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Before we begin today's episode of Renewing youg Mind, we invite you to stay with us through the end of the program to hear how you can request today's featured resource from Ligonier Ministries.
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You got to contend for the faith. This is a faith we can't lose. You can't allow false teachers to take you away from Christ.
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Why?
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Because the same Jesus who delivers also is coming to destroy. There will be judgment. And this is the faith, the faith that saves.
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Hello and welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing youg Mind. This week we have looked at warnings found in the book of Jude about what happens if we do not contend for the faith. So what does it look like to contend for the faith once for all, delivered to the saints? Here's Reverend Jason Holopoulos.
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So let's just do a little bit of review before we get where he's going to bring things to them as to what they are to do and what he wants them actually concerning themselves with. So remember that there are false teachers that have infiltrated the church and they are antinomians. That is they are against the law. They are teaching. Look, you're saved by grace. It doesn't matter how you live. The other is that they were independent, weren't recognizing that Christ is master and Lord as well as our Savior. And so he is telling these recipients of letter, you got to contend for the faith. This is a faith we can't lose. You can't allow these false teachers to take you away from Christ. We contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Why? Because the same Jesus who delivers also is coming to destroy. There will be judgment. And this is the faith, the faith that saves. So let's contend for this, cling to this. What we're going to see in our passage in this lesson, and we're going to look at verses 17 through 21, is he's going to offer one more concern and then he's going to give them marching orders. Okay? And we're going to look at that together. So let me read verses 17 through 21 for us. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you in the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal Life. If you think back to a couple of lessons ago, I gave you warnings about what it should look like not to contend for the faith. Well, now what Jude is doing is he's telling us what it should look like. What does it look like for you to actually contend for the faith? How do you do this? He begins, though, by referencing. He's calling to their remembrance. Again, remember, he has told these stories to call to their remembrance. He's told them about these individuals to call to their remembrance the judgment of God. Now he's calling to their remembrance what the apostles have written. He begins, and he says the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's generally stating that the apostles warned about this. They said that this was going to happen, just generally. And what is it that they said would happen? That there would be scoffers of the Gospel who follow their own ungodly passions in the last days. And as Jude is writing, he is writing to the church in the last days. Ever since the coming of Christ and his ascension to the right hand of the Father, we live in the last days. So it was a word for them. It's a word for us. And he's warning them, this is how you are to contend. Contend against. And he wants them to contend against these scoffers. And he wants them to be on guard that they themselves. And we could say to ourselves that we are not scoffers. Now, I want you to look at the grammar here, because it matters. Notice the order. In the last time there will be scoffers. Now look at the dependent clause. Following their own ungodly passions. The dependent clause there. It's a causal clause, I.e. it causes it so. Their ungodly passions cause them to be scoffers. And as scoffers they cause divisions. So let's see the order here. Ungodly passions rule them. That ruling passion leads them to become scoffers. And that scoffing causes divisions. Or we could do it in the reverse. Why are there divisions? Because there are scoffers. Why are there scoffers? Because they are ruled by ungodly passions. Interestingly, James will say the exact same thing in James 4. He'll say, why is it that there are conflicts among you? It's. Is it not because your passions rule you. And this is always true. Whether it's divisions in the church as Jude is writing to, whether it's division in our marriages, whether it's divisions in our homes, whether it's division with friends, it's because passions are at rule in us and they've trumped our love for others, often our loves for truth. What he wants him to be on guard against is these passions. He's saying, look, people don't reject the Bible because they believe it is false. Objectively, that doesn't happen. People object the truth of the Scriptures subjectively, that is, it isn't just because of cognitive dissidence. It isn't just because it logically doesn't make sense to them. No, it's subjective. There's something else that rules us. We are passionate about something else. And we will not accept the truth of the Scriptures because it invades upon that domain. It requires us to give up that passion. We don't want to lose that thing. And