9.23.07 Contending for the Faith Jude 1:1-4, 17-23 Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were writing a letter or having a conversation or preparing to make a presentation and then circumstances changed significantly forcing you to change your plans and to rethink what you were going to write or say? That happens to me sometimes in preaching. That is kind of the context of the Letter of Jude. While hoping to write a letter that provided insight and teaching about the salvation Christians share in Jesus Christ, Jude felt compelled to shift gears and address a crisis - false teachers and people claiming to be followers of Jesus who were denying Jesus as their Master and Lord and disobeying his teaching. These people were doing whatever they wanted to do and causing divisions in the church and Jude says look out for such people, they re bad news. Second Peter s use of Jude indicates the letter was preserved, copied, and circulated. (It s kind of ironic that Jude appears in the New Testament after the author who used his work.) The letter of Jude was written to inspire and warn the church of the critical need and vital importance of contending, striving, struggling for the faith that was once for all time delivered to the saints. Listen to Jude 1-4, 17-23: 1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, who are beloved in God the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ: 2 May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance. 3 Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4 For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 17 But you, beloved, must remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; 18 for they said to you, In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts. 19 It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. 20 But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; 21 keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on some who are wavering; 23 save others by snatching them out of
the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies. o Contending is an adjective meaning striving or struggling in rivalry or battle, such as contending armies or two contending parties or teams. In baseball this is the season of the year when teams are contending for the playoffs and a championship. Last night a certain team from Boston became the first to qualify for post-season play. In US politics individuals and parties are contending for power and the elections of 2008. In the world, ideas, religions, political philosophies, corporations, and individuals, are all contending for influence and supremacy. In Jude the issue is contending with false teachers and believers inside the church. That can still be an issue in local churches or ministries today. However, there is also a larger sense of contending for the faith that extends outside the walls of the church into the culture and the world at large. In sports contending requires good coaching, skilled players, and staying away from key injuries. Contending in politics unfortunately seems to be about raising money and shaping one s image or that of one s opponents, far more than it is about ideas or plans. As Christians who are told to contend for the faith, Jude says we do so in a certain way. First he says it is unspiritual people, people devoid of or lacking the Holy Spirit who are causing division in the church. If you want a sign if someone is spiritual Jude says here it is spiritual people, folks who have the Holy Spirit will be working for unity in the church rather than causing division. If someone thinks he or she is filled with the Holy Spirit, yet causing division by their actions, behavior, or speech, Jude says, you re not full of the spirit you re more likely full of yourself. One preacher said, Some think that contending for the faith means to roll the Bible up into a bludgeon with which to beat people over the head. Such people feel that they need to be very contentious in contending for the faith. That is not the case. We don t need to be contentious in contending for the faith with others in church. Jude says, Beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; 21 keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on some who are wavering. Build your faith, pray in the Spirit, keep in the love of God, look forward to Jesus mercy for yourself and have mercy on those who are wavering. o Gk by the flesh. The Greek text of verses 22-23 is uncertain at several points
Notice how positive this is in dealing with other people in the church. It is a good guide for all of us to remember. While Jude was concerned about contending for the faith within a church, in our day we need to contend for the faith in a much larger scale in a number of ways. We need to contend for the faith against powers and forces that seek to domesticate, limit, or even eliminate the Christian faith in the world, but we need to contend using the tools Jude describes not with the weapons of the world. Imagine walking into your local library, planning to read a theologian (I said imagine, I know most of you probably wouldn t but humor me) such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth, or a popular inspirational work, such as Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life or Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People. But instead of finding such important and popular titles, you discover that the religion section has been decimated stripped of any book that did not appear on a government-approved list. That's exactly what's happening right now to inmates in federal prisons under a new administration policy. One news report described what has been taking place, "chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries." The news reports seem implausible. The idea of government bureaucrats drafting a list of approved books on religion seems like something out of Soviet-era Russia, not the United States of America, where freedom of religion even for those behind prison walls is something we treasure. But the reports are true. All of the books and authors named above have been removed from prison libraries. In some instances, chaplains have been forced to dismantle "libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups." The Bureau of Prisons says they merely want to ensure prisons are not recruiting grounds for terrorists and other militant groups. So why are they removing the vast majority of materials on faith and religion? And if prisoners are not free to pursue their own faith journeys, what cause for hope should they have? Christians from across the political and theological spectrum are justifiably outraged. Mark Earley, president and chief executive officer of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship said, "It's swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. There's no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books
that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism." 1 This is one example of when it is important for Christians to contend for the faith and to speak up to those in power. The separation of church and state has always been a bedrock principle of Baptists and part of our nation s history. The purpose of this separation is not to eliminate faith from the marketplace or from influencing policy but it is to prevent government interference with the practice of faith. Whether we realize it or not, all of us are contending for a faith that was preserved and passed on to us by earlier generations. The Christian faith is always a generation away from extinction which makes what we do about it so important. Responsibility for contending for the faith, preserving and building up the faith falls to everyone who claims the name of Jesus. We not only need to contend for the faith in the church, but with forces outside the church including the government. What I am about to say next may sound controversial to some of you, but another of the forces Christians need to contend with is Islam. I was surprised by how depressed I felt on Tuesday, September 11 of this year. I watched some programs on The History Channel in the morning before coming to church and the images are still so powerful. I was struck by how sad I felt thinking about that day and everything that has happened since. More Americans have now died in Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed on 9/11, not to mention the tens of thousands of civilians killed. The latest video from Osama Bin Laden invites Americans to turn to Islam. That is the aim of the radical Islamist movement in Muslim countries. Their goal is a political order based on enforcing a particular version of Islamic law. I read a book many years ago in a class on spiritual renewal that argued that the world is a competition of ideas to gain adherents. I believe that is true. We need to contend for the faith of Jesus because there are so many other ideas with competing world views that are seeking to gain adherents; that are trying in every way to win people to their cause. More than a billion people around the world practice the Muslim faith. At present, more than a billion people claim devotion to Jesus. Both religions are universal in nature and contain within them the call to win more converts to the cause. 1 Sources:"Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries," New York Times, 9/10/07. "2 New York prisoners sue to get their banned religious books back," Associated Press, 8/22/07.
