December 21 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Joel 2:12–14

Devotional

Garment-rending and other outward signs of religious emotion are easily manifested. They are also frequently hypocritical. But to feel genuine repentance is far more difficult and, as a result, far less common. People will pursue the most multiplied and minute ceremonial regulations; such things are pleasing to the flesh. But true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, and too thorough for the tastes of the carnal. They prefer something more showy, more insubstantial, and more worldly. Outward observances are temporarily comforting—eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up—but they are ultimately deceptive. At the time of death and on the Day of Judgement, 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 formal sham and a shameless mockery of the majesty of heaven.

Heart-rending is divinely worked and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief that is personally experienced—not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit on the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter about which merely to talk and believe. It is a matter to be keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating. It is completely sin-purging. But it is also sweetly preparatory for those gracious consolations which proud un-humbled spirits are unable to receive. And it is distinctly discriminating—it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.

This Scripture text commands us to rend our hearts. But our hearts are naturally hard as marble. How then can we do this? We must take them to Calvary. A dying Saviour’s voice rent the rocks once, and it is just as powerful now. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus, and let our hearts be rent even as men rend their garments in the day of lamentation.

[Dec 18]

Extracted from C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (public domain), language modernized by Larry E. Wilson.