that is what he is arguing is happening with them. We reject truth because we don't want to reject our ungodly passion. I've seen this over and over as a pastor. Some of the absolute hardest conversations I've ever had as a pastor is with people that you can see them. They are steeped in sin. There is a passion that has overruled them, and they are headed headlong into destruction. And you warn them and they refuse to repent. And you can see them just headed over the cliff with their spiritual life. And I've said to a few people over the 20 plus years of ministry, I've said this thing, I've said, listen, the fact that you're not repenting. Now, there's only two possibilities. It's either one that the Lord chases you and the pain that you're going to have to go through for him to bring you back. It's going to be horrific. And that grieves me for your soul. It's going to be very hard. The second, though is even worse, is that the Lord doesn't pursue you. You're just giving up to this. This passion that has such a rule on them that they're willing to yield their entire lives to it, their eternal lives to it. It's ruling them. Let's stop here, though. Let's consider this, that it's not just ungodly things that can control our passions. It can be godly things. Godly things are good things that become ungodly passions. It happens regularly. People in the church become passionate about this or that doctrine, or this or that ministry, or this or that thing. It's often good. But then it begins to overshadow Christ, our adversary. He's no dummy. He's happy for you to be passionate about good things. As long as it is a passion that overshadows Christ. If he can get you to be passionate about this thing in an inordinate way to where Christ, you're just a degree off of Christ, you're two degrees off of Christ. For me to live is no longer Christ. It's this. He's happy for you to be passionate about it. So we have to be on guard. What happens when we be compassionate, even about good things, is that we begin to demand others make this thing number one as well. We will begin to judge them harshly, and we will cause division. This was happening in the church or the churches that Jude is writing to, remember. My wife and I, we had moved a number of years. It was probably 15 years after we were first married. I had come to Faith in college and then decided to go off to seminary. Just wanted to learn the Bible. That's the only reason I went. There was a campus pastor that I came to Faith under. And about 10 years, 15 years after we were married, I was in a basement of a duplex we were renting. And there was a box, and it was still sealed. And so we had moved this. I don't know, we'd probably moved seven times by that point. And just never opened this box. We just moved the box. So I opened the box and I started sifting through the box. And I found this envelope that was sealed, and it was from that campus pastor. And so I opened it up, and it was a reference that he had written for me for seminary that I guess I just never turned in. And he wrote in that reference, he said, jason becomes excited about things and thinks everybody else needs to be equally excited about them. That was his critique of me, and it was right. I was passionate about it. You got to be as passionate as I am about it. There was a family that I was told about once that they were passionate about the regulative principle. That's good. I'm passionate about the regular principle. You should be passionate about the regular principle. That our worship is to be regulated by the word of God. And for them, they went down the road of believing that we should be exclusive. Psalmists only sing the Psalms in worship. I don't believe that's what the Scriptures teach. I understand that's how they got there, and that's where they were at. But that became for them everything. I was told that they would show up to a church and worship. That was an exclusive solemnity. And they would pick up a community newspaper on the way in. And when everybody else was singing, they would open up the newspaper and read in Worship. And what happened? It was a good thing. Be concerned about the regular principle that it is only God that should dictate what you and I do in worship. So that all of our consciences are free in worship. So that we don't distract one another in worship. And what are they doing? They're walking into worship. And they're holding up newspapers and distracting everybody in worship. A good thing that has become an ungood thing. Our passions begin to rule us. When my passion for the thing outpaces the importance of the thing itself. By placing it above the gospel. Or placing it above my brothers and sisters in Christ, it causes disunity. And I will begin to scoff. I'll begin to scoff against the church. I'll begin to scoff against the truth. And that's what's happening in Jude. So be on guard. Be on guard that you are not a scoffer. That means that each of us has to tend to the garden of our own hearts. You got to be weeding those things out, ripping those weeds out. For the sake of yourself and for the sake of the church. We each have responsibility here. Be on guard. Keep watch over your passions. Now, Jude makes it clear to us how we contend for the faith. He gives us marching orders. Now, you have to understand the grammar again to see what he emphasizes. The reality is that Jude has one marching order. And he has three charges that flow from it. One imperative, and then he gives us three participles for the way that