By Rev Charles Seet

Preached at / Published Life BPC Weekly, 2019-12-29

Text: Jude 3,4

In recent times, there has been increasing public awareness about fake news. The government passed a law on this just a few months ago. This law (which is now known as ‘POFMA’) empowers ministers to order the taking down or correction of fake news on the Internet, and to order companies to block accounts that are spreading untruths. POFMA has already been implemented 4 times for Facebook posts.

This shows what a serious problem fake news has become today. Although fake news has always existed, digital media has now given it a huge boost and reach it never had before. When such news gets published online and remains uncorrected, it can influence elections, defame character, incite unrest, and propagate fear. Because of the great damage that can be caused by fake news, people now have to learn how to read everything with careful discernment by fact-checking of the content, and gauging the credibility of the source.

While we should take fake news seriously, we need to take false teaching even more seriously. Why is this so? It is because there is so much more at stake when false teachings spread – they can bring untold misery and destruction, not just in the present life but for eternity! The first false teaching appeared in the Garden of Eden, and it plunged the entire human race into sin. The faith of many young people has been destroyed by a false teaching called Evolution. False teachings have led many into bondage, delusion, disunity, division and destruction. Therefore the Bible has much to say about dealing with false teaching. This morning we will study what is taught in the book of Jude.

Let us turn our Bible to our Scripture text which is Jude 3,4 – “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This was written by Jude who was the half-brother of Jesus Christ. Jude was apparently a church leader who loved God’s people well enough to warn them against the dangers of false teaching. And the main thing he wanted them to do is to ‘earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.’

Please note that the term ‘faith’ here is used differently from what we had seen in some earlier sermons. When we studied a passage in 2 Peter two weeks ago, we learned that we need to exercise faith in God’s promises. That refers to the faith or confidence we need to believe that something is true. But here in v.3 of our passage, the word ‘faith’ refers to what we believe. The faith is the entire body of truth from God that we believe, and it has been written by divine inspiration in a book called the Bible.

Therefore, to contend for the faith is to defend what is taught in the Bible against false teaching. It often requires much effort to oppose and expose the false teaching, so that everyone can see its hidden errors and would completely dismiss and reject it. This is often very difficult to do, because those who insist on holding that false teaching will be offended and will stubbornly resist all corrective measures. Things can really get ugly.

If we had a choice, I’m sure we would rather speak of things that will never offend anybody. Here in v.3 of our text, Jude disclosed that he had originally intended to write to his readers about a more pleasant subject: God’s salvation of sinners – a subject that everyone would most certainly love to hear more about. But he changed his plan. He wrote instead about something that may not please everyone but was more needful for them – Jude had to write in the strongest possible terms about contending for the faith.

Until today, most people tend to take a very negative view of contending for the faith.  They think that those who do it are nasty, fault-finding, judgmental, unloving and mean-spirited. Actually it does not mean that at all. Contending for the faith does not mean that we become contentious people, organizing riots and protests in the streets. It does not mean criticizing every Church or Christian organization that is different from us, or splitting hairs over debatable secondary issues.

Contending for the faith simply means that we take our commitment to Christ and His Church seriously enough to take firm strenuous action whenever such action is needed in doctrinal matters. It is actually the same attitude that a good doctor would have in looking after his patients. He takes their health seriously enough to deal with their illnesses firmly and strenuously. If their illness is extremely serious like a malignant tumour, he will honestly tell them what they must do to recover, and he will persuade them not to delay their treatment. His treatment must be swift, thorough and decisive enough to completely eliminate the deadly disease before it kills them. Sometimes the treatment itself may be quite painful, and he does not want his patients to suffer. But as a wise doctor, he knows that he cannot stop carrying out the effective treatment at this point, because what matters most to him is their complete recovery.

