"A Call to Restoration" (Part 1)

Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. (Jude 1-3 NASB).

I love the story about Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter, intended to pep up his teammates on the one hand, and distract the Milwaukee batters on the other. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, “Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.” Aaron didn’t say anything, but when the next pitch came he hit it into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, “I didn’t come up here to read.” When I read the little book of Jude I am reminded of how easily it is to get distracted. I am convinced that the church of our age is distracted.

The Book of Jude qualifies as one of those “good things that come in small packages.” In just one short chapter of twenty-five verses, Jude provides us with an amazing insight into the church. His call is to contend earnestly for the faith. It is a call for restoration in the church. The word that Jude uses for “contend” is epagonizomai, which was used of athletes competing in the games. It is where we get our word “agonize.” It is present tense, it means to continually contend. Jude doesn’t want them to simply resist or be orthodox, he wants them to rise up and fight for the faith! He wants them to boldly stand firm for truth.

As we look into these twenty-five verses in the next few days we’ll see more what that “truth” is, however, today I want to emphasize one central point. It is that the church must turn away from the distractions of the busy-ness of doing church and become the Church. We have churches of every kind in our nation doing many good things. I wonder if we are doing the “God-thing?” Oh, there are many who would point to the activities and programs of the church, quoting statistic upon statistic of increases in assets as growth, but the truth is that we have fewer people involved in the life of the Church so that the command of Christ is fulfilled.

Here’s the call to restoration. We need to fight for a lifestyle change that reflects a nature being transformed so that we may love God supremely and love our neighbor as ourselves! We must restore a focus on people rather than feed the ever burgeoning demands of our programs! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have church like that! The call is for a restoration of grace and a return to the real church of the New Testament. Isn’t that the kind of church you are looking for? It begins with us. We change the church by changing ourselves. And, isn’t that really what we “came up here to do?” Forget about where the label is on the bat. Step up to the plate and knock it over the fence!