If you go to the end of your Bible, the book just before Revelation, the small letter of Jude, we're going to be there again. And last week I shared with you an introduction in verses one and two. This week we're going to examine verses three and four. So let's let's stand for the reading of God's word out of respect for what it is we hold in our hands. The inspired, infallible word. of our Lord. Let's read verses 3 and 4 in Jude. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write 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 handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. That is the reading of God's word. You may be seated. Let's pray. Ask the Lord's help. Holy Father. We come to you hungry, we come to you needy, I come to you, Lord, as one inadequate to Bring these words of eternal life to your people. Father, it is you that we desire to hear from by your spirit. Your son said that he has the he has the words of eternal life and God, it is you that we need right now to hear from. So I pray that right now you would remove any distractions. I pray that whatever would be on the minds of your people that would Distract them that would that would take away their attention from your word. I pray that you would just remove that distraction right now. I pray that your word would find good soil and would take root in every heart. If there be somebody here who doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we ask for mercy on them. We ask that you would open their ears, open their heart to the glorious truth we are about to hear. And this we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Imagine with me that you're lying in bed. It's 3 a.m. in the morning. All is dark, all is quiet. Suddenly, you're awakened by a sound. And you lie there listening for a few moments. You think, oh, I must be hearing things. So you just turn over, you go back to bed. All is quiet. Kids are asleep. Suddenly you hear that sound again and you're like, that sounds like somebody moving around. Something's moving around in my house. And so you get out of bed and there, lo and behold, you see a dark silhouette. You see the dark shadow of an intruder. Someone has entered your home. You are experiencing a home invasion. A predator has crept in unnoticed with the intent of bringing harm to you and your family. Now, if that were to happen, beloved, my brothers, in such a case, you would have every right, no, you would have every responsibility to protect your home, to protect your children, your wife. In fact, the Word of God says in 1 Timothy 5.8 that the one who does not provide for the well-being of his family, he is worse than an infidel. That is to say, a man who does not seek the protection, the well-being of his family, he's worse than an unbeliever because even an unsaved pagan man would know, I have the right, I have the responsibility to protect my family. to protect my family from an intruder, from an invader. And I want us to see this morning from our text that Jude's purpose in writing this letter to the church is along the same lines of a man taking very desperate measures to protect his home. You see, the church has been infiltrated. The church has been invaded. Certain persons have crept in unnoticed. And Jude is zealous that the church rise up and defend itself. That the church rise up and defend the truth of God, with which it has been entrusted. This morning I want you to see that just as God has tasked men with the defense of their homes, He has tasked even this church, even this local church, with the defense of the Christian faith. We are part of something historic. We are standing in the legacy of saints that reaches far beyond any one of us. It is far beyond what any one of us can truly appreciate. And what only God in heaven fully sees. It is a legacy of faith which we must protect and which we must preserve and pass on. And to unfold this idea, I want to ask four questions of our text. The first question that we ask our text is what is the faith for which we must contend? What is the faith for which we must contend? At the end of verse 3, we find Jude is appealing that you earnestly contend. You contend earnestly for, now here's the faith, the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. And I want you to see four ways Judas qualifying this faith. First, we see its nature, the nature of this faith. He says, the faith. You see that? The presence of the article there, the faith, indicates that it is not just any faith, but it is a faith that is well defined. This is a faith that was once for all handed down to the saints. In fact, if you looked at this in the original Greek text, you'll see that between the article the and the word faith, All of these words appear right in there. They all modify this faith. It literally reads, the ones for all handed down to the saints, faith. That is, Jude is being very specific about this faith which we are to protect. He's not talking about just anyone's personal, subjective experience of faith, but he's talking about the objective, well-defined body of Christian truth. Generally speaking, the faith in the New Testament refers to the Christian faith, like in Acts 6 and 7. We read that the Word of God went forth. It was kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase. And then we're told that even a great number of priests, that is those of the