That’s what contending for the faith is all about – taking firm strenuous action whenever such action is needed for the spiritual health of the body of Christ and for the welfare of souls in eternity. It is done out of pure selfless love. If we truly love the Lord Jesus and His Word, and if we truly love the Church of God and the souls of men, then we must take firm strenuous action whenever such action is clearly needed. We must earnestly contend for the faith! Let us now consider two reasons why there is a great need to contend for the faith. The first reason is that

1. God’s Kingdom on Earth is at War.

We are not talking about a military war or trade war here, but a spiritual war. This war between God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom has been going on from ages past. In this epistle, Jude provides a few glimpses of this spiritual war. He wrote in v.6, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” This records the great rebellion launched by Satan and his fallen angels against God. They were expelled from heaven and became demons. Since they have no eternal hope, they want to bring as many people as possible down with them.

Then in v.9 Jude briefly describes one particular angelic battle, “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.”

The great climax of this spiritual war is described in vv.14,15 – “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, To execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed…” These verses reveal that this war is also being fought on earth, and everyone is involved in it – either on God’s side or on Satan’s side. There is no neutral ground in between. Before we were saved we were all in Satan’s kingdom of darkness. But by turning to Jesus Christ for salvation we are now in God’s kingdom of light. We have therefore became enemies of Satan.

As God’s Word says in Ephesians 2:2-3, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”

All unredeemed humanity that is characterised by sin and living in rebellion against God, are still under Satan’s rule. And although they do not know it and would very much deny it, all who are not saved are under his control. Now, this does not mean that people around us are not responsible for their actions or are demon-possessed. It means that Satan exerts a powerful influence over them, and he easily uses their own sinful desires to manipulate them to do his will.

But thankfully God’s kingdom has invaded Satan’s kingdom and has liberated many people from his control, including us. Christ has defeated Satan through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. We can be sure that Satan resents the Lord’s invasion of his territory, and he will do all he can to oppose it, to sabotage and to counterattack. This is why Christians have suffered sorely throughout history from persecution, infiltration, and subversion. The world we live in is enemy territory, and so we cannot expect to have an easy time here. Whether we like it or not, we have to be vigilant against the wiles and schemes of the Devil, who walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

One of the most effective schemes that Satan has used to oppose God and keep the world under his power is to create false gods and false religions. In ancient times this came in the form of pagan idols that were worshipped with hideous rituals and even human sacrifice. In later times new religions evolved from the teachings of men who claimed to be sent by God. But they were merely channels through which Satan flooded the world with misinformation, distorted ideas of God, and with false methods of salvation which are based on doing good works to gain more merit.

Let us understand that all false religions are a very ingenious well-crafted scheme that Satan has used to oppose and sabotage God’s kingdom. By propagating them widely, Satan is seeking not only to keep the unsaved in His kingdom forever, but even to prevent God’s kingdom from making further progress.

He also uses these religions to influence Christians to compromise the Truth of God. The world would like us to believe that all religions lead to the same God. We are constantly being persuaded to recognise all the other faiths in the world, join hands with them, and not be dogmatic about our own beliefs. So they say, “Why must you Christians be so bigoted, always insisting that you are the only ones who have the Truth? Why must you go all out to convert us to your faith? After all, we do not actively seek to convert you to our faith. We leave you alone – and so you should also leave us alone. You should recognize that our beliefs are just as valid as yours.”

Christians who want the world to perceive them favourably will easily be deceived by such reasoning. And the Devil would really be happy if we agree to recognize all other faiths and stop all attempts to bring their followers to Christ through evangelism and missions. This is already happening in churches that are part of the ecumenical movement – they participate in interfaith dialogues and joint worship services.

There is only one way that we who are in God’s Kingdom can resist such strong pressure to conform to the world: It is to keep declaring boldly the Truth that God has given to us, the truth that there is only one true religion that leads to God, and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) except the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. By doing this consistently, we help those who are caught up in false religions to come out of them and to come to the Truth that God has revealed in His Word.

