Compelled to Contend

So what starts out perhaps as a friendly, encouraging, comforting letter ends up as a call to arms, a war cry to believers to join the truth war, taking their side with the Lord. Explaining the life-changing truth of God's word, and those years of study have led to his current series here on Grace to You, titled The New Testament, Beginning to End. It's a collection of some of his most compelling sermons, and today's landmark message from the book of Jude is going to show you a foundational commitment every Christian must have, something you need to be willing to fight for.

Whether you follow Christ as a pastor, or a business person, a college student, a stay-at-home mom, or whatever your role, what commitment am I talking about? Find out now as John begins today's lesson. As we look at the epistle of Jude, I want to take you into verses 3 and 4. We read, "'Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.'" This is one of the most interesting introductions to an epistle because Jude, the half-brother of our Lord, tells us that he had one intention when he sat down to write and he actually wound up writing something other than he had intended. He wanted to write about our common salvation, but he felt the necessity to write about contending earnestly for the faith and he realized that the very salvation which he wanted to celebrate, the very salvation which he wanted to write about was in danger of being severely compromised unless the church rose to the occasion of fighting for its survival. So what starts out perhaps as a friendly, encouraging, comforting letter ends up as a call to arms, a war cry to believers to join the truth war, taking their side with the Lord. And behind the letter is a little bit of insight in verse 4, certain persons have crept in, there has been an infiltration in the church of people who turned the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

We don't know the specifics of this, we don't know where, when, how the information came to Jude, but he became very alerted to it. And what we're talking about in this epistle is the grave danger of apostasy...the grave danger of apostasy which is knowing the truth to some degree and abandoning it, knowing the truth and rejecting it. This is not new to Jude, although Jude is the only letter in the Scripture completely devoted to apostasy. Apostasy is familiar to any student of Scripture.

In fact, there is a parable that Jesus gave, He gave it in Matthew 13, but you can look at the Luke 8 parallel to the parable and you'll find it familiar. It's a parable of the soils, remember that, the sowing of the seed and the various soils? And verse 12 of Luke 8 says, those beside the road are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And those on the rocky soil are those who when they heard, received the Word with joy. And these have no firm root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. And the Word fell among thorns. And these are the ones who have heard and as they go on their way, they're choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to maturity.

And then He goes on to talk about the good soil where the seed goes in and bears fruit. Here are three different cases in which people hear the Word and turn away. This is essentially what apostasy is. It is hearing the truth, knowing what it is and rejecting it.

This is exactly what Jude is writing about. These people are the greatest danger to the church because they know something about the gospel. And they bring to bear against the church certain subtleties by their defection. An apostate is one who has received the truth of the gospel. Maybe even one who believes it apparently or superficially for a time.

But then turns away, falls away, goes away without ever bearing fruit. Apostasy is to hear and understand, at least, and maybe to apparently believe, but then to turn and defect. If you go back for a minute to Luke, there's just a little bit of a thought there that may expand your understanding of this helpfully. It talks about verse 13, those on rocky soil are those who when they hear receive the Word with joy. They receive the Word with joy but they have no firm root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation, fall away. That is the verb form of the word apostasy...that is the verb form of the word apostasy.

They receive and they fall away. Now when we talk about apostasy, we're not talking about confusing that with mere indifference to the Word, or ignorance of the Word, or error. There are people who have never heard the truth. There are people who are ignorant of the truth, indifferent to the truth, have not even exposed themselves to it. And there are people who have heard erroneous presentations that purport to be the truth that are not.

We're not talking about that. When you talk specifically about an apostate, you're talking about someone who has received the light but not the life, the seed but not the fruit, perhaps the written Word but not the living Word. It is a willful and deliberate rejection of the truth after the truth has been heard. In 2 Thessalonians 2, 10, I think it's well said, when judgment falls, it falls on those who reject the gospel of whom it is said they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.

