Ezekiel 18:30-32 Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!

Most Christians, even, associate Ezekiel almost exclusively with his visions, such as the “wheel in a wheel” (Ezekiel 1) and the valley of dry bones. (Ezekiel 37) However, this is one of the most impassioned calls to repentance in the whole Bible. The picture that it presents of God is very different from how many people see Him. This is a loving Father indeed, who is heartbroken that His children insist on doing such self-destructive things. Those who don’t like God’s regulations, such as the Ten Commandments, try to paint Him as arbitrary and His rules as spiteful, when nothing could be further from the truth. It is laughable and at the same time sad when someone like Ted Turner (the founder of CNN) tries to replace the Ten Commandments with his own list. God’s rules, all of them, are for our good, to keep us from destruction. So often we are like little children, stubbornly saying NO to everything our Father tells us. How foolish! This chapter as a whole makes it clear that repentance is not just words, it is turning away from wrong actions and doing right things. I get the image of someone saying, “I repent of overeating and inactivity,” and then never getting off the couch or cutting down on their calorie intake. There has to be a change in lifestyle for there to be any real benefit.

I have of course had to deal with repentance in my own life, and I know how hard it can be to say “No” to destructive habits, particularly, but I also know that my heavenly Father is indeed love, and He desires only the best for me. That’s something I seek to get across to others, but so often their interaction with their physical fathers keeps them from accepting what I tell them. When fathers fail to express both discipline and love, their children are greatly handicapped in their relationship to God. Actually, the same can be said of rules and regulations of all sorts. I have seen some school rules, for example, that were nothing more than exercises in teaching the students to break rules! It is human nature to test our boundaries, that is, the rules that are laid out for us, but when those rules are reasonable, we aren’t going to cross the boundaries very often or very far. If parents can communicate their love effectively, their children are far more likely to accept the rules their parents set as being expressions of that love. As a pastor, I seek to help people understand how much God loves them, so that they may indeed repent and turn from the path to destruction.

Father, this is absolutely foundational. Help me indeed communicate it to as many as possible, so that they may turn and live, just as You desire, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!