Before we jump into the book and discover what Jude means by “contending for the faith” I think it is important to realize there are two book-ends that hold everything together here. They are what give the book consistency and give us security. It is the word “kept” that we find in verse 1 and “keep” in verse 24. We begin with the knowledge that in spite of all the uncertainty, opposition, heresy, bad teaching and godless men the church is kept. We end with the knowledge that God is able to keep us from falling. So, from the outset we know two things. First, God is sovereign and engaged in our personal lives and the lives of the church but we also have personal and corporate responsibility. Jude says we are to keep ourselves in God’s love. So, not only are we kept but we are charged with keeping.

In between those book-end of keeping and being kept lies contending for the faith. How does Jude do that and how does he expect us to as well?

First, he is prophetic. Prophetic does not mean telling the future or predicting events. Some prophets did that but the role of the prophet and the responsibility of the one with the gift of prophesy is to tell God’s truth. It does not mean speaking the truth without love. It does not mean burning the skin off people. It means telling God’s truth in God’s way. It means being able to bear the displeasure of people and that is harder than it sounds. Studies have shown that most pastors do not want to be prophetic. They want to be liked and that is why they go into ministry. They want to help people. My grandfather was prophetic in the sense of it did not matter to him whether he was liked. He would tell the truth at funerals. He never stayed very long at a church because he never had the sense to spin what he had to say! However, when he died they could not get everyone in the church because he was so loved by the poor.

It means as Hamlet said, “I must be their scourage and minister…I must be cruel only to be kind.” It is sometimes more cruel not to tell the truth. All of us need prophets and people with the prophetic gift in our lives. We need scourges and ministers both.

Jude is specific and graphic. He doesn’t just harangue or boil over. He makes it clear what the actions of these people are but he doesn’t make ad hominem attacks on them. In some sense, he leave a door open to repentance and redemption if they choose. He does not paint them into a corner but he does not pull any punches on the danger they represent to the church.

Finally, he does what Peter does in his letters. He does not lecture. He reminds. I’ve heard it said that when we remind people they are “twice-taught”. They hear us remind them of something they already know and then they hear themselves remembering it. Jude is not teaching people something for the first time. He is reminding them of what they already know to be the “faith entrusted to the saints.” They don’t need instructing – only reminding.

What is the danger? Well, it is similar to the monoxides we have been talking about previously. Monoxides have 200 times the bonding power to hemoglobin and they crowd out the oxygen in our blood. They are silent and undetectable but fatal. In the same way, as Paul describes the “oxygen” of the church as humility, these monoxides have crowded it out and bonded themselves to the very lifeblood of the church. They have secretly slipped into the fellowship. How does that happen? For one, it means the people have been careless about where they are vulnerable. They have begun to value distinctions more than humility. They have not recognized the signs of pride and arrogance. But, it also means there has been a failure in teaching that would allow the people to head down this path and miss the indicators. Their teachers have not been “telling the truth in love” or being prophetic so they have drifted into the current and away from their moorings.

It’s important to notice that they have not been attacked or intimidated or threatened by these men. To the contrary, they have been flattered into thinking they are – like them – special people. The godless men have taken advantage of the spiritual immaturity of the fellowship. Our natural desire to think highly of ourselves has opened them up to false flattery.

As well, they have begun to encourage grumbling and fault finding. It is one of our dangers as connoisseurs of worship and church. Does the music still move me? Is the temperature too hot or too cold? Am I being fed? Are the sermons too long? Spurgeon said there are some people who even when they take communion want the bread to be cut into just the right size for them otherwise they are dissatisfied with the service. Not only that, but these are people who not only grumble and complain themselves but encourage others to do the same. You remember the story of David’s son Absalom. People felt they could not be heard by David so Absalom set up a table at the gate of the city and told people they could come to him with their concerns. Soon, he captured “the hearts of the people” because he would listen to them and encourage them to think that David had no interest in them. He rebelled and lost his life as a result.

But, these men had appealed as well to what everyone to one degree or another secretly desires: to be part of a small elite group. To be on the inside. To be “at the table” and considered a special sort of person. C.S. Lewis called this “The Inner Ring” and he warned us about it in a lecture given to a group of Oxford students.

