Mosaic Church - Winter Garden Mosaic Church

As Jude calls us to contend for the faith while extending mercy to false teachers, we must do so with our gaze fixed upon the One who is able! Our God is able to preserve us until the end and present us blameless before His glory with all joy. He is worthy of our contending, our everything because to Him belongs all glory, majesty, power, dominion, and authority forever!

Jude calls believers to posture themselves to continually experience the love of God through building themselves up in the faith, praying in the Spirit, and waiting for Jesus to return and make all things new. As we experience His love and mercy, we get to extend His mercy to all people, even those most opposed to the gospel.

Jude shifts from engaging with the false teachers who have crept into the church to now engage with the Lord’s beloved people. Believers are called to contend first and foremost by vigilantly guarding their hearts in the remembering of God’s word. We guard ourselves knowing that we battle in a spiritual war that has already been decisively won in the victory of the risen Christ!

Jude uses another culturally respected, extra-biblical source, 1 Enoch, to further remind his readers of the coming justice of the Lord toward the false teachers who have crept in. One of the main fruits of the false teacher’s lives is discontentment. As believers, if we’re not careful with who we allow to influence our lives, we can likewise be tempted toward discontentment that breeds destruction. We can grow in contentment as we allow the Word of God to be our primary influence through biblical meditation.

False teaching has been around since the beginning of time as Jude brilliantly shows with multiple Old Testament references. With them, we are reminded that when God and His Word are not the ultimate authority the inevitable end is utter destruction and gloom. No false gospel has a chance when believers have clarity of the true gospel. Abiding with the Holy Spirit regularly as we study Scripture in the context of community enables us to bring and release the real lion who needs no defense.

The church is a people called by God to be a force in the world for redemption. We are invited to take all that God has given us and invest it in the realities around us that are full of vulnerability and injustice. Following Jesus into these spaces requires denying ourselves and taking up our cross daily as we save our life by losing it for His sake.