it is going to be fulfilled. So the imperative is, keep yourselves in the love of God. How do you contend for the faith? This is his great concern, right? How do you contend for the faith? Well, you contend for the faith by keeping yourself in the love of God. Well, how do you do that? Three, building yourselves up in the most holy faith. Second, praying in the Holy Spirit. And third, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's walk through that one way. Keep yourselves in the love of God. That's how you contend for the faith. Three charges, and we'll walk through those. The way to contend for the faith is that we keep ourselves in the love of God. Now, Jesus made it clear. He made this clear in John 14. He said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Remember again, they are antinomians, these false teachers. They're saying, you can live any way you want to. And Jude say, no, that's not the case. You have to keep yourself in the love of God. There's effort that has to be exerted Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, Jesus says, it is he who loves me. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And remember, this is what Jude has been doing, has been walking through all of these that did not keep to God's word. They did not trust God. And so he led us through those who abandoned this word. Fallen angels, Cain, Balaam, Korah. We are to humble ourselves under the Word. And as we humble ourselves under the Word, we keep ourselves in the love of God. But then I want you to remember Jude's so good at this. This is one of the reasons this book is so incredibly important, because it's short and it does both of these things. He's saying, look, you have to keep yourself in the love of God. And yet, how did he begin the book? You are called beloved in God the Father and kept in Christ Jesus. Keep yourselves in the love of God. You're kept in Christ Jesus. Now, how do you put these two things together? How do you do that? I believe what the Scriptures teach, what we often say in Reformed theology, the perseverance of the saints. Love that. I think that is what the Scriptures teach. There will be some that say, well, let's call it the preservation of the saints. I don't like that. Some say, well, it's once saved, always saved. I don't like that. Are both of those true? In a sense? Yes, they're true in a sense. Is it true that God preserves us? Absolutely. Is it true that those who are saved will be saved? That is true. But the perseverance of the saints is the teaching of the Scriptures. That is, that even as God keeps us, he keeps us. We never deny that. He also requires that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So as I like to say, I'm a Calvinist, but a Calvinist who sweats. Not that I'm worried about my eternal life or whether I will be in heaven someday, but rather that I am to work out my salvation. I'm to put effort, I'm to strive, I'm to fight, I'm to contend all biblical language. This is biblical Christianity. This is contending for the faith, keeping the love of God, even as I am kept in the love of God. The illustration that often goes through my mind is my boy, who is now 16, not so much a boy anymore, but when he was three years old, I was a church planter at the time, was planting a church, starting a church. And so we rented a little elementary school and we would have to set up and tear down every week. So you have to set up all the chairs and you got to tear down all the chairs. And so every week what I would do is I had all the Bibles and all the hymnals for our little church plant. I put in a box and I had that box in my trunk. And I can remember regularly my little 3 year old son saying, daddy, I want to carry in the box. It's a heavy box. And so I would say, well, of course, son. And he would put out his arms and I would take that box out of the trunk and I would put that box in his arms, but my arms would be under his arms. And he would walk into the church and I would waddle into the church behind him and I would give him just enough of the weight of the box so that his little muscles were straining and he could feel the weight of it. Now there was no doubt that box was going to get in because his father had the box and he would get in and every week he would say, daddy, I carried in the box. You did and you didn't. I did. God can do it himself, but he chooses to have you. And I strain in this. And no doubt when we finish that end line someday and we are in eternity and we have finished our race, we say, oh, it was good to have finished the race. I kept the faith and all the while will know he kept me in the faith. He brought me a cross. He keeps us even as we keep ourselves. We strive to keep ourselves in the love of God. We strain with all our being and he keeps us. Contend for the faith by keeping yourselves in the love of God. Now, three charges that flow from this. As they contend for the faith, they are to keep themselves in the love of God by three things. First, building yourselves up in the most holy faith. How do you contend? By fighting those ungodly passions in you and others. By building yourselves up. A growing Christian. As a godly Christian, we are to grow in our knowledge of the faith. That means you are to grow in your mind. You are to understand more and more of the word of God so that you keep your passions in check, so that you're not led off by false teachers. And even the greatest Christian minds in the history of the church have had to continue to grow. Every single one.