religion of Judaism, were becoming obedient to the faith. That is describing the fact that these men who were in the religion of Judaism had converted and they had embraced the Christian faith. So here scripture distinguishes Christianity as the faith to which many Jews were converting. Now, generally, the faith means or the faith that Jude is mentioning is not our personal experience then. It is the objective body of doctrines that all of us must believe. But more specifically, I think Jude is referring to the most central truths of the Christian faith. That is the gospel. Jude's not crying wolf. He's not calling the church to arms because somebody in the church has a different view of the rapture. He's not calling the church to arms. He's not crying wolf because somebody in the church has even a different view of tongues or a different view of church government. Jude is calling the church to arms. He's crying wolf because he knows that the very doctrines upon which the church has been founded, that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. is being threatened, that those who have crept in unnoticed are distorting the very gospel of God. And it is that very doctrine, it is the gospel itself of Jesus Christ that has given the church its life. That's how we have this common salvation. And so you could see why Jude is concerned. And we see examples of this recorded elsewhere in Scripture. If you read the letter of Paul to the Galatians, he talks about how certain Jewish Christians had crept into the church and they were seeking to draw away some by teaching that salvation is not simply by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, but you need to be circumcised. You need to keep all of our dietary laws, all of our rituals in order to be saved. And they were distorting the very grace of Jesus Christ. And Paul would not have it. Now, the faith here, I'll just lastly add, that Jude is describing is not simply a body of Christian doctrines. It's not simply just the gospel of Jesus Christ, which we must believe, but it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which we must live. He's talking about the faith that every Christian must live. That's why Second Corinthians 13 5 warns us. Test yourselves and see whether you are in the faith. This isn't something simply some intellectual exercise where you can agree with 10 different questions and give the right answers. Are you in the faith? This is a faith that we must live. It is a life to which we are called. That's the nature of this faith. The second way Jew qualifies as faith is by describing its finality. It is the faith which was once for all handed down. In other words, this body of Christian doctrine is complete. It's been once for all handed down. And it's complete because it's perfect. You can't add anything to it. You can't improve on perfection. You can't add or take away from it. And why would Jude bother to mention this? I think he's setting the Christian faith here, historically handed down, over against the novelty of what it is the false teachers were teaching. And you know, every lie, every distortion of the gospel since the time of Christ has only been able to do that, only been able to add to, take away from the gospel. And yet Jude is saying, just like Christ died once for all, 1 Peter 3.18, in the same way, this faith has been once for all handed down. And it means that just as in the first century, nobody could take away from it, nobody could redefine it. That's the same thing goes for the 21st century. All of a sudden, the gospel doesn't become a social gospel. It is still the same gospel once for all given to us ultimately by the Lord Jesus and his apostles. Notice thirdly, Jude qualifies his faith in terms of its transmission. He said, it is the faith which was once for all handed down, handed down. The Christian faith is a hand me down, not in a negative way. It's just to say it's not original with you. If you are a believer in the true Christian faith, let me tell you, it's because somebody handed it down to you. Thank God somebody gave the gospel to you. Jude uses the same language as Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15, 3, where Paul says to the Corinthian church, I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Paul's saying, I am just delivering to you what was given to me. And did you know Paul would get the gospel from the very Lord Jesus? Now, Jude is telling us that this faith has been handed down to you. This faith has been handed down, it has been received. What's his point? Well, to confess that this faith has been handed down is to confess our indebtedness to other believers, to those who handed it down. I'm telling you, if you have received the gospel of Jesus Christ, And you'd say, by God's grace, I know where I'm going when I die. I have a Savior. I am under the blood of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you, take time to thank God that He handed down the gospel to you. Because it is by this faith that you are saved. Thank God for every man, woman, and yes, even children who throughout the history of the church sacrificed, suffered so that this gospel might be passed on to you. Indebtedness. Wow. This gospel was transmitted to us, handed down to us. Finally, Jude qualifies this Christian faith by describing its recipients. He says it was once for all handed down to the