A Broken & Contrite Heart, He Will Not Despise

I'm grateful to have Brother Randall Chronister, Randy Chronister to me, Randall to y 'all, and his family here with us this morning. Grateful to have him to come preach for us. Most of y 'all here know him.

He's preached for us a few times. I've had the pleasure of knowing him. He was my pastor over 10 years ago. Doesn't feel like it's been that long, but over 10 years ago, and by God's grace and providence, he has just kept our paths crossed, and just so many, if you look back 10 years ago and think that we're both where we're at today, it's only by the hand of God.

And so we've ups and downs. God has led us from church to church, and the friendship and the bond there has remained. And so I'm thankful to get to sit under this brother's preaching this morning. So Randy, go ahead and come.

Amen.

It's truly my honor to be here with all of you today. And I do also thank God so much for his grace and keeping Brother Jacob and myself, our friendship together for so many years. And it's hard for me to even believe that what he said, I was his pastor, because we're probably ain't four years difference, I don't think, in our age, something like that.

But not a whole lot, regardless how long it is. And it was just very providential through the years, and I'm grateful for it. Also that Brother Jacob landed here and got with this good body of believers that I'm always, always impressed when I come here with so many things, just the fervency of worship.

If you're not impressed by all the kids at this place, go visit one Sunday night somewhere, and you'll be back here and say thank God for all the little young voices that are being raised up in this place.

And I bless God for it, and you ought to also. I have been in prayer for one of your pastors, Brother Quatro, and his family. I didn't even know that the other family had went with them also. And what a blessing that is that you have two families doing that work, and we'll be in prayer.

And I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing them back, and we'll be in prayer until they get back. And thank you for having me this morning. I would, if you would turn with me to Psalm 51, the 51st Psalm, and I'll read the entirety of it.

I know that there's been a lot of scripture reading this morning, and I'll continue that theme. I know that you love your word here, and so that it won't hurt your feelings a bit, we'll read through the entire 51st Psalm.

It's only 19 verses. One of the things while you're turning there that I've always been grateful for and impressed with here at Providence is your gracious balance. You'll look at things and know, matter of fact, one of the brothers said it this morning that there was a ditch on both sides of the road.

And you've always, every time I've been around you and your pastors, it just seems like that y 'all recognize in the spiritual walk with Christ that there are ditches on both sides of both extremism and a looseness that leads to folly and sin.

And I believe that y 'all have a good recognition of that. And that's the thing, one of the things that I wanna talk to you about this morning that I believe has been on my heart this entire week, it hit me first personally and convictionally there.

And for those of you that you ever preached, you understand if it doesn't work on you first, you probably ought not even say anything about it. And so this is something that God's worked over in me over the past couple of weeks, and I'm not gonna say that I've got this figured out, but I do know that the spirit of God's worked it in me, and there's a balance here that we'll see.

And there is a greater thing that we should press towards as Christians, and I think we'll see that in David's prayer this morning. So do y 'all generally stand during this? Okay, let's stand to reverence the reading of God's word this morning, if you're able.

Psalm 51 and David's Prayer of Repentance

Psalm 51, beginning in the first verse. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, and thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which I has broken may rejoice.

Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities, creating me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God.

Thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. But thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it.

Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou will not despise. Do good in thy pleasure unto Zion. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering, and whole burnt offering. Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar. Heavenly Father, I pray God that your word, and by your spirit, you would speak to our hearts this morning.

I pray that you would both bind my tongue from anything that is unnecessary or not right, but also that you would loose it with power of the Holy Ghost that it may speak the truth in power and love. I pray also that you'd open our hearts and minds, that we may comprehend both with our minds and with our being your words, that it may do more than just resonate with our intelligence but it would sink down into the way that we live, that it would change how we approach our Christian life.

I ask God too, if there's anyone that's outside of Christ this morning that you would do a mighty work by convicting and drawing them to yourself this morning and save them by your grace. We ask in Christ's name, amen, amen.

