Thursday 16 February 2012

Rend your heart, not your garments




“Now, therefore,” says the LORD, “Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. - Joel 2v12-13

One of the great problems with religious practices and habits is that they can become just habits and practices. Every religion does this. Even evangelicals are not exempt. Whatever church we go to we can get caught in the trap of thinking that our spirituality can be judged by how we worship, what we wear, what we do, or where we do and don’t go. The worse thing is when we criticise other believers for their own standards of exterior spirituality while we ignore our own. ‘Mote, meet beam.’

The Jews had one of these practices. It times of deep regret and sorrow over sins they would often rip their clothes apart, daub themselves with ashes, and then dress in garments not much different from burlap bags. It was supposed to show true repentance and at the start it may have been a real reflection of what was going on in their hearts.

But eventually it just became a show. Instead of really dealing with their sin the people would just do the ritual without any kind of change. Then they could feel good that they had done the right thing and everyone else would think they had things sorted.

God lets the people know here that just rending your clothes is not enough. Today He might say that wearing a coat and tie, or going to church, or raising or not raising your hands in praise, or speaking or not speaking on tongues, or any number of practices is not enough.

God wants a rending and a brokenness of heart. I have mentioned a phrase from a modern Christian song that says ‘you have to change her heart before you change her shirt.’ We have to make it sure we have it the right way around. We can’t get the outside right and hope the inside follows.

‘Rend your heart, not your clothes,’ was not advice just for these folks. We need the same lesson of fixing the inside first today. 

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