Jude 3

Jude’s Greeting and the Church Kept by God

So today we get to talk about the purpose of the book of Jude in typical Roman letter writing fashion. Jude has introduced himself, which is the first part of a good Roman letter. The second thing that he's done is he's introduced his audience.

That's the second thing that you would normally do and that's very common today. Jude says that he's Slave, he's brother of James. He's Jude. He calls us the audience the the called the beloved and the kept and then what happens in a Roman letter is That you give a salutation or a greeting and that's normally something that you would wish well upon your audience.

So he says may the mercy peace and love of God be multiplied to you. Last week We talked about how the mercy peace and love of God is multiplied not by our own effort. But by God working these things down into us.

So Before Jude gets to the purpose of why he's writing this letter He wants to teach them things that are absolutely necessary for their relationship with God verse 1 through 2 in a way is Kind of like boot camp for the Christian life.

Jude is preparing soldiers for a great battle as a commanding officer. He knows the situation out there. He knows that the kingdom of God is under attack. He knows that it's gonna be an all-out war. So before he sends them into action He spends the necessary time equipping them and training them and the things that they need to survive.

And one of the truths that he equips them with that I think is so vitally important is that we will be kept by God for Jesus Christ. I think that's utterly important because when we're dealing with the issues that are going on in the church when we're dealing with the Problems that Jude's audience is facing like heresies and false teachers.

God has promised to keep the true Church of Jesus Christ no matter what which is a great comfort and To us today that is great importance. There is nothing no matter what it is. There's no assignment that God could give us where we are not safe.

Because we are being kept for Jesus Christ. He may call someone in this room to be a pastor in a place where the gospel is hated. And yet even if you have to leave Income status job or anything like that.

You're safe. He may call someone in this room. We don't know what the will of the Lord is to Somalia. To North Korea as a missionary and you will go there and it could be the end of your life. But as you go, you were going in the calling of God and you are promised that you will be kept safe.

There may be someone in this room who is called the Lord is laying it on. You to be more vocal about your faith and that is going to lead to pressure at work. It's gonna lead to problems. It's gonna lead to stress.

It may even lead to termination. There's some who are here who are gonna share their faith with a relative or a loved one and they're gonna lose that relationship and We have to understand what it means that we are being kept for Jesus.

When we walk through this life because we have a view that we're being kept for happiness success. Or relational fidelity or anything like that. Then we have had we have a small view of what we're being kept for.

You are not at risk. So long as you understand what you're being kept for and you're not being kept for earthly treasures and you're not being kept for success. You're being kept for eternity. So no matter what you gain no matter what you lose on this earth.

It cannot threaten your eternal reward and If you think about that, what could we possibly lose in light of eternity? We could lose a job and that's a big deal and that's hard. We're gonna be in heaven with Jesus forever.

And while we're here on earth, he's promised to take care of us. He says he knows every hair on her head. He knows every sparrow that falls to the ground. He says if you seek first the kingdom of God, then everything you need will be provided.

What could we lose? We could lose a relationship. That would certainly be hard. But what relationship is compares to the relationship that we have in Jesus Christ? We could lose our life. Paul says to live as Christ to die as game.

Is it really a bad thing? To lose your life to open your eyes and to wake up and see Christ in all of his glory. Your last breath here on this planet would be your first glimpse of Jesus Christ. If you know what you're being kept for if you know what you're being safe or what you're safe from and what you're safe unto those things aren't as Bad as we tend to make them this old tent this fleshly Bag that we carry around make it hurt.

But we don't have to spend our lives Protecting a rotten bag of bones that is going to end up in the ground. No matter what we do. You can eat a good diet. You can exercise and you're still gonna die.

Instead it's my hope that we spend our life living for something different. That we don't spend our life trying to save our life that we spend our life trying to lose our life and to give it Over to Christ no matter what it costs it's my hope that we would spend our life living for him and obeying him no matter what it costs because that is The reward that glorious reward that when we meet him and when we see him and he says well done my good and faithful servant.

That is what we are working for not the praise of men. Not the success not the comfort. All these things are a shadow compared to the surpassing glory that is available to us on the day of Christ and Jude is reminding his people of all these truths like you're gonna be kept safe because They're gonna be facing a very difficult situation in this letter.