Brokenness Is Harder Than Religious Activity

Thank you this morning for standing. I realize that I read the entire chapter 19 verses and according to the preaching that you're accustomed to here where it's line upon line and precept upon precept, you may be getting nervous this morning.

You're thinking, wow, if he's gonna try to cover all 19 verses, this will be a five hour sermon and I promise you I'm not even capable of that. I don't wanna try to focus on every single text verse here but I did wanna read the entire context for you.

I do want to focus more on verses 16 and 17. He says, for thou desirest not sacrifice else would I get what I give. Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

Oh God, thou will not despise. That's very strong thought, very deep thought here from the prayer of David and I don't know if your Bible says it but a lot of them will before the first verse. It'll say something like the chief musician a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

And many of you know that story and remember that story where David, King David, a man after God's own heart went astray. When he sinned, he had transgressed God's work and God's law and he had lusted after Bathsheba there on the roof and after he had done that, you remember Nathan the prophet had come to him, told him a story.

By the way, that's often how that God's messages are brought to us. Nathan brings a story to David and tells him about a man and his sheep and those things and David gets angry as the king. He said, where is this man that's done this wrong?

And Nathan looks him square in the eyes like any prophet ought to, any man of God ought to and says, thou art the man. You're him, David. Now pride was plumb full in his heart before that but it took the word of God, through the man of God to stop David in his tracks and say, wait a minute, I am that man, I have sinned, I have transgressed and so what you find in Psalm 51 is that prayer of repentance, if you will, or confession for a prayer for remission of sins.

He says, God, have mercy on me. Not according to what I have done, not according to what I can do, but according to your loving kindness, have mercy on me. And we'll find several things in this text here that build up to what David is praying but there's a few things first I want you to notice in verse number six, he says, Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts.

He's saying to God, God, I realize that you desire truth on the inside. The hidden places is where you're desiring truth. And so what I want to try to talk to you about this morning is all of the exterior things that we may be able to do as Christians.

Can be fine and they look good but what I want to challenge you with is what is going on internally? What is the truth of the matter? What is the heart in your Christian life? Are you seeking after the brokenness, the contrite heart or is it all external or is it all a shell?

We have a tendency as Christians to turn away from the difficult things. David got right down to the meat of the matter here and he went to the hard thing. He went to the difficult thing when he acknowledged his sin was ever before him.

Just as Jonah said, I don't think I'll go to Nineveh. I think I'll go this other way. He was sought out an easier path for himself thinking, Lord, I can do this rather than go to Nineveh. Have you not seen those Ninevites down there?

That's not a good place for me to go or we could do just this. It's interesting that Brother Jacob read one probably some of our favorite sermon, a recorded sermon from Brother Reedhead this morning. I love that.

I was wanting him to go into the accent and everything.

Monsters of iniquity.

He almost got, he was getting there and he wanted to, I could see it but that story about in that sermon that Brother Reedhead was preaching that day is where the Danites turned aside to a people of Laish.

Now God said, go to this place and conquer it but they said, they're tough. They're mean rascals over there. They're burly over there but these Laish people on the other hand, we can handle them. So they turned aside to these people of Laish and they conquered them.

They're easy. They're just farmers. We can take them quite handily and that's what they done. This fallen trait of ours flies in the face of the most elementary teachings of Jesus. We desire easy things.

We desire to take the easy road and even as Christians, we desire not to hit in the hard places in our own personal walk with God. Jesus himself taught that broad is the way that leads to destruction.

There's many that go that way but straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it. See, the way of Christ is always a narrow way. It's a harder way. It's a more difficult way and we find here that in some of the things that you'll see in Psalm 51, I want to try to show you that some of these things are the hardest things, broken and a contrite heart is an impossibility almost.

You can do a thousand things before you can have a broken and contrite heart as a Christian. It's much easier to fill our Christian life with things that are comfortable, more acceptable. Let me give you some examples.

