Pastor Matt Pierson

Jude

The Faith Once Given

Overview:

• Literary Genre
• Author & Date
• Recipients
• Purpose

“Parts of the Christian church today seem ideationally vacuous, with little or no confessional content to their faith. They tend also to be places where manifold forms of immorality are permitted and even celebrated. In such a context, we are to contend for the faith without being contentious over tertiary matters. In such an environment, we are to embrace and embody the moral implications of the gospel. In such a time, we are to rescue those who are blown about by false teaching and who get flustered over what they should actually believe. To keep ourselves in God’s love we must keep the faith, and keep ourselves from being seduced by bad characters masquerading as teachers.”
– N.T. Wright & Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in its World

1. Jude reminds us that false teachers, scoffers and willing unbelievers exist in every age and culture.
2. Jude exhorts us to understand the difference between a nominal faith and an authentic faith.
3. Jude explains to us how to persevere in an authentic faith.
4. Jude calls us to extend the healing, helping hand of mercy – not the angry, closed fist of self-righteousness.

“The themes that emerge from that ancient milieu are surprisingly familiar and linger with us today as the church seeks to live out its faith in a postmodern world, which has lost all sense of absolutes and embraces hedonism in the extreme.”
– Gene Green, Jude and 2 Peter

“Gradually, though no one remembers exactly how it happened, the unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal. And then applaudable.”
– Joni Eareckson Tada

12 Characteristics of Nominal Faith

• crept in unnoticed 
• ungodly persons
• turn the grace of God into sensuality
• deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ
• revile the things which they don’t understand
• grumblers
• following their own sinful desires
• speak arrogantly 
• show favoritism to gain advantage
• scoffers
• cause divisions
• worldly-minded
• devoid of the Spirit

“Left to oneself, one could easily slide away from ‘the faith once given’ into a phantom called ‘my religion.’”
– C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“It costs something to be a true Christian. Let that never be forgotten. To be a mere nominal Christian, and go to church, is cheap and easy work. But to hear Christ’s voice, and follow Christ, and believe in Christ, and confess Christ, requires much self-denial. It will cost us our sins, and our self-righteousness, and our ease, and our worldliness. All – all must be given up.”
– J.C. Ryle

“The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive and ordinary. I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith – the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small – that God’s transformation takes root and grows.”
– Tish Harrison Warren

“True faith rests on the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.”
– A.W. Tozer

“There is only one being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
– Oswald Chambers

“Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.”
– Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“He has asked us to be signposts of the world that will someday be, even as we live all day long in the world that is.”
– Steve Garber

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”
– 1 Corinthians 16:13-14