They're gonna be facing a situation that is uncomfortable to say the least and they're gonna be facing a situation that is still To this day 2 ,000 years later uncomfortable for us. So he's reminding them of this as a way of helping them as a way of protecting him.

Why Jude Wrote the Letter Instead of His Original Plan

So what I want us to do now is I want us to go back to Jude chapter 2. There's one chapter. I want us to go back to Jude verse 3 and I want us to look at the purpose of this letter in light of the beautiful truth that we've already learned and I want us To see what Jude is telling us as believers that we are called to do.

So let's look at verse 3 Beloved while I was making every attempt to write you about our common salvation I felt the necessity to write you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith. Which was once for all handed down to the Saints.

Now there is so much Beautiful truth in this one verse that we're not going to be able to exhaust it. You're probably glad of that. But we're gonna go through four things tonight from this verse that I think are absolutely Incredible and the first of those is we're gonna look at why Jude actually wrote this letter.

We've talked about the history in the context, but now we're gonna talk about why Jude wrote the letter. We're gonna talk about what does it actually mean that we are called to contend? What does that word mean?

It's not a common English word that we often use what are we called to contend for and The last one which we will only be able to go over briefly is How do we contend? We're gonna talk about what does it mean to contend?

What are we contending for and how do we do it? And I think these things will be very important for us. So the first one why did Jude write this letter? Jude describes the reason here. He said I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation.

But I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend. What Jude is saying is that he wanted to write a different letter. He was actively working on another project probably a theological treatise.

Maybe it was a practical devotional I'm not sure but I know that he was working on something that had to do with our common salvation and he was eagerly actively with all of his faculties working on this project because he wanted to gift his church with an Understanding of their salvation and this was the project he's working on.

I wouldn't be surprised if you go to Israel and you happened upon us a pot in the ground and it and just so happens. That Jude's exegetical study notes are still in there from this project, but he didn't write that letter.

He didn't get to get to the place where he could write that and we get a picture a better picture of why that happens in Jude verse 4. He says for certain persons have crept in unnoticed those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation.

They're ungodly persons who crept into the church. They're people who turn the grace of our God and the licentiousness. They're the ones that crept into the church. They're the ones who deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

They crept into this church. So what Jude is saying here is that savage wolves have come into the church. These are men who are condemned by the Lord. These are men who are ungodly and who pervert the grace of God and Jude said that while he wanted to write this other letter.

He couldn't. The church needed him to write something different the church needed him to write what we have in our Bibles. This letter that we have is the plan B letter of Jude, but it was the plan a letter from God.

He wrote this book because he had to. He wrote this book because the church was in desperate need and they needed this letter. That's the first reason he wrote the book. The second reason he wrote the book is because Jude operates under an assumption that is difficult.

For Americans, it is difficult for Westerners. It is difficult for American Christians. Jude operates under the assumption that when the church is attacked we cannot stand idly by. We can't. We can't just go in our closets and pray about it.

We can't just stick our heads in the sand and say God you're gonna have to deal with it. When wolves come into the church when the pure gospel of Jesus Christ is being attacked Jude is saying that we have to do something.

Jude is saying that we must. We must contend for the gospel and he even goes a step further and he says that we must contend for it earnestly with all our energy and effort and That leads to the third reason why Jude wrote this book.

It's because truth is at stake. Truth was at stake back then truth is at stake back or now if Christians do not stand up and defend the gospel of Jesus Christ and wolves will come in and they will Overtake the church and this is all throughout church history.

We see this. In the modern world we have seen this even happening before our very eyes. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Chicago, Columbia all places that were designed and And Instituted to train up pastors.

But because no one stood up to contend for the truth because no one had enough guts to stand Against the error these places are no longer places of the truth of God. Brown University just as one example was founded.

It's a Rhode Island University. It was founded by a group of Baptist pastors. Little history about the American colonies. The Baptists were always a weird sort of people. I'm a Baptist so I can say that and The Baptist got on the Massachusetts Bay Colony people's nerves and they were banished to Rhode Island so Rhode Island in some ways was the prison colony of the United States and the Baptist when they got there wanted to start their own college and they wanted to start their own college that Taught the truth of Scripture and they wanted a college that would raise up Ministers and they got a council of Baptist ministers together to found this this College right in the heart of Providence Providence Named for the providence of God today Brown University is home as Of 2014 to one of the longest-running and most well attended Annual orgies on a college campus.

