Find the book of Jude with me. There are books in your Bible and there are letters in your Bible, but you could probably think of Jude more like a postcard.
There’s been a shift in American thought over the past several decades. America historically stood for the right to express any opinion. Voltaire famously said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Again, a shift has happened from this historic position in recent days. Where we used to believe that you should tolerate my views even when they were false but now, we believe it is wrong to call anybody’s views’ false.
Against this new view, the Bible speaks into our tolerant age by building fences, separating truth from lies. Embracing a lie as the truth can really hurt you. Tolerance has its limits. Tolerance has its limits especially inside God’s church.
Today’s Scripture
“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).
17 But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” 19 It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 17–21).
1. Limit Tolerance
Beliefs are the building block of your faith. As seconds comprise time & currency is a critical component to a nation’s economy, so are your beliefs to your life. Embracing the wrong beliefs can create a dumpster fire of a life. You have to embrace the right beliefs to live a good life. Secondly, you have to consistently embrace the right beliefs. In fact, the Bible says when don’t consistently embrace the right beliefs, you can be compared to an immature, naïve child. And this immature, naïve child will be tossed around like a cork on the sea bobbing up and down in every direction (Ephesians 4:14).
“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 4).
There’s a demarcation line here that I want to call your attention. You see in verse 4 an implication that really is important. There’s a group that is safe but there’s another group that is anything but safe. Think of a Texas rancher whose cattle has a brand on them but all of sudden, the cattle from the next ranch run through his fence. Now, all the cattle are mixed up. But not to the rancher, he knows his cattle because he knows his brand. Jude is looking over the church and he sees cattle of a different brand inside the fence.
1.1 They Crept In
“For certain people have crept in unnoticed” is the idea of deception. “…crept in unnoticed” pictures for me someone slipping into water like a crocodile, without even making a ripple. Godless people have infiltrated the church. Jude is seeking to unmask people who snuck inside the church. They deceived the church family by hiding their dangerous beliefs in the beginning. Jesus warned about “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). People slipped in appearing to be one thing but turned out to be something else altogether.
Jude makes a series of 4 charges about these people in verse 4:
(1) the Scriptures condemn them;
(2) they are godless;
(3) they change God’s grace into “sensuality,” or a license to do anything they want;
and (4) they deny “our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
1.2 The Tight Connection Between Belief and Behavior
Again, Beliefs are the building block of your faith. And your behavior is the overflow of your beliefs. Look carefully at these words suspended in the middle of verse 4: “…who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality…” (Jude 4b).
You can still hear their argument today: “God forgives sin, doesn’t He? If He forgives our sin, then there’s no penalty for our sin. Let’s live it up!” Grace isn’t a license to do anything I want and God comes in later as my “cleanup guy.” Grace isn’t a license to do what harms us and hurts our Father. If see someone who believes grace is a license to do anything, you can safely assume they are not a Christian. Instead, anyone who has truly experienced grace knows how costly it was for Jesus on the cross. So many people give lip service to “Amazing Grace” but are never profoundly changed.
1.3 Once Delivered to the Saints
There are a lot of things in my life that need updating. Every few months, my smartphone asks me if I want to update. My wife thinks my old, favorite clothes need to go to the trash. My old Lazy boy chair is looking tired and I may have to switch after awhile. Yet, of the all things in my life that need updating, my Bible and my faith never need an update. Theology faces new challenges but biblical theology never needs revision. There’s a word that describes theological innovation – it’s called heresy. Jude says, “Our faith is once and for all.”
1.4 Contend for the Faith
“I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)
Jude isn’t alone in wanting to ensure there’s purity of belief inside the church: “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting…” (2 John 10).
Now, nowhere does the Bible command us to contend for the faith outside the church. Instead, we focus on the beliefs of those only on the inside of the church.
This is why we do still do a thing called church membership. To say it another way, church membership is the public line that communicates those who follow Christ and those who do not follow Christ. Church membership is the line of demarcation that communicates to the community who is a follower of Christ and who is not a follower of Christ. Today, we designate this distinction as church membership. Church membership is the Mason-Dixon line between those who are Christ-followers and those who are not. These words show that church is not something you are born into or automatically added to upon your arrival. Instead, church is a group where you must make a personal commitment to join. Your personal commitment begins with a personal (but not private) commitment to follow Jesus Christ.
“I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)
Once you follow Christ, you become a part of Christ’s church. Think of a community ensuring they have clean water free from pollution. Think of engineers who want to ensure the metal they work with is free from impurities so bridges will hold the weight of your car. Then you understand why our beliefs have to be free from impurities and pollution.
Next Sunday, we’ll focus on building others faith but first, we must focus on ourselves. Jesus said, “I need to get the log out of my eye before I focus on the speck in your eye.” So for the remaining minutes, I want to speak to you about four questions to build your faith.
1. Limit Tolerance
2. Build Your Faith
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit…” (Jude 20). We have a word used to describe this teaching called orthodoxy. Orthodoxy means “straight beliefs.” You can see the nature of the word when you think of orthodontists, where their practice is make your teeth straight.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6–7)
God’s people are called to be umpires. You need to know what a strike is and what is the strike zone.
Four Questions to Build Your Faith
Are You in the Faith?
Who You Are?
Do You Know the Big Truths of the Bible?
