by Kevin Burton
From the tiny Old Testament book of Joel comes a big idea. It’s quite a good notion any time, perhaps more so on this New Year’s Eve.
If you’re doing some soul searching this time of year, you’re not alone.
Joel 2:13 is one of my memory verses. Alistair Begg from Truth For Life radio ministry focused on it in a recent message:
“ 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 2:13, NKJV).
Tearing of garments was a sign of grief in the old days in Israel, as explained by a passage on http://www.gotquestions.org:
“The tearing of one’s clothes is an ancient tradition among the Jews, and it is associated with mourning, grief, and loss,” the passage reads. “The first mention of someone tearing his garments is in Genesis. ‘When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes’ (Gen 37:29). A short time later, ‘Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days’ (Gen. 37:34) when he thought that Joseph had been killed.”
“Other biblical examples of men who tore their clothes to express pain and sorrow include David, when Saul and Jonathan were killed (2 Samuel 1:11–12); Elisha, when Elijah was taken up into heaven (2 Kings 2:11–12); Job, when he was bereft of all he possessed (Job 1:20); Jephthah, when he learned the result of his rash vow (Judges 11:34–35); Mordecai, when he learned of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews (Esther 4:1); Ahab, when Elijah pronounced a judgment against him (1 Kings 21:27); and Paul and Barnabas, when the people of Lystra began to worship them (Acts 14:14).
The passage doesn’t say who first had the (bad) idea that tearing of garments should equate to grief. But Begg’s message talks about true repentance that goes much deeper.
“The tearing of garments and other outward signs of religious emotion are easily displayed and are frequently hypocritical; but to feel true repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less common,” Begg writes.
“Men will pay attention to the most minute ceremonial regulations—for those things are pleasing to the flesh. But true faith is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of people of the flesh; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and worldly.”
“Outward observances are temporarily comfortable; eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up: But they are ultimately delusive, for in the face of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon,” Begg writes. “Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven.”
“Heart-rending is divinely worked and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief that is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer,” Begg writes. “It is not a matter to be merely talked about and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating and completely sin-purging, but it is also sweet preparation for the gracious consolations that proud, unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.”
As for all matters of the Christian life, true repentance must go through God.
“The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally as hard as marble: How, then, can this be done? We must take them to Calvary: A dying Savior’s voice rent the rocks once, and it is as powerful now. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus, and our hearts shall be rent even as men tear their garments in the day of lamentation.”
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