Jason Holopoulos (0:00)

A lot of people accuse Jude of just being heavy, of being absent of love, of being absent of grace. Well, to say that is just faulty and wrong. Jude is filled with the love and the grace of Christ and the hope of the Gospel. But he's going to speak a hard word because he's concerned.

Host (possibly R.C. Sproul or another Renewing Your Mind host) (0:27)

We cannot pick and choose what parts of the Bible to believe and which parts we can reject. As others have said, it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. And so today we continue our look into the book of Jude. A book filled with love, grace and the hope of the Gospel, yet with an urgent call to contend for the faith. Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing youg Mind. It's good to have you with us. Well, today our guest teacher will consider perhaps the two most well known verses in Jude. Here's Jason Holopoulos.

Jason Holopoulos (1:04)

All right, we're going to look at verses three and four. I promise we're not going to go through every single verse like this. But those first two set the tone for the book and letting them know who they are in Christ. And now three and four, we're going to see the meat of what he's trying to get at. So I want to read those together as we work our way through them. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I find it necessary to write appealing to you, to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 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. He begins, if you'll note there in verse three, he begins with a confession. This isn't what he wanted to write to them about. He says he wanted to write to them about our common salvation. There were things that he wanted to write about, but this was the thing he felt like he needed to write to them about. As a preacher, there are some things I like to preach a lot more than other things in the Bible. I like to preach a good gospel narrative. Give me just Christ up front, and that delights me as a preacher. There are other texts that are a little harder to preach and have a hard word in them, and yet I still preach them. Why? Because it's necessary. It's necessary. And he sees that there is necessity here. And a lot of people don't like the book of Jude for this reason. It's not just that Jude is kind of tucked in there in our Bibles. Before you to the exciting revelation that it gets looked over. It's not just because there's some odd things as we're going to see as we get further in this book that we're going to have to wrestle through. But a lot of people accuse Jude of just being heavy, of being absent of love, of being absent of grace. Well, I think you only have to return back to our introduction in the first lesson or go to the end as we will see the benediction to say that that is just faulty and wrong. Jude is filled with the love and the grace of Christ and the hope of the gospel. But he's going to speak a hard word because he's concerned there's something that is before him, that he is concerned for these churches that he is writing to. He feels compelled to write to them. In fact, this letter finds its entire reason in these two verses in 3 and 4. My favorite city in the world is Edinburgh, Scotland. Love Edinburgh. I feel like if you could take Chicago style pizza and put it in Edinburgh, it becomes the best place in the universe, maybe. But I love Edinburgh because it is. It's a clean city. There's a lot of things to do. It's the old and the new just kind of colliding there. And what I especially like is the old. I love to walk around the city and look at all the different architecture. What I especially love is the history. And what I especially love about the history is the old Presbyterian history. And it seems like as you walk through old Scotland, you can't go a block, literally a block, without there being some massive stone old Presbyterian church on every corner, every one. And I walk through Edinburgh and it just delights me because I can do it with a number of those churches where I can point at that church and I can, ah, this pastor served in that church back when, or this missionary was sent out from that church back then. And it just delights me to think about that rich history. It also incredibly demoralizes me as I walk through Edinburgh because most of those churches are no longer churches. They become community centers, they become nonprofits. Some of them are just boarded up. And it didn't just happen. That's Jude's concern here, that this could happen to these churches. He gives us the cause for his letter in verse 4. Ungodly teachers teach in error. He gives us the purpose of the letter in verse 3. Contend for the faith. And his overriding concern is he doesn't want these churches lost by this ungodly, false, heretical, divisive teaching. So let's walk through that. His overriding concern is he doesn't want these churches lost. So let's consider the cause of this letter. Ungodly teachers, teaching error. They were doing two things. If you look there in verse four, they were perverting the grace of our God into sensuality. And second, they were denying Jesus Christ as master and Lord. So first, they were perverting the grace of God into sensuality. That is, they were living as if there was no moral law for the Christian life. They were what we will call in theological circles antinomians. They were anti namas, anti against namas. The law. They were against the law. They believed because they had received the grace of Christ that they could live any way that they wanted to live. We'll know that in the Christian life the law leads us to grace and the grace of Christ leads us back to the law. Not to earn favor with God now that we have the grace of Christ, but rather now because I have the grace of Christ, I could not fulfill the law. So I'm led to grace. I know that I can't do the things that God has prescribed for me. I have inability because of my fallenness in Adam. And so I need grace. He has to call me because I am beloved, right? And now that I am in that grace of Christ, now I am led back to the law, desiring to live according to the law out of thanksgiving and praise and glory to him. And this, these false teachers, they were denying. And by doing this, they were denying the faith. Why? Because our faith requires living to the praise and requires living to the glory of Christ. I'm a slave of Christ. My life is now about Christ. It is now to be lived as a living sacrifice to Christ. