Believer, how do you respond to sin? Not that of others, but your own? Are you afflicted deeply with sorrow? Or are you more like the Pharisees, making a show of your repentance while remaining unchanged?

The “religious” among us would, as did many in Scripture, rend their garments when confronted with sin or injustice. Yet this outward act was matched by neither inward grief nor change. This is not what God desires.

God wants people with a changed heart, people mournful of misdoings, not those who would signal misery on the outside while remaining unchanged. For God says through the prophet, “rend your heart and not your garments” (Joel 2:13). God wants a people who are broken by sin, not who wallow in it.

And when we truly repent, if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins, and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn. 1:9).

Brethren, examine your heart today. Are you truly repentant? Do you despise sin as He does? Or do you rather justify yourself, making an outward show of seeking forgiveness, but having your heart untouched?

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Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotions

Morning, December 18

"Rend your heart, and not your garments." Joel 2:13

Garment-rendering and other outward signs of religious emotion, are easily manifested 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 regulations- for such things are pleasing to the flesh- but true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of the 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 in the article of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. 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 which 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. It is not a matter to be merely talked of 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 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 Saviour'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 vestures in the day of lamentation.

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