“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).
Jude writes about “the salvation we share” and “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” When we are among God’s redeemed people – we rejoice in God’s great salvation. When we go out into the we are surrounded by unbelief. Strengthened by the blessing we received when we worshipped with God’s people – we take up the challenge of standing up for Jesus in an unbelieving world.
How are we to stand up for Jesus in an unbelieving world? In our witness for Christ – there is to be faithfulness and relevance. The call for faithfulness and the call for relevance seem to lead us in two different directions. When we are more concerned about faithfulness than relevance – we may be tempted to retreat into the comfortable atmosphere that we find when we’re worshipping with the Lord’s people. When we are more concerned with relevance than faithfulness – we will be tempted to be less committed to Christ than we were in the days when all that mattered to us was being faithful followers of Christ.
What are we to say about faithfulness and relevance? We should seek o be faithful – and we should seek to be relevant. How are we to do this? Let’s begin with faithfulness. Can we achieve relevance if we abandon faithfulness? We need to pay close attention to the Word of the Lord. If we stop listening to the Lord’s Word – we will have nothing to say to the world. We will become irrelevant!
Can we achieve relevance by trying to be relevant? Trying to be relevant seems like a good idea – but are we missing something? Do we try to make the gospel relevant? or Do we preach the gospel because it is relevant?
The extent to which we maintain a good balance between faithfulness and relevance depends on how we approach the Word of God. Do we see the Bible as a book that belongs to faraway places and long-ago times? If we never really get beyond the faraway places and the long-ago times – we will seem to outsiders to be more interested in learning about Bible times and Bible places than communicating to people who need to hear something more than this. When we read the Word of the Lord – we should be praying for a word that really speaks to today’s people and today’s world. Does this mean that we will become more worldly and less godly? If we think that we can serve Christ well by becoming more worldly and less godly – we are surely mistaken. When we’re reading God’s Word – our first priority is to hear what God is saying. Our second priority is to say what God wants us to say to the world which needs to hear from him.
Faithfulness and relevance – let us pray that we will be faithful to the Lord and that we will demonstrate – in our witness for him – that his Word is more than an ancient book. It’s “the living and enduring word of God … the word of the Lord which endures forever” (1 Peter 1:23-24).
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Learning From God's Word 
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