Psalm 51:16-17
NKJV
16 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart-
These, O God, You will not despise.
Though the sacrifices mentioned in verse 16 were legit in the Old Testament and were commandments of God (Leviticus 1). There are many times when sacrifices were rejected by God and one of these is Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:3-5).
Yet God did reject one. We learn that God doesn't just see the physical sacrifices we give but it goes deeper. God sees the heart, motive, intention and mind behind our actions. Like the Pharisees in the New Testament, though they followed and obeyed the law, their hearts were very far from God.
But here in verse 17, David explains what God will never despise. Our righteous deeds can be dirty rags to God (Isaiah 64:6) and our good actions can be filled with self-righteousness and hypocrisy but a humble heart, a heart that doesn't exalt itself, a heart filled with surrender and a heartbroken before God is one God will never mock, never despise and hate.
This kind of heart is what pleases God because it's deeper than what we humans can see with our natural eyes. It's what God alone can see and what God sees is valuable in His sight. A heart that's childlike, teachable, and repentant is what God desires.
I want us today to meditate on our lives and ask ourselves if we go before God in prayer in this humility. Do we reveal our hearts to God?
God wants our broken, humbled, repentant and honest hearts. The hearts that can admit when they are wrong. A teachable heart. A heart that can confess that they need their God.
This sacrifice goes far beyond anything else we can offer up because it comes from the deepest of us. It comes from our hearts. If comes from a place, only God can fully see and understand. Even when we don't fully understand, God sees what we surrender to God, our brokenness, our guilt etc
We need to grow in a way that God isn't just a God to us but our father, friend and comforter.
These sacrifices of bulls were legitimate sacrifices. Though we can obey God's commands, like a woman of God I watch, she said "obedience without relationship is religion". We can go to church, we can pray, we can read the word and we can do all we believe we have to do yet God is more pleased with a heart that goes to Him as their Father and everything than as someone they go to as just another thing.
-etty