“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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