Keeping The Faith

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, turn to the book of Jude, the second to last
book in the Bible. Go all the way to Revelation and go back one to Jude. It's a short book,
25 verses in our Bible.
Before we get to the text that we're going to look at this morning, I have a... pretty long
introduction to set the stage, so hang with me, bear with me on this, a lot to set up before we get
to it. I want to introduce you to Perry Bacon Jr. He is an op-ed columnist for the Washington
Post, and according to this bio on their website, which you may not be able to read, he focuses on
two major themes in his writing, the growing radicalism of the Republican Party on the right,
and the efforts mostly on the left among Democrats to create a more just, equitable society.
So you can see where his political allegiance is. Before he joined the Washington Post in May of
2021, he had stints as a government and elections writer for Time Magazine, worked at the Post's
politics desk for the Griot for FiveThirtyEight, has been an on-air analyst at MSNBC and a fellow
at New America. He grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where he now lives. He's moved back to
Louisville. Perry's dad, doesn't say this in the bio, but Perry's dad was a pastor in Louisville.
at a black Pentecostal church. And today, Perry describes himself not as a Christian,
but as a nun. That's a word, not a nun like in the Catholic order. This is an N-O-N-E.
That's a word that's being used today to describe the growing number of people who, when it comes
to their religious affiliation, if they're getting a survey, they check the box that says none.
They have no religious affiliation. Back in 2014, James Emery White wrote a book called The Rise of
the Nuns, and that term stuck. And that's where Perry Bacon Jr.
is today. He's a nun. He's not religiously affiliated, not a part of a church,
despite the fact that he grew up in a church. He wrote a column in the Washington Post last month
that was titled, I left the church. Now I long for a church for the nuns.
It's interesting. His column and his story really are fascinating, and I think it gives us a
picture of what's happening among the growing number of nuns in our world.
Let me quote from Perry here. He says, I was never totally convinced that there is one God who
created the earth or that Jesus Christ was resurrected after he was killed. But belonging to a
congregation seemed essential. I thought religion, not just Christianity,
but also other faiths like Judaism, Islam, pushed people toward better values.
Most of the people I admired, from the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to my parents, were
religious. He says part of what pushed him into the nun category was what's happened over the last
six, seven years in the political world. and specifically evangelical Christian support for Donald
Trump. He says, their embrace of a man so obviously misaligned with the teachings of Jesus was
unsettling. I began to realize that being a Democrat or a Republican, not being a Christian,
was what drove the beliefs and attitudes of many Christians, perhaps including me. Now let me just
stop there for a second. What he's observing here I think is significant. Follow this. He started
to see many Christians he knew. who were supporters of Donald Trump, were more passionate about and
more shaped by a political agenda and by their following of President Trump than they were about
Jesus and his kingdom. In other words, he saw people who were communicating more passionately. What
mattered most to them was what was going on politically in the world, less than what God was doing
in the world. And he sees it happening on both sides of the aisle because he said, and put it back
up again,
driving the beliefs and attitudes of many Christians, perhaps including me.
So this isn't a Trump versus Biden issue here. And what he's identifying here is that a part of the
problem that's going on in our world is that people are putting more trust in, faith in,
hope in the political system than they are in anything spiritual. He said, I was watching this
happen to my Republican friends. And it was happening to me, too. I was identifying my life and my
worth and my values around politics. The issue that being a Democrat or Republican,
not being a Christian, was what was driving the attitudes of the Christian right and left. So he
goes on to say, between early 2017 and early 2020, I went from someone who clearly defined himself
as a Christian. and attended the same church most Sundays to someone who wasn't sure about
Christianity but was still kind of shopping for a new religious home and going to a service every
few weeks. But over the past two years, he says, I've been to church only a handful of times, even
skipping Easter. He says, many Americans, including me, were once a part of churches that were an
essential part of our lives. It's strange to me that America, particularly its left-leaning
cohort, is abandoning this institution as opposed to reinventing it to align to our 2023 values.
That's significant. His view is that we shouldn't abandon church, we just need to fix it.
to modernize it, to bring it up to date and up to speed with our values. In a follow-up interview
about this article, he said he's got a daughter and he's starting to think he'd like his daughter
to go to a church to reinforce those values. Here's what he said.
He said, if I could find a church, and it may already exist, where the Sunday school is very low on
the beliefs of Jesus and very high on the community part, that's what I'm looking for. I'm guessing
if I went to 30 churches in Louisville, I could probably find a Sunday school like that that's less
focused on Jesus rising from the dead and more about being compassionate, caring people.
The comments section after this article got posted online was pretty interesting.