It's probably easier and I've talked to many brothers and sisters in Christ that would agree with this. It's probably easier to fill your life with a 45-minute podcast on some Christian subject or if it's one that there's one out there that's these Christian guys and they talk about Bigfoot and aliens and everything else, I've listened to a couple of just comedic almost.

It's easier to listen to a 45-minute podcast than it is 45 scriptures read alone by yourself with nobody to entertain you, just hard, cold word. Even further still, it's easier to read a good devotion about scripture than to spend the same time in earnest prayer and to make the point even further, it's easier even to hand out gospel tracks.

For a whole day.

You know, we can get together and I actually enjoy it and so I've been with several of you brothers and sisters before handing out gospel tracks. Man, it's fun stuff at some times. Sometimes it's easier to do that than it is to fast for two days.

I hope you hear what I'm saying that there's good things and there's right things to do, good podcasts, good devotions, good evangelism works and things like that but oftentimes we use those in substitute of some of the hard things that are so necessary for a cultivated, rich relationship with God.

They're good things and they should be commended and they're positive influences in the Christian life but oftentimes there's a problem. We skirt the mountain and say we've climbed it. You know, I've always been enamored by mountaineering.

I've always thought that it was just something so interesting that these people will train for years and years and years to climb either Everest or K2 or one of these massive mountains the near impossibility of it.

And you know one thing that I never have noticed in either listening to interviews of people that have climbed them or reading behind them, I never indicate, they didn't brag about it necessarily but then you'll find these people, they'll stand at the bottom of Everest and they'll take a selfie, say look at what I've done and I hope what I'm trying to communicate with you is that's not what David was doing here.

He didn't sin and he didn't get to a place and say well I know I need to get right with God because everybody's looking at me, I'm king. And he didn't just go to a place and say well I'm gonna do the formality of it so that everybody knows or thinks at least that I'm right with God.

He went to the hard place and that hard place being a broken and a contrite heart, he could have went to the temple and made 10 ,000 sacrifices for his sin. He could have went there and shed blood till Jerusalem was dripping with it.

He could have went to that place and he could have made all the sacrifices, he could have had all the incense but one thing was most difficult for him, a broken and a contrite spirit. And what I want to encourage you today too, dear Christian, is that there's a thousand things that you can do externally, that you can do all the Christian things, all the podcasts and all the devotions and all of those things, good and right as they are.

Do not forsake the hard things. I've come into a realization that against thee and thee only have I sinned. It's just like the prophet the prophet that God showed Ezekiel I believe where he brings him out, he brings him out to a place and at first there's waters up to his ankles and there's waters up to his knees and waters up to his waist and he said there's waters to swim in.

Now I think all of you know me well enough and you trust your pastors well enough, I'm not talking about a second work of grace where you get into this place where God stirs you up into some frenzy. But I'm saying dear Christian, do not skirt the deep things of God.

Do not skirt deep acknowledgement of sin. Do not skirt the fact that God desires a broken and a contrite heart. It's just like the man, the story of a man he collected watches. He loved watches of every kind and he would collect them from all over and he spent years doing this and he brought his, he would bring his watches in and he'd put them on the shelves and display cases and he'd have watches all over the place.

Some beautiful watches, some wasn't so beautiful. He spent years doing this and he had a friend invited over one day and they spent long conversation and you could tell they really got caught up in their conversation and the friend said, wait a minute, I don't even have a watch.

He said, I think I'm gonna have to be going, what time is it? And this man who had collected watches for all of his life, he looked at one watch and he said, well, it's 1121. But that one says 1137. And that one says 1142 and that one says 1101.

That one says two o 'clock in the morning. And the man who'd spent all of his time gathering all of his trinkets didn't even know what time it was. And here's the point that I wanna make to you about that this morning.

Is that there's so many times, Christians, we get involved with all of the trinkets of Christianity. We forget to go into your prayer closet and nail the door shut until you've heard from heaven to put this book in front of your face and stay with it and long for it.