They received the truth, they didn't receive the love of the truth. In the Olivet Discourse, toward the end of our Lord's ministry, Matthew 24 records in verse 9, Jesus said, then they will deliver you to tribulation, they will kill you, you will be hated by all nations on account of My name and at that time many will fall away. Many will become apostate. Second Peter 2, just giving you a smattering of these, verse 20, it says, for if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. If you know the truth, if you have come to the knowledge of the Lord and Savior in your mind and you go back and are entangled again in the defilements of the world, the last state is worse than the first, it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them. Like a dog returning to its own vomit, or a sow after washing, returning to wallow in the mire. The Bible does not have very commending language to bestow upon apostates.

And they are going to be everywhere. First Timothy chapter 4 tells us, the Spirit explicitly says that in the latter time some will fall away from the faith. There's the same term. They will defect, in the words of Paul to Timothy, they will make shipwreck of the faith, back in chapter 1 verse 19. Or in the modern terminology, their faith will come to an end like a plane crash. In 2 Timothy we find the same kind of thing. The day is going to come, writes Paul to Timothy, when they will not endure sound doctrine. Verse 4, they will turn away their ears from the truth, turn aside to myths. Now what's really serious, back to Jude, is that these people get inside Christianity and embed themselves unnoticed.

They creep in unnoticed. And so we have to go to war in a civil war sense. That's hard to pull off nowadays, isn't it? Because the big deal now is let's love everybody, let's get along, let's not fight, let's be tolerant. We've got a war to fight and the war that we have to fight is right here inside...inside the church. We have demon-controlled preachers and demon doctrines and hypocritical liars and people who don't want the truth and they'll go to churches that don't preach it, and not to ones that do. We have apostasy in the church. That's where it's dangerous. They've always infiltrated.

They've always come in. That is the strategy. What does Paul say in Acts 20, 28, be on guard for yourselves and all the flock? You've got to be on guard.

Why? Because after My departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And here's the danger, from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. And therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I didn't cease to admonish each one with tears."

How are you going to deal with it? Well he says, I commend you to God and the Word of His grace which is able to build you up. The only way you're going to be able to defend yourself against this is to know the Word so well that you can recognize the apostasy. Apostates go away from the truth, they don't necessarily go away from the church, right? They have a certain...many of them have a certain familiarity with the church and they can base their operation there and be very successful for the enemy and also make some money at the expense of people's ignorance. There always have been apostates and always will be apostates, always those who defect from the truth.

It's been everywhere. Do you know that the people in the generation of Noah heard the truth and rejected it, walked away from it and drowned? It was apostasy from the truth that led to the Tower of Babel because the truth about the true and living God had been proclaimed. It was apostasy that made Israel fail to conquer the land under Joshua and ignore the warnings of Moses. It was apostasy that produced the immorality of the time of the judges. It was apostasy that led Israel into Babylonian captivity.

It was apostasy, the whole religion of Israel was apostate and that's why they didn't recognize the Messiah when He came. Apostasy has plagued the church, not only in individual situations but in massive ways. In every cult and ism and schism that's come along in the name of Christianity that deviates from the true gospel is an apostate form. Every preacher who doesn't preach the truth is an apostate preacher. Schism is an apostate attack on the church. Any denial of the singularity in authority that belongs only to the Scripture leads the church into a drift toward apostasy. That's why all those false religions always have other authorities. There's always the Scripture and some other authority. But they hang around and stay within the framework.

They creep in and they embed themselves. And the attack on the truth comes from the inside and so here we are facing this, having to deal with it from the inside and it doesn't make us very popular, I'll tell you it doesn't. And the way it's going today, it's really hard to take a stand against the outright apostasy that's easy to see and the drift toward apostasy that is coming so fast because of a lack of discernment and an unwillingness to be discerning. So many times if you take a stand on something, if you draw the line where the Bible draws the line, and if you do not compromise and you stand for the truth, live for the truth, proclaim the truth, don't waver, people call you unloving. Is that not true?

I mean, that is so typical...so typical. This is the common designation for the preacher who is true to the faith, he's not loving. It's the common designation for somebody who's exposing the apostasy and exposing the apostates. But do you understand that what Jude is doing here is not because he doesn't love, it's because he does? It's because he cares so much. He started to write a letter about common salvation but he loved his people too much to leave them exposed to what he saw as a great threat. Beloved, he says. And then in verse 17, but beloved.

