Bobby Bowden, (former football coach of Florida State University) said that when he was in college, he played college baseball. During one game he managed to hit a ball right down the right-field line, into the corner.
He rounded 1st and looked to the 3rd base coach.
He turned at 2nd, was halfway to 3rd - and coach was still waving him on to home… and when he reached home, he stepped triumphantly on the plate. He had scored his first home run as a college player, and he was excited. Everybody on his team was giving him high-fives and slapping him on the back.
(PAUSE)
But then the pitcher took the ball, threw to the first baseman, and the umpire called him out.
How come? What happened?
Well, in his excitement… he’d failed to touch first base. Bowden later applied that lesson he’d learned to his personal life… and to his life in Christ:
"If you don’t take care of first base, it doesn’t matter what you do.
If you don’t honor the Lord first, it doesn’t matter what else you do."
Here in Jude, the writer is telling the Christians of his day:
Take care of 1st base.
“Contend for the faith once delivered to the saints!”
Because, if you don’t take care of first base… it doesn’t matter what else you do.
If you don’t contend for the faith that was ONCE DELIVERED to the saints - if you don’t make it a point to touch THAT base in your church - you could really mess things up.
Then the writer of Jude goes on to say that the failure to contend for the faith has consequences:
· “… godless men (will) change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” Jude 1:4
· This will lead to some not believing and facing judgment from God. Jude 1:5
· And eventually God will bring damnation on those who rebel because of your lack of faithfulness in contending for the faith once delivered to the saints. Jude 1:6-7
You can do ANYTHING ELSE you want to for the church.
You can be highly successful and build large buildings.
You can write popular books and receive the praises of men.
But if you fail to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints you can bring disaster and judgment upon those who depend on you
Paul makes the same warning in Philippians 1:27-28
“Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, CONTENDING AS ONE MAN FOR THE FAITH of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved— and that by God.”
Now why would that be? Why is it so important?
Why can’t we believe whatever we want to believe?
What difference does it make what the church teaches/ believes?
ILLUS: Well, it’s kind of like this: Phil (a member of our congregation) owns a stunning sports car. It’s a Viper. It’s a thing of beauty. And it has a powerful engine with 10 cylinders.
Most of us common folks have cars with 6 and 8 cylinders… but this car has TEN cylinders. I’m pretty sure it can take you anywhere you want to go as fast as you’ll ever want to go.
Well, let’s say I come into some money, and I decide to buy Phil’s sports car, and he’s kind enough to sell it to me. But buying that car just about taps me out. Money gets tight and I have to start cutting some corners. And one of the places I decide to cut corners is in the oil I buy for oil changes. The oil I’m supposed to put in that vehicle begins to look a little too expensive for my budget, so I decide to go down to the grocery store & buy some Wesson cooking oil.
I mean – it is oil isn’t it?
Now, what do you think is going to happen to that car?
It’ll turn over just once, and then that engine isn’t going to be worth much.
On the outside it will probably still be a beautiful sports car but on the inside… the power of its engine will be destroyed.
It will ultimately be unable to take me the places I want to go.
And that is what God tells us about the Faith Once Delivered to the saints.
If I go to changing the oil and putting something in the engine that doesn’t belong I might still have a good looking chassis on the outside, but on the inside… I’ll have destroyed the power that the Church has to help people go where they want to go.
AND THAT’S THE DANGER!
(PAUSE…)
Now, what does it mean to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints?
Well, it means that we try as hard as we can to cling to the things the early church believed and taught. But over the centuries, denominations and church leaders have shown a tendency to change the oil in God’s Church.
At one point in history, reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin rose to stand against the perversions the Catholic Church had brought upon the faith once delivered to the saints. They (and others like them) became the force behind the Reformation movement that attempted to reform the church of their day.
But even the reformation churches fell prey to the same temptations that plagued the Catholic Church they opposed. By the time of the early 1800’s many in those denominations felt they were being burdened down by the rules and regulations of men rather than God.
Back in early 1800’s there was a preacher in Western Pennsylvania named Thomas Campbell. He was a preacher for the Old-light, Anti-burger, Seceder Presbyterian Church. Each of those phrases described a political division within the Presbyterian Church of that day. For example: a church that was “anti-burger” opposed any influence of city mayors in their congregation, while a pro-burger would have welcomed such input.
Thus, the Presbyterians were divided over many things, and each group sought to maintain the purity of their positions. So they (like many other denominations of the day) opted for “closed communion” to make sure that only those who clung to their standards could take communion at their churches.
