Rend Your Hearts

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Judgment Day can be circumvented by repenting of our sins. This devotion looks how sincere repentance at the heart level cleanses us so that our relationship with God can be restored.

Nuggets

  • God calls us to genuine repentance to restore our relationships with Him.
  • God knows who will turn back to Him and His response.
  • God is most concerned about everyone’s spiritual condition because of His mercy.

Devotions in The Days According to Joel series

Joel had just been talking about blowing the trumpet to warn of impending judgment. He painted a pretty bleak picture.

In the verses we look at here, Joel is giving the Israelites — and us — a way to miss that judgment. There is a big catch.

We have to feel total sorrow for our disobedience. This has to be all the way down at the heart level.

Let’s look at how Joel laid this out.

Let's Put It into Context

Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.

True Repentance

“‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ 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” (Jl. 2: 12-13 ESV)

God calls us to genuine repentance to restore our relationships with Him.

There is so much in these two verses. It is going to take a bit to unpack it.

The first gem we find is even now. Don’t wait another minute. Turn to God now so you don’t miss out a second of His blessings.

Don’t wait until it is too late. “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isa. 55: 6).

Don’t wait because right now, we will be saved. When we genuinely seek salvation and ask is true submission, God will give it to us.

Hold that thought.

We first have to talk about the the second gem — that it is God Himself talking to us. God calls us to salvation. There is no other way that we can come to Him.

To read a related devotion, click the button below.

Now, back to where we were heading.

How do we show we are sincere in returning to God? We “… return to [Him] with all [our] heart[s] …” (Jl. 2: 12 ESV), our third gem.

We can’t be repenting just because we want to get out of Judgment Day. God isn’t in the business of fire insurance.

We can’t be repenting just because we want to get God’s blessings. It isn’t about entitlement or what we get out of it.

We need to repent because we realize we have disobeyed God and need to make things right with Him. We realize we need to worship Him and follow His laws and commandments.

We’ve long said that the outward walk without the inward faith means nothing to God. The fourth gem changes that to the outward walk and inward transformation.

OutwardWalkInwardTransformation

That inward transformation is the result of rending our hearts. The modern definition of rending is tearing apart.

I like the archaic one better. It means wrenching something violently.

We are violently jerking, twisting, and heaving our old sinful nature from our hearts. We replace it with character like God’s.

When we rend our hearts and transform our inward hearts, we show that by the fasting, weeping, and mourning. In other words we show sorrow for our sins.

We just talked about fasting in A Call to Repentance. Fasting is more of a private exercise.

It is more than just not eating. It is a pause for meditation. It’s goal is to cut out sin from our hearts.

The weeping and mourning are seen as more known by others. But we aren’t talking about the crying jags and black clothes here.

It goes hack to being sorrowful, which Excell told us about. He wrote, “A true turning of the soul to God is always accompanied by intense sorrow because the law of God has been broken, because the soul has been injured by sin, because time has been lost in which good might have been done, because it has enfeebled the moral manhood, and because it has moved the anger of God.”

Resource

So, the fifth gem is the turning back to God and proving it. We have to make the transformation permeate every facet of our lives. We can’t just go through the religious ritual.

The sixth gem is Joel was not wispy washy about this. He said this is what was — and is — going to happen. Plan on it. Work accordingly.

Hutcheson gave us our seventh gem. We think of punishment as being bad and one sided. God is lowering the boom on us.

Resource

No. God is calling us to repentance and restoration through punishment.

God’s Response

“Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing —
grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God” (Jl. 2: 14 ESV)

God knows who will turn back to Him and His response.

No, it isn’t about predestination. It is about God’s omniscience. He is all-knowing.

God is all-knowing, but this verse, to me, is confusing. So, let’s put 13 and 14 together.

“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. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing — grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God” (Jl. 2: 13-14 ESV)

Okay. This is Sarcasm 101.

Well, God may forgive you and give you a blessing when you repent.

