Bible Sermons Online

Online Text Sermon - The Acceptable Sacrifice, Psalm 51 vv.16-17

Links to Bible chapters open in a new window.

"For 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 a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51, 16-17).

Two types of sacrifice

You will see in this text a reference to two kinds of sacrifice. It is said about one type of sacrifice that it is not what God requires. You will see about the other kind of sacrifice that it is the kind which God requires. Let me read it again: "For 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 a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (text).

This needs to be explained because there have been some people who have misunderstood these words and similar words in the Old Testament. When the Psalmist here tells us that God does not require sacrifice or burnt offering, we are not to suppose that the Psalmist means that God did not institute the sacrificial system which we read about in the Book of Leviticus and parts of Numbers. In that Old Testament sacrificial system God himself demanded of the people that they should offer the blood of bulls and goats and sheep and other creatures - sometimes birds and other types of animals. There was a temple or tabernacle, there was an altar upon which there was fire, and when the worshippers came in Old Testament times they were required to bring with them these sacrificial animals. They had to be what are called 'clean' animals. Certain animals were clean and certain were not clean. Generally speaking, the clean animals were domestic animals - cows and bulls and sheep and goats and so forth, as distinct from the wilder types of animals. Now all of that was required by God and if we were now living in the Old Testament times then you and I would still be required to do that. Public worship demanded that we must bring our sacrifice with us and offer the blood of bulls and goats. So you mustn't understand this text as though David was saying that God never instituted that form of sacrificial system. There have been people who have misunderstood these words in that way.

So then, how are we to understand these words of David who writes here in this Psalm 51? Well, like this. He means that what is most important in worship is not what we do outwardly but what we do in our heart and in our soul. Granted that there is a place, He means, for these outward forms of worship, but that is not the main thing in worship. You'll see from the very last verse of that David has no thought of abolishing the sacrificial system, because he says: "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" (Psalm 51, 19). It's very clear that David does acknowledge there is a place for those outward sacrifices and offerings, but he means God first of all requires the worship of our hearts. And it's still true in the New Testament. We don't come any more with animal sacrifices but we do come to God's house. We do sit here and we do sing, and listen, and take in things from his Word.

The importance of heart worship

And what is the most important aspect of all our worship today, or in any other age? It is that when we worship God we should bring our hearts to him, that we should bring our innermost affection and desire before God, that we should be involved in this worship. You see, this was the mistake that many Israelites made. They offered their bull, they offered their goat or whatever it was; they came to the temple or tabernacle, and away home they went. They thought that just by doing these outward things, God would be satisfied. That wasn't true then, and it isn't true now. It's not a work of supererogation to sit in the church or in an assembly like this, and to come and to go home. Provided we bring our hearts with us, our worship will be acceptable. But if our minds and our hearts are far from the worship of God then it is of no value.

All of this is very relevant because this passage of Scripture tells us in an unforgettable way that we need, all of us, to have this broken heart. We must ask ourselves, 'Do I know the meaning of this idea, to have a broken heart?' I'm going to define it just in a moment, but that's the question I must put to myself and to us all. Have we ever been broken? Have we ever had our hearts broken? - because that's what it's talking about. Listen to these words: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." (text)

What is meant by a broken and a contrite heart?

What it is not.My first concern then will be to explain what is meant by a broken and a contrite heart. What is it? Let me explain to you what it is. Negatively, we are not talking here about a bad conscience. There is such a thing as having a bad conscience; we feel guilty - we all know the meaning of that, and I assure you I know it absolutely as much as anyone living. It's an awful thing to have a guilty conscience and we know the meaning of that. We speak hastily and we could bite our lip afterwards. Or we lose our temper somewhat and we feel so wretched and so sinful. That is a bad conscience, and the thing to do is, when we have a bad conscience, to go quietly away to some little spot and confess your sin to God. Don't live with a bad conscience. Don't let the bad conscience continue without doing something about it. As soon as you have that feeling of bad conscience, go apart and ask God to cleanse you by the blood of Christ. So we're not here talking about a bad conscience; that's not what's meant by a broken heart. It's something else.

