Joel 2:12-13 – “ Yet Event Now” declares the LORD. “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD you GOD, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
The passage is quoted from time to time. It tends to be a verse that is quoted by Christians when they are talking to or about other Christians in a place where they have been in sin for a while and are desiring yet again what seems like the 1,000th time for a forgiveness of some sin or vice or stumbling point where they have turned their back on God in a small way or a big way. And I agree, I agree simply from the context of this whole book. This is God telling the children of Israel that they have ran so hard and fast away from Him, they have as he says in another prophet, Whored after other gods. God was calling his chosen children unfaithful and committing soul adultery with other false gods. And then in the beginning of the book of Joel he talks about how he is going to send a whole bunch of disasters and hardship to them for their disobedience. Then after all of this he Say YET EVEN NOW RETURN TO ME. What incredible LOVE. What mercy, what patients, what an eternally loving God we serve that even when we sin and whore after other gods. Even when he sends a punishment. Even when we are in that place where we feel that we have run after other gods. He says I hate what you have done I hate your sin, I hate your whoring, I HATE SIN. He says YET EVEN NOW RETURN TO ME. A full returning, a true weeping for our sin, a mourning for what we have done to our eternal lover, a weeping and wailing for the sin we have committed. And then the Lord says “rend your hearts and not your garments.” The rending of garments was something that traditionally was done in the Middle East, even today it is still done as a sign of disgrace, sorrow, pity. It is done as a sign of sorrow. But God says essentially “ok you ripped your clothes in half…ok, your clothes are nothing, what about your heart, your heart is where the issue is, are you so sorry, for your whoring after false gods, no matter what they are, that you will weep and wail and rend your heart.” Seeking the Lord after we have sinned seems painful, think about that, RENDING YOUR HEART. Ouch, that has got to hurt. Imagine the pain, but imagine the freedom. Imagine the God glorifying wonder of rending our hearts. When we come to a full realization of the sin we have committed. When we come to a place of total realization of the pain we have cost God. When we come to the realization of immense misery and genuine sorrow God must feel when we totally disgrace him by whoring after other gods. When we get there, and then realize that God says “yet even now return to me” we can’t help but rend our heart. For we realize that we are so unworthy of all the forgiveness, all the mercy, all the love, we don’t deserve any of it and it brings about a pain, a good pain, but a pain none the less. A pain of sorrow that our heart hurts for the spiting in the face of God we have done, AND YET HE LOVES US STILL. And when we return and we take hold of that mercy and that grace, God is glorified by him magnifying his eternal qualities that surpass that of any human being. He is so eternally merciful and gracious that when we take hold yet again of that mercy and realize yet again how big his grace is, that even after we run after other god’s, he forgives and loves us. GLORY BE TO GOD.
