Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


4.06.2005  

Sacrifice

Psalm 51:14 - 17
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; then my tongue will joyfuly sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise. For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken spirit and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

David is crying out, pleading with the Lord to cleanse him from his sin, David's infamous sin with Bathsheba. The sinful ordeal was one that Nathan had exposed after David himself had tried to hide his adultery with murder; not exactly the monarch's most shining moment. Today, as I thought about my own sin, I saw in verse 17 something that struck a nerve: a broken spirit and a contrite heart are the things that God desires, the sacrifices that God desires. Yet, how can I offer up to the Lord a broken spirit and a contrite heart? I mean, really...how can I offer such things up to Him in such a way that they would please Him?

In the very first verse of the psalm, David asks of the Lord to blot out his transgressions, "according to the greatness of Your compassion." How great is the Lord's compassion? We who live on this side of the cross know that His greatness extends even to the death of Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

What spirit was broken more than Christ's? What heart was more contrite (in the sense of awareness of sin and the hatred of it) than Christ's? None. We, in and of ourselves, cannot offer up to the Lord spirits of brokenness and hearts of contrition that He would delight in; rather, we do so not only through Christ, but we do so in the manner of Christ's work that reached its apex upon the cross, where He was broken and bore our sins for us. The only sacrifice that would truly please the Father was the sacrifice of His own Son, and any other sacrifice prior to Christ would only serve to further highlight the surpassing sufficiency of Christ's excellence and glory as the Lion and the Lamb. It is in Christ that we are delivered from bloodguiltiness, in Christ that we sing joyfully of God's righteousness, in Christ that see the greatness of God's compassion, in Christ that our spirits are truly broken and our hearts are truly made aware of our sins to the point of contrition.

What a sacrifice, indeed!

posted by Bolo | 11:34 PM
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