Contend for the faith

By Matt Watson

Judges 19 recounts the horrific account of a Levite's concubine being brutally gang-raped to death by a mob of Benjaminites in Gibeah. Judges 20 details the vengeful response by the rest of Israel against the tribe of Benjamin. Brother fought against brother, tribe against tribe, in a civil war that united Israel against the injustice committed.

In those times, life was cheap. In just three days of battle, more people died than at Gettysburg. It was an era when women were used for worshiping false gods (Asherah worship) or were simply used up until they died. This is the result of forsaking God's Word, will, and ways. Time and again we see a cycle of apostasy where the people turned away from the one true God and worshipped false gods. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6 ESV).

But one day it had gone too far, and the people said “Enough!”

Enough

And all the people arose as one man, saying, ‘None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will return to his house. But now this is what we will do to Gibeah: we will go up against it by lot, and we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand of ten thousand, to bring provisions for the people, that when they come they may repay Gibeah of Benjamin for all the outrage that they have committed in Israel.’ So all the men of Israel gathered against the city, united as one man.
-Judges 20:8-11 ESV

Irish philosopher Edmund Burke is credited as saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He also said, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

The men of Israel refused to do nothing. When the Benjaminites at Gibeah, those sons of Belial combined, the men of Israel united. They would not tolerate their sin anymore.

At the start of this series in Judges I said “If you want to fight the tide of culture, you must make it. Don't sit and watch; get up and do. How do you create culture? Worship God, get married, and make babies.” I also said, “Culture is created by what you teach and what you tolerate.” Which means saying “enough!” and no longer tolerating the commandment breaking of the people who reject God’s Word.

The people of God today are in a tough spot. The church is being cowed into submission by culture, shouted down with outrage and false accusations of hate and phobias. The church has responded with two errors: Some surrender, some pick fights, but neither contend.

On the surrender side, some have chosen to syncretize with culture, worshipping their false gods and flying their banner. These are mostly churches from mainline denominations that lost their historical confessions of true faith but increasingly include generic evangelical churches. Others sit out the fight by raising their hands in surrender, hoping Jesus will return before it gets too bad (looking at you, Dispys). Those who do want to contend for the faith are told that politics have nothing to do with the gospel and that a gentle word will win every time.

On the fighting side, you have another error: revolution. Revolution is what impatient and violent men try to achieve when they won’t trust God and wait and work for Reformation. War happens, and there are just causes for war as well as biblical examples of resisting to the glory of God. But violent revolution is neither. It’s thumos and orgos, an unbridled fire that consumes rather than restores.

Don’t Take the Bait

Let us not forget that:

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places
-Galatians 6:12 ESV

Likewise,

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ …
-2 Corinthians 10:3-5 ESV

So here is what I am not advocating. I am not saying that we should be content with hand-wringing and surrender, nor content with revolution. Instead, we contend for the faith before an opposing culture for the glory of God. We don’t give up, but we fight right too.

People are anxious about a civil war. This isn’t an isolated right-wing fantasy, but an anxiety on the left too. Hollywood released a movie this year about a potential second civil war. Canadian journalist Stephen Marche released his book The Next Civil War in 2022 after COVID and the BLM riots. Add to that fears about the upcoming election, and you have a recipe for a pandemic of anxiety.

Christians, may your trigger fingers not be itchy. As Douglas Wilson says, “The bait lies before you now. Do not take it.” Christians are called to war against sin, not against flesh and blood. We are called to demolish strongholds with God’s divine Word, not demolish our neighbor’s house because he flew a certain flag.

When Justice Becomes Vengeance

In Judges 20, the people of Israel united to bring justice, but their bloodlust got the better of them and they didn’t stop until they had vengeance.

Then the men of Israel turned, and the men of Benjamin were dismayed, for they saw that disaster was close upon them. Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel in the direction of the wilderness, but the battle overtook them. And those who came out of the cities were destroying them in their midst. Surrounding the Benjaminites, they pursued them and trod them down from Nohah as far as opposite Gibeah on the east.
-Judges 20:41-43 ESV

It wasn’t enough to defeat the Benjaminites and punish the sons of Belial in Gibeah. They had to completely destroy them, a fellow tribe of Israel. When executing justice is no longer about God, it is no longer justice. That is because justice originates and exists only in God (Deut 32:3-4; Rom 3:23-26). Therefore, any form of justice that does not glorify God is inherently not justice.