Somebody said, my beliefs have evolved. I no longer believe in a personal God, but I love the
message of Jesus in the Gospels as well as the music, the fellowship, the shared commitment to
others that belonging to a church gives me. Somebody else said, I'm a nun, but I'm very happy to go
to church. I get a pleasant endorphin rush from the church. I also like the music and it helps me
focus on working to be a good person. But there's no way I could check all the boxes of traditional
Christian ideas like certainty that there's a God or Jesus rose from the dead or fed a multitude of
people with loaves and fishes. In other words, people like Perry Bacon Jr.
and his readers are saying, if we could just have all that the church offers,
you know, meaning, purpose, joy, peace, godly character, a better world, if we could just have all
of that without having to believe all this stuff that the Bible teaches, that's what we're looking
for.
And as Perry Bacon Jr. says, I'm looking for a church that aligns with my 2023 values rather than
looking for a church that will realign me to biblical values. You see the difference?
I want a church that reinforces what I think is true rather than a church that challenges what I
think is true and asks, is this what God says? They want a faith that they can define,
a customized personal faith where they decide what goes on,
what matters, what doesn't. They're the captain of their soul. The buck stops religiously with
them. not with God. And by the way, this is nothing new. We read about this, we're in the middle of
it, we think, oh, this is never going on. No, this has been going on forever. Forever.
You go back 100 years, J. Gresham Machen was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary,
and he started to notice a number of his seminary colleagues were drifting from a biblically
anchored faith. And so in 1923, 100 years ago,
Machen wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism to address the drift that he saw happening
in the Presbyterian church in his day. A drift toward what he said was not a different perspective
on what the Bible teaches, but an entirely different man-made religion founded on a sentimental
and superficial view of God. That was 100 years ago.
That's still there. It's still among us. It's still going on. And it's not an alternative view of
Christianity. It's another religion, a false religion.
Machen eventually left Princeton and started Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia because he could
no longer teach at a seminary where the Bible was not the frame of reference, the source and ground
of what they believed. By the way, the starting place for all of this is Genesis 3.
Has God really said this? Can you really trust what God says? Do you want to follow what you think
is right or what God says is right? Wouldn't you like to be your own God? God knows when you eat of
this fruit, you'll be like him. Doesn't that sound good?
One more illustration. There are so many illustrations. I mean, I could come up with so many, but I
just have to share this one. 1985, a UC Berkeley professor named Robert Bella and his colleagues
big survey across the country. They wanted to examine the habit. They're sociologists. They wanted
to look at the habits that were shaping and forming American life in the 1980s. And so they wrote a
book called Habits of the Heart. That was their conclusion. Came out in 85.
And in the book, they shared about our views as Americans in the 80s when it comes to religion.
And they told about an interview that they had done with a young nurse in California named Sheila
Larson. Here's what Sheila said about her faith. She said, I believe in God.
I'm not a religious fanatic. I can't remember the last time I went to church, just my own little
voice. When you ask Sheila what she believes, she said, I just try to love, it's just try to love
yourself, be gentle with yourself, you know, I guess take care of each other. I think God would
want us to take care of each other. Then she said, my faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheila
-ism.
And Bella and his team concluded after talking to Sheila and others,
this suggests the logical possibility that there are 235 million American religions, one for each
of us.
That's the background for the verse that we're going to look at in the letter from Jude this
morning. And I took time to go through all of that. to say this to you. First of all,
there are voices inside the American church today in 2023, people who are actively seeking to pull
denominations and seminaries and churches and individual Christians away from the historic
Christian faith and to reshape it around 2023 values like we saw.
That's what Perry Bacon Jr. wishes there was. By the way, when he printed that column in the
Washington Post, he said he heard from 15 churches in Louisville that reached out to him and said,
come join us. You would be right at home here. There were plenty of churches who said,
we're like you. We don't talk about Jesus and the resurrection. We just talk about being good
people and sing some songs and have community.
That's... Present in our world today, there's an active movement inside the church to try to push
the church away from its historical biblical moorings and to push it into what I would say is
pseudo-religion. And secondly, what those voices are advocating is not a kinder,
gentler, more tolerating, more accommodating Christian faith. It's not Christianity at all.
Christianity sends... resurrection, without the resurrection, is no faith at all.
Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 15. Take away the resurrection. We've got no hope.
And this is the issue Jude is addressing that was going on in his day.
People in the church in his day who were trying to pull new believers away from the new faith.
Now, it wasn't the historical faith, but it was the revealed faith, the faith of the apostles, the
faith of Jesus, the revelation of God, and pull it in new directions.
That's what he's addressing in this epistle. And that's what the text we're going to look at this
morning is all about. It's a single verse, Jude verse 3.
And before we read it together, let me pray for our time. In God's word. God, we thank you for your
word and the gift it is to us.
