Morning, December 18

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"Rend your heart, and not your garments."

  Joel 2:13

   Garment-rending 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.