, “aggressive pursuit of selfish desires.” Very often, this pursuit manifests in physical or sexual matters according to 1 Corinthians 6:18-19. It is inherent in the word licentiousness that these pursuits are against the commandments of God. Verse four proclaims this when it says they, “deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
Master and Lord. Why do you think Jude use these words here? Why doesn’t he call Jesus our friend or our good buddy or our amigo? These words are intentional. The word master in Greek is despotēs (des-pah’-tays) from which we get the English word despot. It means one who rules absolutely. And the Greek word for Lord here is kyrios (koo’-ree-os) which means one who possesses or owns something. So Jude says that Jesus possesses us, owns us and rules over us absolutely.
These are not warm and cuddly words describing Jesus here. He is not just the humble Jewish carpenter that many sentimentally like to think He is. This isn’t the gentle Jesus that we would want to go walking with in the garden. This is not a one-dimensional, effeminate character in a storybook. This is the one, true, living God-Man Jesus of the bible; He is our master and Lord!
He is the one who is powerful enough to speak the universe into existence. (John 1:3) He is the one who will judge the quick and the dead with perfect righteousness (2 Timothy 4:1). He is the one before whom every knee will bow one day. (Philippians 2:10) This is the Jesus who willingly submitted to His Father’s will and laid . down . his . life for you and me while we were still lost in sin. Ephesians 2:1 says we were DEAD in our sins; not sick, not hurting, not some nice person struggling to do more good things than bad things, but DEAD – DEAD! in our transgressions. Why would anybody give anything to a dead man? And yet, He did. He did it all; He gave it all. He bought us with his blood.
Jesus laid down His life not so we could have our best life now, not so we could speak a word in faith and have prosperity, health, and wealth; NO, none of the selfish things that false teachers like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and Eckhart Tolle espouse. Jesus laid aside his life so that these dead, dry bones could LIVE IN HIM! (Ezekiel 37:3) When we confess Him as Savior and Lord and admit our own sinfulness, He takes it all upon Himself and gives us His perfect righteousness. That’s the good news! We’re not being rescued, we’re not being resuscitated; we’re being resurrected from the dead!
For some unfathomable reason, God chose a wretched, dead dog like me and called me to His holy throne. He put life into this body that once was dead in sin! He took out a heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh. Forty-five years ago, my mother gave birth to me, and five years ago the spirit gave me new life (John 3:3). And now, God calls me his son! He calls me his child! (1 John 3:1) I don’t deserve that! And neither do you. None of us do.
I am not ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16). I’m not ashamed of the laws of God and I’m not ashamed of the grace of God; and I am not ashamed to get carried away about the glory of God and I am not sorry for being filled with the joy that can only be found in Christ Jesus our savior, our Master and Lord.
Now – where in the world was I? Jude 4. That little aside was actually a pretty good overview of the grace of God that some people turn on its head. Can you imagine that anyone would throw away such a gift? Can you imagine that anyone could take that wonderful grace and turn it into a license to sin with impunity? We all say we are Christians and yet we all sin, but those who have crept in unnoticed don’t confess their sins; they don’t even acknowledge their sins. Their way of life proves that they don’t pursue His righteousness; they pursue their own selfish pleasures. They don’t even try to obey His commands; they do whatever they want.
And they don’t love Him. In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And in John 14:21, He says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.” To Jesus, love and obedience are synonymous. And in Luke 6:46, Jesus says, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” What Jesus is saying in all of these verses is that you can call Him lord all you want, you can read the bible all you want, you can pray all you want, you can go to church all you want; but if you disobey His clear teaching, He’s not your Lord and master, you are. You have set yourself in His rightful place.
I need to pause here because Jude writes all this about flesh and blood people, false teachers; apostates that have infiltrated the church to whom he writes. And make no mistake; there are people who call themselves Christians but who are exactly as Jude describes them. They are in the world today, in this country, in our hometowns and even here at Mt. Zwingli.
But, I need to add a few words of caution here so you don’t start duking it out with they guy sitting next to you. Ephesians 6, the same chapter that tells us about the whole armor of God also says this in Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
This is a very important caution. Our fight is against the lies that these people tell with their lives as much as those they speak with their mouths. Our fight is for the truth of the Gospel to be proclaimed and the lies of the world to be exposed and rejected. Our fight is with the sin, not with the sinner.
Jude 5, 6 and 7 give three examples of those who are marked out for condemnation as stated in Jude 4. The Israelites whom God brought out of Egypt and who disobeyed His law, the angels who left their rightful place of honor and tried to usurp God’s authority, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who were sexually immoral and distorted the wonderful gift of physical love between husband and wife. God destroys all of them; the Israelites who didn’t believe, the fallen angels who denied His holiness and the sodomites who perverted his gift. Do you think God is serious about sin?