Another negative is this: we are not talking about being hurt. We all know what it is to be hurt. Someone says something which is stinging and unkind, and you feel it, and we've all had that experience. Somebody has been unkind to us in the way they have dealt with us. They have hurt our feelings, we say. We feel hurt by what they have done or said; that's a very real thing too When people unkindly deal with you and hurt you like that, then the thing to do in that case is to pray that God will bless them, to pray that God will forgive them, and to pray that God would do them good. Don't hold a grudge. I know it's very hard; it's awfully hard to forgive those that hurt us. 'But', said Jesus, 'turn the other cheek' (Matt. 5, 39), forgive as we are forgiven (Luke 11, 4).

What it is.Positively, what is this broken heart? Well it is first of all this: it is the heart of somebody who knows that God requires us to worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is somebody who has understanding of the character of God, who knows what sort of God the Bible shows us God to be. You remember how God appeared to Moses in Exodus 34? The Lord passed by him and proclaimed the name of the Lord: "The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping covenant with thousands of them that love him and keep his commandments" (Exodus 34, 6-7; Deuteronomy 7, 9) That is the character of God, and a broken heart belongs to somebody who knows the true character of God, who knows the meaning of Jesus' words: "The Father seeketh men to worship him who will worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4, 23). It is the feeling of Isaiah, for instance, when in chapter 6 he saw the Lord "high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple", and Isaiah cried out "Woe is me! I am undone... I have seen the LORD of hosts" and he felt so unclean. "I am unclean," he said, "and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; mine eyes have seen the LORD of hosts.... who is holy, holy, holy." (Isaiah 6, 1, 3-5) That is a very spiritual experience, and all true Christians have had this experience, more or less. The way to grow in grace and in holiness is to see more of the character of God, to have more of this knowledge of God, more of this reverence, more of this grace, more of this love towards God, more of this understanding and desire to please God.

Those who have this broken heart, they are people who understand that what God is looking at in all worship, whether in secret or in the family, or in the congregation, or wherever - all worship which is worth the name of worship - is worship in which our hearts are engaged. It's not simply a matter of using words. This is, you see, why we don't go in for prayer books. There are some churches who believe in having everything written down; the minister has really no liberty whatever to offer his spontaneous prayer - everything comes out of a prayer book. You simply look at the calendar date. Ah, you say, it's the ninth of the month, so you turn to the prayer book which gives you a prayer to say for the ninth of the month. Next week it'll be some other date, and you read these prayers all the way through. Well, I'm not saying that there's not some use in reading the prayer book sometimes for your own personal edification, but the danger is, you see, in real prayer the heart leads the mouth, but in prayer books the danger is that the mouth leads the heart and that the heart really is not in it. It's easier to read off somebody else's prayer, and it may be edifying like a sermon in a way, but the heart may not be engaged in it. This is a lesson to us, to say that what God is looking for, in all our worship, is a broken and a contrite heart - that is the thing.

Old Testament animal sacrifices pointed to Christ.Let me go on and put it like this: it is the heart of somebody who sees why God has appointed sacrifices in the Old Testament. You see that raises a question, doesn't it? If God really was not so concerned about the blood of the bulls and goats, but was more concerned about people's hearts, why did He insist on people bringing the blood of bulls and goats? You see the point? Why did God require the blood of bulls and goats if that wasn't the main thing in worship? Well I'll tell you. It was because worshippers in the Old Testament did not yet have as their creed what you and I as Christians have, and that is: "I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died, and rose again the third day." They didn't know about that yet, as we do. Oh yes, they had the promise that one day He would come, but they lived in an age when this was not clear, as it is clear to us. So, the shedding of the blood of animals was to them a parable. It was to them an illustration. It was to them a prophecy of what Jesus Christ our Lord would do. All the blood of bulls and goats that was shed in the Old Testament was nothing more than a prophecy pointing to the coming of Christ. He is the only sacrifice there ever was or ever would be. His is the only blood that cleanses from sin. All the blood of bulls and goats, even oceans of blood of bulls and goats, it cannot take away one sin (Heb. 10:4), but God instituted that worship in the Old Testament so that the conscience of the worshipper should have something to inform it of the way in which the Messiah, Jesus, would deal with the sins of the world when he came and died for us upon the cross. Isaiah 53 therefore is the key to understanding the sacrifices of the Old Testament, because chapter 53 shows us Christ in a most glorious way, shedding His blood.

