Returning to God

As we continue into our Series Empty & Filled: Discovering the Meaning and Power of Lent, we are going to continue this week in understanding how we prepare ourselves for Lent and for the coming Easter Celebration.

This week we will be delving into the book fo Joel as our Key text

Joel is a short book that echoes the themes of much of the Prophets: the coming consequences of sin and the need for Israel’s repentance. In this, Joel is very similar to our own placement as a people right now, understanding the impact of choosing to live lives outside the framework God intended for us, and recognizing the need to repent and get back in line with His Word and plan.

Joel chapter 2 describes the coming destruction and defeat of Israel in dizzying detail, but then it takes a sharp turn in verse 12 and describes the repentance that God requires of his people, and I want to go ahead and read verse 12

Joel 2:12 ESV

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

Lent is a Time to Return to the Lord

Lent is a time that we should return to the Lord and that we should evaluate the choices and decisions that we have made.

Hosea 14:1 echoes much of what we hear in Joel regarding the need for Israel to turn to God.

Hosea 14:1 ESV

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

We as individuals have to come to a place where we can both accept the state of our lives as well as recognize the need for it to change. I’m not sure about you, but I am tired of being on the path that Israel was on in the days of the Judges and Prophets. We rise up under the power of God as we turn to Him and then fall away as we chase over the temporary and ephemeral things of this world. The momentary pleasures of the flesh or of indulging the basest of emtions, anger, jealousy, hatred.

I want to get to a place that I am willing to lose it all as long as I have God.

Isaiah 59:20 ESV

“And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord.

Scripture is clear that if we turn from our transgression and turn to Him that we will be redeemed.

What we need is to use this time in the season of Lent to Return to the Lod. So irst this morning we know that Lent is a time for us to Return to God, let’s continue to verse 13, but let’s read verse 12 again to stay in the right context

Joel 2:12–13 ESV

“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.

So we are still seeing the need to return to the Lord, but as we read we get some very evocative language here about how we should feel due to our Sin

So not only do we need to Return to God

Lent Leads to Grief over our Separation from God

As we see in verses 12 and 13 there were some specific and ver visible signs of grief: fasting, weeping, mourning....and then we get this phrase that says we should rend our hearts not our garments

“Rending” (tearing or violently separating) clothing was a customary sign of mourning, but it was not what God instructed his people to do. Instead, he asked them to “rend your heart” (v. 13). Their “fasting and weeping and mourning” (v. 12) was an appropriate outward sign of repentance, but it was nothing without true internal grief over their sin.

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

There’s a crucial difference between grieving over sin and allowing shame to rule our hearts. Grief over our sin is a result of true understanding of the consequences of sin and a desire for repentance. Shame is the result of misplaced faith—in ourselves and our own abilities instead of in God. John Piper makes a similar distinction between misplaced and well-placed shame Humans favor extremes, easy clear-cut answers, so most of us will tend toward either misplaced shame and legalism or toward ignoring and excusing sin. Instead, grief over our sin should motivate us to turn back to God and experience repentance.

Verse 13 uses an image that can be hard for contemporary readers to truly understand. and I want to put it back up here for a moment and I want to ask that we leave it up oin here and at home for the next moment

Joel 2:13 ESV

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.

Bring out the shirt and put on and start talking as we rip it up

For the original listeners, this passage immediately reminded them of real, raw grief. This wasn’t just a cognitive idea about “rending” garments or hearts—it was a picture of the kind of grief that makes you want to break something.

Use images of a hospital room, a car accident, or a fire destroying a home to show modern examples of the images that this passage would have evoked in listeners.

We rarely think of our sin with such depth of emotion and distress, but if we truly understand its severity and its consequences—both on this earth and in our separation from God—we are driven to real grief. This is a central purpose of Lent: not to leave us wallowing in grief over our sin but to remind us of how desperately we need a Savior.

There’s a reason God tells the people to rend their hearts instead, however. He wants more than external displays of grief. He uses the word “heart” twice in verses 12 and 13—instructing the people to “rend” their hearts, but also to return to him “with all your heart.”

God is Looking for More than Empty Rituals

This is not merely about a set of rituals, but about grief over sin that then motivates a true heart change.

Remember when he talked about the weeping and mourning and fasting and rending, God said that we should not rend our clothes (visible), but rather our hearts (not visible)

The fasting and mourning is important, but the most crucial directions he gives is for their hearts to be turned back to him.

Our fasting and spiritual disciplines during Lent orient our hearts toward the reality of our sin and the need for our Savior. They empty us of our own self justification and expose our need to be filled by Christ. Empty rituals (like rending garments) can do nothing, but heart change and habits together are a mutually enforcing combination.

Set up for Communion