Sermon VI. David’s Sacrifice

(Lincoln’s Inn, 2nd Sunday after Easter, April 30, 1854.)

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 li. 16, 17.

When I spoke to you last on the subject of Sacrifice, I was considering the provisions of the Levitical Law. I endeavoured to show you how strikingly those provisions, formal and precise as they were, illustrated the principle of Sacrifice, as we had seen it unfolding itself in the offerings of Abel, of Noah, of Abraham. The national precept carried on the education of the Jew when he was come into new circumstances, but it did not alter or modify any of the lessons which he had learnt among the tents of the Patriarchs. It protected those lessons from perils by which they were threatened; it connected them with the experience which the Israelites had passed through in Egypt; it prepared the way for fresh experiences through which they would pass in Palestine. The more closely we examine the terms of the command which appointed what sacrifices should be offered,—how, and where, and by whom,—construing those terms strictly as laws should be construed, the more we perceive how they were directed against the Heathen notions of sacrifice, which spring up so naturally in the heart of man—which foster its pride, and which bring it into slavery—and which had already worked so mightily and fearfully in the world: the more we saw how these provisions asserted the divine doctrine that Sacrifice must proceed from the Will of God, and is perfected when the will of man is subdued to it.

But clearly as I think these positions are established by the plain words of Scripture—still more by all the context of its history, by the errors of the chosen people, and by the effects which ensued when they fell into the habits of the people round about them—I do not wonder that readers have felt something like a shock when they have passed directly from the Law to the Psalms; when they find Kings and Seers apparently disparaging those offerings, which were so precious a part of the divine economy. Our attention has been lately called to passages of this kind—passages which have a startling sound, and which certain critics affirm must have been written by men who, secretly or openly, had revolted from the national faith. The fiftieth and the fifty-first Psalms were chosen for our use last Wednesday morning.¹

In the first, we find such sentences as these: ‘I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goat out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.’ In such language, there is something like scorn of the notion that animal offerings—the very offerings which the law had prescribed and which the priest continually presented—could be of any worth in God’s sight. The argument is stated in the broadest manner, in a way which must have given offence, one would have thought, even to sincere and devout suppliants. And the conclusion, that the offering of thanksgiving, and the calling upon God in trouble, is that which he really demands, must have been urged by a number of Sadducees in the latter days, if there were none in the earlier, as a justification of all that they taught respecting the easiness of the divine requirements and their purely moral character. The fifty-first Psalm is altogether different. There is nothing which can be taken for contempt of any vulgar doctrines or practices. The King who speaks is not raised to a higher point of view than his subjects—he is beneath them all. But in the depth of abasement, he seems to arrive at the same discovery to which the other teacher was led by a different route. ‘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.’ These words, though none were ever spoken in the world that could be so little intended to perplex any worshipping Israelite, nevertheless must have strangely clashed with some of his most cherished and familiar thoughts. Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings!—Why then, was it said, that the Lord smelled a sweet savour when Noah brought forth the clean beasts after the flood? Why were all the offerings at the door of the tabernacle accompanied with incense which intimated that they were grateful to Him who dwelt there? Why were they called peace-offerings, and offerings of atonement? And supposing that, in some sense, the heart was a better offering than the bullock or goat, must it not, according to all symbols and analogies, be a whole heart in order to be accepted? Were not Israelites forbidden to offer anything maimed or broken to the Lord? Were they not to bring unblemished males of the first year? Was it not running counter to all these axioms, and to that which was implied in them, to speak of the heart, bruised, worn, torn in pieces, as the very gift which God desired? I do not see how any Pharisee could have answered these questions. He would have tried to answer them, by saying that the Law was divine and that the Psalms were divine, and that it was not his business to reconcile them, but to believe both. The practical effect of which resolution, I think, must have been that he would believe neither, and would act according to neither, but would believe his own notion of sacrifice, and would ground upon it doctrines and practices which Moses and David would have hated equally. But a simple, childlike man—one of those whom the evangelists describe as waiting for the kingdom of heaven—beginning with a strong sense of the apparent diversity between the teachers whom he reverenced, would gradually have discovered—by suffering as the psalmists suffered—how truly they were the interpreters of the Law, how little it could be understood except by those whom God Himself trained in the school in which He had trained them. Christian men living since the Gospel of the kingdom, for which these men waited, has been proclaimed, have been brought to the same conclusion by the same process. And we, my brethren, may find out, as they did, what the words of these psalms signify, how they illustrate all that we have ascertained about sacrifice hitherto, how needful they are to explain the nature of our sacrifices, how they bear upon that perfect sacrifice, the inestimable benefits of which have been set forth in the Collect for to-day.

