For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering.
The prophet Nathan has just confronted David over his adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband. Now David faces a closed altar. God Himself commanded the sacrifices. If He takes no pleasure in them, what can a guilty person bring?
David knew exactly what he was doing. That put his sin out of reach of the offerings.
But in the fifty-first psalm you find the sin of presumption. There is no question that David knew how awful the sin was that he was committing. His conscience and heart had grown hard for the time, and he went on in that terrible course which in effect ended in murder. Then he came to feel that sin, after God had touched his conscience through the prophet Nathan. He could not plead ignorance, so he does not presume to bring an offering. The law provided trespass offerings and sin offerings, and offerings for the sin of a ruler too — but he could not bring that. He says, "You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it." How could he bring a sacrifice for the very sin for which God declared there was no sacrifice?
David has only one place left to turn: God Himself.
And so the voice of divine mercy is not delayed: "The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die." For sin such as his, the law had no offering or sacrifice. Death was the righteous penalty. Only God Himself, on the throne above the king's throne, could set it aside. And this is what he means in his psalm of repentance.
The verse is not a sweeping rejection of sacrifice. And the broken spirit is not a payment put in its place.
In fact, none could be prescribed for sin like this, which greatly limits how absolute this denial is. Here the "sacrifices of God" could only be "a broken spirit"... A broken spirit cannot be the ground that justifies God's grace in salvation. It may describe the moral condition a sinner must meet to be accepted. And this is the only possible thought here. It would not be a broken spirit if it could regard itself as having atoning value in the sight of God. It is the very confession of sin and worthlessness that makes it possible for Him to come in with mercy.
Many people want to hand God something in exchange for forgiveness. This verse cuts that off.
There was no sacrifice available under law for the sin of adultery or of murder. Can we dare to think of giving something up to deserve the salvation of God? Mere pride may think so, but such a thing is repulsive to a God of truth and of grace... This is just the opposite of the pride of trying to appease God by giving Him some material offering. God would absolutely despise the latter, but will not despise a contrite heart.
David was not the first to learn this. Others in Israel had already put obedience above ritual.
Several passages in the Old Testament show that God did not delight in sacrifices offered with a wrong attitude of mind... "Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. 15:22).
Even then, the sacrifices themselves were never the real answer.
In many cases the soul had to look outside the sacrificial forms and say, like David, "You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; You will not be pleased with a burnt offering"... Faith took hold, for salvation, of what these offerings pictured but could not do themselves.
David could only reach forward in faith. Now the work is done.
I would search the whole world for sacrifices, but I cannot speak of them to You. Your steadfast love sweeps them all away... But now One Sacrifice has been offered and accepted too. The blessed Lord was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. So God has swept everything away, that we may have to do with Him, directly with Himself, each one.
- Closed altar. The law gave no offering for deliberate sin, so David had nothing to bring.
- Open throne. With the altar closed, mercy alone remained — and it answered at once: "You shall not die."
- No bargain. Offering God something to deserve forgiveness is pride, and He refuses to be bought.
- No merit. Even the broken spirit is not payment; it is the confession of worthlessness that lets mercy come in.
- One Sacrifice. God has now given what the offerings only pictured, so the guilty can come straight to Him.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
David wrote this after his adultery and the murder of Uriah. The law had no sacrifice to cover a sin like that, so the verse names what he could bring instead — and what God accepts from a guilty person.
David's sin fell outside what the law's sacrifices could cover. One writer traces where that left him:
For himself he could say nothing but admit his guilt and the corruption he had inherited from Adam. Yet he could throw himself on God's mercy, the resource that never fails anyone who turns to it with a truthful heart. He could do nothing but this. He could offer nothing to meet his case. The law made no provision for someone who had sinned deliberately, as he had. Death was its only sentence. In such circumstances the only sacrifice God could accept was a broken spirit. But a broken and contrite heart God does not, and will not, despise.
The psalm speaks of broken bones, a broken spirit, and a broken heart. One writer explains what each one stands for in us:
Jacob needed a whole lifetime to learn what the three things in Psalm 51 mean. There are broken bones — the bones being the seat of our natural strength. There is a broken spirit — the seat of our natural good sense and wisdom. And there is a broken heart — the seat of our natural tendency to idolatry.
Another writer ties a broken spirit to the will:
With a broken spirit, self-will cannot be active. Before he had a broken spirit, David had followed his own will, and it led him into adultery and to Uriah's murder. A broken spirit gives up its own will so that it can depend on God.
Why does God value this state? One writer points to where God chooses to live:
The highest place in heaven is honoured by the presence of the One who still stoops to make the lowly heart His throne. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." The God whom the highest heavens cannot contain is the God we may host. But we can only do that by getting down ourselves into the lowest and humblest place. So if we have never met Him, the reason is simple: we have never come down as low as that level of self-judgment where He is found in grace. But when He makes His home in the humble and the contrite, He comes in the sweetness of His love and the tenderness of His mercy, to revive the spirit of His humble ones and the heart of His contrite ones. How blessed to be lowly enough for the lofty One to dwell with us, and contrite — rubbed down — enough for the Holy One to revive us!
A broken heart pays for nothing. One writer shows what it does instead:
The law was completely unable to give comfort or peace to David's soul. Yet he takes hold of God. What we hear is confidence, the confidence of a restored soul. But it does not rest on legal sacrifice. He says, the only sacrifice I can bring is a broken and crushed heart. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." God will not despise that. It is the condition of heart that lays hold of the truth of Christ and His precious work.
David's case looks beyond himself. One writer finds both a picture and a pattern in it:
What breaks David's heart is to find himself faced with "bloodguiltiness" (v. 14) and to realise that he had shed the blood of righteous Uriah. This is a prophetic picture of the blood of Christ shed by Israel... But let us remember that God disciplines us to lead us step by step from a true and cleansed heart to a broken heart. That is the only condition that suits us in the presence of the cross. It is the only sacrifice God accepts along with the sacrifice of praise. And it is the only state of heart that does not leave us exposed to fresh falls.
What God refuses to despise, others count as nothing:
This attitude is one the world despises... But the Psalmist could say that such a "broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." And is not His approval what we should really value?
- Empty-handed. David's sin had no sacrifice under the law; he could offer nothing and had to cast himself on God's mercy alone.
- Broken. A broken spirit gives up self-will and natural wisdom. A broken heart gives up the idols we cling to.
- Accepted. This is the one sacrifice God receives, and the state of heart that takes hold of Christ and His work.
- Indwelt. The God whom heaven cannot contain makes the lowly heart His home, so we meet Him at the level of self-judgment — and He comes to revive us.
- Guarded. God's discipline leads us to this brokenness. It is the only state that fits us at the cross, and it keeps us from falling again.