Introduction
In a scene in the movie We Were Soldiers we see Sgt. Major Plumley standing tall amongst many wounded and one non-combatant journalist. He tosses that journalist an M16 and ammo. He stays standing tall and ready for the charge that is coming from the Vietnamese.
He only has a 45 caliber 1911 side arm that only holds around 7 rounds. He never flinches and never yields. He continually is moving amongst the men firing and standing strong in the face of immense danger.
But before this attack hits while all you can hear is the whistle calls and see a few faint Vietnamese soldiers coming forward he famously says, “Gentlemen prepare to defend yourselves.” Then things get real dicey for a while. Yet he stood tall and did not weaken or give in. He fought and so did they.
He knew that the soldiers had been trained because he was one who trained them. He knew they knew what to do. He knew he was standing with men who would fight. He knew that they all had a common goal and it did not matter who the man next to them was, they were there to win and survive and it took all of them for this to happen.
Those men were prepared to defend themselves. They had been trained and equipped to defend. Many in the church today are not prepared. They believe and are saved yet they are not prepared to stand strong knowing they have what it takes to win.
Many become confused and feel as if they are wrong or that God has abandoned them only to then settle into a belief that there is not a God. The sad thing is that many leaders in the church are the ones who cause people to come to this conclusion.
Take for example a woman named Alisa Childers. She wrote a book called Another Gospel, and I think all of us here should read this work. In it she speaks of how her pastor then was teaching a “seminary” type class that would take 3-4 years to go through. In this class he taught how the Bible was not true but only a good story to follow and act like. That and that one can live how they want to basically because God is love.
Many were deceived in the class it caused her much grief too. It took her a long time to come to grips with what was taught and reorient herself back to the true word and teaching of the Lord.
She was unprepared to face the attacks that came. She was not like those soldiers were. She was not Prepared to Defend Herself.
This book we will study through for the rest of January is all about us contending for the faith and defending the truth of Christianity.
Jude develops this magnificent opening of how we are kept in Christ and that we must defend against the enemies of the Lord.
This brief book has so much in it for us and it could have been written yesterday it is so relevant for the world now.
So let us look at Jude 1-4
1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. 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. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Jude 1–4 ESV
We see that we are…
The Army (1-3)
We are the Army. That is everyone who has ever believed in Christ. We are beloved by God and kept for Christ and as such we are called.
In our calling we must stand for the truth and what is right. We cannot waver or weaken on this.
We are soldiers in a war that is going on everywhere. It truly is a world war.
Jude here places himself right along with all of us when he says he is a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. He was the brother of Jesus Christ too but he knows that he is indebted to Him as much as the rest of us are.
He is humble and not arrogant in this introduction. He knows that arrogance does nothing but cause problems. He identified with the church then as one of them and not anything more than them.
He prays for mercy, peace, and love to be multiplied to them and by proxy us.
This is the method for which we wage war. We do not go out guns blazing taking on the enemy as the soldiers from We Were Soldiers did, or any soldier from any war.
We do our warfare through mercy and love and peaceful interactions. This does not mean we shy away from difficult situations and hard discussions. No, we engage but with grace and love. That is why Jude prayed for that to be multiplied to us.
We can have courage in this war because we are beloved in God the Father and kept for Christ Jesus.
We are secure and because of this nothing can separate us or remove us from this. If we die then we are in the presence of our savior at that moment.
This is not a deterrent for us but something that should embolden us to serve the Lord. This world cannot do anything to us of eternal harm and that is motivation.
We are God’s in Christ and as such we can push forward and move on without fear or anxiety.
Just like the man from the opening story. Sgt. Major Plumley stood and showed great courage in the battle of Ia Drang. He charged up and down the battle lines encouraging by his fearlessness and organizing his men for the battle. He stood and moved when others were wanting to take cover. He showed no fear in the face of extreme danger and struggle. That is how we can be as believers when we know that we are kept for Christ that we are in Christ and cannot be separated from Him.
We can defend or contend for the faith when we know this.
Verse three tells us that Jude wanted to write about the common salvation held by him and other believers. He could not do so because of the urgency of the appeal to defend the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
Not only does Jude’s opening lines give encouragement to have no fear but it is also to demonstrate that we are to do this as one together. We are to “with one mind strive together for the faith.”
Much like Paul wrote in Phil. 1:27
27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
Philippians 1:27 ESV
With one mind. When we are together just imagine what we could do for the faith. That is what the military and coaches in sports strive to get their soldiers or athletes to be: one mind together.
John Wesley has famously said,
Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.
This is what can happen if we are all of one mind together and striving for the same thing. We as believers are on the same team. We need to work together and not be like the young child who takes the basketball to the other teams goal. Or be like the football player who is running towards the other teams end zone.
We need to strive together because there is only one faith that has been delivered once for all to the saints.