The broken heart and the contrite spirit is that of somebody who sees that the blood of sacrifice in the Old Testament was necessary only as it pointed to Christ, to the blood of Christ and to the cross of Christ. It is the heart of somebody who is sorry to have offended God; that's the kind of heart you need if you are ever to get to heaven. If you want God to listen to your prayers then you must have a contrite heart. If you ever want God to bless you and do you good then you must have this broken heart - broken because you know, and you confess freely, you are a sinner! You have done wrong! You have broken the laws of God. You have not lived to the glory of God, nor have I. And all true worship has this element within it. 'Lord,' we say, 'I deserve to go to hell. It is of thy mercy that I live another moment. I deserve to be cast into outer darkness. Lord, it is thy kindness which has provided for me a ransom for my soul.' That's why we have the Lord's Supper of course; it is a reminder to us of the blood and death of Jesus Christ. "This do," says he, "in remembrance of me" (Luke 22, 19) - a reminder to us that we owe everything to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

That then is what is meant by the contrite heart and by the broken heart. Everybody that has the broken heart is a true Christian. If you have got that broken heart, my dear friend, you are a true Christian. No-one could possibly have that broken heart, but only somebody whom God has taught. It is a mark of grace. Nobody has it, in all the world - we're not born with it, we don't cultivate it through education, we don't get it by accident - we only get it by the grace of God. The Holy Spirit himself must needs give us this spirit of contrition. So I say, make this a point for self examination with yourself.

Boys and girls and older people, let me put it to you - ask yourself right now, as I am speaking to you - do you have this broken heart? Are you truly sorry for the sins that you have done? Does it grieve you when you offend God? When your conscience points to you and blows the whistle like a policeman and says 'you shouldn't have said that; that was out of place'? Many times in a day - I have the same problem - many times in a day. Oh I wish I had not said that! Oh I wish I had not done that! We are such foolish, fallen, ruined creatures. All our hope is that God is merciful to those who confess their sins and forsake them. This is what's meant by the broken heart.

Secondly, I want to give you some reasons why a broken heart is acceptable to God. The text tells us this: "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 a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (text).

Why is God concerned about the broken heart and the contrite spirit?

Why does He love this? Why does He delight to see this in the worshipper, more than anything else? God will tolerate irregularities in the outward forms of worship, provided our hearts are right. Let me explain then why God loves this. Because those who have this contrite spirit are truly sorry for their sins and that is something which God loves. God loves to see people sorry for their sins. That glorifies God. It justifies God. It honours God. It accords with what God tells us himself.

I sometimes quote from an old writer in the church called Tertullian. He lived in North Africa in the early Christian centuries and Tertullian said this: 'I was born for repentance.' Now there's something very good in that. 'I was born for repentance.' In other words, the thing that I must do all the time in this world as a believer is to admit to God my shortcomings. Take Peter - what's the difference between Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot? They both sinned: one betrayed Christ; the other denied Christ with oaths and curses. One went to hell and the other went to heaven. What is the great difference between them? Ah! Peter truly, spiritually repented. Judas relented. Judas was sorry for what he'd done; his conscience smote him but he didn't repent in the sense of turning to God with a broken heart. Peter did. Peter went out when he heard the cock crowing and he wept bitterly.

Do you ever weep when you're in secret prayer? Do you have the tears in your eyes, running down your face? You should! We are a ruined race. Oh, I know that this is not something which is very commonly said today, but our forefathers who excelled us in spirituality, they would tell us if they were alive from the dead that the best Christians are the most broken Christians - always. The best Christians are those who grieve most over their sin. 'A heart is best when it is broken', said another old writer. That's interesting isn't it? Nothing else is better for breaking, is it? You have a window: it's not the better for breaking. If you have a motor car, it's not the better for being broken, is it? If you have almost anything you can think of, it's not the better for being broken. But, here's the exception! The best hearts are broken hearts. Oh! for a broken heart! Oh! to see society with broken hearts. That's what will happen, I believe, to the Jews one day - the beloved Jews, our elder brother - oh how we long for that! How I have prayed for that for many, many years. The day will come, says the Bible, when the spirit of grace and supplication will come upon the Jewish people as a whole and they shall look unto Him whom they pierced and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for an only son (Zechariah 12, 10). Their hearts will be broken when they recognise Christ one day in the future, whenever God's time has come.