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do due to the glory of God. The apostle says, as Jude says here, this grace we have received is from our God. He's our God and we're his people. I'm just not my own anymore. And that may be especially why Jude begins the letter that way. Slave of Jesus Christ. They see themselves as not only antinomians against the law, but they also see themselves as independent of Christ. As we're going to see. Jude is telling them this is false teaching of the deadliest kind. If you're saved by the grace of God, you're saved to live for God. Charles Spurgeon once said it this way. He said, what the law demands of us, the gospel produces in us. Elsars is no gospel at all. And theirs was no gospel at All I remember when this first hit me, I was in college. I was a freshman. I went to university as an atheist, an avowed atheist, and was a very committed atheist. And I was invited by some Christian students to come to a Christian fellowship. And I had promised a friend back home before I went off to school that fall that I would attend it one time. And she called a couple of upperclassmen who called me every single day for the first week of school, said he promised me. And so they hounded me, but it was really the hound of heaven that had me in his eyes. And so I finally, just to fulfill that promise, I went to this Christian fellowship. And I sat there under the word. And it was a day that I was in a college dorm room. All the guys on my floor were. Were together in this college dorm room. And I was feeling pretty good about myself this day because I had new red wing boots. Oh, they were lovely, manly, lovely, manly, lovely. And I loved them and was so proud to be wearing them. And a guy in that crowded room, he stomped on my boots and jokingly, I pushed him. Well, he didn't receive it as a joke. And he turned around and he launched me across the room. And I turned around and I pulled back my arm with a fist, ready to clock him. And I heard all the guys in the room yell, punch him. Punch him. And I remember the thought going through my mind, Jesus would not have me do this. And I put my arm down and they're yelling, punch him. Punch him. I remember walking out of the room, walking down the dorm hallway with a smile on my face. And I had a smile on my face because I was thinking I just might be a Christian. I understood I'm not my own. It looks different. There's an ethic that comes with the Christian life. I now belong to another. These false teachers were teaching something different. They were antinomians. Live any way you want to. No, not in Christ. The second thing they were doing as we referenced, is that they were promoting a kind of independency. They were not only antinomians, they were also independents. Not only against the law, but they were just, frankly against being ruled. No one is going to rule over me. Jude says. Second, they deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. They liked the idea of Christ being their Savior. They didn't want him as their master and Lord. And this error is committed over and over and over again throughout church history. Want Christ as savior. Want the safety of being hid in Christ? Want the assurity of being covered over by that blood. But I'm still my own. I'm still in charge of me. I yield to no one. That is not the gospel. They're teaching a false gospel. Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11. Right. Beautiful passage. One of my favorite, probably the first that ever warmed my heart. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. And we often stop there. But he doesn't stop there when he says that. He continues on and he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. You come to him and you receive rest. But now that you have received that rest, you have taken his yoke upon you. And you're following after him. You're walking after him. You're seeking to become more like the one you love by his grace, by his strength. But this is what it looks like to be a Christian. And so he is correcting this error that he speaks of them teaching in these churches. We come to Christ as Savior, and we yield to him as our Master and Lord. This was the cause for the letter. Ungodly teachers, teaching error, antinomianism and independency. Now, second, what I want to look at is the purpose of this letter. Look back to verse three. Jude charges this. He says, contend for the faith. In Jude's mind, it's not simply enough just to have the faith. He says, you must also contend for. For the faith. Well, what is the faith here? Jude is not speaking about having faith. He's not speaking about expressing faith. He's not even speaking about living in faith. Rather, there's an article there. The he's speaking about the faith, our beliefs. This. He's saying you must contend for contenders. What does that mean, to contend? The Greek word very much sounds like our English word, agonize. And that's the idea. You're agonizing over it. You're striving for it, you're fighting for it, contending for the faith. Judah is saying, look, there are things that are worth fighting for. There are things worth contending for. And this is worth fighting for. This faith, once delivered to the saints. Think even back at this time, in the early 60s in the church probably when this letter was written, even then there was a corpus to the faith. There was a core to what they believed. And Jude is saying that this we have to safeguard, we have to keep. They were