It is a large event held by the queer Alliance of Brown it's an event called the sex power God festival and it was dedicated to utter depravity licentiousness and Total depravity. The college itself had to shut it down because the folks at Brown who don't believe in God thought that they had went too far.

And that's not one isolated event at Brown. The same things you can find at Harvard Yale and others when universities that are founded on biblical truth Decide to stop fighting for it. They slip further and further away Generation after generation until they are completely gone into the kind of perversions that will make you cringe.

Mainline denominations are no different in America the Presbyterian Church the PC USA. I say I'm a Baptist. I also Really love the Presbyterian denomination and the Presbyterian denomination has its roots all the way back to the Reformation.

These are men like John Calvin John Knox BB Warfield Charles Hodge, maybe these names don't mean anything, but these are Men of God in church history who loved the Lord. Men who stood for the truth. John Calvin it is said that one day Men who did not believe did not love the Lord came to take communion.

And he said you can put a sword in my face. You can kill me if you want, but you will not take communion on my watch. This is a man who stood for truth. This is a man until the day that he died and loved the Bible and loved truth and yet now the PC USA Is one of the more liberal denominations in America and now joyfully allows anyone of any sexual orientation to all ranks within the church.

Practicing or non-practicing it doesn't matter. How is it that this great denomination that came out of the Reformation has become so morally bankrupt? That the only thing they struggle with is struggling on what new kind of error they're going to give themselves to.

How is it possible? Because they stopped contending they stopped fighting for the truth of God and We would be utterly foolish as evangelicals if we thought that we are immune to this. If the true Church of Christ in America does not stand up against error.

Fast forward a few decades and the only thing that will be left will be a shell of what it is today. Heresy at the worst it will be nothing like it is today. And it will fall into the same pattern that all throughout history church has fallen into they deny the truth.

They hate the truth and then they fall into sexual perversion. It's happened too many times. We are not immune. Jude is writing to a sleepy church and telling them it is time to wake up. He's Not encouraging them to get fat on their calling or to get comfortable on their status or to become Complacent in the fact that Jesus is keeping them.

He's not calling them to use God's mercy peace and love as an excuse. He's reminding them of who they are because they must do something. They must contend. We must do something. Well, if we're gonna do something we need to know what it is that we're supposed to do.

So that's why I want us to now talk about what does it mean that we are to contend if all of us are called. To contend if all of us are called to stand up against the onslaught of error, then what is it that that requires?

Contending Earnestly for the Faith

The Greek Word that Jude uses. It's a really fun word to say so try to memorize it. It will it will thrill you to no end. I promise you Epagonizomai. Epagonizomai. Now this is the only time in the New Testament that this word is used epagonizomai but The root word is actually used quite often.

Ep at the beginning of epagonizomai is a multiplier or it's an amplifier. So Jude is amplifying the meaning of this word. Epagonizomai without the ep is used often in the New Testament. Paul uses this Frequently and when Jude says the new the NASB translates it to contend earnestly.

Epagonizomai just means to contend now. Again this is the only time this word is amplified. The majority usage in the New Testament is Epagonizomai. Now it may be helpful To go through a little bit of the definition to give some more color and shade to the word.

The Greek English lexicon of the New Testament says epagonizomai means to exert intense effort on behalf of something for the benefit of the larger group meaning that we if we're going to contend for truth.

We're to give effort towards it. We're to give effort towards contending for truth and it's for the good of the church for the larger group. Another lexicon puts it this way epagonizomai means to continue the attack.

To not stop fighting until the battle is over. It essentially means to fight and keep on fighting if you were to read that idiomatically. Now I want to tell a little bit of the history of this so you can see how the word kind of came into being.

The word actually started as a noun way back in the Hellenistic period of Greek literature. And it just meant the place that we gather. It just meant the assembly place it meant the place where everybody shows up.

Now how did a word that means the assembly place turn out to be all-out war fighting like gladiators? Glad you asked. In Greek culture where people gathered was the games. Where people gathered was the fights.

So when gladiators came to fight people showed up. So the word subtly began changing from the place that we gather to the place that we watch the fight. And then when the verb came into the language, it meant to fight.