And then in verse 20, but you, beloved. This is not some kind of sentimentalism. This is not some kind of shallow emotion.

This is not some kind of tolerance. This is the real purposeful, powerful, loving concern of a man of God for the people of God to be protected from what could destroy them and their effectiveness and their ministry. It's not love born of sentiment that God's after, it's love born of conviction regarding the truth.

You have to keep making that distinction all the time. You love someone when you tell them the truth. And Jude was prepared to go all the way to the truth, even if it was painful. So Jude says, I was just pressed as a faithful watchman, protecting God's church to write and to write to you appealing. It's really exhorting, counseling, calling alongside to help, coming alongside you that you contend earnestly for the faith. That is a powerful expression.

At least I can get through that. That you contend earnestly for the faith, contend earnestly, epagonizo...epagonizo. The root is agonizo, from which you get agonized. Ep...again, any time you see a preposition added to the front of a Greek verb, it is intended to intensify it. This is to fight for, to fight strenuously for, to defend vigorously. I am calling on you to an extreme form of agony. It's a present infinitive which means it's continuous action. I am calling on you, I am appealing to you to an ongoing battle, continuous conflict.

It's an all-time continuous problem, apostasy. The word again, agonizomai, agon, is a very interesting word. The word actually means, agon means a bowl, a stadium.

They were built like a bowl. And it was in a bowl, a stadium that you came for a battle, a struggle, gladiators, fights. It's a term that Paul uses when he talks about fight the good, fight a faith, agonize.

It's like playing in the ultimate Super Bowl and it's an all-time struggle. It is a mighty battle, a fight to the death with the forces of apostasy. Paul is calling us to the same thing. Over and over again we hear these calls from the Apostle Paul to Timothy, fight the good fight. To the Corinthians, you know, he says, I don't shadow box, I hit my opponent.

To the Ephesians, he writes about putting on your armor and going into battle. And the defense of the faith has to occur within the church, within the framework of Christianity. In fact, that is where the battle is, I think, most agonizing sometimes because you have to deal with not only the error that's there, but the resistance on the part of the people who are swept up by the error or unconcerned about it. We're not discerning enough to know that it is error. But what is it we're actually fighting for here?

Look at it. We're fighting for the faith...the faith, not for faith in some nebulous way, the faith, the faith, the Christian faith, the gospel faith, the content. If you go down to verse 17, you get a little bit of a better understanding. You ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. The faith is constituted in the Apostles' doctrine, the objective faith.

As Acts 2 42 says, they continued in the Apostles' doctrine. This is where the battle must be fought, for the protection of the faith. Oh Timothy, 1 Timothy 6 20, guard what has been entrusted to you.

And what had been entrusted to him? Back one verse, the treasure...the treasure, what treasure? The treasure of the truth. Remember in 2 Timothy 1 13, retain the standard of sound teaching, sound words. Verse 14, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you.

If you are a pastor, even a Christian, you have a guardianship. We are not only proclaimers of the truth, we are protectors of the truth. And Christian love must be confined to those in the truth. And so we fight for the faith, the true faith. If anybody preaches another gospel, Paul tells the Galatians, let him be accursed. John says, if anybody comes to your door and wants to come into your house and have you show them hospitality and they have a wrong doctrine concerning Christ and extending that and the gospel, don't let him in your house, don't even bid him God's speed or you become a partaker in his evil deed.

This is that dangerous. We have to battle agonizingly all our lives for the preservation of the faith. And then he defines that faith in very succinct and very important terms. The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

You know what that says? It says the faith intact was once given to the saints. Once for all, hapax, delivered, paradidymia, entrusted.

And this word hapax, once for all, refers to something done for all time with lasting results never needing repetition. The faith, dear friends, the Christian faith, the gospel truth in its entirety, in its completeness was in the past one time entrusted to the saints. There's no new faith and this is why there's no new revelation. The Christian faith was deposited through the Apostles and those who worked with them in the first century.

The canon was closed with John's writings at the end of that century and the faith was then given once for all time and all people to the saints. That's why Revelation 22 says, if you add anything to this, it shall be added to you the plagues that are written in it. Revelation does not continue. God is not adding to the faith.