In the Presbyterian churches it worked like this: the Lord’s Supper was taken once every month or so… but on the Saturday night before Communion Sunday members were required to come in and answer a series of questions. If they answered the questions correctly they received a “Communion coin” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communion_token), and the next day they would drop their coin in the box and partake.
This didn’t sit very well with Campbell – who believed that the Lord’s Supper belonged to Christ rather than to him - and on at least one occasion he opened the Communion table to all who belonged to Christ. Word got back to denominational headquarters and they sacked him. He was branded a heretic and eventually left that group.
About that same time, Thomas’s son Alexander was shipwrecked on his way over from Scotland. He stayed in Scotland another year, and while he was there attended worship services at a Presbyterian congregation in the neighborhood. On Communion Saturday night he dutifully went in to answer the questions required of him for the coin… and was shocked to find that the questions were different than he was accustomed to. However, being well versed in Scripture and Presbyterian thinking, he was able to answer the questions correctly and received his coin. The next day he walked in, put his coin in the box and walked away without taking of the Lord’s Supper.
When Father and Son got back together they both had come to the conclusion that the church had way too many HUMAN rules and regulations. Christians were being segregated from God (at the communion table) and from other Christians because each denomination insisted on clinging to their own distinctive denominational names, creeds and practices.
They were soon joined by Methodist and Baptist groups who were struggling with their own denominations’ teachings. They were tired of all the divisiveness and they just wanted to be “Christians Only.”
What these people were upset about was the tendency of Churches to change the rules. To change the oil in the machine of the faith once delivered to the saints. They began to believe they needed to do was go back and “restore” – as best they could – the pattern of the New Testament Church and to only practice and believe what that first group of believers held to. Because they were attempting to “restore” what the early church did, they began to refer to themselves as a “restoration movement.”
They made this decision because the churches they left had fallen into the trap of believing they could improve on the pattern God set up in New Testament. Now, God established His Church just the way He wanted it 2000 yrs ago… but the folks in those churches (and even in many churches today) don’t accept that.
These people will often describe that New Testament church as being primitive. They might have said: “I know that’s how the early primitive church did it - but that was back then - this is now. And as a result they changed things they felt were unimportant.
Now, it wasn’t like they wanted to disobey God. They actually felt they were making improvements on the original design.
ILLUS: Years ago I bought a Chevy Caprice at a used car lot. It was a thing of beauty. It was big and stylish and it purred as I drove it down the road. Well… it purred for the first few days. Then it began to cough and sputter and I had difficulty getting above 30 mph. Now I don’t know much about cars… but I knew something was wrong. The car was still under warranty so I took it back to the dealership.
About an hour later, the mechanic came out of the shop and he has a small BB in his hand.
“That was your problem” he said.
Apparently the previous owner had been told that they placed that BB in the gas regulator they could improve the car’s gas mileage.
“Why on earth would they do that? I asked it.
And he replied, “These engine is extremely efficient. It’s as well designed as any car out there. But every once in awhile folks get to thinking they can improve the car’s gas mileage, and so they’ll do things like put this BB in the engine.”
Now, the owner thought he was improving the engine’s performance, when in reality he hurt it. It worked just fine… until he messed with it.
In the same way there are folks who believe they can improve on the design God set up for church. But they fail to realize that God designed His church the way He did for a reason. I mean - how do you improve on a church that changes the lives of 1000s of people overnight?
On Pentecost they had 3000 converts.
Over the next few days the church grew to 5000.
And at one point they were known as the group that had turned the world upside down.
How do you improve on something like that!!!
You don’t.
A church that does things the way the early church did will work just fine until someone messes with it. And that’s why we’re told to “…contend for the faith ONCE DELIVERED to the saints.”
The churches in our brotherhood say that we belong to a “Restoration” movement.
That means: Our purpose is to “restore” the church to the basics found in the New Testament.
We believe – If the Bible says it, we want to preach it. If the Bible doesn’t, we’d prefer to avoid it.
So, how do we go about “restoring’ to this faith once delivered to the saints?
Well, we begin by attempting to do the obvious… we attempt to avoid trying to think the church belongs to us.
It doesn’t belong to us!
Who does it belong to? (It belongs to Jesus).
The Church is His… and it should be run the way He set it up to begin with. And the ONLY way we can know how He set it up and how it should be run is in the Bible.
I. That’s why we refuse to accept any book or creed other than the Bible.
For us, the Bible is our only “book of doctrine.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Now if that’s true – and it is – then a church really doesn’t need additional confessions/ creeds/ and catechisms to teach its followers what to believe. If you can’t find it in the Bible, you probably shouldn’t be teaching it.
