Pilgrim Traveller

There’s a lot of difference between religious ritual and real repentance. External rituals only mean anything if they are linked to an inward change that has already happened.

Read: Joel 2: 12-17

Repentance is about a change of mind and heart. It is also about changing your direction of travel. Both of these changes should ultimately lead to a change not just in your thinking, but also in your behaviour. In the New Testament, when some religious leaders came to John the Baptist for baptism, he exclaimed, “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God”. For him the act of baptism was an outward sign of an already existing inward change

Joel says that outward signs of grief and mourning are not enough; a deeper work of repentance is necessary so that our responses to our sense of sinning against God are not just ritualistic and superficial but honest and deeply sincere.

Ritual repentance, confession, and penance are meaningless unless they spring from hearts and minds that already turning back to God in deep sorrow, and unless they result in changed behaviour.

In this instance it is not an individual, but a whole nation that God is calling to repentance. In our day, it may be that the church of which we are part, locally or universally, may not be right before God…how then do we find a way forward involving real repentance.

In Judah’s case it involved fasting, a solemn meeting (where we can help and encourage each other in repentance). It involved all age groups…even the children needed to be part of the returning to God and not protected from it (vital if they are to avoid repeating the pattern). It involves setting aside all other priorities. It involves the example of the leaders of the church, who often bear responsibility for allowing the situation to develop in the first place.

Ultimately, it requires the whole group or church to understand that our sin is a failure to truly reflect our Father God, and to cause others to mock and dishonour God as a result.

Repentance may seem simple, but real repentance is a serious thing.

“As long as I keep pretending, my soul keeps dying. Oddly enough, I don’t just pretend in front of other people. I pretend with God. My friend Scotty says that sometimes we ask for forgiveness, but we know full well we will go back to the same sin tomorrow. We don’t really want forgiveness; we just want to get out of trouble. He says it would be better to pray like this: “Dear God, I sinned yesterday, I sinned again today, and I’m planning to go out and do the same sin tomorrow. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” It may not quite reflect the maturity of “Thy will be done,” but it is better to be an honest mess before God than a dishonest “saint.” “You desire truth in the innermost parts,” the psalmist said to God, and that’s soul-talk. This is part of the sheer healing power of AA — Alcoholics Anonymous. Confession is good for the soul.

“Soul Keeping” by John Ortberg

How does this make you feel? Is there anything you need to do

There are so many parallels between Joel’s day and our own. Are there any lessons to be learned by us?

Read: Joel 1: 1-15

A devastating plague of locusts and an untimely drought wreak havoc across the land. People are dying and the economy is in ruins. God gave Joel the task of speaking into this situation.

As I write these words, we are living through a global pandemic at a time of political unrest and nations at war. People are sick and dying, and the economies of many countries are struggling to recover. What does the prophet Joel have to say to us today?

It’s likely that Joel was speaking in the aftermath of an actual plague of locusts in the land. Even today, such locust swarms are the nemesis of the subsistence economies in many lands. Just last night I watched a documentary about just such a swarm that was threatening the rice harvest in the highlands of Madagascar.

But as so often happens with prophecy, God causes Joel to move from the present actual to the future possible. The plague of locusts is just like the invading armies that have laid waste to both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. I tend to attribute a late date to the prophecy, maybe early on in the time after the exile, when the people are returning from the Persian empire and beginning to rebuild Jerusalem.

He focuses on the idea of the Day of the Lord. I believe there had been a number of Days of the Lord, days when God allowed disaster to befall the people so that they would be confronted with their sin and disobedience. But, having confronted it and turned back to God, God then delivered them. This cycle is very evident throughout the Old Testament. The Exodus, the times of the Judges and the Exile would be three such stories, pivotal to the story of God’s relationship to his people. These ‘Days of the Lord’ were always local and limited to the Jewish people.

But Joel seems to be hinting that there would be a future Day of the Lord, a Day to end all days, a day to bring the constant cycle of disaster and deliverance to an end once and for all. More of that later in the series.

In the meantime, let’s be encouraged by God’s presence in these difficult times, and his promise to rescue and deliver his people.

What lessons of disaster and deliverance might God be calling us to learn at this time – as individuals, as the church and as a nation. What part do we have to play in bringing God’s desire for us into being?