And is there not times, dear Christian, you'll read a text and you'll read it and you'll read it and you'll read it and it'll be just as dry to you as can be? Will we not just give up on it and say, well, let's go pick up our latest Charles Spurgeon thing that we bought.

And amen, I love Charles Spurgeon. I love all of my devotions and things like that. But how often will we give up on that difficult thing and say, nevermind with all of the commentary, nevermind with those things.

God, by your Spirit, we sang it this morning about the one church. By your Word and through your Spirit, may the church live and breathe. This is how we go forward. But it is some of the most difficult things in the Christian life.

We have a tendency as Christians, we have a tendency as humanity to take an easier, more acceptable route. But this route that David took was not easy. It was not necessarily acceptable. It was confession.

It was tough. The fact this morning is that humility, a broken and a contrite spirit is about as impossible as one person can do. I was asking my wife this week, just because this had been on my heart.

I said, have you ever been washing dishes? And I believe all of us would agree with David. We know that all the blood sacrifices, all of the church attendance, all of the good things that you can do as a Christian will mean absolutely nothing if that's what you stand before God with and say, God, look at what all I have done.

I've prophesied in your name and your name. I've done many marvelous works. And he'll say, depart from me. I never knew you. I believe all of us would agree with that. And so all of us would long as Christians to say, I want truth.

I want that verse number six, that you desire truth on the inward parts. I want that broken and that contrite spirit. But I asked my wife this last week, I said, she's at the sink washing dishes. I've got two dishwashers at my house.

And one's a Maytag and one's a Brittany. I was trying to tell a joke, but I think y 'all just didn't like that one. I do help wash dishes. And she was washing dishes. I said, honey, at any point while you're washing dishes, can you just turn around and become humble right then and contrite?

I mean, one minute you're thinking this is stuck. That lasagna ain't coming off. And then all of a sudden, I want to be humble and contrite. I don't think any of us would say that's how it works,.

Is it?

I want to be humble. I want to be contrite because that's what God delights in. He longs for that in us. He will not despise that in us. I said, God, but that's what I want. I want to be humble. I want to be contrite before you.

First of all, you find time and time again that the will of God has always been for us to have a humble and a contrite heart before Him. All the sacrifices, all of the things that we could build up in this world, just as David said here, if you desired sacrifice, I would give it.

If you desired burnt offerings, I would pile them to the heavens. The same thing, if you'll remember the story with Samuel and Saul, remember Samuel the prophet told Saul, God has said, go destroy the Amalekites, every last one of them.

As a matter of fact, it goes all the way from the men, the cattle, the sheep, the goats, the women, and the sucklings, the children. Leave nothing. And you know, many of you know the story when the prophet come back into town and Saul was just glad as he could be at what he had done.

I have really accomplished the will of the Lord. I have went into the Amalekites and I have conquered them fully. And the prophet said, what's that I hear? I hear lowing of sheep and the braying of cattle.

What is this sound that I hear? And here's, I hope you see the parallel of what we'll do in our Christian life. Saul says, well, I got them to sacrifice unto God, of course. We kept all of the best of the Amalekites goods so that we can sacrifice to God because this is honoring to God, don't you know?

Samuel said, no, sir. Don't work like that. As a matter of fact, you could have went all throughout the land and gathered up every one of the sacrifices that was there, King Saul, or all of the animals and everything that was there and sacrificed them to the Lord and it would have been a stench to God's nostrils.

And what did Samuel say then to Saul, the preacher say to the king? He said, God desires obedience more than sacrifice. See, this is the will of God. You say, well, okay, I shouldn't even have to go to church then, I shouldn't have to do all of these Christian things that I do.

Notice what David said in verse 19. After that broken and contrite heart, he said, then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt offerings, with the whole burnt offering, when they shall offer bullocks upon thine altar.

See, let's not put the light things in front of the weightier matters of truth, of justice, of goodness. See, the Pharisees done this very same thing. They came in and man, they had it together. They had the right clothes on.