It is the true faith and it is the only faith that saves. It is faith alone in Christ alone. Nothing else saves and nothing else is the faith. This faith is that Christ died for sinners 1 Tim. 1:15
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
1 Timothy 1:15 ESV
1 Corinthians 15:1-4 tells us that Christ was crucified, was buried, and was resurrected for the forgiveness of our sins.
John 14:6 tells us that Jesus is the only way to the Father. That is the one faith and anyone who holds to that and that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone are on the same team as we are.
We are together as one because there is Eph 4:5-6
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:5–6 ESV
This is the faith we must defend and stand for. It is of the utmost importance. Only around 6% of the of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.
This means that many who claim to be Christian are either not saved, or they do not have knowledge of what Scripture teaches. We need to know what God has said and what God desires if we are to contend for the faith and have mercy, love, and peace for those who are against us.
Some of these people are on the outside looking in but some of them have crept into the church. Some are sitting in pews and chairs every Sunday. Some of them are behind the pulpit in many churches today.
It is these we must be on the lookout for.
They are…
The Enemy(4)
Certain people have crept in unnoticed. Unnoticed. That is sad that people can creep into the church and not be noticed. Yes, we are to accept anyone through the doors and share truth with them but we must exercise discernment with them before we allow them any chance to spread false teachings.
That is why it is so important that we know the one faith and know how to discern what is wrong. People will creep in and be so close to the truth that it sounds correct but be so far off of what is true it is unreal.
These people Jude says are perverting the grace of God. This means they are altering or changing the condition of His grace.
This can be in someone saying all religions are all worshipping the same God. That homosexuality is okay and not a sin. That premarital sex is fine as long as you are in Love. This is what is meant by the sensuality that Jude wrote of.
That word means lack of constraint. It violates all bounds of what is socially acceptable. Simply put, people ignore God and do what they please.
We see this with the world and understand they are living how they are, sinners in sin without Christ. We pray for them and show love and mercy with them because they are lost and only doing what lost people do, but we take truth to them.
These Jude wrote of were in the church and were wrecking the church. Much like the pastor of Alisa Childers. He was a pastor and he was teaching this junk and saying it was correct.
These people who do this are denying Jesus. They are teaching against what He taught and still teaches. Jesus said we were to find God and salvation through Him alone. A man and woman were to marry not man and man or woman or woman. He also said God created them Male and Female, not that and dozens of other genders.
These people who are saying they are the true loving and caring people are the ones who are opening the door on a balcony that goes to a thousand foot fall saying right through here you find life.
They are deceiving many and many are falling for it. They are those who do not take the Word of God for what it says. They do not follow the statement of:
If the plain sense makes good sense seek no other sense lest you wind up with nonsense.
They take what the word says and try and make it mean what they want it to mean and they say that is fine because the word is to be defined by the reader not the author.
Jude is warning us about these people and saying to be on guard against them. The only way to be on guard against them is to know what God has said and learn how it all weaves together. We must know His word but we also must know outside arguments so we can contend for the faith that has been once for all delivered to the saints.
We must defend and stand strong together for the faith. The world is falling down around us and what are we doing? Mostly complaining but have we went and contended for the faith? Meaning that we have exerted intense effort on behalf of it.
Atheism is growing and becoming more prominent.
Progressive christianity is becoming the en vogue thing today. They pervert the faith with their nonsense that Jesus is nothing but love and we can love who we want how we want because that is what Jesus did and wants of us.
They reject that Jesus is the only way. They make coexist bumper stickers and shirts that mingle all religions. It is sickening and almost makes me vomit every time I see one.
But, when we do contend we do not come across as a soldier who is fighting for our lives and just seek to demolish our opponent. No, we must show mercy and love to them and have patience. We must love them enough to share the truth with them and be ready to be rejected and laughed at. But, some may believe. That is what matters.
Our feelings do not matter. Our comfort does not matter. We are soldiers in this spiritual war and we must advance and charge ahead at all costs. This is contending for the faith. We do this because as we will see next week a severe judgment awaits those who do not change or believe.
Conclusion
It is clear that we are in a battle for the faith. It is clearer now than ever. People are ignoring biological facts for “Science.”
People only believe what they want to believe. They make the rules up as they go. We have this in the church. Many people are saying that they are, through research, discovering more nuance in the text that what it says.
They are applying things to it that do not work on that and coming away with distorted and convoluted views and interpretations.
We must stand firm for the Lord but always be loving and gracious. We cannot allow error in but we must not seek to destroy the people that carry the message.
We do defend the faith with vigor and passion but also with truth and love. If we ever leave love out we have failed completely. This is why Jude prayed for Mercy , Peace, and Love to be multiplied to the readers.
We need this as much as they did then. We need to stand firm but love too. Christ is worth more than this nation is and we will stand strong and fast for this nation in a moments notice. If we can do that, we can stand up for our Savior also.
