“Thus declares the Lord of hosts:
Return to me, says the Lord of hosts,
and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.”(Zechariah 1:3 ESV)
This is such a clear call to repentance for Israel. It is the message of “teshuva”, a radical turning back from sin, self-centered lives and especially idolatry, which is the root of all other sins.
Times haven’t changed much. Idolatry, again, is the sin many Christians have fallen for by redefining who God is, by making a god in their own image, instead of following the God who clearly reveals himself in the Bible.
Along with redefining God, they have redefined human identity, for instance by going along with LGBT theology and the gender “religion”.
This didn’t happen overnight. It has been a sliding scale ever since the Enlightenment, several centuries ago, and more recently the sexual revolution. These are nothing more but waves of rebellion against God.
The “grace” message (or rather hyper grace message) that the church has preached the last decades has fed into the erosion of the church’s stance for holiness and biblical ethics. As a result, we haven’t been able to turn the tide of the rebellion against God that we not only see in our society, but even in our churches.
Yes, we need to keep preaching about a God who loves every single human being, and who has grace for every single human being, no matter what they have done. But we can’t do that at the expense of preaching a radical “teshuva” message of turning from sin and idolatry and turning to the God of the Bible.
Repentance is not when you cry about the things you have done wrong. Repentance is when you turn from these things and turn to the living God. Repentance is a change of mind, that leads to a change of heart, that leads to a change in direction. The place to start is to take inventory of our thought patterns, and how much they have been influenced by the thought patterns of the world around us.
You do not need a golden calf to be an idolater!
Zechariah had to declare to Israel: “Return to me, and I will return to you.”
John the Baptizer and Jesus preached a similar message hundreds of years later: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt.3:2;4:17)
Revival starts when you and I return to Jesus with our whole mind, our whole heart and all our actions.
Shalom!
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