saints. That's the beneficiaries. That's the recipients of this faith. They are called holy ones. Literally, that's the word. Holy ones. We could say what that really means in light of the New Testament is ones who have been made holy by the blood of Jesus. And if you are in Jesus Christ, you've been made holy. You are a saint. What an incredible contrast from those that Jude is writing about. We're going to see he's going to go on to describe these false teachers in much more and much less flattering terms. They are anything but holy. They are seeking to draw away people from the precious truth by which we must be saved. And yet he describes those who've received this faith as the saints. And by the way, can I just say this too? There is no precedent anywhere in the Bible for describing God's people as anything less than saints. There is no, the Bible never teaches there is a special category of Christians that are called the saints. But there are some Christians that are just kind of working on it. We've not yet been canonized. You see, the Roman Catholic Church has had a long tradition of canonizing certain men and women based on their exemplary deeds or different things. And you know what? The Bible doesn't teach that. I want to encourage you this morning that if you're in Jesus Christ, did you know that the 67 times where the word saints occurs in the New Testament, it is always only referring to the people of God in general, the saints. Because if you've been declared righteous in Jesus Christ, if you've been justified, you are holy in the sight of God, positionally. Well, that's this faith that Jude is talking about. That's the faith for which we must contend. It's the once for all handed down to the saints faith. But there's a second question for our text, and that is who must contend for the faith? Who must contend for the faith? Well, if you're a genuine Christian and you've embraced this faith, let me show you two reasons that Jude is calling on you this morning. He's calling on you to take a stand and contend for this same faith. First and most obviously is how he begins. Verse three. He's calling on those who are beloved. He says beloved. While I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, he says, I felt the necessity to write about these false teachers. But he begins by describing his readers as beloved. The Greek word is agapitos. Now, it's a term of endearment, a term of affection. And it could mean that Jude is simply referring to them as those whom he loves or those whom God loves. He's already said in verse 1 that these who he's writing to are the called. They are the beloved in God the Father. They are kept for Jesus Christ. And I think that really both of those ideas are equally in view. Jude loves these people and he loves them because he knows God loves them. And just keep that in mind because We're going to see this is a very harsh letter. All right. This is probably the harshest letter in the New Testament. But I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Jude is not some angry man riding on an angry, vengeful tirade against these false teachers. He is full of love for the truth. He loves the church. This is his family. And just remember that. Remember where he's coming from. He begins his letter addressing the beloved. And actually, this word beloved appears in almost every letter of the New Testament to describe God's saints. It's not a word that is uniquely partitioned off for the pastors and the deacons, the church leadership. It is a word that is applied to the people of God. It's how God would address all of us who are in Jesus Christ. And so as he appeals to those beloved to God, He's appealing to all of God's people. And he does so because he knows that those beloved, those beloved of God will love the truth. Isn't that true? If you really love God, you're going to love his truth. That's 1 John 5 makes that plain. And if you truly love God this morning, you're here and you say, you know, I love the Lord. I love Jesus Christ. He is more than life to me. I'd rather have Jesus Christ than anything, Pastor. That is my testimony. That Jude is addressing you as well. Because if you do mean that, if you do love Jesus Christ, you love God more than anything. You will love his gospel. You will love his truth. You will love the story of salvation and you will give your life for it. You will share Jude's concern that this is your home being invaded. This is your country being threatened. Another reason you can know Jude is calling on all Christians to contend the faith is how he goes on to to call on all those who share in this common salvation. You see, in verse three, he says, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, he has this interruption to talk about false teachers. And I should mention this, too. He's telling us, I had plans to talk about the gospel. I was going to talk about something else. I was excited about it. I had this other letter that I was planning on writing. I had to postpone that because something was so pressing. It's the false teachers we're going to go on to see. But notice how he was making every effort to write about our common salvation. Our common salvation. And you see these possessive pronouns that just include all of God's people. He's saying in verse 4, certain ungodly persons, they are seeking to turn the grace of our God. into licentiousness. You