<TITLE>05. Par 18-22</TITLE>L-18 Our beloved Saviour, we are so happy tonight, because that we can say from our hearts, by the witness of the Word and the Holy Spirit, that You are our Saviour. For our spirit bears witness with Yours, that we're sons and daughters of God. It does not yet appear just what we'll be at the final wind-up, when this world is no more. But we know that we'll have a body like His, for we're going to see as He is. What glorious hope and with joy in our heart, how could we feel bad and believe that? That someday we're going to meet Him and see Him, touch Him. What would it be? And setting at the wedding supper, come, take His nail pierced hands, wipe the tears from our eyes, take away all suffering and sorrow, entering into the joys of the Lord that's been prepared since the foundation of the world.
God, let every man and woman in here tonight lay hold on that promise, and believe with all their heart. And by believing so they receive Everlasting Life. For we ask it in His Name. Amen.

L-19 Just for a few moments. I want to read out of the book of Jude, just one chapter. And it's the 3rd verse of this chapter I wish to read for a Scripture reading just now:
Beloved, I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and to exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
May the Lord add His blessings to the reading of His Word.
I'll just speak a few moments for this. And you pray with me that God will take the Word of God and by the Holy Spirit deliver it to every heart just as we have need.

L-20 Now, Jude here writing some thirty years after the--the first beginning of the Christian dispensation, the birth of the Lord Jesus. And the beginning after the issuing in of the first dispensation or the Christian dispensation, rather.
Now, to make that clear, Luke 16:16 said that, "The law and prophets were until John and since then, the Kingdom of heaven is been preached." John preached for six months, his ministry. Then Jesus was introduced by him, and then he decreased, then Jesus increased, as he said.

L-21 Notice, Jude said here that he gave all diligence to write unto the church, that they should earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints.
Now, that would... We'd want to think that that was our church. Us Methodists would want to think that's our church. We Baptists want to think that that's our church. We Presbyterians wants to think that that's our church. We Catholics wants to think it's our church. And we Pentecost wants to think it's our church. And every one of us wants to think that that's what our church is doing.
Now, friend, there's always one logical, sensible, fundamental way to seek what they had: let's go back and find out what kind of faith they had. Then if we've got that kind of faith in our church, let's contend for it. That's the truth. That's the way to do it. That's really the Scriptural and the only basic way that I would know to approach this--the subject.

L-22 Now, notice it did not say, "Let us contend for the faith that was delivered to Israel in the wilderness"; "Let us contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints." And in order to be a saint, it had to be applied to the Christian dispensation.
Because the word "saint" comes from the word "sanctified, the sanctified one." And if sanctification comes through the shedding of the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 13:12 and 13 said, "Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people, suffered without the gate." You see it? Saints then would have to be in the New Testament. Contend for that faith, because it was in the dispensation of grace and not under the dispensation of law.


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