However, Christians in predominantly Muslim countries have a very different experience than Muslims in predominantly Christian countries or countries with a significant history of Christianity. Muslims in nations in Europe or the United States have the freedom to practice their faith without fear of persecution or retribution and take advantage of the openness of the freedom that is provided for them and for all people. Christians in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia face incredible hardship, death threats, car bombs outside of worship places, even torture for converting to Christianity much less practicing their Christian faith. Arab Christians are leaving the Palestinian territories in significant numbers due to persecution from a Muslim dominated police force and government. Justus Wiener, a scholar in residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs says Bethlehem, which in 1948 was nearly 80% Christian, is today barely 12%. In July several hundred people gathered in Rome for a Save the Christians rally to demand an end to persecution of Christians throughout the Middle East. 2 In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, wrote that we are engaged in a clash about civilization. Terrorists base their ideology on religious extremism. They do not want Muslim countries to modernize. With all due respect to Mr. Blair, that isn t completely accurate in describing the root of the problem. The truth is from its origins the Muslim faith has contained within itself not just the desire to be a global faith but a willingness to use force and violence to make that happen. This is a significant difference from the origins and growth of the Christian faith. The Christian faith won over the Roman Empire in an extremely slow and painful process that took three hundreds years and the universalism of Christianity was originally conceived in spiritual terms that made a clear distinction between God and Caesar. By the time of Emperor Constantine when the political structure sought to embrace Christianity as a means to further its imperial claims, Christianity had in place a church institution with a strong authority over the wills and actions of believers to counter the government. Islam linked from its beginning political and religious imperialism, it didn t distinguish then and doesn t today a difference between earthly and spiritual power or to use Jesus words, rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar s and to 2 Article on Persecution, in Charisma Magazine, October 2007 edition.
God the things that are God s. From the outset Muhammad claimed his authority directly from Allah to act as head of the state and head of the faith. 3 In the prophet Muhammad s farewell address in March of 632 he said, I was ordered to fight all men until they say There is no god but Allah. Needless to say this is a far cry from Jesus saying, By this all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. More than 500 years after Muhammad, the renowned Muslim ruler and conqueror Saladin said in January of 1189, I will cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah. In our time Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) and Osama Bin Laden continue to echo the same message, I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad, (Bin Laden, November, 2001). Islam is hoping to triumph over the west, you might be surprised to know that immigration, conversion, and higher rates of child birth have greatly increased the number of Muslims within Europe (in France one in ten people is a Muslim and a reported 50,000 Christians convert to Islam every year; in Brussels Muhammad has been the most popular name for male babies for some years; in Britain attendance at mosques is higher than in the church of England). 4 In the 21 st century we are in a struggle of ideas and the stakes are very high as we contend for the faith as believers in earlier centuries did. It is important that we are not naïve about what is at stake. Jude describes the necessity of contending for the faith, he writes about the judgment of God that will come on sin, and reminds us of how we as Christians are to practice our faith. Build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; 21 keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on some who are wavering. On a broader scale the tools to contend for the Christian faith in a complex world include changing the conditions that lead to crushing poverty, attacking corruption at all levels of society, protecting and preserving the land and water so there is food to eat and water to drink, and providing educational and economic opportunity as well as medical 3 For an excellent book on this subject I recommend Islamic Imperialism A History by Efraim Karsh, Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 2007. 4 Islamic Imperialism, page 236.
care these are the sorts of things are missionaries are engaged in as they share the faith of Jesus Christ. Jude ends with a great blessing that gives us hope as we contend for the faith. 24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. "Now to him who is able to keep you from falling" indicates the potential in the Christian life. It doesn t say "Now to him who does keep you from falling," because God does not always keep us from falling. God is able to, Jude says, but the Lord doesn t always do it. We fall sometimes; some of us can t seem to learn any other way. If we weren t so stubborn, and if we would obey God, the Lord would keep us from falling. In that sense, we never need to fall. But even when we do fall, God is able "to present us without blemish in the presence of his glory." The word translated "without blemish," (Greek "anomas"), means "apart from the law." Our God has so completely dealt with us that even our falls have already been handled in Christ. Therefore, after we have learned the painful lesson of it, the Holy One is free to wipe it out of the record, and to present us faultless before his glory! This will be done, with rejoicing. That means we will have had a part in this too. We are involved in the process of contending for the faith and walking the path of discipleship as long as we re living, and when we get where we're going, we can say, "Hallelujah! Thank God, I've won!" As Paul says, "I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness," {2 Tim 4:7b-8a RSV}. Let us be contenders for the faith, who run and strive for a crown of righteousness with all our strength and with all our minds. Blessing 24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.