That's what should be happening, really, in churches now everywhere. Oh, for the broken heart! To take seriously what it means that we are sinners in the sight of God. You see, God is honoured when a contrite heart says to God: 'Lord, I am wrong but thou art right.' We've no right to complain of our troubles in this world. We've no right to complain of our miseries. It sends a shiver down the Christian's back when he hears the world's way of talking when some catastrophe, some tragedy, some trouble occurs in the world. 'Well,' the people say, 'we didn't deserve this. What have I done that this should happen to me? What have I done wrong that this misery should come into my life?' That's not a Christian Bible way of talking! That's a worldly way of talking! The Christian says, 'It's a wonder worse things have never happened to me. It's only rain - it might be fire and brimstone! The earth might open her mouth and swallow us down. We have nothing ever to complain against God in His providence. The worst that can happen would never be too great to punish our sins.' That's how the Christian thinks. In doing so he justifies God. "That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest," says David in verse 4, in this very place.

You see how David takes all this to himself. He had sinned against God, as we know, and God chastened him. God chastised him severely. God said, "The sword, David, shall never depart out of thine house." (2 Sam. 12:10) - and that's what happened. Trouble came upon David's family. One son killed another son. All sorts of awful things happened within the family circle and these trials came. He had the news of Absalom revolting against him, trying to seize his father's throne. David had to go into exile to escape from the hatred of his own son, Absalom. All of that and worse happened. But David never complained. He wrote this psalm instead. Thou art righteous, O Lord. (Psalm 119, 137 etc.). I deserve all these things. God loves this contrite heart because it is the proper attitude that we ought to have. It is the disposition of mind and soul which is appropriate for those who have offended God - and we have all offended God by our transgressions.

We are sinners in three ways. Do we all understand this? What made me a sinner first? Well, I'll tell you: it was the imputation to us of the first sin of the first man. I know it's a very great mystery - don't expect anyone to explain it - I'm simply here to tell you what the Word of God has revealed to us. We'll understand these things better in heaven than we do here. But we must go by what God has said. The first sin of the first Adam is immediately imputed to all his children. We're all, in the womb, sinners. That's what David said: "In sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51, 5). He didn't mean there was any impropriety in his birth. He didn't mean that he was an illegitimate child - nothing of the kind. What he means is that in his mother's womb the sin of Adam was imputed to him, as it is to us all. We are all sinners in our mother's womb. Before we've opened our mouth to say a word, or stirred a hand to do any harm to anyone, we are sinners by the imputation of Adam's sin.

Secondly, we are sinners insofar as we, from Adam, receive our fallen, depraved, ruined, corrupted human nature. Isn't it unspeakable? Again this week, again, the police are after somebody who's killed a young girl, a young woman walking down a street - killed or stabbed or throttled or something - it will be the same this week, and the next week. Can you believe it, the society we're living in? Some poor young girl, a little bit late at night, foolishly, instead of being at home she was in a pub or somewhere; somebody chases her, follows her, throttles her - can you believe it? Why do people do it? Because the heart of man is rotten and ruined and depraved and hellish! And we're all capable of it!

I once met a man years ago who was a schoolteacher and he and I got into talk about religious subjects. He wasn't very enthusiastic to go that way but I pressed him. 'Oh,' he said, 'I know I'm not perfect,' he said. 'I'm not perfect. But,' he said, 'I would never murder anyone.' You see what he was saying? He did not know his own heart. Because we are capable of murder; any one of us is. At times you feel yourself tempted even to the worst of sins, because there is something in us which is profoundly wicked and we are capable of it. Even the Christian must watch and pray. If we know these things we're safe, and if we confess these things to God we shall be safe, but you see how all this glorifies God - because it tells God all the time that we have no hope of getting to heaven through our own goodness - no, not so much as a hundred millionth part of a hope of getting to heaven through our own good works.

