Lent - Mar 13 - Joel 2:12

S p e n c e r   B e n s c h

Joel 2:12

“Even now,” declares the LORD,

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting and weeping

and mourning.”

 

In the face of an army of locusts with total annihilation and calamity abound, it is as if God said “all this I have therefore spoken, in order to terrify you by my threats. Wherefore, turn unto Me with all your hearts” and show penitence of your minds.  Joel, the Prophet is telling people “even now” they might still find hope and salvation if you go to God with all your heart, with all humility, to grieve inwardly and mourn outwardly for sin. That we should engage in humiliation acceptably that the humiliation was to be that of the heart – sorrow of the heart for the sins by which we have offended God. That we should show our penitence of our minds, “by fasting and weeping and mourning” that fasting now, we may “be filled” hereafter, “weeping now” that we may laugh hereafter and “mourning now” that we may hereafter “be comforted”. That your sorrow should be genuine and shame for sin.

 

Our Almighty God is a loving, gracious and forgiving Father but we foolishly and grossly deceive ourselves in believing our God is ignorant when our heart is divided. God is aware of our insincerity, ceremony, hypocrisy, disguise and deceit. We must turn to Him with our whole heart for it is a hypocrisy abominable to God, when men keep the greater part of their heart, closed up. When we feel his wrath, we then think there is no grace remaining. Yet, we all feel God leaves behind him a blessing so that when he passes by us with his rod, he will restrain his severity so that some blessings will remain. Humble yourself, call upon the name of the Lord and seek his face. Repent of your sins and consecrate your life to God. Resolve and determine to obey God with gladness. Ask the Holy Spirit to enable you to walk in that narrow and straight path of righteousness. Where there is repentance, God is there. Where there is humility, God is there. God’s presence is shown through our humility, repentance, and turning to him. And in god’s presence there is fullness of joy and on his right hand, pleasures forevermore.

 

I think Calvin’s Commentary sums up this passage by his prayer. “Grant Almighty God, that as thou seest us so foolish in nourishing our vices, and also so ensnared by the gratifications of the flesh, that without being constrained we hardly return to thee, O grant that we may feel the weight of thy wrath, and be so touched with the dread of it, as to return gladly to thee, laying aside every dissimulation, and devote ourselves so entirely to thy service, that it may appear that we have from the heart repented, and that we have not trifled with thee by an empty pretense, but have offered to thee our hearts as a sacrifice so that we and all our works might be sacred offerings to thee through our whole life, that thy name may be glorified in us through Christ our Lord, Amen”.

 

Spencer Bensch