If there is anyone here who is not saved yet, please don’t delay any longer to come to the Truth. You can do this right now by repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus Christ alone to save you from sin and eternal death! How will you respond to God’s call to come out of Satan’s Kingdom and become a child of God? Why should you continue to be deceived by the Satan’s schemes when you can come into God’s kingdom and share the victory that is found in Him?

And now, more than ever before, it is most urgent for all believers to declare the Truth of God boldly. The Scriptures have already foretold that the entire world will be greatly deceived by the Antichrist before Jesus returns:  “…for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3,9-10)

In three days’ time another year will begin. This means that we are moving one step closer to these End-time events that have been foretold in God’s Word. Satan knows that his end is near, and thus the war that is fought between his kingdom and God’s kingdom will become even more intense. Therefore we better get ourselves prepared for the battles that are coming – because the conflict between God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom will get fiercer and fiercer.

And Satan not only opposes God’s kingdom from without – he does it from within as well. This is mentioned in v.4 of our scripture text: “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” This brings us now to the other reason why there is a great need for us to earnestly contend for the faith:

2. God’s Truth in the Church is often Corrupted by Ungodly Men.

We may call this ‘truth decay.’ There is a tendency for new ideas to creep into the church and corrupt God’s truth. We all know that in science and technology, innovation is a good thing which can lead to great improvements. But in theology there is no place for innovation. Charles Spurgeon has put it very well: “Be assured, there is nothing new in theology except that which is false.” So, whenever you hear someone claim that he has discovered a new teaching in the Bible that no one else has ever known before, or that he has received a new revelation from God, you must reject his claim.

We observe in v.3 that Jude describes the truth that we have as “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” This implies that the faith we have is already delivered once and for all, and nothing more can be added to it. We just need to keep it intact as good custodians of the faith. Unfortunately, throughout the entire history of the Church there has always been ungodly men who somehow manage to get in, win the hearts of the people, and then introduce new teachings that mix the truth with error. And then, amore and more people get caught up with the new teaching, it goes viral and becomes a raging infection that needs to be stopped. The only way to stop it is by earnestly contending for the faith once delivered unto the saints!

In the first century, the Apostle Paul had to contend for the faith against the Judaizing heresy in the church. There were false teachers in the church who required Christians to be circumcised and observe all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament in order to be saved. By doing this they undermined the Gospel of Christ and turned it into a counterfeit gospel. And so Paul had to write the book of Galatians to expose this false teaching.

About 20 years later, the church was infected with a new teaching called Gnosticism. Its symbol, which is a sun-disc with a cross inside, shows that it combines pagan and Christian concepts. The false teachers eventually claimed that besides God and Christ, there are also many other supernatural powers that were involved in the creation of the world and in the salvation of sinners. The result is that they ‘denied the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ’ as Jude wrote. Christ is not the unique only begotten Son of God anymore. And He is also not full deity, because Christ came into contact with matter, and according to this false teaching God can never come into contact with matter.

To the Gnostics, everything material is evil and everything spiritual is good. They therefore cultivated their spiritual lives and allowed their flesh to do anything it liked. The result is that they ‘turned the grace of God into lasciviousness.’ (v.4) The false teachers tried to convince believers that being saved by grace gave them freedom to live in sexual immorality.

This prompted Jude to warn believers against their false teachings and to urge them to ‘earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.’ Many faithful believers did this, and the battle against Gnosticism was fought for more than a hundred years until it was completely eliminated. Although the church was successfully delivered from this false teaching, the struggle to keep its doctrine pure from all corruption did not end.

Soon after Christianity was declared to be the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD, all kinds of strange teachings were brought into the church. God’s Word was eventually banned from the church and replaced by man-made traditions such as the doctrine of indulgences. But thankfully, the Lord raised up believers who were willing to contend earnestly for the faith. In the 12^th century, a merchant in southern France named Peter Waldo started a movement to eliminate all the false doctrines from the Church and follow strictly what the Bible teaches. Those who belonged to this movement became known as the Waldensians. Although they were heavily persecuted, they kept on contending for the faith for several centuries.