No, God will forgive us and give us blessings — when we sincerely repent. Henry felt that Joel wrote it this way because we need to be humble and modest.

I can see that. I’ve already said we shouldn’t feel entitled. Entitlement has smattering of pride involved.

Henry went in to expand on what will and won’t be removed. He wrote, “There is no question at all to be made, but that if we truly repent of our sins God will forgive us and be reconciled to us, but whether He will remove this or the other affliction which we are under may well be questioned, and yet the probability of it should encourage us to repent.”

Resource

That gives us hope. Brownrigg told us that of which we should be hopeful.

  • Returning to be in God’s favor.
  • Remembering His promised judgments.
  • Living under His mercies once more.
  • Worshiping God again.

Resource

If we do take this as God is the one who is repenting, as Beddome did, it does make sense.

Resource

No, God has not sinned and does not need forgiveness. But there is some turning on His part, also.

What does Scriptures say about God departing from us?

  • “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isa. 59: 2 ESV).
  • “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” (Rom. 1: 24 ESV).

God does have to return to the relationship, also. It was our sin that separated us in the first place as He cannot be associated with sin. His anger over our disobedience has to be placated.

God has to turn away from His judgment of us. In some cases, He may cease the punishment we are experiencing.

Once we have repented and the stain of our sins removed, God can come back to fellowship with us.

God always blesses His children.

Glossary

Sparing the People

“Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.  Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, “Where is their God?”’” (Jl. 2: 15-17 ESV)

God is most concerned about everyone’s spiritual condition because of His mercy.

Joel went back to blowing the trumpet and talking about fasting. He coupled it this time with getting the nation together, but it wasn’t just any old meeting.

Jones contends we “… declare a holy fast …” (Jl. 2: 15 ESV) by confession of sin, resolving to live as God calls us to, and depending on God’s goodness and mercy. We make it the process of repentance.

Resource

It was a sacred assembly. Excell thought this meant there would be the purification ceremonies conducted. (You know, like the priests got in Numbers 8: 6-7).

Everyone — young and old — got every sin purified. No one got an excused absence that day. That was because there was a common sin and a common class.

The priests had to ask God to spare His people. In other words, they had to confess their sins and ask forgiveness. They weren’t automatically forgiven.

They had to pray to God for mercy and admit they had sinned against Him and ask for His forgiveness. It wasn’t where the people were allowed to try to get God to rewrite His laws and commandments or change His judgments.

They assembly was where they were to be humbled.

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Making the Connections

Remember, we aren’t just talking priests here. Excell spelled it out nicely. He wrote,

“All who attended this meeting were to be washed from the defilement of their past sin, and were to come and bow before the Lord in a renewed condition of soul. This was not an assembly to inaugurate social reform, to advance scientific research, or to determine a political policy; but to manifest a deep sorrow for national apostasy, and to turn aside the peril which had been awakened thereby. This meeting was not to vaunt the prowess of the nation, [but] to confess sin before God; and surely only a solemn mood would avail at such a time. How beneficial would be the effect of such an assembly.”

Resource

All who attended were offered salvation. All benefit from having their sins forgiven.

Notice what else Excell said. It isn’t about social reform. That is the worldview.

It is about repenting of our sins and turning away from them. It is our spiritual condition, not our physical condition.

How Do We Apply This?

  • Sincerely repent with all of our hearts.
  • Repent today.
  • “… seek [God’] mercy and expect His blessing,” as Excell said.
  • Don’t rely on religious ceremony to mortify our sins — repent.
  • Show shame at having sinned against God.
  • Change our hearts and lives to correct that disobedience.
  • Enjoy God’s presence.
  • Don’t make excuses for sin.
  • Frequently call assemblies to confess sin.
  • Don’t divide people into different groups.
  • Have God’s ministers organize the people.
  • Pray to seek the glory of God.

Resource

Father God. We confess our sins to You. We humble ourselves, asking for Your guidance as to how to sanctify our hearts. We confess our sins to You before the congregation. Amen.

What do you think?

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