Listen to this. People didn't discover the faith, it was delivered to them. Nobody mystically discovered the meaning of Jesus. Nobody mystically discovered the meaning of salvation. Nobody mystically discovered how to get to God. Paul and the others who wrote the New Testament didn't have some transcendental religious insight by which they ascended intuitively into the upper echelons of religious thinking and somehow touched the garment of God and drew down some deep understandings.

Nobody went anywhere to get this, it was delivered...it was delivered, it was entrusted by God intact, the faith. To add to the Old Testament, the faith, the New Testament, Matthew through Revelation. The body of teaching, complete, the only acceptable revelation. There are no new doctrines, there is no new revelation. This rules out all seers and all those who claim new revelation. This rules out hanging around waiting to hear the voice of God. This rules out every cult, every ism, every false system that claims any other revelation than the Bible.

This is so wonderful. All that God wanted to say and all that He did say, He put in one book. Keeps it simple, doesn't it? This book is all we need. Scripture is all we need. You don't need to be running around checking out every new revelation and you don't need to be listening as if God was going to tell you some secret that He hadn't revealed to anybody else. We're talking here about the once for all, literally the Greek, the once for all delivered to the saints' faith...faith comes last in the Greek order.

What faith? The once for all delivered to the saints' faith. Do you get the message?

This isn't a trickle, we're not still getting it, it was once for all delivered. And Jude realizes this is under assault by people who have come in and we have to fight them inside the church. And I would say this too, that we can never do that effectively and come across to the world as a nice kind of compassionate, easygoing group of folks who are just having a lot of fun. This is a war here and when a non-believer comes in, I trust that they'll see the love of Christ and the transformation that's occurred in our lives, but they also are going to realize that we're in a battle for the truth. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is the pastor of Grace Community Church. He's chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. And today's reminder that if you're a Christian, you're called to stand up for biblical truth. It's part of John's study called The New Testament, Beginning to End. Now, you know, John, when you talk about contending for the gospel, warning churches about those who distort the Bible, I know that your love for the truth drives you to do that. But I'm wondering, how can you, how can anyone be confident that he's not distorting the Bible, that what we teach and defend really is the truth? You know, one of the arguments you always hear from the critics of Christianity, and even some people in Christianity, is that the Bible's not clear, you know, there are all kinds of views of it, everybody's got his own interpretation, and how do we ever know what's true?

There are some people who say, we really can't know what's true, you know, what's true for you and what's true for me, maybe different things, what was true for the people a thousand years ago and today are very different. Let me answer that by simply saying this, the Bible was written to be understood. Even the book of Revelation, which some people think is so confounding, begins by saying, blessed is the one who reads and understands this book. Even the book of Revelation can be understood. And let me also add, there's only one correct interpretation of every scripture.

Not many, only one. God only meant one thing, and it's not hidden, and it's not secret, and it's not mystical, and it's not reserved for some kind of elevated elite sort of gnostic people who are sort of super saints. It's available to every believer. I want to give you a tool that will help you to get the meaning of scripture in its context. It's the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, over 40 years plus. I've been writing these commentaries—I'm finished now—33 volumes on all 27 books of the New Testament. You can order all 33 at once, and a discount is provided if you do that. If you already order some, you can order the ones you don't have. Get in touch today, order the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, and start reading commentaries instead of superficial books, and get into the New Testament. You can do that right now.

That's right. This comprehensive resource will give you access to John's decades of in-depth study. It's like having John there to answer your Bible questions. So order the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series when you contact us today. You'll reach our customer service team at 800-55-GRACE, or you can go to our website, gty.org. The MacArthur New Testament Commentaries make a great gift for longtime believers or new Christians alike. To place your order, call 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org.

Now before we go, a quick suggestion. Get in touch and let us know how you're benefitting from grace to you. We want to hear your story. We want to know how this verse-by-verse teaching is helping you grow spiritually. So jot a note and send it our way. You can email us at letters at gty.org, or if you prefer regular mail, you can write to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And here's our email one more time, letters at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and be here tomorrow when John looks at the future blessings that await all believers. He'll continue his series on the New Testament beginning to end with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.