December 18, Morning
C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling
"Rend your heart, and not your garments." — Joel 2:13 · KJV
Garment-rending 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. Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial rules — for such things please the flesh — but true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of carnal men; 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 at the hour of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean on. 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 wrought and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief, personally experienced — not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit on the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter merely to be talked of and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humbling, and completely sin-purging; but then it is sweetly preparative for those gracious consolations which proud, unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone. The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally 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 rend their garments in the day of lamentation.