Why We Must Contend Earnestly For The Faith - Pastor Bob DeWaay

why we must earnestly contend for the faith Jude one and verse 3 it says here beloved while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you would contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints and notice here that it says that it was once for all delivered numbered in other words the faith what we believe isn't something that is accumulation of ideas throughout church history and religious tradition but it was something delivered by the Apostles Christ and His apostles this authoritative and is not evolving and someone said to him Lord are there just a few who are being saved and he said to them strive to enter by the narrow dark for many I tell you will seek the enter will not be able so what we have today is a wide easy gate we have some of our best-selling authors some of our biggest seminaries and some of our most popular teachers in the evangelical movement are masters at widening the door they've made a science out of widening the door we do market surveys so we can widen the door we go out and find out what Saddleback Sam wants at church and we widen the door and we look at what's popular and look at what sells books and that are gets wider and wider and finally this idea of agonizing to enter the narrow gate seems absurd because we can come in comfort we can come with whatever pagan beliefs we had come into church listened to us said and leave with all our pagan beliefs still intact and unchallenged that's the wide gate so the battle for the truth of the gospel makes every other issue pale in comparison and they deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ now this denial isn't always in the form of saying no such person as Jesus ever existed I mean the most radical liberal might say that but this denial takes on more sophisticated forms as we saw in just the previous lecture on the emerging church denying certain things about the person and work of Christ denying that his blood avert of God's wrath against sin denying his lordship by denying the authority of his words denying that we need to believe the whole council God and follow what Christ said now it says these persons have crept in unnoticed how do you creep in unnoticed by you don't come with a wolf suit you come as a nice kindly person who's trying to help okay so the the the people creeping in unnoticed are in the church they're not really Christian but they have a Christian veneer and they're the ones that are selling people on their ideas this the degeneration had come in and the people that brought that in our wonderful kind saintly gentleman you see that's that's what people don't get we have too much discernment going on based on who's nice well who has the credentials who's been around a long time and they're nice kindly old gentlemen but that's how they creep in unnoticed we need to use objective standard as it is the faith under attack or are they helping us learn the faith look at this Matthew 7:15 beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves the false notion people have is that you judge by who's nice their idea of fruit is this person is nice they're so nice that's the sheep's clothing are they confessing Christ that's what I want to know if somebody came into the even a local church and says I don't even believe in Jesus Christ at all well they're not there obviously a wolf right they're not going to go unnoticed by saying I don't believe in Jesus Christ all of these isms and false cults and false teachers believe in Jesus Christ but they have a different doctrine of Christ which Christ the Mormons would like you to believe that they have the same Christ that you do but they don't so they all claim to believe in Jesus but the Bible says they deny him and they deny that the die Hebei not submitting to his apostles in their teaching now anybody who has an audience who's speaking for God supposedly on behalf of the church that person must confess Christ and that's not meaning saying nice things about Jesus it means confessing the person and work of Christ what do people need to know about Christ and the first thing they need to know is who is Christ who is he how are they going to believe on him that they haven't heard about Paul said in Romans 10 if you don't preach Christ they're not going to come to faith so who is he God incarnate what does that mean what's the Incarnation what does Jesus Christ come in the flesh he's the Jewish Messiah he pre-existed he was born of a virgin he lived a sinless life he is the eternal God who came and was fully human and fully God and he ascended into heaven bodily what did he do who is Jesus what did he do well he lived a sinless life he performed miracles to prove his own deity he predicted his own resurrection from the dead nobody else has ever done that and pulled it off he predicted his own resurrection said it he be raised on the third day and he was what did he do he came into the world to take away the sins of the world why do we need him he died four skins once for all the just for the unjust in order to bring us to God why do we need that people need to know that this must be confessed as part of the personal work of Christ why do we need him because God's wrath is directed against sin and without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sins and that God's love was displayed on the cross because he shed his blood to avert God's wrath against my sin and if and if I don't believe on Him that God will execute his wrath on me that's why you need him now people don't come built-in with that knowledge and you need to tell them what he expects them to do how can you be saved repent and believe the gospel turn to Jesus Christ turn away from self sin the world and whatever you've been following and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and God will give you the gift of eternal life now if that's not proclaimed from the pulpit with authority and conviction the Holy Spirit is not working in your church for the overseer must be above reproach as God's steward holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching or doctrine that he may be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contract now this is a necessary requirement for someone to be an elder and this is ignored absolutely ignored and I know this from personal interviews with dozens and dozens of dozens of people I've even had people tape some of the sessions where they went in where the elders are telling them you may not preach the gospel at our outreach you may not pass out traps tracts you may not tell your testimony you may not talk to people one-on-one no no no and if you persist in this we're going to ask you to leave the church I heard it the elders are telling the flock that they can't share the gospel on the church property but you beloved building yourselves up on your most holy faith praying in the Holy Spirit keep yourselves in the love of God waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life he loves you he cares about you you're his sheep he wants you to be fed and he's going to not allow anybody to snatch you out of his hand so be encouraged you

Channel: Critical Issues Commentary

Views: 6,214

Rating: 4.52 out of 5

Keywords: Contend, For, Faith, Deception, Wolves, Sheep, Clothing, Bob, DeWaay, Critical, Issues, Commentary

Id: O9ugAslWiyM

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2009