“I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside…The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of a certain circle for some wholesome reason—if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music—then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.

Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.

And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can’t in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.”

That was the temptation facing the church. There will always be those who desire to be exclusive and to leave others out. In fact, to exclude most of the others. There were words used to describe this by those encouraging it. There were some who were “the initiated” and they were considered to be more spiritual. They were the elite and those growing ever closer to God. The rules were different for the elite. They did not operate under the same rules as the rest. They were exempt. They did not have to be moral as the “little people” understood morality. Their status gave them certain privileges and immunities not available to the masses of the second class. That second class was the “uninitiated” and the Greek word for them literally meant “animals”. They were the herds of “ordinary people” who were tolerated and mocked but not included. This way of thinking had worked its way into the life of the church and was causing divisions and classes of believers.

They had rationalized what they desired. They had found a theological reason for being proud and overbearing. In the words of Jude they had begun to follow the way of three Old Testament illustrations of pride.

They had fallen into the same trap as that of Cain – murderous envy. Cain was so resentful of his brother that he could not bear to have him around to remind him of his not having favor with God. Even after God’s warning him that sin was crouching at his door to devour him, Cain’s anger overwhelmed him. So it was with these men. They could not bear to be compared to others and they envied what others possessed.

They had followed the way of Balaam. He was a prophet who, while not an Israelite, spoke for God. The king of Moab, Balak, was so fearful of the Israelites advancing from the wilderness that he offered to pay Balaam to curse the Israelites. Balaam turned it down but when Balak offered even more he agreed to sleep on it. In other words, he opened himself up to the bribe. However, even though he was unable to pronounce the curse (and was even rebuked by his own donkey) he took the money and retired. Later, he gave advice to Balak on how to corrupt the purity of the Israelites. Send beautiful women into the camps to seduce them and get them to follow their gods. It worked. So Balaam was paid to lie, retired and became a political consultant. In the end, he too was killed by Moses for his deception.

They stumbled into the rebellious behavior of Korah. Read it in Numbers 16. “Korah…became insolent and rose up against Moses. With them were 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders who had been appointed members of the council. They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lordf is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?” Do you see what they were doing? They were saying, “We are as good as you are and you are not the boss of us.” They were like children…but they were not children. They were a threat to the rightful authority and leadership of Moses and Aaron. There is a difference between elitism and anointing and that is what they failed to understand. Moses was not “first among equals.” He was chosen by God for leading the people.

So, what are we to do?

I know what I would like to do when I see people like this in the fellowship. I would like to weed them out! But, sometimes, we are to wait as Christ said in the parable of the wheat and the tares. The answer is not rooting out the tares because we would destroy the wheat as well. No, Jude says we are instead to build up our faith. After all, wasn’t that the reason these men were able to insinuate themselves into the fellowship in the first place? The best defense was sound teaching and a strong faith.

We are to pray in the Spirit. Elitists do not have the Spirit of God. There is nothing in them that moves them toward humility. In fact, they are uncomfortable when they read Paul’s words in Philippians: “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This is how we pray in the Spirit.

We are to keep in God’s love. That means we are not to react with anger or cynicism. We are not to demonize people but we are to be mature in mercy. We are to be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear..” We are not instruments of his wrath but of his love.

Catherine Hoke began a ministry in Texas to prisoners. She was a force of nature and the ministry grew quickly. She was well-respected by everyone and then her life fell apart. Her marriage collapsed and she was discovered to have had affairs with some of the released prisoners. She had gotten too close. She had worked too hard. She had almost ruined her life. She stepped down, moved to another place and suffered through years of shame and embarrassment. But, in time, she began again. Carol and I were with her two weeks ago and she said something I will not forget. “What if you were to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did in your life?” There is always room for redemption.

Finally, after everything, He is able to keep us from falling – now and forevermore. The church will always be subject to bouts of heresy, division, false teaching and threats to its very existence but it goes on. It stumbles but it does not fall. It wanders but it is not lost. It is kept by God. I heard it said, and I believe it, that the church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. It is true. That is why we contend for the faith that was entrusted to the saints knowing that we are kept and supported by the everlasting arms.