Young Man … Are You in Blood Earnest?
the Foundations Baptist Fellowship Annual Meeting report
What an outstanding meeting! We heartily commend Dr. Mike Harding and First Baptist Church of Troy for their excellence and graciousness in hosting us for the meeting. The speakers all did an outstanding job. The music was incredible. The whole meeting a blessing.
One of our attendees typed up a summary post each day of the meeting. I will link his posts at the end of this article. Our theme was, “The Generation to Come.” Many of us (look in the mirror, old man – ed.) are at the age where passing the Lord’s work on to the coming generation is the next major transition of ministry for us. We desire to finish our course well, to pass on something worth perpetuating to the next generation. We also pray that the next generation will pick up the mantle and do better than we did in guarding the good deposit. Thus the theme. Thus the ongoing conversation, care, discussion, prayers, intensity and love for the dear Lord and his gospel and his people that drives us and occupies us.
Dr. Mark Minnick closed out our meeting with an outstanding message from the epistle of Jude. You need to hear this message. You should listen to all the messages, but if you can only pick one, you must listen to Dr. Minnick. His conclusion frames the title of this post.
Dr. Minnick’s treatment of Jude 3 profoundly enhances any message you ever heard on the passage. He pointed out that Jude wrote right at the end of the first generation of the Christian church. It is a transitional epistle. It means to address the next generation and press home to them the need of the day. The epistle’s purpose expressly addresses our theme.
The question Dr. Minnick raised for us is this: What is involved in preserving the gospel? The text gives two answers. The subject Jude wanted to write about (and delighted in) and the subject the Lord constrained him to write about. The first subject, the one Jude longed to address, was in fact the whole gospel itself. The gospel as Paul addressed it in the first of our epistles, the book of Romans. The common salvation. The faith. Our holy faith. The first duty of one generation of Christians is to pass this faith on, whole and intact, to the next generation. We do this through constant and faithful exposition, teaching and training, honing and refining. Telling the next generation what the Bible says.
However, Dr. Minnick asks, “Is this kind of exposition sufficient to keep the church sound?” Or to put it another way, “Will expository preaching alone preserve the gospel?” Answer: No. Not by itself.
Jude points out in his text that our common salvation is our joy to speak of, but in addressing the coming generation, the needful thing is a commitment to contending for that common salvation. Every aspect of the Christian life requires contention in the New Testament, but in this text, contention for the common salvation is our most explicit mandate.
Not only that, Dr. Minnick pointed out that our mandate is not the exclusive province of preachers. To whom does Jude write as he pens these words? “Beloved…” Jude writes to all. The burden of Jude is the burden of the church. Unless our churches are taught the gospel, in all its ramifications, and taught to contend for the gospel (with grace, with Christian charity, with humility), inevitably we will lose our churches. “We need to expound the books, but we also need to be willing to go to war over what they mean.”1
To contend, our people need to be prepared to expose what is hidden and deceptive, even though it appears to be of the light. Jude speaks of “hidden reefs” in v. 12. He uses very strong language in rehearsing their sins, though on the outside they appear to be “of us,” “brethren,” “in the light.” In v. 11, Jude rehearses history that bolsters the claim and the need for such vigilance. Likewise, it is the history that we repeat, that shows the pitfalls Christians fell into in the past that demonstrates the priorities of contention. Dr. Minnick referred to Iain Murray’s Evangelicalism Divided, as performing this function and opening the eyes of many evangelicals to their own errors. The history proves the text: we contend because of the weakness and errors of the past. Iain Murray repeats his theme in The Unresolved Controversy. Both publications are must reading. They help explain where we are and why we are here.
The challenge of the message, though, is this. Our generation is passing. We will pass the baton, like it or not. The question is not what should the passing generation do in relation to the coming generation. The question is, what will the coming generation do with the gospel they are given.
Young man… Are you in blood earnest to contend for the faith as the Bible calls you to do?
Highlights from our meetings:
Chaplains Training
Torchbearers Award, Dr. Bob Jones, III.
Honoring our host, Dr. Mike Harding.
Summary posts by participant Jacob Reinhardt
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Report prepared by Don Johnson.
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
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- Author’s paraphrase of Dr. Minnick’s statement. [↩]