you Well, a good morning to you. Today, I'd like to encourage you from the minor prophet, Joel, in Joel chapter two. Are you reading through the books of the Bible this year, reading through the Old Testament, and getting down to the end? If you're following along in a Bible reading schedule, you get to the minor prophets, and things tend to go pretty quickly. You get from one book to the other. Well, in Joel chapter two, The chapter begins with the Lord challenging the people of God with their basic presupposition about the Day of the Lord. They're thinking that the Day of the Lord is going to be a day of great blessing and prosperity and joy, and we can't wait for the Day of the Lord to come. But the Lord corrects that. He says, the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand. It's a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness. That is, for those who claim to be his people, but are living in rebellion against him, or they're being flagrantly disobedient, they're idolaters, and so forth. Basically, chapter 2 is a confrontation of his people, God's people, for their sin. Nobody likes to be confronted, do they? When was the last time you really looked forward to someone rebuking you or chastening you for some error in your life, maybe some flagrant sin? You didn't like it, did you? Well, that's our human nature, not to like it. But after the Lord challenges his people with their sin and threatens the chastening of the day of the Lord when it's going to come upon them, he turns to them in verse 12 and he says, Now therefore, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. The Lord doesn't rebuke us and challenge us and confront us with our sin because He wants to make us miserable. He doesn't do it so that we can then wallow or something of that nature. No, He confronts us, whether directly through His Word or through the preaching of His Word. He confronts us to bring us to repentance, so that we turn to Him with our whole heart He says, rend your heart, verse 13, rend your heart, and then he says, not your garments. Now, why did he say that? Well, because we can go through the motions of repentance, you know, pretending like we're repentant, you know, by just coming to church or whatever and being somber or sober, you know, going through motions that look like we're a humble and repentant people. The Lord isn't really interested in that. He's interested in whether or not we rend our hearts, whether our hearts are broken over our sin. He says, rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God. Why? His, goes on to say, he's gracious and merciful. He's slow to anger and of great kindness, and he relents from doing harm. So here's the thing, the Lord challenges us with our sin, He rebukes us, His Word convicts us, but He does so purposefully. He does so so that we will repent, so that we will break our hearts over our sin and return to Him. This is what He wants us to do. And the thing of it is, there is great joy and delight in repentance and turning to the Lord, because with him, as he goes on to say, he's gracious and merciful. As John writes in 1 John 1, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He's gracious and merciful. He's slow to anger. Aren't you thankful for that? Aren't you glad that the Lord is slow to anger? He doesn't see us do wrong and right away fly off the handle and knock us down one, but he's slow to anger. He's patient with us. He convicts us. He does so repeatedly. He confronts us in the preaching of his word and so forth. He is slow to anger. and of great kindness. And so even when we are slow to repent, the Lord is slow to anger and is still treating us with kindness. And when we repent, there is a special blessing of kindness. He completely forgives us of our sin, He cleanses us from our unrighteousness, and the last part of verse 13 says, He relents from doing harm. Yes, there is a place for being confronted with our sin, and being aware, being made aware of the consequences of that sin, if we will not repent. But let's do. Let's do. Let's be quick to repent. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this encouraging challenge from your Word today to to return to you with all of our heart, because you are gracious and merciful, and we thank you for that. In Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, listen, I hope you have a good rest of your day, and the Lord will bless you in it.