Justice is a buzzword for those who think they stand for civil rights. Racial justice uses reparations and critical theory to enact vengeance for sins committed long ago by other people. Reproductive justice provides an excuse for women to murder their children. Trans justice denies biological fact and promotes genital mutilation. Economic justice and redistribution are pseudonyms for stealing other people’s money. The list goes on.

None of these things are justice. They are attempts at vengeance for perceived (and sometimes real) wrongs. More so, the church cannot pursue this sort of injustice, because our God is just. Vengeance is his, not ours (Rom 12:17-19). This isn’t to say we don’t fight or deny that perhaps one day a cold civil war will spark into a hot one. It doesn’t mean we don’t defend. It means we contend.

How to Contend for the Faith in 2024

Contend means to maintain a struggle, fight for, and “to strive or vie in contest or rivalry or against difficulties.” It’s like grappling. It’s personal, sweaty, and difficult. It’s hand-to-hand combat. It’s running a race and trying to win, or fighting in the ring till a knockout or submission (1 Cor 9:24-27).

Note in Judges 20:34 that for the Israelites, those on the right side with God, the battle was hard. Contending will rarely be easy. But it is necessary.

Here is how to contend for the faith in 2024:

Read your Bible

If you point to any ultimate authority that isn’t the Bible, you are committing the same sin as those who say the Bible has no authority. Meaning, that you can’t just be for or against something because you saw it on social media or “that’s just not the way we do things in a small town.” You are for or against what God is for or against. How do we know what God is for? We read his Word.

How do we know what to contend for? We read God’s Word. How do we demolish stupid arguments made by the sparkling warlords of culture? We read God’s Word.

Pastor Jonathan said “My fear is that many Christians have neglected their swordplay. How many hours does a marine care for and practice with his rifle? Wouldn’t he be intimately familiar with every inch of it, how it fits together, its weight, and capability? Why would he spend time doing this? Because he recognizes he is at war and if he wasn’t familiar with his weapon then he will be destroyed when he meets his enemy.” He argues that as a marine is familiar with every single part of his rifle, so should the Christian be familiar with their Bible.

Pray

I’ve said before that prayer is a war radio to God. “In prayer, we use God’s war radio to call in artillery fire against the schemes of the enemy, air support for the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and request the rescue of the lost still captive to the enemy.”

If we aren’t praying, we aren’t growing. Leonard Ravenhill said, “No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying.” Prayer should mark the life of a Christian because through Christ as our High Priest, our prayers have direct access to God. We pray directly to him, worship him, and depend on him. Martin Luther says, “As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.”

Fight Sin

John Owen famously said, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” Paul says it this way:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
-Romans 8:13 ESV

Church, if you aren’t killing sin, you are either flirting with it or straight on having extramarital affairs with it. If you are a Christian and are not mortifying your sin, be warned and be scared. Believers kill sin through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, and if we aren’t doing that, it may be evidence we are not of the Spirit of God after all. It is critical, for men and women in the church to be on guard against sin.

We fight sin by confessing it to God and to our brothers and sisters in discipleship groups or community groups. We fight sin by applying God’s Word, that two-edged sword, to it. In our small groups, we are all battlefield medics doing triage on each other. If you aren’t turning from your sin and turning to God, then God is not your God.

Follow Jesus

This is the essence of being a disciple: following Jesus. If you aren’t following our Lord King, then who are you following? Whoever they are, did they deliver you from the dominion of darkness and transfer you to Jesus’ kingdom (Col 1:13-14)? Did they endure the cross and despise its shame (Heb 12:2)? Did they cry out “It is finished?” at the cross as they died for you, putting an end to all your sin and guilt (John 19:30)? Are they making all things new (Rev 21:5)?

No. They didn’t and they aren’t. Only Jesus is worthy of such worship.

Following him means loving as he loved, being holy as he was holy, being gracious as he was gracious, going where he goes, and doing as he does.

Fulfill the Mission

We are all called to be disciples who make disciples. The great commission given us by Jesus is to go make disciples who follow Jesus, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey the Lord (Matt 28:19-20). That includes our children, our neighbors, our coworkers, the city council, and everyone beyond. That is how we contend against cultural opposition: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This article was originally published by Matthew Watson with Awake! Put on strength!, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.