It meant to struggle. It meant to contend and it had an aspect of it that meant to do this until the job is finished. Just like a gladiator would not stop fighting until the battle was over. If he did he would lose his head.

An NFL example because the NFL works really great in sermon illustrations. To win a game is to continue playing the game every down every quarter every every yard. Imagine a cornerback in the fourth quarter of a game who just so happens to decide to be lazy.

Tom Brady throws an immaculate perfect pass the game is won and the cornerback has to hang his head in shame. Because he played a hard game for the whole game, but one play he let his guard down and the game is over.

To contend means to exert the same effort consistently from the beginning until the end. It's not to let your guard down at the end. One lapse in effort could have disastrous consequences. Now this word apogonitza my came into the New Testament vocabulary very early.

It became in some of the earliest writings of Paul and we're going to talk about a few of the examples that Paul uses. He says in 1st Corinthians 925 Everyone who apogonitza my eyes or everyone who competes in the games?

Exercises self-control and all things they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we do it to receive an imperishable one. What Paul is saying is that Christian life is not meant to be easy. It's meant to be a fight.

There's no such thing Paul would say as a couch potato. Christian life as a Christian is Dedicated. It's relentless. It's focused. It's it's the same level of dedication that Olympian athlete would would think or would go through.

Imagine Michael Phelps or imagine any of the other Olympians what? Rigorous effort that they went through to get to where they are. The diet that they went through to get to where they are. Paul Is saying that everyone who competes in the games?

Exercises these disciplines for a silly wreath but yet we Apogonitza my we contend for an imperishable reward that can never be taken from us. So Paul's comparing us to Christian to the Olympian. In Colossians 128 and 29.

He says we proclaim him. That's Christ admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose. I also labor Apogonitza my striving.

According to his power which mightily works in me. So what Jude is saying here or not Jude. Jude amplifies the word Paul is saying this word means striving. And what he's saying is that preaching is an all-out war and he trains for it.

Prepares for it. He fights where he strives for it. He executes it with grave seriousness and his work is done in the power of God. It's according to his power which works in Paul. So what Paul is saying is not only do we take our Christian life with the level of seriousness that an Olympian athlete would that?

We rest in trust in the fact that we don't have the energy in the effort to do that. So we need God and we need his power at work in us in order to do it. That's what Paul's saying. If you want to contend you need the power of God.

Later in that letter in chapter 4 verse 12, this is Paul talking to the Colossians. He says Epaphras is always Apogonitza my laboring earnestly for you and his prayers. That you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God.

This word is translated laboring here this man Epaphras is a member of the congregation who helps Paul and what it's saying is is that Paul saying he gets it. His life is an all-out struggle. He's leaning into the power of God, but he's not throwing off little pop shots into heaven.

He is going to war and prayer. Because and he's fighting like a dog in prayer for the spiritual life of others. So look at how Paul is already laid out for us a case on what? Contending means it means we fight for our faith.

We fight for the faith of others and we know that the fight really is by the power of God. It's a beautiful rich theology that Paul is unpacking in first Timothy 1 7 and 10 he says Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

For it is for this that we apogonitza my we labor and we strive. Because we have fixed our hope on the Living God. What a beautiful statement that is. He's saying that we contend. He's saying that we fight.

He's saying that we go to war with our flesh so that we can have godliness in our life because we know the Living God. Paul is saying because we know who God is. It produces within us this kind of effort to contend for the faith to contend for godliness.

What Paul is saying is that knowing the Living God does not produce half-hearted effort? What he's saying is when you really Know who God is when you really catch a glimpse of him in his beauty and his splendor and his glory the most natural thing for you to do is to want to Go contend for your faith contend from prayer contend it for godliness.

These are natural things for the Christian. Robert Murray McShane is one of my favorite Puritans. He he says it really well, he says when you gaze at the Sun it makes everything else dark. When you taste honey, everything else is bland.

So when your soul feeds on Jesus It takes away the sweetness of fleshly pleasure. What Mary McShane is saying is that when you really know who God is the most natural consequence of your life? Is that you want to seek him that you want to know him that you want to?

That you want to plead with him you want to pray to him you want to exercise discipline and grow in godliness to him. Knowing who God is does not produce Christian apathy. Knowing who God is does not produce Christian lethargy.