During the 16^th century Protestant Reformation, the Lord raised up more believers who dared, against all odds, to remove all the man-made traditions and teachings from the church by going back to the Bible. Despite the tremendous opposition they faced, the Reformers pressed on to restore the purity of the Christian faith. And thanks to them, we are able to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth today.

In the 19^th century, new doctrines began to creep into many churches. Every tenet of God’s Word was questioned by Liberal scholars who claimed that the miracles of the Bible did not take place, that the Bible is not the Word of God but of men, and that hell does not exist. They claimed that Jesus Christ was merely a wise moral teacher, and that He is not the only way to God. In the 1950s Modernist ministers were propagating these false teachings in many churches in Singapore. This led to the bold step taken by our church founding fathers to come out from the compromised denomination to start Life Bible-Presbyterian Church.

And now in this present time, it is our turn to contend earnestly for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. There are many new trends and movements that have emerged today. Post-modernism has spawned the Emergent Church movement which is characterized by a flexible approach to theology and ‘highly creative’ approaches to worship. Materialism has engendered the Prosperity Gospel with its attractive emphasis on health and wealth. Pragmatism has given rise to the Megachurch movement which employs worldly methods to generate rapid church growth.

Dispensationalism has produced a new teaching called Hyper-grace. This teaching overemphasizes the grace of God to the exclusion of other vital teachings such as repentance and confession of sin. It teaches that the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments are irrelevant to Christians today. Hypergrace even teaches that everything which Jesus taught before His resurrection are part of the Old Covenant and therefore no longer applicable to us.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to prevent all these new teachings and movements from making inroads into the Church. This is because of the easy access to abundant sources of influence which digital media affords. And we can be sure that more and more new teachings will arise in the days to come. What then should we do in order to be well equipped to contend for the faith?

The answer is found at toward the end of Jude’s epistle: “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith….” (Jude 20) This is the only other verse in this epistle that contains the word ‘faith’ beside our scripture text. And ‘the most holy faith’ mentioned here refers to the same body of truth that we are to contend for. Paul mentioned the same thing to the Ephesian elders, when he said, “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up…” (Acts 20:32)

This means that we need to grow in our own knowledge and application of God’s Word. Every believer needs to acquire a good working knowledge of the Scriptures, especially in our present time when false teachings abound – and some of them may be extremely hard to discern. The way to become more discerning Christians is not by spending all our time examining every false teaching that comes along, but by spending a lot more time in the Word to acquire a thorough working knowledge of the truth of God.

An expert on money was once asked how he was able to recognise the false notes and coins so well. Did he spend a lot of time studying counterfeit notes and coins? “No,” he replied, “I spend most of my time studying the genuine notes and coins.” Let us spend more time in reading and studying God’s Word, and let us do this with the same intensity that is needed to earnestly contend for the faith. By doing this, we will develop a keen ability to recognise any false teaching.

There are many ways of doing this. As the New Year begins, you can make a resolution to read the Bible thoroughly, so that you will know it well. One indispensable ministry to equip Christians in every church is the Sunday School where systematic biblical instruction is specially catered and delivered to each age group. As next Sunday is promotion Sunday for our Sunday school, please make it a point to join one of the classes. If you want a more in-depth knowledge of God’s Word, you can enroll for the ERBL classes on Monday night or Thursday night which will begin on 13 Jan.

Another opportunity to build up yourself on your most holy faith is through the messages at our annual Church camp. In June next year, Pastor Tan Soon Yong will be our camp speaker and he is preparing to bring 8 solid messages from the Book of Malachi. And of course, please don’t miss coming to church for worship service every Sunday to receive God’s Word that is preached here. You must regard every opportunity to be fed with the Word as a precious opportunity to build yourself up on your most holy faith.

As we prepare to begin a New Year, let us commit ourselves fully to do this well, so that we will all be well-equipped and ready to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints!

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