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"Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity."
(Joel 2:13)
We are looking at passages from the book of Joel this week. Yesterday we read chapter 1, in which Joel recounts a recent disaster in Israel where a swarm of locusts have wreaked havoc. Chapter 2 begins by speaking about the day of the Lord, a day of God's judgement. The prophet Joel calls the people to repent in light of this impending judgement, and he writes our verse for today, which you can read above.
What does it mean to rend your heart and not your garments? In the Old Testament, we often see the act of tearing one's clothes as a display of horror and sorrow over sin. The person humbles himself and pleads for God's mercy with this act of tearing his garments as an outward sign of his grief. The word "rend" is often used to express this act, as it literally means "to tear apart". They "rend" their garments. Here in the book of Joel, the prophet calls the people to rend their hearts and not their garments.
Anyone can go through these outward motions to signal repentance. You can wince and twist your face and tear your garments. You can wail and cry and make a big show of it. But while these outward actions are performed, it is entirely possible for your heart to be far from contrite. The Lord is not after these outward actions. He desires genuine repentance of the heart. There is no use tearing your garments if your heart is not broken over your sin. You can go through with the spectacle of rending your garments and then go on your way sinning. You can go through the motions but have no genuine heart change. So when Joel calls the people to rend their hearts and not their garments, he is calling them to focus inward on the state of their hearts and to have genuine repentance, not just the outward appearance of repentance.
So what kind of repentance is the Lord after? What is genuine repentance?
Genuine repentance results in a change: a turn away from sin and toward righteousness. To repent is to turn around and go in another direction. It is to agree with God about your sin, that it is an affront to a holy God and destructive for your life, and to then choose to leave that sin behind in favor of God's will for you and your life.
Ask God today what you need to repent of. Ask Him to break your heart over your sin and not to be complacent about it. Rend your heart and be broken over your sin. It is good for the people of God to be broken over our sin because the Lord does not leave us there, as we will discuss tomorrow. While uncomfortable, it is a benefit to the believer to spend some time feeling the weight of our sin and being genuinely broken over it so that our repentance is also genuine as we recognize sin for what it truly is.
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