It produces Christian action. Knowing who God is our Christian action doesn't save us. Paul would never argue that our salvation produces the action not the action to salvation. In case Paul hasn't made his argument clear.

He does so in 1st Timothy 6 12. He says but flee these things. That's ungodliness. You man of God and pursue righteousness pursue godliness faith love perseverance and gentleness and a Pagan it's a my fight the good faith and Take hold of eternal life to which you were called.

What Paul is saying is that our Christian life is a fight for the good faith. It is not what concert style churches have misled people into believing it is not healthy wealthy and successful. It is not a misguided confidence that produces complacency and consumerism.

It is the Christian life lived rightly with the right view of God causes us to chase after him and to long to know him. And it produces action that propels us towards him. That is what contending means.

It's the sustained lifelong action that propels you to God and It's motivated by God. It's motivated by the love of God. But it is what we're all called to do now again. I want to be clear. We are not fighting contending struggling to be saved.

We are fighting because we know the Living God and we want more of him. We want to see more of him we want to experience more of him. We want to know him deeper than we currently know him. That's a fight worth fighting.

Who could fight to earn their salvation who could reach up to the heavens and say God you must rescue me because I'm so good. But with a God that is that good. Experiencing him is worth fighting for. Experiencing him and knowing him it's worth giving all of our energy and all of our effort.

So that at the end of Paul's life the last. Some of the last sentences he says. He says I have apogonizomied. I have fought the good faith. I finished the race and I've kept faith. Paul's not saying that I got to the end of my life and I was successful.

Paul sitting in a jail cell. Paul sitting in a room with scars up and down his body with broken bones that have never healed correctly. With relationships that have abandoned him and broken him and on the surface.

He's on death row. This man's not successful. He doesn't have a white picket fence. He doesn't have a really bountiful 401k. He doesn't have a vacation home or anything else that we would value. But Paul says that he finished well.

Paul says in abject poverty and on death row. I finished well, and it's because Paul did not define success by American standards. Paul said what brought me joy is That I fought and I did not stop fighting to know my God and my life.

Is a is an instance or an image of that? He's saying that all my life I fought to know God and it was the greatest fight that I could ever engage in. Paul an old man Gives us great confidence that we now who are still young as we approach our deaths.

What will we say at the end of our life that we actually fought for? Will we say that we fought for God or will we say that we fought for a vacation home or Finding seashells on a beach somewhere in Sarasota, Florida.

Or will we say that we fought to know God? That's what Paul is getting at now. When we get to the book of Jude We've just talked about what Paul uses this word a pogon. It's in my. Jude takes it to another level.

Jude says that I want you to ep ago nit so my which means I want you to contend earnestly. This is the only time in the New Testament this word is amplified and Jude is using it here to describe the kind of fight that he is calling believers in his church to engage in.

He's calling them to contend for the faith in a culture that loves error and He's calling them to contend earnestly because the situation is desperate. And we're going to be exploring all of this in the next several weeks.

So I'm not going to treat it exhaustively here but what I do want us to see is that true truths that we have left for us today that Paul or that Jude is Teaching us is number one. There is the content of what we contend for.

So we're gonna find out what it is that we contend for and the second Paul's our Jude is gonna teach us how we contend. So we're gonna talk about what Jude is calling us to contend for and how we contend in verse 3.

Jude starts with the what? 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 contend earnestly for the faith for the faith.

Which was once for all handed down to the Saints. Paul talks about how to contend for your personal faith and how to grow in godliness by fighting for your faith. Jude is talking about the faith that was once for all given down by the Saints.

Jude is talking about the Christian faith. Jude is talking about the delivered and handed down Gospel. Jude is talking about the scriptures. Jude is talking about truth and orthodoxy and doctrine. He is saying that I want you to contend for the faith the collection of truth.

That was handed down from Jesus Christ to his Apostles by the Holy Spirit written down by the Apostles into the New Testament. And that is what I'm calling you to contend for to contend for the pages of scripture that are in this book.

Because that is also a fight that is worth fighting for it is a fight worth fighting for to fight for your faith. And it is certainly worth fighting for to fight for the faith. That's what Jude is saying.

It's not a physical fight. Goodness knows the history of the Christian and the Rome ish Church have erred inexcusably in. Thinking that sometimes this was a physical fight does not. We do not pick up sticks or stones and we do not pick up guns and rounds.