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Why?
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Because it's impossible for your finite and my finite minds to grasp the infinite. There is always more growth to happen. But it's not just that we're to grow in our mind. We're to grow experientially we're to grow in our walking in Christ. We're to grow in our understanding of Christ. We are to delight in what he delights in. We are to hope more in what he has given us hope in. We are to hate more what he hates. There is an experiential growth. You are to continually be growing in Christ. There's a live in a little town outside of kind of the main town that pastor in. And a couple of years ago, they were putting up a new apartment complex, and I was so excited to watch it. They. They laid the foundation, and that got me excited. And then a couple of weeks later, they put some walls up and, oh, I was incredibly excited. And then it just stopped for two years. And what had so much potential and what was so exciting all of a sudden became an eyesore in our little town. It's an eyesore of a Christian that has all kinds of potential but doesn't keep growing. They keep growing. I have some ladies in the congregation that I serve in. They are in their 80s, and we are on the campus, right on the campus of Michigan State University, 50,000 college students. They're in their late 70s, early 80s, and they have started going on campus every week. And they set up a little table where they are offering prayer for students. And it's their way of going out and evangelizing. And to every single one of them, to a person, they would say, we're not evangelists. We've never felt comfortable evangelizing. So what are they doing? They're going out together to grow. In evangelism in the late 70s and 80s, we're to be growing, building yourselves up in the holy faith. Second, he charges us to pray in the Holy Spirit. Jude has already made it clear that these false teachers, they are devoid of the Holy Spirit. And here's the truth. You cannot pray apart from the Spirit. And so he's reminding these congregants that you are to pray. You have the spirit. You are to continually be praying. So, contending for the faith, keep yourselves in the love of God. It isn't mysterious. He's saying, look, how do you do this? In a very real sense, this Christian life, It's not very complex. It's filled with the Word, Keep building yourselves up, and it's filled with prayer. You're to have your nose in the Bibles, and you have your knees bent in prayer. This is what it looks like. And then lastly, third, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are growing, but we never reach completion. We are praying, but we always don't see the answers to our prayers. So we do all of this with hope. We wait. We continue to wait and hope for the mercy of our Lord. These false teachers want things to be realized now. No. You keep waiting in hope. Keep building yourselves up. Keep praying and keep waiting. This may be the hardest spiritual discipline. Just keep waiting in Christ because he's returning, as Judas said over and over. And when he returns, we will never regret having held on to this faith. We'll never regret the sacrifices that we've made for this faith, will never regret having contended for this faith. No. He says here at the end of our little passage in this lesson, he says that the Lord will present us with joy. Joy. He has joy over us. Keep yourselves in the love of God. This is how you contend. Keep yourselves building yourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, waiting for the mercy of God. And then he goes into that doxology and saying, look, the Lord is going to present you with great joy before his throne. This is a faith worth contending for. Building yourself in, up in praying and waiting on the Lord's return.
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Our faith is worth contending for. You've been listening to guest teacher Jason Holopoulos as we have explored the brief New Testament Book of Jude. If you'd like Lifetime Digital Access plus a DVD and study guide of Contending for the the Book of Jude, simply call us at 800-435-4343 with a donation in support of Renewing youg Mind or give your gift@renewingyourmind.org well, tomorrow R.C. sproul looks at the role of God's law in the life of a Christian. So I hope you'll join us tomorrow here on Renewing youg Mind.