CONTEND FOR THE GOSPEL TRUTH

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,

To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude 1:1-4

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

After our study of the three letters of John, who also penned one of the four Gospels, we come to a letter from Jude, who the scriptures tell us was “a brother of James” which means that he wasn’t just a “servant of Jesus” but his half-brother as well like James was. It’s likely that Jude didn’t identify with Jesus from a sibling perspective out of humility.

As we’re going to see throughout the 25 verses of this short letter, Jude intends to warn his readers about the abandonment of the faith and disaffection with Jesus and the Gospel in the end times. As we will see in today’s passage from the opening verses, this apostasy will begin through false teachers and prophets who will infiltrate the Christian church.

Let’s look again at the opening four verses which form the foundation for our message today. There, Jude writes:

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,

To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Here, we find that Jude is writing to “those who have been called” and are “loved in God the Father and kept for Christ Jesus”. This tells us his target audience was fellow Christian believers and given the multitude of Old Testament references we find through the rest of the letter, we can have some confidence that the believers were converted Jews.

Note that Jude really wished he could spend his time writing “about the salvation” he shared with his readers but felt there was a greater urgency to exhort his brothers and sisters in Christ to “contend for the faith that was once entrusted to God’s holy people”.

Now, when someone is in contention for something, especially from a sports perspective, they are competing against someone or some team with the intent of winning. No one truly contends for something with an intent to lose and Jude writes with this fully in mind.

So who or what was the opposition to the Gospel and the sanctity of the Christian church and its believers?

Jude tells us in verse 4.

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jesus would often discuss attempts to corrupt His teachings by using an analogy entered on yeast and dough, common food items that His listeners could relate to. In the first verse of Luke, chapter 12, we find our Savior issue this warning:

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to His disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

In their hearts, the Pharisees, who along with the Sadducees were the Jewish religious authorities of the day, were absolutely opposed to the Gospel and advent of Christianity, a movement they often referred to as The Way. Jesus, know their hearts, warned His listeners about being corrupted by the “yeast of the Pharisees” much like a lump of dough would be infected by yeast which would then alter its character and original intent.

Here, we find Jude warning against “certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago” who had “secretly slipped in among” them. This insidious “yeast” was comprised of “ungodly people” intended to “pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality”, all the while denying “Jesus”.

What did this mean?

It simply meant that these ungodly people were trying to convince legitimate Christian believers that living in sin was okay because they had a sure salvation through Christ and so could live as they wished before their time on earth was done. Clearly, this was a distortion of what grace truly meant, an affront to the life Jesus lived, a life meant to be a model for every one of His followers, and nothing short of the work of Satan. It was an all out frontal attack on the church and this is why Jude implored his brothers and sisters in Christ to contend for the Gospel truth against the efforts of the enemy and his minions.

Today, Satan hasn’t given up on coming after the Christian church and don’t let yourself be deceived to think otherwise. The warnings of Jude are just as applicable today as they were more than 2,000 years ago and will remain relevant until that day when Jesus comes back to judge all creation. Given this, the Word of God is calling us today to be on alert for false teachers, those who would seek to distort the truth, and contend for the Gospel, fighting for the cause of our Savior Jesus, whenever needed. For when we do, the mercy, peace, and     love of the Lord that Jude wished would fall abundantly on his readers will truly be upon those who have believed and trusted in the one and only Savior of the world.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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