But we also cannot stand idly by. When wolves come into the church and undermine the pure gospel of Jesus Christ we can't. In Jude's time men were creeping in and they were undermining the scripture. They were undermining Godliness, they were undermining grace.

They were denying the totality of who Jesus was and Jude called those believers to contend now. I think the same is true for us there. They're actually in my opinion I think the situation is worse. Because in Jude's context it was one congregation who was being attacked by one group of people you go on the internet.

There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of wolves that are out there. Undermining the truth of the gospel so I think it's worse today and if you look at the fact that Technology gives anyone with an opinion and ability to spew their nonsense on YouTube and Twitter and everything else I think that the situation is worse.

When you look at the fact that heretical groups on major television networks like CBN and Daystar and other false doctrine Profligators when you look at the fact that mega church Mega churches who don't preach the gospel can can on a Sunday reach 40 ,000 people in Texas.

But then on the very next day can upload their messages on on the internet and reach millions. They can reach millions of people. Jude never had to encounter an infiltration like that so-called worship bands who mischaracterize the holiness of God release albums on Spotify go around and tour on concert and yet.

They're undermining true and right worship. We live in an era of unprecedented Ability for wolves to be able to totally feast on sheep entirely unabated. And where's the church? Where's the church. Jude tells us that we must content.

Because wolves will come in. Because they have an insatiable appetite for the sheep. Because the faith that we hold dear is at stake. Jude is not saying that it's possible that wolves will come into the church.

Jude is not saying that. That it's likely that Truth is going to be challenged. So long as we live in this world and So long as Satan exists the truth of God will be challenged and it is up to the church to contend Not lay down and die if American Christianity doesn't wake up.

I Would say in less than a hundred years the only expression of Christianity that this country is gonna have to offer is outright heresy. There'll be no pure expression. If the church doesn't contend history verifies this.

If the church does not contend it will fall into error and it will fall into disarray delusion and Ultimately, it won't exist if Jude were alive today. I think he would think the situation in our country is dire.

Let's go through a few statistics. The average American Christian believes that Jesus is the first and greatest created being. This is a study that Ligonier ministries did and when I say average, I mean slightly above average.

We live in a day when the liberal agenda is overtaking churches like the Lutherans and the Methodists and the Episcopals in the United Church of Christ and all of these denominations. We live in a day when the average Christian believes That God accepts worship from any religion so long as it is sincerely held and believed from the people polled in this study.

Doesn't matter if you worship Buddha. Doesn't matter if you worship Allah. It doesn't matter if you worship one of the 33 million gods and Hinduism so long as you are sincere. I think the Lord will cover you the Christians Who've been overtaken by error?

We live in a day when the word-of-faith movement and Mormonism are the fastest growing sex of Christianity. Mormonism that denies who God is. Mormonism that says Jesus and and Satan are brothers. The word-of-faith movement which says if you think it you can have it and God has to give you whatever you want.

These are the fastest growing sex of Christianity in Africa. The word-of-faith movement is about to overtake the entire continent. So that there's no faithful expression of the gospel left in Africa.

It will happen if we don't contend. Where's the church? Why have we stopped fighting? I? Think it's easy in American culture to say well when we fight it doesn't feel good. But Isn't this worth fighting for?

This is not a battle that we lay down and die. This is not a battle that we put on our our sweet Sister Mary Sunday morning Christian hat. We pray like Paul. We ask God to move but yet we stand on the truth of the Word of God.

We must contend. It's not an option. I heard it said this way. The best way to spot fake is to know the original. I Think a part of contending is knowing the Word of God so well that you can spot the errors before they become Big before they become pervasive.

Jude saying that when we're contending for the truth, we must know the truth. We must fight to know the truth. And we must make it a matter of earnest significance in our life. The first moment that we wake up in the morning ought to be an earnest Grave necessity to get into the Word of God to know God.

To know him in his word. If you're not a morning person at some point in the day get into the Word of God. So you'll be prepared when the wolf comes. Which leads to our final question? We know now what we're to contend for.

We're to contend for the faith. We're to contend for truth. We're to contend for the gospel. Because wolves will attack it. So we know what Judah's saying. That's what we're supposed to contend for now.