We pray that as we come to your word now, your spirit would be our teacher, that you would soften
our hearts, that you would open our ears, that you would speak to us by your spirit. Lord,
confirm your word in us today.
Plant it deep in us. Shape and fashion us in your likeness that the light of Christ might be seen
in us. And help us to be doers of the word, not just hearers. We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
This is the word of God for the people of God, Jude, verse 3. Beloved, although I was very eager to
write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend
for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
That's it. Amen. May God add his blessing to this reading of his word. The grass withers and the
flower fades, but the word of God lasts forever. Now, as I've been meditating on and ruminating,
if you read the newsletter, I've been ruminating, chewing on this verse this week. Three things
have jumped out at me that are going to be what we're going to look at this morning as we look at
how Jude begins this letter. First, Jude makes it clear that he's writing about...
different than what he had first intended to write about. He says he was planning to write about
our common salvation. That would have been his preferred focus. And I want us to look and see what
that is and why it was his preferred focus, why he wishes that's what he could have written about.
Second, I want us to see what this faith once for all delivered to the saints is.
When he says, I'm writing to you about the faith, what specifically is he talking about?
And then third, He tells us that we are to earnestly contend for the faith. So I want to talk about
how we do that, what that looks like. So that's where we're headed this morning. Let's start with
what I'm calling his preferred focus. He says, I was very eager to write to you about our common
salvation. Now I read that and I thought, don't you wish we had the other letter? Don't you wish
that Jude had sent us, this is what I had intended to write to you about. I had to stop,
but this is what was really on my heart. Our common salvation. so eager to express about our common
salvation what new insights would he have shared I want to suggest to you three reasons why I think
Jude was so eager to write about our common salvation when he sat down to write the thing he cared
most about writing to them about was salvation I think the first reason he was eager is because he
understood the importance of our salvation as the issue of first importance. That's what the Bible
tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Paul says, I delivered to you as of first importance what I
also received. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, was buried,
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Paul says, I shared with you what's
the most important thing, which is what Jesus did that made salvation available to mankind.
That was first importance to him. And Jude says, when he sat down to write, that was what was on my
heart too. This is of first importance. It's the essence of the gospel, the good news that is at
the center of our common salvation. That's what I was eager to write most about.
So why? Because it was a priority in his life. The gospel was his top priority.
Sharing about salvation was number one for Jude, so that when he sat down and said, what do I want
to write about today? The first thing that came to mind was salvation. What else is there?
I think the second reason he was eager to write about our common salvation is because he
understands that everything else in our lives flows from that.
everything in life flows out of our common salvation. Let me define terms here.
Oftentimes, and this was true for me for many years, when I would talk about salvation, what I was
thinking about was the point in time when someone passes from death to life, from darkness into
light, the point of time when we're born again, when we have that... life-changing experience.
Some of you know exactly when that day was. Others of you say, that kind of happened gradually in
my life. But God does a work in our lives where he brings us from death to life.
And most of the time when we hear people talking about salvation, they're thinking of that moment,
that work of God in their lives. But salvation in the Bible is bigger than just that point.
It's like... we were saying, I want to talk about your life, and you said,
you mean my birthday? We would say, well, okay, yeah, it started there, but I want to talk about
your life. And you would say, well, yeah, so let's talk about my birthday. Well,
yeah, okay, we can, but let's talk about what's happened since then, too. Because salvation is not
just what God did for you in the past, bringing you from death to life. It's what God is doing for
you now in the present as he is changing you from one person to another person,
that he's begun a good work, he is faithful to complete it, that he's conforming you into the image
of his son. That work that we call sanctification is a part of your salvation.
And when we talk about salvation, we're talking about what's coming. for those who are children of
God, which is the end of all things. It's being with Jesus. So it has a past,
present, and future aspect. When we talk about salvation, it's what God did.
It's what God is doing. It's what God will do. It is salvation.
It's forgiveness of sins in the past. It's transformation of our lives in the present. And it's a
hope and a future as we look forward. That's... of salvation. So when Jude says,
I wanted to write to you about our common salvation, he wasn't saying, I just want to talk to you
about the day you were born. I want to talk about all of the implications of that in your life
going on now, to declare that, to affirm it. He understood not only the centrality of this theme,
but the bigness of it, the inexhaustibleness. of salvation. And by the way,
you could write about God's work in your life for the rest of your life every day and you would not
exhaust the subject because God is inexhaustible. His work is that big. So he understood its
primary. He understood the comprehensive nature of it. I think the third reason he wanted to write
to us about it is he also understood we forget it all the time. We lose sight of it.