In the Old Testament, when they offered their sacrifices, one of the sacrifices involved the offerer in coming to the altar with a lamb - and this is what he did. The priest was standing there, the altar was here, and they were going to kill the lamb shortly but before they did that the worshipper put his hands on the head of the lamb and he leaned hard on top of the lamb and then killed it. Now what was that for? It was to teach the lesson of imputation. The worshipper was commanded by God to do this so that he would understand that the sin of the worshipper was imputed to the beast, and the beast was killed as the substitute. All of that pointed to Christ! That's what we do when we come to be Christians. We have laid our hands upon the head of the Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world, and his blood is our only hope. We don't imagine we can appear before God with any righteousness of our own, or any goodness of our own - it is impossible and unthinkable. No, no! The contrite heart confesses that we can do no good of ourselves; it must needs be the grace of God. We want to sing God's praise and to honour Him.

Why is there so little power in the Gospel these days? It's all partly related to this very subject: there aren't enough broken hearts. I'll promise you, if we all came to this congregation with broken hearts in a month's time, there'd be more blessing - I speak to myself. That's why I think there are times when individually we should have days of fasting, go without food for some hours and pray for an hour or two, and plead with God in secret for grace to break our hearts more and you'll see a difference. That's why there's so little blessing in the times in which we live. It's all related to small repentance, small views of God and small views of sin.

Another question: Why did Martin Luther come to appreciate the doctrine of justification? How was it that at the Reformation Martin Luther, of all people, who was a monk, came to understand we are justified only by Christ without the works of the law? For a thousand years or more, the church had been in error on this point. What was the key to the way in which he found this secret out? Well part of the secret was this: he had a burdened conscience, he was aware of his sins. He kept on confessing his sins, all the time. He didn't know how to get rid of them. My friends, he discovered there is only one way to get rid of sins, and that is to believe in the free justification of God, to lay your hand upon the head of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, and to believe in His blood. He died for me.

A Negro once put it very simply. He wasn't a theologian, as you'll see, but the Negro put it like this, referring to Christ. He said: 'Him die - me no die.' That's it in a nutshell. Christ died - I don't need to die. He died for me. If you want to put this in learned language, I'll tell you the language to use. We talk about imputation and counter-imputation like this: my sin upon him - his righteousness on me. For that, He got what I deserve! And what did He get? Damnation! The wrath of God fell upon Him; He was cut off out of the land of the living - for me, and you! You deserve that! I deserve that! My sin brought Him down to this sad and sorrowful experience. Thank God He did!

Because the whole righteousness, the entire obedience of Christ is mine, I stand in Him acquitted. There is no condemnation for his sake (Romans 8, 1). Oh my friends, we owe it all to Christ. The broken heart is the heart of somebody who recognises this. God doesn't require outward things in our worship so much as our heart. Here's the question God is asking when He sees the worshipper: 'Does this man love me?' When He sees the woman bowing her head: 'Does this woman love me?' When he sees a boy or a girl in church, what God is asking is: 'Is their heart a broken heart, a contrite heart? Are they offering the sacrifices of a contrite spirit toward me?' There's the question. If you are, then happy you are and blessed you are.

It's possible to go wrong on all of these things. There was a man called Christmas Evans, a Welsh preacher - over a hundred years ago now but it is a very interesting story - Christmas Evans was a very great preacher. When people heard him, many times the whole congregation would be in tears - he was a great, great preacher. However, he got the wrong theory about something - he imbibed an idea called Sandemanianism. We haven't time for the details on it but what it meant was this: it taught that what you need is faith without emotion; faith but no feeling. For a time he went in that direction. He put away this feeling, these tears, this emotion, and he began to imbibe and to bring into his mind this idea that all you need is faith - faith but no feeling, no emotion mixed with it. Something happened to his preaching. There were no more tears. Nobody felt anything as they had done in the past. For, I think, fifteen years, he preached like that and there was no blessing.

