Turn from your wickedness and turn to God

So I've been in the Old Testament a lot. Kings and Chronicles and Isaiah and I have to say there's a lot of death and destruction and prophets with bad news for the people of God. At some point the message went from repent from your wickedness and turn to God to, you're evil and you're going to die.

Now, I've struggled with this mightily. The reason being is that all the killing and death and terrible things the prophets say will happen and that do happen to the Israelites really doesn't jive with Jesus' message of grace and love. Ya know? And I'm a big fan of the grace and love thing because I'm pretty bad at being a Christian and without grace and love, I'm going to wind up getting overthrown and killed by the Babylonians.

But Jesus said when you see me, you have seen the father. And the connection is that Jesus is the earthly representation of God. Which means God is all about grace and love too. I know there's judgement and salvation didn't work in the Old Testament like it does now and I know the Israelites has chance after chance after chance to get it right and continued to be complete screw ups. So they all get captured and die. King after king after evil king gets killed and in the mix there are a handful of people who are all about this God of fathers business and try to do things the right way, but they die and their sons go back to being evil and the cycle continues. (I have just summed up the books of 1 and 2 Kings for you. Thank me later).

So back to Jesus. If we've seen the father through him, and Jesus was about forgiveness and grace and love and relationships, then God has to be too, right? And he is. That's why he established covenants with all these people in the Old Testament, I mean it's why he created people in the first place. But that still doesn't help me all the death and destruction. It bugged me in Esther, in bugs me to degrees in Kings, and although I have an understanding why, it doesn't always jive with me.

So, I didn't really have a breakthrough tonight and the killing still doesn't completely jive with me but I did have a thought hit me. 2 Peter 3:2 says "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles." This struck a chord in me as I went back and reread it.

The thought I had was that the message hadn't changed. Jesus said repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The prophets said repent and turn back to God. Different wording and context but the message is the same. Leave behind that which is keeping you from God and follow God. Yes this is the dumbed down, poor man's theology version and perhaps many a people way smarter then me already knew this. Maybe everybody else already knows this. But I'm slow.

Jesus loves you.

:)