see that they are denying our only master and Lord. He's saying this is your God. This is your Lord Jesus Christ, your only master. It's your salvation, our common salvation. He's not saying common in the sense of a dime a dozen cheap come by anywhere. It's common in the sense of that which is mutually shared. And if you're saved, if you've experienced that salvation, you're a part of something that all of God's people share equally. Jude is telling us what Paul writes to Titus in Titus 1.4, to Titus, my true child in a common faith. Peter similarly writes, 2 Peter 1.1, Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have received, now listen, a faith of the same kind as ours. In Jesus' parable, I don't think anybody better illustrates this than Jesus. In Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard, he tells the story of how the Lord of the vineyard goes out into the vineyard at the very start of the day, which for the Jews was six o'clock in the morning. This was the first hour of the day. He goes out and he finds men there in the marketplace and he sends them into his field to labor in his vineyard. Well, then the Lord of the vineyard returns and he comes again at 9 a.m. and he hires more and sends them to labor in the same fields. Jesus says at noon and at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, the same Lord returns to the marketplace. He finds others standing around. He sends them also into his fields to labor in his vineyard. Finally, in the 11th hour, that would be 5 p.m. for the Jewish clock, the Lord found others standing around and he said to them, Why have you been standing here idle all day long? They said to him, Because no one has hired us. And he said to them, You go into the vineyard, too. And at the end of the day, guess what? The master paid all of the laborers the same wage. He gave them all the same wage. So those who had begun laboring at 6 a.m. I think we can identify this. We can identify with this. They began grumbling. They began to be discontent. They said, wait a second, we've been laboring all day under the heat of the sun. And these guys came at 5 p.m. at the end of the day and you're going to pay them the same as us. And this is what Jesus said. Here's the point. The master replied, is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous? Jesus' basic point is that no one is going to get more salvation than anyone else. It's the same salvation. It's a common salvation for all who believe. Praise God. I had the opportunity this past Thursday to share the gospel with someone lying on her deathbed, physically wasted away. And in that 11th hour, She prayed to receive Christ. Now, I don't know her heart, but I can tell you this because of what the Word of God tells me, that if she meant in her heart what she confessed with her lips, then she received the same common salvation that I have or you or anyone who's ever trusted Jesus Christ and entered in to eternal salvation. Isn't that amazing? That is the grace of God that He saves sinners in the 11th hour, just like He does at 6 a.m., at the beginning of their life. So here's the point. Don't let anyone tell you that your salvation is second rate. I don't care when God pulled you out of sin. It doesn't matter if you're living in the very end of your life or you're at the very beginning. Praise God. But whatever it is, we're part of it. We have the same salvation. Some will, they won't say your salvation is second rate, but they'll say things like, well, you know, you need to speak in tongues. That's real salvation. They'll say things like, oh, well, if you've not been slain by the spirit, you're missing out. They'll say things like, you need the second blessing. Others will say, you need the deeper life. You need the higher life. So that Christianity is divided. The church is divided into the haves and the have nots. And you know what? The Bible never teaches that. that all who believe are the saints. They're the called, they're the beloved in God, they're the kept for Jesus Christ, and they have all the same common salvation. God doesn't have his favorites among his people. He loves them all the same. And so. Praise God, if we share in this common salvation, God is calling on us. If you have this common salvation, he's calling on you. to contend for his faith. I could just mention also from the end of verse three, I'll just point this out. Jude is calling on the saints. We've already said the saints includes all who are in Jesus. It is those to whom this faith has been handed down. This is not some elitist group of Christians that Jude is addressing here. He's addressing the church at large. Every soul ever redeemed by the blood of Jesus. And if this faith was handed down to you, You've got it. It's your time. This is your time. This is the only time that touches eternity that you can make an impact. And it is your time to pass on this faith, to see that the next generation gets it. So we've seen that the faith for which we must contend was or is the once for all handed down to the saints faith. It's the Christian faith. We've seen who must contend for the faith. But thirdly, a third question for our text is, Why must we contend for the faith? What's the big deal? Why must I contend for the faith? Notice the reason Judas applies, verse 4. 4. Certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long ago, long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. And he's going to go on to describe them. Simply put, Christians must contend for the faith right now because your faith is under attack. Your faith is under siege. And Jude gives us, I think we could distinguish a couple reasons here for this call to arms. First, we must contend for the faith because our churches are being presently infiltrated by false teachers and false teaching. It was happening in his time and it's not ceased to happen even today. Verse four begins, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed. He doesn't identify him, right? He just certain persons. I think I don't think it's because Jude didn't have some names in his mind. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he knew some of their names. And by the way, Paul sometimes names apostates. It's not wrong to do that. I will do that from the pulpit at times. So don't freak out. But you know what? Jude doesn't name anyone because really the issue isn't the names. It's the false teaching by which any false teacher must be recognized. That's what's most important. Because false teachers will come and go, but their false teaching, which they receive from their prince, the devil, that will not change. It's just repackaging in one form or another. But it's the same old lies. And so Jude begins the body of his letter here about these certain persons. It begins in verse four. It's going to carry to verse 19, from verses four to 19. He will not stop the talk about these guys. He's got a lot to say about them. And he doesn't tell us their names again, but he says they have crept in unnoticed. They've crept in unnoticed. I mentioned how the danger which threatens the church of Christ today is like a home invasion. You know, when Anne and I were living in Suffolk County, we just moved there a few years ago, then we had a home invasion of our own. I remember one night we heard scurrying, rapid scurrying beneath the floorboards. And that's when we knew we had an infiltrator. We had been invaded. We had unwanted company. And I eventually came to discover, while crawling under our back deck, that there was this opening into the house. Just this huge opening and I realized we had a vulnerability. We had been exposed. We had an unguarded weakness. And whatever it was crept in unnoticed. The enemies of our faith are like that. They are seeking a weak spot into the church, into your life individually. The devil is looking for the weakness to exploit you. And the problem is that many of these enemies, their infiltration is unidentified. It is unnoticed. How can you fight an enemy you don't identify? You can't. And that is the strength of the enemy here. It's his secrecy. You can't fight what you can't see. And in what is the oldest strategic manual on warfare, The Art of War, maybe you've read that before by Sun Tzu, he gives the following strategy. Listen, all warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable. When using our forces, we must seem inactive. When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away. When far away, we must make him believe we are near. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack where he is unprepared. Appear where you are not expected. That's strategy. That's warfare. It's always been that way. And you know what? Our enemy, the devil, has been around for a long time. He knows what he's doing. And that's precisely how he's waging war against the church, employing deception, utilizing distractions, seeking to divide us, looking to strike where least expected. And let me warn you, too, when Jude says they prepped in unnoticed, that is not simply hypothetical. That is happening Right now, it's happening right here. Now, I am not insinuating that someone within our very assembly is a wolf. OK, I'm not saying that. But, you know, Satan doesn't need someone to physically enter the walls of this building to draw away people from this very flock. Because everywhere you go, anywhere you go, Satan has a soapbox. He will preach to you his false ideology, his lies, from your phone, from the television, from the airwaves, the media. It is not neutral. And so effective has been our enemy's campaign of indoctrination in the church that we are now witnessing the apostasy of an entire generation. Surveys are telling us that 20% of Generation Z individuals who identify as Christian evangelicals have now embraced the LGBTQ movement. That is, they are rebelling against our Creator's design for sexuality and marriage and the home and the family, what God instituted from the beginning of time. And it's happening in mass numbers across the church. What's more tragic is how many Christians don't even realize this is happening. The enemy is among us. He's under our noses and the church is sleeping. The church is just, oh, Lord, take us away. Lord, return. But the enemy is among us and it's time to fight. And Satan is deceiving souls in some of our most solid churches. If Jude were standing here, I believe he'd say the same thing to you he said to these Christians in the first century, and that is contend for the faith. Why, Jude? Because the church is under attack. The church is under attack. And they've infiltrated. They're here. Actually, Jude is compelled to immediately comment on God's condemnation of these responsible for teaching these lies. You see that? He says, in