Rebellion or Repentance?

 In our modern, western culture, we have grown up with the independent spirit, the inclination embedded in us since childhood that we can make it on our own with enough discipline, personal application of strength and ingenuity. These are not bad attributes, nor can we live without what one would all the “American Spirit”— a belief in “freedom, individualism, opportunity, and a list of very “American ideals and values.”

I am a proud American. I served this country in the U.S. Navy for years as a young man. I dearly love this land. What we cannot afford to do is to disconnect our spiritual umbilical cord from these values, for without a proper spiritual anchor, we will simply become a ship without a rudder, lost in a sea of selfish ambition morphing our values and what they represent into something dysfunctional, unrecognizable and self-destructive without our original biblical underpinning.

We see it everywhere around us manifesting in the iniquities of the day having become, on many fronts, normal. Sexual sin, pornography, addictions, abortion, high crime, and the list goes on and on.

We are, it seems, living in a rebellious house.

In 597 B.C., Ezekiel, both a prophet and priest, was among some of the exiles deported by the evil Babylonian Empire that finalized the destruction of Jerusalem later in 587 B.C. God used Ezekiel as prophet to call his recalcitrant people to repentance, referring to them as a “rebellious people and a rebellious house” in chapter two, because of their extreme, continuous spiritual rebellion against our holy God in their disobedience of his commands. Like Old Testament Israel, our nation is at a spiritual crossroad. We must understand where we are and why.

We are at an intersection. The intersection of rebellion or repentance.[i]

We must come to a place in our lives, both individually and corporately of repentance. If I could summarize the message of the entire Bible into one word, it would be repentance. The reason for my summary is simply based on the way God has chosen to reveal himself to us. If God did not reveal himself, we would not even know that there is a God. He reveals himself in three basic ways: his creation, his Word the Bible, and his son, Jesus Christ.

His creation alone gives us accountability for knowing him and responding to him in repentance, for we read in Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

The great inference in this verse is that God reveals himself through his creation, and even if we never see a Bible or hear the name Jesus, we can see in his creation around us enough to know God’s attributes, power and nature, and we are then accountable to him. As one great scholar has said (Allen P. Ross) “Creation is the greatest evangelist of all time!)

God seeks a response from us to his great Self-revelation. As one peruses scripture, they would have to literally ignore the clear and abiding fact of God’s expectation of repentance from us. The Bible teaches us that we are all sinful against him in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Throughout the Old Testament (and ratified in the New Testament), we witness the constant ebb and flow, the back and forth of God’s people, Israel, rebelling, being judged for sin via God’s wrath for such sin, and their repentant response in bringing them back to a national and individual relationship with our Creator-God. The parallel should not be missed as we look into our own modern souls.

We too, it seems, are a rebellious house.

Our beautiful nation is in a constant spiritual fluctuation from rebellion to repentance. It appears; however, that we are now in a spiritual stasis, stuck in the muck and mire of rebellion as a nation, a house of rebellion through sin against our beautifully Holy God. We are at an intersection.

The intersection of rebellion or repentance.[ii]

This is a dangerous intersection. We must choose our direction well, for if we remain in this stasis of sin, it will be catastrophic. Our nation goes where the heart of our people go, for they are the nation. If we continue on this road of rebellion, in this rebellious house, as archaic as it might seem, the truth of our situation is real, a continuous rejection in this rebellious house, a continuation on this path will only lead to the ultimate self-destruction of our nation, and even worse, the eternal destruction of many eternal souls in a terrible place the Bible is clear about—hell.

We must evict ourselves from this rebellious house.

We must repent before our wonderfully holy God. We must receive a new residency in His Eternal House—his gift of eternal, indestructible life with him forever.

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 We can come to know Christ through confession of our sins and repentance (turning away from sin). Let me encourage you to do this by talking to God through prayer. Here is an idea of how you might do that:

 "Dear God, I believe your son Jesus Christ died in my place on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day following his death. I confess my sins, all of them, to you now with a humble heart. I repent of those sins and ask you to empower me with your Holy Spirit in overcoming further sin. Amen”

 If you prayed this or a similar prayer committing your life to Christ and becoming one of his followers, let me encourage you to find a good, Bible-believing church.

 Begin talking to God in prayer and reading the Bible daily. A good way to begin to read the Bible is to start with the Book of John in the New Testament.

 Feel very free in connecting with me if you need any further help in your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can do this via the above email or Facebook page or this web page.

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 Mercy Road Ministries was founded and now led by Ben Bounds. Ben has pastored churches across Texas for over thirty years and is an ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). He holds a BA in Pastoral Ministry and Biblical Studies from Southwestern Assemblies of God College and did graduate theological studies at the BMA Theological Seminary.

 Ben's first book, The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God, was released on 12.08.2017 through Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. It is available in paperback and hardback through your preferred bookseller (Mardels, Barnes and Noble, etc.) and paperback, hardback as well as ebook through online book retailers (www.christianbook.com, www.cokesbury.com, www.amazon.com, www.booksamillion.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, etc.).

 Ben is the host of Staying in Bounds, an on-air Bible devotional broadcast multiple times daily on KWJV 103.7 FM Weslaco, TX which can also be heard worldwide online at www.kwjvthestar.com. Ben and his wife, Linda, together have four adult children and nine grandchildren. They live in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

Ben can be contacted for preaching engagements at benbounds695@gmail.com or 903.441.3279. Ben can also be contacted via his website @ www.benbounds.com, which is also his blog and contains more information about his ministry.

 Follow Ben @ https://www.facebook.com/mercyroadministries/ and this website www.benbounds.com.

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[i] Bounds, Ben, The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God. Bloomington, IN. Westbow Press, A Division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2017, p.155.

[ii] Ibid., 155.