Do Others Want to be Around You?
2.1 Are You in “the Faith?”
The first piece to securing your faith is to establish IF you are in the faith. Jude could have felt he automatically belongs to the family. After all, our friend, Jude, is none other than the half brother of Jesus Himself (Matthew 13:55). Yes, Jude was one of the younger brothers of Jesus. Jude calls Jesus, his Messiah, his Lord, and his master. Jude didn’t always feel this way about his brother: “And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mark 3:21). “For not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5).
If your brother said, “I’m God. I’m the Lord. And I’m hear to die for the sins of the world,” you wouldn’t readily believe Him either. But after Jesus rose from the grave, we see Jesus’ mother, Mary, worshipping Him. We also see his own brothers, James and Jude, worshipping as well. It’s likely that James, came to believe his half-brother was more than human when Jesus appeared to him upon rising from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:7). James and Jude are both believers and are in the Upper Room of Jerusalem right after Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:14). Something happened to Jude that we call the new birth; he was spiritually reborn.
This is one of truly great arguments in favor of Christianity. If you can get your kid brothers to worship you, you’re someone. If your kid brothers are devout Jews who worship only God alone, and they arrive at the conclusion that the Guy on the top bunk is God, you’re really something.
He didn’t rely on the biologically connect to Jesus. Instead, he knew he needed a spiritual connect to Jesus. A fundamental aspect to being a part of this church family is all of us have experienced the new birth.
2.2 Who You Are?
This world can be so unkind. You may have called you an idiot, a hack, a nutjob, or a lunatic, a blowhard, a radical, or a fool. They said you parents were never married. They have called you names that I cannot utter from my lips. Who are you?
“To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1b).
You are called. You are beloved by the Father. You are loved. You are kept for Jesus Christ. You are safe. You are secure. You are God’s workmanship. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit. You are Christ’s friend. You have been joined with the Lord. You are justified. You are redeemed. You are righteous. You are completely forgiven. You are free from sin’s pernicious power. You have died with Christ. You are holy. You reign with Christ. You are a new creation. You are a servant to God. You are a saint. You are blessed. You’ve been adopted. You are a slave of Christ. You are a son of God. You are a daughter of the King. You are a child of God.
2.3 Do You Know the Big Truths of the Bible?
“I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)
I’m want to borrow an analogy from Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary for a moment. When you enter into the Emergency Room of John Peter Smith, our county hospital, you will quickly see the trained medical personnel practicing triage. There is always chaos to a county’s ER and nurses, EMT’s, and doctors know the questions they need to ask a patient in order to determine who has the most critical needs. The word triage comes from the French word trier, which means “to sort.” Doing triage in an Emergency Room is where someone decides which patients need the most urgent treatment. If this did not take place, someone suffering from the flu would receive the same urgency of consideration as someone suffering from the dreaded Ebola virus.
Christians who are attempting to navigate all the varied steeples dotting the landscape of DFW. Each steeple represents a place where people meet under the banner of the cross and purportedly teach the Bible, or something close to it. If you are new to Christianity, you are probably aware that not all Christians agree on every thing we read in the Bible. Inside churches and among Christian friends, we debate and discuss all kinds of various parts of the Bible: creation vs. evolution, predestination vs. free-will, or how old the earth is. To sort this out, you and I need to do biblical triage where we determine which parts of the Bible are the most critical to our faith.
Certainly at the top of our list would be the Trinity, who Jesus truly was/is, salvation by faith alone in Jesus alone, and the Word of God. All of these beliefs are of critical importance – you could liken them to our heart, lungs, and brain. Christianity cannot live without these beliefs and we could call them first-order beliefs. After this, we can see there are second-order and even third-order beliefs. These would include what we believe about finer details about Jesus’ Second Coming, church government, and gender roles within church leadership. I find this really helpful tool.
A liberal will treat the beliefs of the first order like the beliefs of the third order. You are left with wide-spread confusion. Yes, you are left with nothing that will offend but there’s also really nothing left to give hope.
A fundamentalist will do the exact opposite, he will treat the beliefs that belong to the third-order as if they are first-order. When this happens, love evaporates inside the church and everyone becomes uniform on all matters and everyone is rigid. If I am confused about who Jesus is, I have lost the gospel itself.
Here’s a helpful summary: In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity. We could say this historic statement another way: In first order essentials, unity. In second and third order non-essentials liberty. And in all things, charity (or love). This is an essential belief and we must have unity. If I am confused about the age of the earth, I still know the gospel. The age of the earth represents a non-essential belief, and we should have some liberty. If I am confused about the gift of tongues, I still know Jesus Christ died for me. Bible-loving Christians should discuss and even attempt to persuade others over such matters.
2.4 Do Others Want to be Around You?
Jude doesn’t mention his family connection to Jesus because of humility. He could have begun his short book this way: “Hi, I Am Jude, the half-brother of Jesus.” Not many people can claim this.
Yes, Jude doesn’t do this and I what I like about him is that he is both strong in his convictions but also humble. So many people are strong on their convictions but you want to run when you see them coming your way. Not Jude. He’s humble and convictional.
You know what America needs. America needs churches that embrace the whole counsel of God but also embrace people outside the church with tremendous compassion. We shouldn’t belittle others. We love others and point them humbly to the truth of God’s Word.