verse 4, that these are those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. And that phrase can actually be translated in one of two ways. The ESV says, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, kind of like the Nazarene there, same sense. The NIV is a bit softer. It says whose condemnation was written about long ago. So is Jude simply saying God long ago wrote about this condemnation or that he long ago predestined it? Well, I'll let you wrestle with that. We'll actually run into that a little bit more in this epistle. But 1 Peter 2.8, Peter says that those who stumble over Christ stumble because they are disobedient to the word and to this doom they were also appointed. They are the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. Romans 9, 22. This is one way of saying these false teachers may seem to get away with it. They may seem to go unnoticed. They may destroy many churches and pull many away from the faith. But their judgment has already been decided by God. And from that judgment, they will not escape. Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32, 35. That is the time that God himself has appointed. So we must contend for the faith because there are enemies among us. But along with that, we must contend for the faith here because these persons are presently perverting the truth of God. And notice how the second half of verse four describes what these enemies of God are doing. They are ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Their character is ungodly. They are ungodly persons. Their conduct is unrestrained. They turn the grace of our God into licentiousness. That means they pervert the wonderful grace of Jesus Christ and pervert it as though it was a license to live lawlessly. It's like they're saying, hey, you can go out and have an affair. You can go and do whatever you want with your body, because guess what? God is so full of love. He's so full of forgiveness. It'll be OK. You can go out and live that sexual fantasy. You can go out and live that simple lifestyle. Do whatever you want, because God will forgive you. What does God think about that? Well, he tells us, are we to continue in sin that grace may increase, Romans 6? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? God's grace isn't an excuse for living any way we want. It isn't an excuse for remaining in sin. God's grace is power to live victoriously over sin. That's the wonderful grace of Jesus. It saves us by transforming us, not just saving us from hell, but from our very sin. Galatians 5.18, you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. God's grace isn't a license to live any way you want. It is your opportunity, your power to help and serve and love others. 1 Peter 2.19, Peter tells us how these false teachers promise freedom to others while they themselves are the slaves of corruption. He's saying they can't even, they promise others what they can't even do for themselves. They're hypocrites. They're liars. And as popular as it might be for me to stand up here and just say, live any way you want. In the end, it's all OK. Because Jesus has gotten you covered. He'll be your fire insurance. That is a perversion of God's grace. That's the mindset of one who has never been truly converted, one who's never truly experienced the saving grace of God. Because if you have, let me tell you, your attitude won't be great. I can do whatever I want. You will love Jesus Christ because you will be made a new creation by his grace. Notice their creed, we've seen their conduct is unrestrained, but their creed is anti-Christ. They turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and they deny. They deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. And we're not specifically told all that these heretics believed, but we are told this much. They denied Jesus Christ was their Lord. They denied the lordship and mastery, the only lordship and mastery of Jesus Christ. That's a problem. They were OK with Jesus being their savior, perhaps. Hey, who doesn't want to escape hell, right? But when it came to Jesus' worship over their life, they were not so enthusiastic. They denied that, whether by what they said or their lifestyle. And that's a problem because we can't simply recognize Jesus as our Savior without also embracing Him as our Lord. I've heard some preachers say things like, some of you have already received Jesus as your Savior, but you still need to receive Him as your Lord. I think that can be misleading. We have to be very careful with that kind of language. Because Jesus isn't simply fire insurance. He's the King of kings and Lord of lords. And if you have not ever knelt to Jesus Christ, if you've not ever bowed yourself to Him and submitted yourself to Him in faith, as your Lord and Master, You've not really believed on him as your Savior, because Jesus didn't come simply to save us from hell, but to save us from sin. Matthew 121, it was said of Jesus before he was born on earth of the Virgin Mary, he shall save his people from their sins. And so those who embrace Jesus as their savior are embracing his lordship. They are experiencing his lordship in their lives. Anything less than that is less than what the gospel teaches of salvation. So we've seen the faith for which we must contend. We've seen who it is that must contend for the faith. We've seen why we must contend for the