One day he was thoroughly sick of himself. 'Something' he said 'has gone wrong with my soul. What I must do is to get apart.' He went to a famous mountain in Wales called the Cader Idris - or Seat of Idris in English - and there for some hours he wrestled in prayer with God until - you can guess the rest! - until tears flowed down his face again. He got the presence of God back! When he went into the open air to preach - the old response - tears, broken hearts. Oh! That's what we need again.

How may we get this broken heart?

Remember God's holiness.How can we get it? I want just to mention three things. First of all, my beloved friends, we must remember how holy God is. You know, we're living in an age when the holiness of God is lost in the church, not only in the world. Oh they don't believe in God anyway - but even in the church, people act and speak and live as though God was not the holy Being He is. It won't do. If we want real blessing, if we want the presence of God, we must begin by recognising the holiness of God. He demands obedience! He demands that we reverence Him! He demands that we worship Him with all our being! Our whole soul must be given to Him, otherwise it's worthless. It's like a clanging bell or a tinkling cymbal. It's of no interest to God. The sacrifices of God are a broken heart. A broken and a contrite heart is what God is listening to.

He's not watching where the beautiful vestments are. He's not watching to see where the ceremonial is all explicitly done and marvellously orchestrated. He's not looking for great cathedrals and splendid organ recitals. He's looking at your heart, your soul! What do you think of the great God? It's almost certain that the most pure worship in this world is offered not by cardinals and archdeacons and dignitaries of the church. Almost certainly the best worship of the world is offered by widows, and people who love the Lord in their quiet, honest, sincere way. They'll be highest in the kingdom of God. And rightly so! We ministers will be somewhere along the queue at the back, but the broken-hearted widows are those who love the Lord! They will be at the top! Because many that are first will be last, and the last first. So let us estimate of people in terms of their broken heart.

Remember our sinfulness.The second thing we need to do to get the broken heart is this: to remember our sinfulness. 'Examine your soul,' says Paul. Examine yourselves. Don't let sin go unconfessed. As soon as you become aware of something you've done wrong or said wrong or thought wrong - even your thoughts - confess it to God, and forsake it. You are lying in bed, let me say, and somehow, you know, a line of thought may come into our minds, and before you know where you are, you're going from A to B, and B to C, and C to D, and you're going along the alphabet of thought. Suddenly you stop... Where am I going with my thoughts? This is shocking! God forgive me! Stop yourself in your thoughts. Don't allow your thoughts. Stop them! Say 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' Satan gives us these wicked thoughts often, into our minds. Stop the thoughts! Oh, if we have no sense of sin, we shall never have a contrite heart. It is essential.

Remember the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.Thirdly and finally, we need to remember above all the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remind yourself of the suffering Saviour in the Garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember how He staggered under the weight of our sin and fell headlong, sweating great drops of blood? "Oh! my Father! Let this cup pass from me! Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt." The cup was the damnation that He had to drink for you and for me. He could easily have said to his Father, "It's too much! I can't go ahead with this, it's too much." He drank it lovingly, for you. The reason is because He loves you and He loves all those that love Him. He loves all those that want Him. He freely offers himself to every single soul that wants Him. If you want Christ you can have Him - He's free! You can have Him as soon as you want Him. As soon as you want Him, you've got Him. There are no barriers to coming to Christ; he doesn't put any barriers in the way. If you want Jesus as your Saviour, you can have Him; He's offered to you freely in the Gospel. Believe in Him and be saved. Oh, this is how we get the broken heart - to remember how he suffered these pains upon the cross.

The great John Newton, that wonderful man, who had been a slave dealer but who was converted and became a minister all those years ago - do you remember? - at the end of life his memory had completely gone, completely gone. He said, 'I can't remember anything except two things.' What's that? He said, 'I remember that I am a great sinner,' he said. 'And the other thing I remember is that Christ is a great Saviour.' Well if you remember those two things, you're sure to have the broken heart. God tells us here, this is what He looks for. And oh, what a blessing! Oh, what a blessing if your soul can feel this grace of God within it, which brings you to confess your sin and to love Jesus Christ. Amen.

This sermon has been downloaded from http://www.bible-sermons.org.uk