They had all the bells and whistles religiously. They were even coming in and tithing down to the smallest spice. And they were letting everybody know about it also. And Jesus reminded them, you shouldn't have left the tithing, you shouldn't have left that stuff undone.

But there are more important things that you need to get right first. First, do you remember Mary and Martha? Man, Martha was doing an excellent job. I love me some Marthas. They just go and take care of everything you look and it's like, how did they clean that entire kitchen in 10 minutes?

Martha was doing a good job. She was trying to take care of everybody in the house. She loved her Savior, she loved her Lord, she loved Jesus and wanted to make sure that he was fed and that he was taken care of and that he was comfortable.

She was ministering to Christ. She was doing a good work and so are you, by the way, friend, when you're reading your devotion, when you're listening to that podcast on the way to work. But she got a little upset at her weaker sister.

She said, well, Mary's not taking care. Mary's not up busy, Mary's not up doing anything. She's there at Jesus' feet and what did Jesus tell her? Martha, Mary has chosen that better part. Mary has identified what is the priority.

Now, I've spent all of this time talking about this to try to lay a foundation here on verse 16 and 17, that there was a priority in David's prayer. David recognized that all of the sacrifices would not do.

David recognized that all of the things that he could build up religiously would not appease God in his prayer in repentance. But he said, a broken and a contrite heart thou will not despise. Now you say, well, you've made the point, you can't get there from here.

Well, I hope I have. I hope that you've seen that it's about impossible. It's impossible to have a broken and a contrite heart within yourself, just to jump up and say, I'm gonna do that. I heard the preacher say, and I read it in the Bible, we need to have a broken contrite heart, I'm gonna go home and do that right now.

Doesn't work like that, does it? Some things has to happen first. I see some things that happened to David here. First of all, he had that deep recognition of sin. In verse number three, he said, I acknowledge my transgression and my sin as ever before me.

I think that that's most necessary for us Christians. And if you're not a Christian this morning, if you're outside of Christ, this is step number one, if you will. Do you think you're not a sinner? Change your mind about that, you are.

We must recognize first, before we can ever have any brokenness before God, we don't come to Him with pride and arrogance. The only thing that we can come to Him with, as Christians, is humility and boldness.

Humility in ourselves and boldness in that Christ is our righteousness. And he comes here, David, in his prayer, he said, I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin as ever before me. I want us this morning to think on this, that it is not your mother and father's fault.

Don't blame it on another generation. It's not the things that your grandparents handed down to you that we have sinned. You've got it all in yourself. We've sinned on our own accord. And until we recognize that in ourselves, that cold, dead, dry prayer will be your lot.

When you say, God, that's me, what's the little kid's song that probably many of y 'all used to sing in church? It's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, oh Lord.

David wasn't pointing his finger at the generation around him. David wasn't pointing his finger at his generals. He wasn't pointing his finger at anyone else. He said, it's my sin, it's my transgression.

So to get to that place, there must be a deep recognition of sin. I think about when Peter had denied Christ, and at first he said, I'll never deny you. When things are going good, when it's on that easy road, he said, I'll never deny you.

I'll follow you all the way. And then all it takes is a few little maiden ladies that identified him as one of those followers of the Nazarene and said, I believe that that's him. Listen to his speech.

Is he not from Galilee? And he said, don't know him, I don't know Jesus. And before Peter ever finds himself back in fellowship, back in unity and power with God, he finds himself weeping, bitterly, the Bible says.

I think about that deep recognition of sin, how that it is one of the most necessary things for us to start with, even as Christians, that I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. I need him. I need him to break me, if you will.

You know, in Ezekiel nine, Ezekiel has a vision from God and God tells him, he says, go throughout the city. And he said, well, there's a few men that Ezekiel sees in the vision. And one of them has a horn of ink around his shoulder.

And he tells that one with the horn of ink, he says, go and he says, mark every one of them that cry and weep over the abominations of the city. Put a mark on them. And then there was four or five other men that all had swords in this vision.