We get distracted. He wanted to write about what God has done and is doing and will do because it's
so easy for us to drift from thinking about those things. He wanted to pull us back to remembering
how important and how vital these things are. He wanted to write to those who had already heard the
gospel and believed the gospel and experienced the new birth, who were experiencing God's ongoing
work of grace in their lives. He wanted to write to them to tell them, to remind them of these
things because it's easy for all of us to forget it. No matter how many times you've heard the good
news that leads to salvation, that brings salvation, you need to hear it again. I need to hear it
again. And again, it has a wonderful transformative power in our lives.
Jude gets that. He says, this is what I wanted to write to you about, what God has done for us in
Christ. Is there anything more important for us to be talking about or writing about or thinking
about? I think people who knew Jude probably whispered to one another when he was in the room,
don't ask him about Jesus. He'll just go off on one of those things he always does.
Right? I think they just knew he won't shut up about salvation.
Would that we had that reputation wherever we are. I think Jude was so eager to write about this
because he never lost sight of what Jesus had done for him.
Remember, Jesus was his half-brother. He grew up in the house with Jesus. He didn't believe that
Jesus was the Son of God until after the resurrection.
And Jesus had so transformed his own thinking and his own life, his own understanding about who God
is, his own understanding about what God was doing in the world. It was so transformative that Jude
couldn't forget it. He couldn't lose sight of that. He never got over it.
And I think one reason why you or I might not be as eager as Jude is to talk about this with others
is because we've minimized. or lost sight of what God has done for us in Christ.
The more you meditate on what God has done for you in Christ, the more motivated you are to want to
tell other people about that. And if you're not motivated to tell other people about that, have you
forgotten how glorious this is? How transformative it is? Has it become familiar,
common, old news?
I want that old news. to become fresh and new for all of us today,
this morning. I want it to captivate your thinking and your soul and your imagination.
I want what Jude was eager to write to you about to penetrate your hard heart and bring fresh waves
of gratitude and wonder and delight and amazement and love.
I want you to be able to sing amazing love. How can it be?
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me. I was thinking about this week.
There's an old song. We haven't sung this in years at Redeemer, but I remember singing it for
years. after I became a Christian, redeemed how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb, redeemed through his infinite mercy, his child and forever I am,
redeemed and so happy in Jesus, no language my rapture can tell. I know that the light of his
presence with me shall continually dwell. I think of my blessed Redeemer.
I think of him all the day long. I sing for I cannot be silent. His love is the theme of my song,
redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
This is what Jude had wanted to write about and was eager to write about. The question is, are you
eager to think and to write and to tell others about this? To fix your mind and heart on these
things? To be enthralled by these things? Are you distracted by lesser things? Are there other
topics that stir up more passion in your soul than what God has done for you in Christ?
Other priorities? Other things you find more interesting?
We saw this a few weeks ago, but I always come back to this. I remember reading this and it's just
jumping out at me. 2 Timothy 2, verse 8. This is Paul's last letter to Timothy,
the last one we have. Paul knows he's about to die. He's writing to a pastor, and he says to him,
Timothy, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, offspring of David,
as preached in my gospel.
Timothy's going to forget Jesus? He's a pastor. Pastors can forget Jesus. Just like anybody can
forget Jesus. Timothy, don't forget Jesus. Don't forget the gospel.
Jude said, I was eager to write to you about what God has done in our common salvation and that all
that means. I don't want us to ever lose sight of that. But he said, I got something else I got to
write to you about. There's something urgent that has come up. So as we get to the urgent thing,
just keep in mind that if there wasn't something urgent that had to be addressed, what Jude would
have written his letter about was the glory of our salvation, the theme of his song. But he says,
here's what is eager. Verse 3, I was eager to write to you about our common salvation.
I find it necessary at this moment to write to you and appeal to you to contend for the faith. once
for all delivered to the saints. It's a call to arms. Jude is saying something very valuable is in
danger. It's under attack. It's being threatened. So instead of being able to write to you about
the glory of our salvation, I have to write to you about how we defend and protect the faith that
has once for all been delivered to the saints. So when he uses that phrase, the faith, what's he
talking about? We usually think of the word faith as a verb. It is. It can be used as a verb.
We talk about having faith, walking in faith.
We studied this when we went through Hebrews 11 this summer. What is faith? And how do we respond
in faith? How do we walk by faith? And what are the examples from the Old Testament saints of how
they lived by faith? And what can we learn from them? And walking by faith is important.
But before we talk about walking by faith, the verb, we need to talk about what the faith is that
we're walking by. So the faith. is a body of truth.
Here's how I understand the term. Jude is talking about the truth that God has revealed to us
regarding our common salvation, the essentials of salvation. Stay with me here for just a minute.
When Jude talks about the faith once for all delivered to the saints, he's talking about the
essential truth that we must receive and believe in order for a man to be converted.
