CMC 2009 Winter Retreat Sermon #1
Some of you guys remember about a year and half ago or so how God was really moving among us. If I trace back, I can pint point to a moment after watching the movie Facing the Giants. It is a movie about Coach Grant Taylor trying to survive through another impending defeated 7th season for Shiloh Christian Academy after loosing a star running back to a rival team. Things only seem to get worse for him. Those who used to support him now have serious doubts; they want him out and replaced. The poor coach’s car won’t start! His house literally stinks. And, he learns that he and his wife Brooke may never have any children. And, his team will be matched up against the undefeated Giants.
In the midst of the struggle, a man who’s been praying for the students and the coach tells him a parable about two farmers. They are both praying really hard for rain. One waits for it hopefully. And, the other waits for it while “preparing his fields.” And the man asks the coach which farmer is truly trusting God? The core message was this: genuine faith in God’s provision gives our very best. Faith is against earning. You cannot earn God’s provision. But, faith doesn’t oppose earnest effort, our very best instead it requires it.
So, many of us took this message to our hearts, and we tried to give our best. But, along the journey, our initial enthusiasm met slow progresses, defeats, fall backs, boredom and apathy.
Looking back, what I realize is that it is not merely enough to try to give my best when things don’t look promising, discouragement sets in. Down under the trench while bombshells rain on you, the call to give your best doesn’t evoke the kind of courage needed to get through the drawn out, distracting, disheartening times. It is easy to walk when all things are hunky-dory smooth, when things seem to be falling into place. But, when simple ordinary moments become crucible testing grounds, I need something more than the cheerful call from the side, “Hey, do your best!” What I need is to fight! The devil constantly prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and try to turn our perfectly normal ordinary days into complete boredom, discouragement, or chaos, what do you need? What we need is to dig our heels into the ground into all out fighting stance to stand firm and resist (1 Peter 5:9).
I don’t know about you, but I know I am a creature that wants things to be easy. I wish following Jesus is easy, effortless, somehow it comes to me and flows; inspiration, motivation, perspiration just comes naturally and I don’t have to work at it. I wish I could run this spiritual marathon on my bicycle. But, Jesus says, “You are invited to run this race. But, Steve, you cannot bring your bicycle here. You cannot expect someone else to run it for you either. You got to run it. But, if you would trust me, I will be your coach. I will train you. I promise you that it is not going to be easy road ahead. You are going to feel some pain. You are going to feel like quitting. But, I am going to help you fight to stay the course.”
Jesus calls me, Jesus calls you to come after him and he tells us that we must deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily and follow him (Luke 9:23). To follow Jesus, I need to get this idea that I can run the race without having to fight, without having to experience any pain. Runners out there know that pain is expected in training to push your limit.
God wants to define our year 2009 as the year when we will fight to stay on the course.
Christine who will be departing to Texas this Sunday will be going through her basic boot camp for the Army. I asked her since she is enlisted as an officer doing dentistry, why she would need to go through boot camp. Foot soldiers I understand, but dentist? Apparently, the Army requires that everyone enlisted to meet a certain level of fitness and combat skills. She said to me that she’s been working out and she is able to do 20 pushups. And, I asked her if that’s with her knees on the ground. She said, “No! No, knees!” I was impressed!
I want you to envision 2008 to be a training ground when you and I are going to learn to dig our heels and stand firm to resist, to fight off the devil that prowls around to devour us. That is what’s going to take to grow. Men and women of warriors in making!
Some of you are wondering if I am going to talk about Jude at all. Well, here it goes.
1. Jude’s call to fight
The call to fight comes from Jude 3 where he urges you and me to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. The word, contend means to exert intense effort on behalf of something, to struggle for something.[1] Eugene Peterson paraphrases in Message this way, “you fight with everything you have in you for the faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish.”
If Jude had his way, this wasn’t something that he was eager to talk about it at all. He was very eager to write… about the salvation; to discuss doctrinal foundation. But, he said, in Jude 3, “I felt I had to write and urge you to content for the faith.” And, in Jude 4, he explained why he felt so strongly to urge the reader to contend for the faith.
It is because as stated in Jude 4 certain men who were godless men slipped in among the readers, whose condemnation was written about long ago. Two things were wrong about them. One, they were redefining what grace is by saying grace gives them a license for immorality. Two, they denied Jesus Christ, Sovereign and Lord. I will talk about them in greater detail tomorrow when we cover Jude 5-16. But, for tonight it is suffice to say that Jude made his urgent call for Christians to contend, to fight for the faith entrusted to them because he saw some reinventing the gospel to justify their sinful lifestyle. And, the spiritual truth is that you cannot promote sinful lifestyle while counting on God to cover it with his grace. The reason they were degrading God’s grace into a license to sin more was because they deny Jesus Christ only Sovereign and Lord.
