The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise

‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise, — Ver. 17.

TN the beginning of the Psalm, David had, out of his deep consciousness of guilt, given unmistakable evidence that his heart was broken. We have seen it manifested in his case that a contrite spirit is a sure characteristic of the penitent soul who is seeking grace. In the course of the Psalm, however, his tone undergoes a change: he has spoken of joy and gladness, and has given promises full of courage and strength. One might almost imagine from this change that a broken heart is indeed to be had, wThile grace as yet does not prevail; but that later on, when grace has done its work, this spiritual condition is no longer an element in the case. As a matter of fact, it is far otherwise. Even in the life of grace, from the beginning on to the very end, the disposition with which God is especially well-pleased is that wrhich is presented in the expression — a broken and a contrite he&rt. Of the life of thanksgiving, which the Spirit of the Lord desires to make us experience, this is an abiding and unmistakable feature: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.’

This utterance teaches us how thoroughly the broken spirit will, for the believer, be at all times a token of grace. God may according to His promise forget sin: the believer forgets it never. The sense of what it means to be a sinner is not superficial and transitory, something that is very speedily effaced. No: for the maintenance of the right relation, and the enjoyment of the right relation, and the enjoyment of the right kind of intercourse betwixt the Lord and His redeemed, it remains necessary that man should always continue mindful who he is, and how much he is indebted to grace. It is just as the Lord of old said to redeemed Israel: ‘I will establish My covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: that thou may est remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I have forgiven thee all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God 5 (Ezek. xvi. 62, 63). It is not only the law, the sense of guilt, but especially the power of grace and forgiving love, that shall prove the means by which the soul shall be more and more, as time goes on, melted and humbled, yea bruised before God. It will often be just the most glorious proof of the goodness of God that shall overwhelm the soul, and make it remain contrite in the consciousness of its own unworthiness.

This word teaches us, further, the complacency that God has in this spiritual disposition. God has no delight in sacrifice, no pleasure in the mere worth of the greatest external offerings that may be brought to Him. His sacrifice is a broken spirit. It is on the inner man, on the hidden man of the heart, that He looks: it is in spirit and in truth that He is to be worshipped. The sacrifice that He desires is a living spiritual sacrifice. And if the man who is seeking salvation, or has already found grace, feels that he has so little to bring to the Lord of what he may reasonably require, yea, nothing of the love, the zeal, the cordial self-surrender, the fervent thanksgiving, which He desires — at such a crisis this word comes in with grateful comfort: ‘A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.’ It reminds him that the Lord never finds so much delight in anything as in that feeling of poverty and failure which bows down the soul. This disposition makes the heart capable of receiving and duly appreciating the wonderful grace of God. This disposition teaches the soul to look awavfrom itself and seek evervthin

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in God alone. This disposition gives glory to God alone. Over such a heart God bows down with inexpressible tenderness and complacency to fulfill gloriously in its experience the manifold promises of His word. Read the great utterances of Isaiah on this point (Isa. lvii. 15, lxvi. 1)^ that there is no place in the wide world in which the holy God, when He stoops from His glory, will so readily and so certainly set up His throne as just the contrite spirit. Hence

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it is also that He devotes so much work to the accomplishment of this bruising of the heart in His children. By the law and the sense of guilt, by the experience of sin and helplessness, by many kinds of adversities and oppressions, by the operations of the Spirit and the revelations of grace — by all this and very much more, He prepares His own for bringing to Him the sacrifice that is acknowledged with the token of His good pleasure.

This word further teaches us to understand how it is just in the broken heart and the contrite spirit that the freedom and joy of the life of grace will be chiefly manifested. This indeed appears a contradiction. So it is for nature; but certainly not for grace. God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, and the more we by the Spirit appropriate and reduce to practice His thoughts and His word, the more shall we experience how wonderfully our deep misery and God’s high grace are wedded to one another, so that His life can be fully revealed only in our death, His power in our weakness, His comfort in our sorrow, His help in our impotence, His healing in our oppression, His love in our contrition. And we shall also experience that the more we die to ourselves and yield ourselves willingly to the discipline of the Spirit, by which our spirit shall be continually more and more broken, so that all of its own hope and power shall be taken away, the more shall the consciousness of God’s good pleasure and the experience of His nearness to the broken in heart become our portion.

Beloved reader, who art minded to lift up the petition: ‘Have mercy upon me, O God,’ forget not that this utterance is closely connected with it. It is a word betokening anxiety; but it is also a word of comfort. In the confession of sin, in the striving for holiness, in the self-dedication of thanksgiving to praise God and make Him known to others, the value of this truth is everywhere felt: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.’ And not least is this so in the case of the last form of service, that is, the joyful glorying in God’s righteousness and the proclamation of His praise. There is nothing that in your work for others will enable you so much to find grace, and wield influence not only with God but also with man, as the holy ornament of a contrite spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price: * A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.’