Let me say that again. I think we can put that up. It's the essential truth that must be received
by and believed by faith in order for a man to be converted.
That's the faith. So the Bible is truth. It's all truth.
And it's all to be received and believed by faith. What Jude is talking about here is a subset of
the totality of the Bible which relates to our common salvation. He's talking about the faith,
the essentials of God's work in our lives.
The Bible, this is all God's revelation to us. It's all true, every word of it. Jesus said that.
John 17, sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. All of it.
But here, Jude is talking about contending for the faith, not for the truth.
The faith is true, but I'm suggesting the faith he's talking about is a subset of the totality of
God's Word. He's concerned that there are false teachers who are creeping into the church,
introducing error that will lead people away from the faith that leads them to salvation.
So it's not about those who are going to undermine... the totality of God's Word.
It's about those who are going to be attacking at that very point that's all about our common
salvation. He wants readers, us, to be people who will defend those essentials that lead a man to
be made right before God.
And Jude makes it clear here that the text that he's talking about is a text, the faith he's
talking about, is something that comes by revelation. It was a faith that was delivered.
It's not a bunch of guys who got together in a dark room somewhere and said, let's make up a faith.
Let's just come up with what we think is true. Let's write this down and we'll take a stab at it
and get as close to it as we can. No, this is not a faith that was invented or concocted.
It was delivered to people through divine revelation. Remember the writer of Hebrews talks about
this at the very beginning of Hebrews. He says, long ago... at many times, in many ways, God spoke.
That is, God revealed something. He spoke. He delivered a message. He passed along the faith.
He spoke to our fathers by the prophets. In these last days, he has spoken to us,
revealed himself in the essentials of our salvation. Spoken to us how? Through his son. So the
faith that Jude wants to talk about is a faith that was revealed and received.
From God, through the prophets, and ultimately through his son,
and that's the faith that is under attack, Jude says.
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said this about the Old Testament. He said the Old Testament,
what he called the law and the prophets, was partial and incomplete revelation of God.
It's like God had given the Jewish people a bunch of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without the box top
and without all of the pieces. And he said, start putting this together.
And they started putting it together. Oh, look here. That looks like part of the sky. I think
that's a bird. They could see a little bit and they could start to get glimpses of God's plan
throughout the Old Testament. Jesus comes along and he is the full and complete,
the final word. of God, the final revelation of God. He comes and he says,
I'm the box top and here are the rest of the pieces. Now you can put the puzzle together. In fact,
what he said in the Sermon on the Mount was, don't think I came to have you throw out all the old
box pieces that you got. and the prophets. I didn't come to throw those away. I came to fulfill
them, to bring the rest of the pieces and show you how this all gets put together.
Jude is saying that the faith that God has delivered to you is this revelation of God through the
apostles, the prophets, through Jesus. It's a priceless treasure. It's a pearl of great price.
It's all embodied in Jesus and his mission. That's the faith. Who is Jesus and what did he come to
do?
His death on the cross, his resurrection, his perfect life, that's the particular truth Jude is
saying. We need to dig in and contend earnestly for this body of truth. That's what he's calling
the faith. And notice he not only says it's been revealed to us, but it's been revealed to us once
and for all.
It is not an evolving understanding or revelation. Now, our understanding of God's word evolves
over time. But God's word doesn't change over time. The truth is not being added to.
It's not being expanded. We may get a fresh insight, but the insight was always there.
It's just our minds that are getting it. God has given us the complete and final revelation. We
should not be looking for more revelation from God today because the faith has once for all been
delivered to the saints. Not like 500 years ago, people had a different faith that they believed,
and now we have the one that's updated to 2023.
No, it's once for all been delivered to the saints. Back in 2006,
I was in Louisville, Kentucky for the very first ever Together for the Gospel conference. There
were about 2,600 people. We were all gathered in the ballroom at the Galt Hotel in downtown
Louisville. and we were there to hear a number of Bible teachers and pastors. There were four men
who had put the whole thing together. I remember Mark Dever, the first night, got up at that event,
and he said, the four of us who have put this event together, he said,
two of us are Southern Baptists. One is a Presbyterian, and the other is a non-denominational
charismatic. He said, we don't agree about the method and mode of baptism.
We don't agree about... related to church polity or spiritual gifts. We had a hard time working
through what kind of music we would have at this event that all of us could be happy with,
what kind of a podium we should have. Should it be a podium or a pulpit? What should that look
like? We had conversations about what we should wear. There is one of us who will always have a
suit and tie when he gets up here and another one who doesn't own a suit and tie.
He said we're here with those differences because of what we have in common.
which is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We're not going to get distracted by the
things that we disagree on where there's Christian liberty. We're going to stay focused on
defending the faith, which are the essential things. That's what the Apostle Paul did.
