Return to Me With All Your Heart

Introduction

Joel & Locusts: As I was thinking about what passage to share with you tonight, the Lord brought to my attention the prophet Joel. Joel has a number of critical passages that New Testaments authors pick up on. Joel was writing to Judah in the midst of an ecological crisis, a locust swarm. While that might sound like a nonsubstantial issue for prophets to be writing about, it was in fact a threat to Judah’s very existence, because swarms of locusts like this could literally consume an entire years worth of grain and crops.

Questions: It would have raised all kinds of questions:

How could God let this happen to his people?

Did God see the trouble they were in?

Was God so angry at them that there was no coming back?

Passage: After wrestling with these questions and considering the reality of this plague of locusts swarming down upon them, we read these words from the prophet.

Joel 2:12–14 ““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?”

In the midst of the worries and the concerns and the fears of what might happen, God’s people were invited to remember that nothing occurs outside of God’s control, even swarms of locusts. They’re called, in the midst of their trial, to look up to heaven and to remember the nature of their God, that he is loving, he is gracious, he is slow to anger, and abounds steadfast love and faithfulness.

Rend Your Hearts: That language “rend your hearts, and not your garments” is one of those nearly poetic imperatives in scripture. It speaks about making sure that our religion is not just a matter of outward show and presentation, but is truly one of our affections, our desires, our longings.

Illustration - Siren But No Fire: In fact, while we are in this building tonight, it is fitting to remember the very last Sunday we ever met in this building years ago. Somebody came into the building and pulled the fire alarm, if you recall. The siren blared, the lights flashed, everyone left the building and went outside. But there was no fire. It was all simply noise with no heat. In Joel’s day, rending the garments was like pulling the fire alarm. It was loud and looked religious, but there was no heat. God is saying, “I want to see the flames of your heart ignite. I want to see the fire burning within you.

Christianity is not about surface level moral change. It is about the transformation of the heart.

Water Pump: I really like how the famous preacher Thomas Watson spoke about this passage and the need to rend our hearts,

“When we put water into the pump, it fetches up only water, but when we put the water of tears into God’s bottle, this fetches up wine.”

And the idea is simple of course, God wants the heart. In all things, God is always after the heart.

Lent: Tonight we’re gathered together to spend an evening prayer and worship of God. Some of you have spent a part of the day fasting and preparing your heart for this evening. And Ash Wednesday historically marks the beginning of Lent. The 40 days leading up to Good Friday, where Christians have often intentionally tried to create space to “rend their heart.” The goal of lent is not just to give something up out of a religious duty, that is specifically what Joel calls “rending your garments.” Some might choose to fast from something during this season as an act of worship. Other might not. There is no rule here. God’s not after that.

The opportunity in Lent is to “rend our hearts;” it is to posture ourself under Christ, in such a way that something new is squeezed out of us.

Greater awareness of ongoing sin in our life

Greater commitment to the mortification of sin

Greater hunger for God’s Word to mold us and shape us

Greater sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s leading

Greater rejoicing in the simplicity of grace upon grace

Greater experience of vivification, the increase of virtues in our life

Greater love of our Church family.

Greater love of our neighbor.

Lent is an invitation to slow down, and let spiritual formation form

Wrap Up Joel: The wonderful truth about the book of Joel, is that though the locusts would plague Judah, and though the people would cry out in lament and repentance, the end focus of the entire book is not despair, but the focus is on the God who dwells among his poeple.

Joel 2:27 “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else…

Let’s pray…