faith. The fourth and final question of our text is this. How? How must we contend for the faith? And if you go back to the middle of verse three, Jude says, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you earnestly, that you contend earnestly for the faith. There's an intensity to this fight. We are called to contend earnestly. The root of this Greek word is agonizomai. It's from where we get our word agony, to agonize. It was a term that was often used in Olympic context, athletic context, where you'd see an Olympian athlete striving, maybe in wrestling or boxing or running, pushing themselves, agonizing to win that competition. It was also a term used in military combat. where soldiers would be wrestling with each other in the, you know, the wrestle of death, the grip of death. It would be hand-to-hand combat. And they would be agonizing to get one up on their opponent. And Paul uses this term in 1 Timothy 6, 12, he says, fight, literally agonize the good fight of faith. It's a fight. It's a warfare that we're in. And here is the only time in the New Testament that this word, agonizami, to agonize, appears in a intensified form with a prefix. It's often a way that a writer in the Greek would intensify a word. So it's translated, contend earnestly, strive to blood for the faith, we could say. This is a fight to the death, I believe. Jude's not merely after standing for your faith within the walls of this building, or when it's convenient, or when it's, you know, some Christian holiday and everybody's out. But Jude's calling on believers to contend, in season and out of season, to contend to the death. In our nation's earliest history, there was a call that went up, and there wasn't many times this happened, but there was a call that went up for militia. That is, there was a call that went out for any able-bodied man from age 16 to 60. Age 16, can you imagine that? I mean, stop playing your video games. Stop playing your video games and pick up your musket. It's time to defend your family, your homeland. This is the history of our country. Many times boys younger than that. And these militia were called to take up arms and defend the homeland from invaders. And the prospect of victory was bleak because we were going head to head with the most powerful nation in the world at the time. It was the British Empire. It was David versus Goliath. But the colonies had something, we could say, that the British Empire hadn't reckoned on, and that was striving to blood. That was a devotion to the cause of liberty that was a devotion to the very death. Give me liberty, give me death. That's the cry of the colonies. And so among the local militias, there were even those that were called minute men. They were chosen for their unique zeal and strength and skill, and they were expected at a minute's notice to take up arms and lay down their life if necessary for the cause of liberty. They were the minute men. Would you take a bullet for the gospel? Does the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings the liberty of eternal salvation that all men need. Is that truth worth more to you than your life? Is it worth laying down your life at a moment's notice? Would you give your life for the gospel of Jesus? As a man lays down his life for his family or as a patriot lays down his life for his country, that's how we are to contend for the faith. That's what God expects. That's what Jude is calling for. The enemy's calling on Christians everywhere. Lay down your sword. Abandon the truth. Leave the ranks of the faithful and we'll accept you. We'll accept you. More and more who identify as Christians, evangelicals, they're apostatizing. They're leaving the church. And there's going to be more. There's going to be more Christian authors. There's going to be more popular preachers, more Christian celebrities that you and I thought, I thought they were genuine. They will leave the ranks of the faithful. What will you do? What will you do? Will you lay down the truth? Will you desert Christ or you stand and fight to the death? I'm not talking about a revolution of blood and steel. I'm talking about overcoming the evil one by the blood of the lamb, by the word of our testimony and by not loving our lives to the death. It is a war waged by the sword of the spirit, the word of God, the truth of God, and God has tasked our church with the defense of this Christian faith. It's historic. You are part of something eternal, something historic, and it's your time. It's our time as a church to make a difference. If we love the truth of God, we will say with David, when he heard that giant blaspheming the name of Israel's God, is there not a cause? Is there not a cause? Let me ask you, just in closing, what's going through your heart? Does your heart burn for zeal and love for the gospel of Jesus Christ? Are you bothered that the gospel, the very gospel which brings salvation is being threatened, being distorted, being perverted? If not, why is that? Could it be that you are outside? You're looking at what Jude is talking about as an outsider. Maybe you don't share the same commitment and devotion to the gospel because you've never believed the gospel of Christ. If that's you, let me say, now is the time. Today is the day of salvation. When Christ comes, it will be too late. Now is the time to repent and plead for his pardon. He's only a call away.