When he confronted the Corinthians, you know how morally troubled they were,
how bankrupt they were, all of the moral issues in Corinth? He called them brothers. and called
them back to the gospel. But when he talked to the Galatians, who were losing their grip on the
gospel, he challenged them and said, if somebody's coming to you preaching another gospel, let him
be accursed. Don't follow that. He understood that there's a lot to work out in the Christian life,
but we have to keep the essence of the faith intact, protected,
and defended. I say all of this because we have to be careful that those of us who are called to
contend earnestly for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, we have to be careful that
we're not people who make theological mountains out of theological molehills, which I've been prone
to do in my life. I will just confess to you that there was a long season in my life where I liked
a little theological wrangling, and if you didn't see every sub-point the way I saw it, I needed
to correct you. I took a certain amount of pride in being able to correct you. I could probably out
-argue you on those points that you had, and I kind of liked doing it. It showed a little
theological superiority on my part, maybe a little theological insecurity on my part,
but let's get past that, right? Some people, in the name of contending for the faith, get so dug in
on all kinds of secondary or tertiary issues that aren't unimportant, but aren't the essence of
what salvation is all about. And in the process, they wind up contending not for the faith,
but contending for a preference or an understanding. And listen,
we can destroy the unity of the church, which is a priority for Jesus, by making secondary or
tertiary issues into primary issues. And that does not bring joy to the heart of God when we do
that. When Jude says, contend earnestly for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints,
he's not saying, go fight about every little thing in the Bible.
He's saying, no, protect what is essential. The false teachers he's talking about in this letter
are not people who might disagree on non-essential issues. These are people who are undermining
the core. of the gospel, the essentials, the essential truths that must be received and believed in
order for a man to be converted. That's what Jude means by the faith. That's what we're to contend
for. So some questions for you. First of all, do you know what these biblical essentials are,
the core issues? Can you articulate them? Can you share them with others? Do you believe them?
Are they the core of what you believe?
I can't unpack all of them here for you this morning. Let me just give you... Kind of four handles.
You want to know what the faith, the core, the essential is? The first is, what does the Bible
teach about who God is? That's pretty important that we look at what the Bible,
what God has revealed to us about himself. Second, what the Bible teaches about who we are.
It's important for us to know who we are. Creatures made in the image of God.
Fallen creatures who have sinned and come short of the glory of God. People in desperate need of
salvation. We need to know what the Bible teaches about the person and work of Jesus. That he was
not just a great teacher or a miracle worker. He was God in human flesh who came on a redemptive
mission to rescue those who had rebelled against God. And we need to understand what the Bible
teaches about how we are made right with God.
That's kind of the uranium-rich core of the Christian faith.
Those things. When we're talking about what we need to be protecting and defending and contending
for, it's who God is, who we are, what Jesus has done, and how we're made right with God.
When those things are under attack, we stand up and say no. If someone is teaching something about
God other than what the Bible teaches about God, we say no.
Someone is teaching something other than what the Bible teaches about who we are, about our nature,
about being made male and female, about... purpose, our sinfulness, we say no.
Someone is teaching about something different than what the Bible teaches about who Jesus is and
about the work he's done. We say no.
Someone is teaching something different about how a man is made right with God, how we receive
salvation. We contend. We say no.
So, again, four questions to ask yourself about these categories. Do you know what the Bible
teaches about each of these? Some of you go, I don't know what the Bible teaches about God or about
man. Okay, so it would be good for you to get in a place,
in a study where you can learn these things, to start to dig into them. Get a copy of J.I.
Packer's book, Knowing God, and it will teach you things about God. It's just a good primer to get
somebody to go with you through it.
Do you not only know what the Bible teaches about God and man and salvation, do you believe it?
And not only do you believe it, but does that belief affect how you live your life? If you would
say, well, I know it and I believe it, but it has no effect on how I live my life, I would go,
well, time out. And something got short-circuited there. Because if you know it and believe it, it
can't help but change how you live your life. And if it's not changing how you live your life, I
wonder if you've really understood it and believe it.
And then finally, can you share what you know and believe with other people?
If we're going to be people who contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered for the
saints, we have to know it, believe it. be changed by it, and be able to share it with others.
Now again, you read that and you go, I'm not sure I can do all of that. That's why we're here
together with one another. That's why we get together as a church. If you say,
I need help with this area, there are lots of people in this church who could say, well, I don't
have it all down either, but I can share with you what I know. Take it a little farther down the
road. We can go through a book together. We can grow in this area.
If you're saying, I need some help, come see me. I'll hook you up with somebody who would be happy
to help walk you through and help you grow in this area. And if you're here going, I've been at
this for years and I still don't know many of these things. Well, iron sharpens iron. Get together
with somebody else and share what you know with what they know and grow.