Jude 8, 9 and 10 tell how these false teachers or apostates do things that Angels don’t even dare to do. Jude equates them with “unreasoning animals.” And Jude 11 pronounces “Woe unto them.” Again, Jude gives three examples of their error from the Old Testament. Jude says that because of the things they do, they are destroyed. I think the worst thing false teachers do is lead innocent and immature Christians astray.
Jude 12 and 13 contain a litany of metaphors for these apostates, they are called “stains or blemishes,” “clouds without water,” “autumn trees without fruit” and “wild waves of the sea.” All of these paint a picture of uselessness and wastefulness.
Jude 14, 15 and 16 tie back into Jude 4 which uses the word ungodly to describe these apostates, Listen to this, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” Did you hear all those ‘ungodly’s?” Four of ‘em in one verse! This was kind of a hard verse for me to get my arms around, and sometimes it’s easier for me to look at the opposite meaning of verses like this so I can understand better what it is saying. So what is the opposite of the ungodly doing ungodly deeds in ungodly ways? Well, it’s Godly people doing Godly work in a Godly way. That’s the very definition of a church; God’s people doing God’s work, God’s way.
In Jude 17-19, Jude makes an important point that is sometimes overlooked in studies of this book. In verse 19, about the apostates, Jude writes, “…these are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the spirit.” You know, most often, those who stand for the truth, those who stand for the faith, are the ones who are labeled as divisive. The heavenly-minded person takes a position based on the bible, and the worldly-minded one takes a position based on expediency or pragmatism. They go with what works, rather than with what is right. The discerning Christian must be able to spot the difference and to distinguish between the two.
Some of you may know that I am a firearm safety instructor in my spare time. I recently asked a young man in one of my pistol classes, “What do you think are the main reasons for firearm accidents.” He immediately said, “Because people are stupid and they do stupid things.”
He was exactly right on both accounts. The top two reasons for firearm accidents are ignorance and carelessness. Ignorance causes accidents when somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing, does something wrong. Carelessness is worse. It is when somebody knows better, but does something wrong anyway.
Jude 20 and 21 are pleas against ignorance and carelessness. Verse 20 is a call not to be ignorant about God’s word. “But you, beloved, build yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” This verse sounds a lot like Jude 17, “But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Both these verses are saying basically the same thing. There is only one proper way to build yourself up in the faith and that is by reading God’s holy, and infallible word; and praying in the spirit. Christians have an advantage over all other religions. We have a book that was written by God (2 Timothy 3:16) and it is truth from cover to cover. (John 17:17)
Jude 21 is a plea not to be careless with God’s word. “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” How do we do that? Jesus has the answer; I already read three of them from the gospels of Luke and John – we keep ourselves in the love of God by keeping His commandments. This is a continuous thread that runs throughout the entire bible. Keep God’s commandments. God saved us while we were still in sin, not because of anything we deserved and not because of any good thing that we might do; He saved us by his mercy alone and we thankfully and obediently and joyfully turn away from sin. Our actions flow from our faith.
Finally, in Jude 22 and 23, Jude reveals how we are to contend earnestly for the faith. Finally! We’ve been building up to this for 20 minutes; it just seems like an hour! Let’s lace up the gloves; here are our fighting orders. “And have mercy on some who are doubting. Save others, snatching them out of the fire, and on some have mercy with fear hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.”
Wait a minute. That’s it? Have mercy!? Pull ‘em out of the fire!? Fear!? That can’t be right, I want to fight, not show mercy!
Here again, Jude gives us three examples; three distinct groups of people. “Have mercy on some who are doubting.” This is the first group. They’re just not sure of what the truth is. We are called to bear with them and forgive them. (Colossians 3:13) They can be brought back to the truth because they are still open-minded; but they need mercy and patience and loving instruction until they repent and believe (Mark 1:15).
The second group also is to be saved, but snatched out of the fire. These people have accepted the words of the false teachers, they are committed to their errors and are very close to perishing; that’s the reference to fire. They need immediate and more drastic measures than the doubters. Stronger measures of instruction, reproof, and correction are necessary (2 Timothy 3:16), but we still show them mercy when they turn from their ways. (Luke 17:3-4)
The third group of people are so deeply entrenched in apostasy that there is no hope for them except by a miracle from God. It is dangerous for the believer even to go near them, and the word of God they hear from us should encourage fear, because that is what they lack. 1 Corinthians 5:5 is a good example of how believers should deal with false teachers and it is consistent with how Jesus dealt with them. He never compromised the truth to keep from offending the Pharisees.
Isn’t it amazing that here at the end, there’s no fighting or violence; there’s no holy war. There is an abundance of mercy and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. We are our brothers’ keeper and it is never too late to turn.
This is ultimately, how we will defeat false teachers: by not falling for their lies; by not falling into habitual, unrepentant sin; by defending the truth that was once for all delivered to the saints. We defend the truth by staying in the truth. We defend the faith by staying in the faith. We defend the love of God by staying in His love; and by helping our brothers and sisters do the same. The best argument for the faith, the best way to contend for the faith is to know the truth, to speak it boldly in love and, most of all, to live it yourself.
