Spurgeon: December AM
* 12/18/AM
"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.