Okay, so go back to these four essentials. Notice that I started each of these with that statement,
what the Bible teaches about these things.
I'm presupposing a belief that what the Bible teaches about these things is what is right and true
and authoritative. It's the source for what God has revealed. It's not my vision or my
interpretation or my revelation. It's what God has revealed in his word.
If someone comes to us suggesting that truth comes from somewhere other than God's word, we say,
no, we contend.
And this is key right here. Don't miss this. Maybe the biggest challenge that the church is facing
today is that people, false teachers inside the church, are coming along and proposing that we need
to adjust our thinking. Excuse me, we need to adjust the scriptures to align with our thinking,
our emotions, and our experience, rather than adjusting our experience, our emotions,
and our thinking to align with the Bible.
Today, when you hear people... for a more progressive approach to Christianity,
and you ask them for their arguments, they don't say, well, here's what the Bible says.
They say, well, here's what my experience tells me. Here's what my emotions tell me.
Here's what my 2023 values tell me. And so we need a church that aligns with that rather than
trying to align our church with the Bible.
That's what Perry Bacon Jr. was proposing.
False teachers always begin with, let's set aside what God has said for a minute.
What feels right to you? What makes sense to you?
We've got to bring our life experiences, our reason, our rational thinking, our emotions, we bring
them to the party when we come to say what's true about God. But at the end of the day, when what
we believe or feel doesn't line up with what the Bible teaches, We don't try to change the Bible to
fit our thinking. We try to change who we are to fit the Bible.
The false teachers inside the church today are holding up experience and feelings,
human wisdom saying, this is where you find reality and truth. And Jude is saying, do not go there.
Don't follow them. Contend against them. And that brings us to the last part of this verse.
So we've looked at what Jude really wanted to write about. We've looked at what the faith is that
we're to contend for. The question is, what does contending look like? How do we protect it?
How do we fight for it? I'll give you three thoughts here. First of all, we're supposed to contend
without being contentious. Secondly, you're supposed to walk by the Spirit as you contend.
And number three, you've got to find the right hills to die on. Let me spend a little time with
each one of those. First, how do we contend without being contentious? Most of us are going to lean
one way or another on this. Some of you, you read a verse like this and you say, let me add it. I
kind of like contending. I'm ready to fight. Give me the theological battle. Bring it on.
Some of you are wired that way. More of you are wired like, I don't want to be that guy. I don't
want to have to contend. Can we just keep the peace? I'll just smile and not say anything. I don't
want to make any waves. You know who you are. You know whether you lean this way or you lean that
way. And if you're the pugnacious type, you probably need to relax a little bit.
And if you're the soft type, you probably need to speak up a little more.
I think the late D. James Kennedy had it right. He said this, to contend in love is the secret.
It's always a difficult one. He said, we tend to either lose sight of love and compassion and just
hack people into little pieces with our theological axes. Or we become so loving and so
compassionate that we let Christian doctrine just sort of melt into a marshmallow type of thing
that can be shaped however anyone wants it.
Now, don't be one or the other. Contend without being contentious and speak the truth in love,
which brings us to contending by walking by the Spirit. So it's got to be critical that we walk by
the Spirit, that we are Spirit-filled, Spirit-led as we contend. If you are earnestly contending
for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, the fruit of the Spirit should be present.
That means contending for the faith as you walk by the Spirit, with love,
with patience, with kindness, with gentleness, with self-control. It's possible to stand up for
truth. in a way that does not honor God.
Have you thought about that? It's possible to defend the truth and be dishonoring to God in how you
do it. Don't be that guy. So don't be contentious. Walk by the Spirit.
And then the last thing is you've got to find the right hills to die on. You've got to contend for
the essentials. I told you when we came back from sabbatical that one of the books we had listened
to as we drove around the country this year was a book from Gavin Ortland called Finding the Right
Hills to Die On. Now, honestly, I was a little put off by the title of the book because it ends
with a preposition.
And as all of you know, prepositions are not things to end sentences with.
See what I just did there? Yeah, I ended that sentence with a preposition.
Never mind. I ultimately decided that I did not want to make having a book title and a sentence
with a preposition a hill on which I was going to die. So, I listened to the book,
and honestly, I think it's one of the most important books that's been written in the past couple
of years. I just think it's essential for our day. The subtitle of the book is The Case for
Theological Triage. Now, that's a phrase that Gavin Ortlund borrows from Dr.
Albert Moeller, and it's helpful. You know what triage is in the medical world, right? You walk
into a battlefield and there are people all over who are injured. The doctor first has to decide,
who do we treat first? So some of them are going to die, no matter what you do.
