A Call to Repentance

A Call to Repentance

We as a nation may be facing God’s much deserved judgment. Yes, MUCH deserved....We started by kicking Him out of our schools when we abolished school prayer. We then taught our children that we were the products of evolution, the survival of the fittest, rather than a creation made in the Imago Dei. That led to a further devaluation of life with Roe vs Wade. We have lost our true identities and have nearly come to the point of total disregard for life. We have become a land of bloodshed and we call good, evil and evil, good. Yes, we deserve His judgment.

How can a good God judge? He has to, by the very virtue that He is good. His perfect character of justice demands that evil be judged. How can a good God take an easy or casual view of sin? He absolutely can not. It would make Him evil, not good; it would be a violation of His very character. So yes, we as a nation deserve the judgment of a good and just God.

But He’s also a God of mercy, compassion and love. He desires that His people repent, change from their wicked ways, and return to Him. These were the very characteristics of God that Jonah didn’t want God to extend to the Ninevites. It’s a short book to read and I would recommend reading it, because here we see just how much God is willing to forgive and even postpone His just judgments when there is true repentance. I want to draw your attention to chapter 3 of Jonah:

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you." Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city--a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish." When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

There’s still time for us to repent, and not just as a nation. We who claim to be followers of Christ must lead the way in our repentance. We must give up the secret sins in our lives and plead for forgiveness. We must repent, change our ways, change direction and begin to live lives that are marked by strict obedience, love driven obedience not a pharisaical, law based obedience, to God and His Word. Then and only then will the possibility exist that God may relent and postpone the judgment we deserve.