Turning Back to God

Throughout the Old Testament, God used His prophets to bring His words to the people of Israel. One of the most common calls of the prophets was the call to repentance. The people of Israel would respond to these calls for repentance with varying degrees of intensity. Few of the prophets gave a call for repentance that got the response that Ezra did when he prayed with great emotion and confessed the sins of Israel. The people wept bitterly because of their sin of intermarriage, which was against the will of God. The years that Israel spent in exile because of their sin and God’s judgment for their sin must have taken a toll on their stubbornness and pride. Their return to their homeland of Israel (The land was given to them by God.), must have softened their hearts and given them a new appreciation for God and His promises and blessings. They had to be thankful to God for delivering them from the exile that they brought upon themselves. As a result, they wept bitterly, confessed their sin and repented of it. They then took steps to “make right” their sin by putting away their wives and children from inter-marriage with the peoples of the land that God had given to them. As Ezra gave the call for repentance and for the people of Israel to return to living by the teachings of God, Jesus issued the same call to the people of Israel (and the world) and preached that the people should “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17) He preached repentance throughout His ministry; urging the people to turn away from their sinful ways of living and turn instead to God’s way of living which He taught in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-7:29. This beautiful sermon covers most every aspect of human life and how God wants us to live according to His words. As Ezra prayed and the people responded, Jesus prayed and the people are still responding today. Jesus preached repentance by the lost, but He also preached reconciliation. It is His desire that those of us who have heard His word and responded to it and then fell away (or backslid), that they also would repent and come back to God; just as the people of Israel returned to God in response to Ezra. Let us bend our ears to the call for repentance and commit or recommit our hearts to God in obedience to Christ. In Christ, John