Now Creeds and such can be good reference materials - but they aren’t the Bible. Too often churches cling to their specific denominational creeds, doctrines and distinctives, and use them as “spectacles” through which they view and interpret Scripture. And that’s the danger in clinging too tightly to such statements of faith.
Any Creed that says more than what the Bible says… says too much.
And any Creed that says less than what the Bible says… says too little.
Beyond that, our major complaint with creeds, doctrinal books, etc. it that they only serve to create more division and tension between believers. Every denomination has these distinctive teachings that stand on top of their Bibles and each group’s teachings are slightly different from the others. Our contention has always been - if a church would remove those creedal statements and doctrinal books and just endorse the Bible as their sole doctrinal book, the walls that separate believers would begin to melt away.
II. One of the other divisive practices that we object to is the tendency to cling to different “names. According to that Bible the early believers were called Christians. They weren’t called “Fundamentalists”, “Charismatics”, “Baptists”, “Lutherans”, “Methodists” etc.
Acts 11:26 says “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”
One of our mottos is “We’re not the only Christians, but we want to be Christians ONLY”
Now I don’t mean to say that there aren’t Christians in those groups I mentioned.
My point is this: the names they cling to in their groups are divisive. Those names separate one believer from another because those titles create walls.
Our hope as a “restoration movement” has always been that we can convince other churches and other believers to drop those names. To just call themselves Christians and quit building those man-made walls.
If being called “Christians” was good enough for the early believers… it should be good enough for us.
III. The Bible also tells us that each New Testament church was set up to be overseen by a group of Elders. These Elders were to work in concert with the Evangelists like Titus/Timothy. These Elders were responsible for helping the church function like a true family and they also were to stand guard protecting that family from false doctrine.
Their role so was so critical that Titus was told by Paul “The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.” Titus 1:5
A church was not “straightened out” – it wasn’t a “finished product” - until elders to look after it. If that was true back then… it’s true today.
IV. Now, if you’re a visitor from a denominational church today, you’ll notice we take Communion. In fact – unlike many churches – we take it every week. Acts 20:7 tells us that “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread…”
Every Sunday, that’s why they’d gathered… to share in the Lord’s Supper.
Now, we need to realize the Bible never COMMANDS us to take communion every Sunday but that was the pattern the early church followed.
Even 100 years later, a man named Justin Martyr wrote these words:
“On Sunday a meeting is held of all who live in the cities and villages, and a section is read from the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets, as long as time permits. When the reading is finished, the president, in a discourse, gives the admonition and exhortation to imitate these noble things. After this we all arise and offer a common prayer.
At the close of the prayer, as we have before described, bread and wine and thanks for them according to his ability, and the congregation answers, ‘Amen.’
Then the consecrated elements are distributed to each one and partaken of, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the absent."
If they did it every Sunday - that’s good enough for us.
And that’s why we do it that way today.
V. The Bible also tells us that we need to be a people of love.
We could be absolutely correct in every item of doctrine we teach, but if we don’t love others… all our other doctrines are worthless.
Jesus said “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35
That kind of “love” should be so much a part of us that we refuse to get mad at those disagree with us. As Paul wrote: “…the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth” II Timothy 2:24-25
VI. Now lastly, our brotherhood has come to believe that the Bible is very clear on salvation.
I know in some Churches they sprinkle babies with water and call them saved but that’s not found anywhere in Scripture… so we don’t do that.
Aside from the fact that the Greek word “Baptizo” only means to immerse babies don’t need to be “saved” so we don’t have to baptize them.
Jesus said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3
And again: Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14
If I have to become like a child to enter heaven/ and heaven belong to such as them we don’t need to worry about baptizing little children. Besides babies are way too young to make that decision to follow Christ anyway.
Now there are other churches who’ll ask you-bow your head and accept Jesus into your heart. They’ll lead you in the “Sinner’s Prayer” and tell you you’re saved. But the Bible doesn’t talk about a Sinner’s Prayer, and New Testament Christians never “ASKED Jesus into their hearts.” It’s just not in Scripture. It’s another man-made creation that has added another layer of division within Christendom.
What we have found is that the Bible is very clear on how to belong to Jesus:
1. You need to believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God (John 3:16)
2. You need to repent of your sins and turn away from your old life (Acts 3:19)
3. You need to confess Jesus as your Lord and Master (Romans 10:9-10)
4. And you need to buried in the waters of Christian baptism (Romans 6:1-6)
If that’s what the Bible says… is that a decision you need to make today?
(Invitation)