Some of them, you've got to get too quickly so they don't die. And some of them, with the headache,
they can go over here. Triage is deciding. which are the critical patients to address because if we
don't address them, they're going to die. Theological triage is deciding which are the critical
theological issues that have got to be addressed because if we don't address them, we're in
trouble. Dr. Mohler said it this way. He said, living in an age of widespread doctrinal denial and
intense theological confusion, thinking Christians must rise to the challenge of Christian
maturity, even in the midst of a theological emergency. We have to sort the issues with a trained
mind and a humble heart in order to protect what the Apostle Paul called the treasure that has been
entrusted to us, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We have to decide which
theological issues are critical and which ones aren't. So how do we decide which are the urgent
issues and which ones aren't? Well, that's what Gavin Ortlund's book is all about. Is baptism a
triage issue? Spiritual gifts a triage issue? What about roles of men and women in the church?
Is that a triage issue? And Ortlund, in addition, by the way,
in his book he's careful to say, I'm going to use these as case studies, not so that you agree with
my conclusion, but so that you see how to do triage. and you come up with the way to approach these
kinds of things. He says, I think there are four questions that will help you do theological triage
as you look at any given theological issue that you're contending for. First of all, how clear is
the Bible on this doctrine?
If you look at something in the Bible and say, this is a little confusing, then maybe that's not
the place to start to do theological triage on the hard, confusing things.
Alistair Begg likes to say, the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main
things. So the things that aren't plain aren't main. Stay with the plain.
How clear is it? Number two, what is this doctrine's importance to the gospel?
If we're talking about hierarchy of angels in the unseen world,
and whether there's a hierarchical difference between cherubim and seraphim, that's maybe not an
unimportant issue. We can look at what the Bible provides for clarity, but it probably doesn't
affect how a man is made right with God. It's probably not a gospel issue. If it's not central to
the gospel, maybe it's not something we spend a whole lot of time worrying about. Number three,
what is the testimony of the historic church concerning this doctrine? If all of a sudden your
interpretation of a Bible passage is new and novel and doesn't line up with what those who have
gone for the last 2,000 years understanding the Bible to mean on something, if it's a new and
novel interpretation, you ought to be careful.
That's not something that you need to be emphasizing as major and important.
And then finally, what is the effect of this doctrine on the church today? Again,
four pretty good... questions to do triage. Is this an issue where brothers and sisters in Christ
can legitimately disagree, come to a different conclusion about what the Bible teaches,
both of us believing the Word of God is true and saying, well, I think this means this, and
somebody else thinks, I think this means that, and we have that open debate but still remain
brothers? Or is this an issue where When we look at this, the Bible is clear and the church has
believed this for years and yet somebody is departing, that's when we need to start to raise the
red flag and say there may be an issue here. I like this thought about theological triage from
Kevin DeYoung. He says, we should steer clear of theological wrangling that is speculative,
that is it goes beyond what Scripture teaches, or vain, more about being right than about being
helpful, endless, no real answer is possible or desired,
or needless. It's mere semantics. Just a good test pattern again to say,
in my theological wrangling, am I dealing with things that are speculative, vain, endless, or
needless? And finally, this reminder from Gavin Ortlund on the importance of unity. He says,
the unity of the church was so valuable to Jesus that he died for it. If we really care about sound
theology, we should care about unity as well.
So those who would wrangle to try to get everybody all on the same page about non-essential issues
may be despoiling the unity of the church for something that is not a critical,
it's not the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
That's what we're going to be looking at in more depth as we continue through the book of Jude.
That's a lot we've gone through this morning, right? Take a deep breath, okay? There's a lot more
to unpack. We're going to wrap up here this morning. Just pray with me as we close. Father,
we thank you for your clear word. And Lord,
where it is clear, we want to believe it and proclaim it and contend for it.
And where it is not as clear, help us to be graceful.
Help us to be kind. In all that we do, Lord, help us to display the fruit of the Spirit as we
contend for the faith.
Lord, help us to represent you well and help us to keep the main thing the main thing. And I pray
this morning for Perry Bacon Jr. and for others like him who have left what they once believed or
maybe never believed, but I pray that they would see that rather than trying to align a church with
their principles, they need to be aligning their own lives with what you say is true.
Help that to be true for each one of us. And finally, Lord, I pray for anybody who's here today who
has, we went through those questions. Do you know what the Bible teaches? Do you believe what the
Bible teaches? Has it changed your life? Can you share it with others? Anybody who is here who
would say, I don't know that those things are true about me. I pray that your spirit would be at
work in their lives. that you would draw them to yourself, that they would recognize your love for
them, recognize what Christ has done for them, recognize their own nature as sinful,
their need for you to change their lives, to transform them.
I pray that you would do a saving work in this place, in our midst,
in their lives today. And I ask it in Jesus' name.