This is why Jude felt utterly compelled to call Christians to contend for the faith entrusted to them, to fight for the faith that was gifted to them.
2. Fight for the faith as a servant of Jesus Christ
Take notice in Jude 1 where Jude describes himself as “a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James.” James whom Jude refers to is one of the half brothers of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 13:55. He is half brother because Joseph although was wedded to Mary, Jesus was born without Joseph’s physical involvement. Jude a brother to James would make Jude also a half brother to Jesus. Yet, what you don’t see here is Jude making any mention of this relationship to Jesus. But only other thing he mentions is, “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ.” For Jude, his physical connection to Jesus through his Mary was not important. What was important to Jude was that he was a servant of Jesus Christ. Jude was simply a servant, a bond-slave who did the will of God in Christ. Jesus said that his true brother, sister and mother was, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:35).” For Jude, this was all that matter to him that he was someone who served Jesus Christ to advance God’s will.
What we see is humility of James for purposely not writing about his connection to Jesus through Mary. And, this humility of seeking no other recognition than being a servant of Jesus Christ enabled his call to contend, to fight for the faith in Jesus Christ whom he called Sovereign and Lord (Jude 4).
It is a difference between either Jude authentically contending for the cause of Jesus Christ or for the cause of Jude, himself. Jude’s object of contending was fighting for the causes that mattered to Jesus and to the Father. That is what servants do; they serve the interest of their master, their king.
Can you and I make this genuine claim? “Jesus is my King, my Sovereign, my Lord. And, I am his royal servant.” If you are not clear on this, you are not going to be able to fight for the faith because the faith is faith in Jesus Christ as King, Sovereign and Lord.
The Christian faith is trust in Jesus Christ as God’s Son who came to dwell in our world as God-human person, who took our sin upon himself, went to the cross, took the blows of our punishments, nailed and pierced on the cross, died, buried, and in three days resurrected from the dead, defeating the power of death, the power of Satan.
And, he now sits at the right hand of God as Sovereign and Lord and when he comes back second time around, we are going to see his name written on his robe and on the side of his thigh, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS (Revelation 19:16).
It is not enough to know Jesus as one who forgives our sins when we ask him for forgiveness as though we can now do whatever we would like to do; we accumulate enough sins then we come back and he is ready to forgive us more. And, we go back and sin more comfortably knowing he will forgive us. This would be reducing Jesus Christ to superpower soap that can remove the guilt of our sins from us whenever we need him for.
What Jude understood was that Jesus Christ forgives us in order that we can freely serve him without shame and guilt, to fight for Jesus’ cause to advance God’s will in our own lives and around us.
To fight for the faith, you must be a servant of Jesus Christ because you know Jesus as your Sovereign and Lord.
3. Fight for the faith on the knowledge that you are called, loved and kept by the Triune God
Notice with me how Jude as a humble servant of Jesus Christ addresses the reader. “To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ.” (Jude 1)
Without being secured in the knowledge that Triune God has been working since the eternal past, is working now and will be working in the eternal future, you may serve God thinking this will help you earn a good standing before God.
But, you don’t serve the King hoping that he will accept you as a servant. This will be like by serving you are hoping to earn a place of a servant in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. No, you serve Jesus Christ, Sovereign and Lord, because he has made you his servant, his own.
The same idea applies to God the Father. To do the things the Father wants you to do, hoping that you will become his child doesn’t make any sense. You do the things God the Father wants you to do because you are his son through Jesus Christ.
God has called you means he has chosen you in the past to reveal himself to you through his Son Jesus Christ. The fact that God has called you and you’ve responded to his choice of you, you are now loved by him as your Father and you are kept by Jesus Christ. Do you have this certainty of being called by the Father, loved by God the Father through Jesus Christ and how you will be kept by Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit?
Do you know that your past, your present and your future are all secured by God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit? My prayer is that you do know this. And, if you don’t have the conviction of being called and loved by God and preserved by Jesus, my prayer is that you do know this tonight. I pray that you experience God’s touch.
When you know that you are called, loved and will be preserved, your fight for the faith takes a different shape. You don’t fight for the faith out of doubts about your standing before God. You fight for the faith because you love God who loves you in Christ. Contending for your faith becomes simply an expression of your committed love for God who is in charge of your past for he called you, who is in charge of your present for he loves you, who is in charge of your future for his Son will keep you.
Look down with me to Jude 24. “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore.”
Although the great theme of Jude is about you and I contending, fighting for the faith, ever greater overarching theme of Christian life that is vividly expressed in these two verses is that God is contending to keep you; he is fighting to keep you from falling; he is fighting to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.
The call to contend, to fight for the faith is only possible because it is God who first called us, loves us and will keep us and present us to his presence as righteous sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. This is what it means to fight for the faith, to simply respond to God in your love for him who fights for you, who loves you, who is committed to you.
[1] Louw & Nida, epagwnizomai (39.30).
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