He said, now you four or five other men go slay everybody else. That's strong, is it not? But it gets to the heart of what God is after in us is we must recognize the sin in ourselves and around us. When's the last time that you wept over the fact that our country is killing thousands of babies still?

Let's not settle, Christians, just because we might find some reprieve in our certain political environment. Don't settle. Murders still murder here in the land that we live. Fornication and adultery still present and prevalent.

Go weep.

Go intercede on the behalf of the generations coming behind you. You say, well, this is good. This is something we should do. But I want you to look at your Savior who had no sin, who had no transgressions of his own, yet there in the garden, he wept, as it were, great drops of blood, or sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, and he wept bitterly there for the transgression, for he had a deep recognition of the sin, of the punishment that was fixing to come upon him, the wrath of God because of sin.

You know, the old song we used to sing is he had no tears for his own grief, but sweat drops of blood for mine. The Bible describes Jesus as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was smitten, stricken, as it were.

And we as Christians, and I love a good laugh and a good time as much as anything. It's something that I'm reminded of often is I never find Jesus joking about anything. He was serious, especially about the depth and the walk that we have with God.

And there's a time for us to rejoice absolutely. But if we spend all of our time piling up trinkets like watches and all the time with jokes and gestures, then all you'll have is a shallow, Christian-looking religion.

But if you'll remind yourself that there are strong, weighty, important things that must come first, and that's what I love about your pastors. I believe they recognize this, and I've seen it in you dear people also.

If you don't have a pastor or preacher that'll blister his knees the week before, you ought to run him out. There's some weighty things that has to happen before they say and speak of the Word of God.

There's some weighty things that needs to take place in your Christian life also before we go off into just living, as it were. And David recognized these things that if God just wanted sacrifices, go cut a goat's throat and let it bleed and we'll be done with it.

No, he wants more than that. Something that's about impossible for you to do, he wants you to have a broken and a contrite heart. And we look at Christ and we see that perfect brokenness, not because he had his own sin, but for ours.

In him's where your hope is. In him is where that perfect, you can't, as it were, you can't be broken enough to say, okay, God, I broke myself and now I'll be accepted. But you can look to the garden, you can look to your Savior, you can see the brokenness that he has for you and for your sin.

You say, in him I'll have hope. In him I'll have rejoicing. God desires the humble. But resisteth the proud. What does it take? What does it take for men to appease God? Well, first of all, it takes his only son, quite simply.

That's it.

But when we come to God, we can try to offer our sacrifices of devotion, attendance, whatever you wanna pile up. And just as David prayed, he said, I know that all of that'll not do, but a broken and a contrite heart you will not despise.

So what does it take for man to appease God? Everyone has a price, if you will. Money is the general means to either make men's or to gratify another. Gifts can be used when the relationship is more intimate.

It'd mean very little to a wife if the husband just gave her a fistful of cash like he was paying some sort of debt. Wouldn't mean much to her. But a thoughtful gift that appertains to what she likes and longs for, that means something.

It cultivates the relationship. So it is also with the gods of this world. Ashtroth, Molech, they all desire a gift. They desire a sacrifice. Other religions demand a lifestyle. But God requires something that is seemingly impossible to acquire.

Bring your gold to him, he's not impressed. Bring your strength, he will laugh. Bring your wealth, he will pity your poverty. Bring your wisdom, he will scorn it as ignorance. Bring all of your crowns, they will gather as rubble under his feet.

Bring your righteousness, he will be repulsed. Bring all you have in life and body, and you will find his price is far too high for you. So go lower, even lower still. Condescend from your strength. Cast down your wealth, despise your wisdom.

Go lower, yes, lower still, until your intellect has no breath, until your gold is forged to nails, and your crowns lose comfort. Their jewels now thorns, too grievous to bear. Cast down the crowns, sink deep the nails.

Cast them, sink them down to his tomb. Impossible, this God to appease. All my gain will not suffice. Yet a broken and a contrite heart, he will not despise. Dear Christian, if he won't despise it, we shouldn't either.