perverting this, this faith, as he says, once for all, delivered to the saints. And we'll find this throughout the Scriptures, throughout the New Testament in these early years, even in the church, that there are early confessions of the faith. There's a core to the faith. Paul will Write this in 1 Timothy 1:15. The statement is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He's referencing some words that others were already using, and he references them as the core of the faith. This must be believed. Many scholars believe Philippians 2, that great Kenosis passage, verses 5 through 10, is an early creed of the church. It does it in kind of a rhythmic version of putting all these things together, the incarnation and the life of Christ and the death of Christ and the glorification of Christ. It seems to be an early creed in the church summarizing the early Christian faith. Or First Corinthians 15, where Paul is saying, this is of the most importance. And then he details what is of the most importance. Well, this is what Jude is saying. There is the faith. There is something that we must contend for, and they are denying the faith. If you think about this with me, the faith, it can be denied by subtraction and it can be denied by addition. And both of those things have to be contended against. If we just think about this biblically, there are those biblically that denied the faith by subtraction. So you think about the erring, the Corinth Corinthian Church there, where they're denying the resurrection. That's subtracting from the faith. Well, you think about adding to the faith. You think about the Galatian heresy they're trying to add to the faith with putting circumcision as a requirement upon someone for coming to Christ. That's subtracting and there is adding. If we think historically, we will see it time and again that there is subtraction by denying the sufficiency of Scripture or the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ. Or we could think of a biblical view of sexuality. Or if we think of addition, you have it with prayers to the saints or the need to walk down an aisle or to pray a specific prayer. The faith has to be contended for. Anything that would subtract from it, anything that would add to it has to be fought against. That's worth fighting for. He's saying now it never happens in a void. This is what I want to warn us about and think about. It's not happening in a void here either. There is always a reason for adding or subtracting to the Faith, there's always a reason, and usually it is because we are trying to make it more palatable in our day and age. So take away that which is offensive or add that which might allure, and this is usually the error of liberalism. There's the other end of the spectrum, though, too, where we add or we take away because we think the church needs to withstand cultural pressures. And the only way the church and the gospel can withstand cultural pressures is, is by adding or taking away. And this is the era of legalistic fundamentalism. Whether it is on behalf of liberalism or legalistic fundamentalism, whether it is to make it more palatable to the culture we live in or to make it stand more in our view, in the culture we live in, it's doing damage to the faith. And that can't be. It has to be contended against, fought against. Jude is clear. This faith was, he says, was delivered once for all. There's finality. It's done. You can't adjust this thing. You can't make it something else. It's not a wax nose that you get to shape into the way that you want it to be. It already is. It's once delivered for all. And what he is saying to these churches he's writing to and he's saying to us today, it's not enough just to have faith, you also have to contend for the faith. Both are necessary, otherwise the church will be lost. Paul echoes these same things. I'll think through a few verses here. 2 Timothy, he says, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. And Paul calls it the pattern of the sound words that you've heard from me. He says, this faith that you receive from your mother and grandmother, Eunice and Lois, you're to fight for this. Keep this, safeguard this, guard this. We're in Jude's words, contend for this. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul tells Timothy that he has been entrusted with this ministry of the gospel in Ephesus, this ministry where Paul tells Timothy he is to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. We've been entrusted with this. It is in our generation, because the generations before us kept it. They contended for it. You know that some many lost their lives for it. And now it's our generation's responsibility to contend for the faith once for all, delivered to the saints. It can't be shared if it's not safeguarded. That's his concern. When I was a little boy, elementary age, my grandfather said, jason, I want to share a secret with you. And I was very excited. He took me up to his bedroom and he took me to his closet and he said, let's kneel. Okay? So we knelt in front of his closet. He reached in the very back of the closet and he said, do you see this dress shoe that I'm getting? I said, yes. He pulled out one dress shoe. He said, you see, it's the right dress shoe. I said, yes. And he put it before me and he said, now stick your hand in there. I stuck my hand in the dress shoe, pulled it out, and it was a wad of money. He was a child of the Depression. He didn't trust banks. So he was going to hide his money in a shoe in his closet. He said, now, this is our secret. You can't tell anybody who always kept money in that shoe. Guard this, Jason. This is our family's money. This is our family's great jewel, the gospel. But we don't keep it a secret. We have to guard it so we can share it so that it keeps going on generation after generation after generation. And so our churches, our homes, don't look like Edinburgh today. There are things worth contending for. The faith is chief among those things.