Earnestly Contend for the Faith

Driving home: It means the powerful, persuasive work. The work of God, not only summoning us to respond to the gospel, but powerfully inclining us to embrace the offers of mercy and salvation and actually to come to the Lord Jesus.

An example of a mother verbally summoning her son Johnny home is used to contrast the common understanding of 'call' with the New Testament's meaning of God's effectual call.

And so the people to whom Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, writes, are described as called, beloved, and kept. Now this terminology, called, beloved, and kept, is language used only of the true people of God. When Jude indicates that he's writing to a people who are called, he is using the word called in its standard usage in the New Testament. We use the word call primarily as a synonym for extending a verbal summons.

5:34 - 6:16 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It means the powerful, persuasive work. The work of God, not only summoning us to respond to the gospel, but powerfully inclining us to embrace the offers of mercy and salvation and actually to come to the Lord Jesus.

The analogy of Johnny's mother not just calling, but physically taking him by the ear and bringing him home, illustrates God's effectual call as a powerful, persuasive work of the Holy Spirit, not just a mere summons.

It means the powerful, persuasive work. The work of God, not only summoning us to respond to the gospel, but powerfully inclining us to embrace the offers of mercy and salvation and actually to come to the Lord Jesus. It would be the difference between Johnny's mother merely saying, Johnny, time to come home for supper, and running out into the yard where he is and taking him by the ear and, bringing him into the house. Well, God's call, though it is not a physical, external force, is God taking us, as it were, by the ear. By the secret, yet powerful operation of the Holy Spirit, not only summ...

6:54 - 8:19 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The sermon highlights that false teachers aggressively promoted error even while apostles like Paul and Peter were alive, as evidenced by Paul's experiences in Corinth and his…

The metaphor of putting a man on a torture rack and tightening the winches, dislocating his body, is used to describe how false teachers 'wrench' and distort the Scriptures, taking them out of their natural configuration.

And now it has come to pass, and by the time we come to the seven letters of the seven churches in Asia Minor, written toward the end of the first century, when all of the apostles except John are dead, there are only two churches that do not receive a reproof from the Lord. And there are several where there are explicit reproofs concerning the toleration of false teaching. And the history of the church has taught us that the body of truth that was being assailed by those who were aggressive in promoting error while there are living apostles, that the devil is never lacked for men whose minds ...

41:52 - 43:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Have an uncompromising commitment to the truth of God.

The analogy of an athlete in training, striving to win gold, is used to explain the meaning of 'agonizomai' (contend earnestly) as marshalling all powers and faculties with self-control.

The man who is striving to win the gold is the man who exercises self-control in all things. Every man that strives in the games, every man who is marshalling all of his powers and all of his faculties to the end that he might gain the gold, that man is agonizing. It's the word used of our Lord when he went into the garden of Gethsemane and being, it's a different form, but in the same family and being in a great agony. He sweat as it were great drops of blood.

45:49 - 46:27 Read in full sermon

The point: Have an uncompromising commitment to the truth of God.

The example of Christ's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is used to further illustrate the intense, agonizing nature of the word 'agonizomai'.

The man who is striving to win the gold is the man who exercises self-control in all things. Every man that strives in the games, every man who is marshalling all of his powers and all of his faculties to the end that he might gain the gold, that man is agonizing. It's the word used of our Lord when he went into the garden of Gethsemane and being, it's a different form, but in the same family and being in a great agony. He sweat as it were great drops of blood.

45:49 - 46:27 Read in full sermon

The point: Resist being called junk food mind; be well-grounded in the faith by paying the price for a nutritious, healthy, well-balanced spiritual diet.

The analogy of physical health requiring nutritious food, not just Twinkies and candy bars, is used to explain that spiritual health and grounding in the faith require diligent study of God's Word, not just 'mental and intellectual junk food'.

Dear people of God, I beg you, if you don't resist to be called junk, food, mind, you're never going to be well-grounded in the faith. There is so much to bombard our minds with mental and intellectual junk food. And just as no one becomes healthy and vigorous in his physical constitution who's popping down Twinkies and candy bars and has no sense of commitment to a nutritious, healthy, well-balanced diet, no, no one is going to be well-grounded in the faith and be able earnestly to contend for it unless he's willing to pay the price to have a Bible-based, spirit-imparted, intelligent understa...

57:18 - 58:45 Read in full sermon

The point: Be committed to propagate and defend the faith even unto death.

The analogy that a crisis never creates anything new but only reveals what is already there is used to explain that a future trial of martyrdom would simply expose the existing level of commitment to the faith.

and the erosion of common grace so quickly manifested in my own generation, with the increasing outspoken hostility to those who hold to the right angles of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, there may be some sitting here for whom martyrdom will not be something you read about in Foxe's Book of Martyrs or in the days of the Covenanters in the Highlands. And the crisis that would come when your contending for the faith, might mean contending that the price of your blood, that crisis, will not create anything new. It will simply reveal what you've been doing up until that moment of...

65:16 - 65:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Contend for the faith in an uncontentious, gracious, but firm way with peers at school, work associates, and neighbors.

God's question to Jeremiah, 'If you've run with the footmen and they've wearied you, how will you contend with the horsemen and the swelling of Jordan?' is used as an example to challenge believers about their readiness for greater persecution if they struggle with lesser trials.

Indifference and carelessness that I trust there's something wrong with my perception, but I don't believe it's that skewed. I fear for altogether too many of you and I speak to you lovingly that you may not be able to do it. Should God suddenly unloose a concentrated way of such open opposition, that we would have to pay for our faith by imprisonment, starvation or death, I fear, I fear how many of you might renounce Christ because you really have not been committed to the propagation and defense of this faith in the relatively easy circumstances in which we face. In the relatively easy circu...

66:10 - 67:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't stifle the voice of God speaking in the word and in conscience.

The metaphor of physically reaching and snatching someone from the fires of hell is used to convey the urgency and desire to save the unconverted through pleading with them to turn to Christ.

Some save, snatching them out of the fire. Would to God we could, physically, reach and snatch you from the fires of hell over which you hang this moment in your underwear. We can only do that by pleading with you to turn from your sin and to turn to Christ. Some have mercy with fear.

72:06 - 72:32 Read in full sermon