Rend your hearts and not your garments

          For the day of the LORD is great and very awesome; 
               who can endure it?
          “Yet even 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 your God, 
               for he is gracious and merciful, 
          slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; 
               and he relents over disaster. 
          Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, 
               and leave a blessing behind him, 
           a grain offering and a drink offering 
               for the LORD your God?  --  Joel 2:11c-14

I'm not sure why, but I am always amazed and excited when I see the gospel in the Old Testament. Perhaps I've bought into the incorrect notion that Israel had the Law, but we get the gospel. Maybe I've gotten sucked into the wrong headed idea that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, but in the New Testament He is a God of love. Or there is the possibility that I've slid into the misguided school of thought that proposes that God's first plan was for Israel, but when they messed up, He sent His Son with the gospel.

Well, whatever the case, passages like the one above from Joel, strongly remind me (and all of us) that God had (and has) a singular plan of redemption. Starting in Gen 3 and culminating in Rev 22, God's plan has always been to rescue and restore His people and His creation through the redemptive power of the Cross.

What is interesting to me about the passage from Joel is there is no plea for action other than heartfelt repentance. Even here in the midst of the post exile disaster, God is saying "I want your heart". I don't know about you, but I can begin to feel the of the passion God has to be reunited with his children. To borrow from another post exile prophet, Ezekiel writes, "Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ezk 33:11)

At the end of the day, these two Old Testament passages sum up our singular response to the gospel. We must turn to God. By grace? Absolutely. In the power of the Spirit? Without a doubt. Yet there must be a turn. Our lives must somehow be different. And we must rend our hearts, not our garments. External grief and surface level responses do not cut it with God (check out Mt 7:21-23).

          The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
                        a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  --  Ps 51:17
God wants your heart.

To God Alone be the Glory