I. The fiftieth Psalm exhibits the chosen race as summoned to answer for itself before its divine King. God is calling to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people. This people is marked out in the next verse, as saints who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. It is assumed, therefore, that the nation is holy, and that God has claimed it as holy by taking it into covenant with Himself. The covenant cannot be separated from sacrifice. I have shown you how this principle was embodied in the institution of the Passover; how the ordinance which established that sacrifice—how every part of the service itself—testified that Israelites were a dedicated, devoted, sacrificed nation. ’The first-born were consecrated as representatives of the whole people. They were redeemed from death, but not redeemed from this condition. The animal was a dead offering; they were living offerings. The great trial or judgment, then, which the Lord of the land is making of His subjects, has this issue: Have they acted as if this were their state; as if they were dedicated, sacrificed creatures? He is God, even their own God. Have they understood this to be the case? have they believed that He was their God, and that they were His saints,—His sanctified, redeemed creatures? Let them not put the cause upon a different issue from this; let them not suppose that God is reproving them for their sacrifices or their burnt-offerings, because they were not always before Him. He does not want these; the cattle on a thousand hills are His. He wants their acknowledgment of Him, He wants their trust. But what had they to do who declared His statutes and boasted of His covenant, yet remained wicked? Did not they know that His purpose in taking them into covenant with Him was to reform them; to separate them from their evil; to deliver them from the adulterous, deceitful, slanderous tendencies of their nature? Did they suppose that God wanted to be fed with their beasts? Did they not know that they needed to be made right men by Him? Oh, miserable delusion! they fancied Him altogether such an one as themselves! one who could be bribed as they were bribed! They had not yet learned, after all His teaching and discipline, that their duty and their blessing was to submit to Him, that He might make them like Himself.

Here was, indeed, a wonderful exposition of that falsehood which was leading the Israelite astray in all the periods of his history; the falsehood which turned him into an idolater in one generation, into an insolent denouncer of idolaters in another. He did not look upon God as his God, as his Deliverer, as his Judge, as his Reformer; he did not yield himself to Him as His subject, as His redeemed creature, to be purified, to be renewed. He had never understood what it was to be sacrificed himself. But he could, if need were, produce a hecatomb of oxen to be sacrificed: he supposed God’s toleration of his sins was to be purchased, and that this was the purchase-money. The mockery of such a notion by the psalmists is terrible, but not disproportionate to the monstrousness of the evil which it was condemning. It is that mockery which comes out of the burning heart of a man who knows God to be righteous and true; and who sees that men are making a god like themselves, and are strengthening themselves in their lies and their crimes by regarding him as the patron of them. But the mockery is only a translation into words of that which is embodied in the whole law and ritual of Israel. The Psalmist draws out the inmost sense of the book of Leviticus, when he says, that ‘if God were hungry, He would not tell them’. In all the institutes which that book contains, God is commanding a people, with whom He has already made a covenant, what they shall do in order to testify that they are in that covenant, and that they have broken it. They are righteous, for He has chosen them and united them to Himself; they have distrusted Him; they have forgotten that they are a righteous people; they have chosen ways of their own. By their offerings of beasts, they acknowledge that it is so; they take up their place as Israelites; He accepts them. What pride and falsehood to suppose that an act, which was the confession of sin, had some meritorious power! What blasphemy to think that the instrument by which God chose to establish peace between Himself and those who had revolted from Him, was a successful contrivance of theirs to conciliate Him and induce Him to overlook their revolt!

2. No one could have taught his countrymen these lessons who had not learnt that he needed to be judged and reformed, that he could not judge and reform himself; that the Searcher of hearts, the King of his land, was doing that work for him; that in doing it He was fulfilling the covenant which He had made with the Israelites; that to submit freely and frankly to that process was the man’s part of the covenant, was the sacrifice which God above all others demanded of him. And this is the link between the fiftieth and the fifty-first Psalms, which in outward characteristics are so dissimilar, and yet in which we found a striking correspondence on the subject of sacrifice. The circumstances which suggested this last Psalm do not affect its nature, but I shall assume the old tradition, which few have ever disbelieved, that it is the confession of David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. We may believe that the King did not say, Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it, without having made the experiment. It was a most natural thing for him to betake himself to the Tabernacle which he had frequented before; to make his gifts there more costly than in former days; to persuade himself that if other men’s transgressions were forgiven, his, who had fought so many battles for the Lord, and sung so many songs to Him, would certainly be overlooked. Why did not the result answer to his expectation? Why, after the priest had duly presented the whole burnt-offering—had praised him, perhaps, because his devotion and bounty were greater than ever—did he return to his house, with his countenance fallen, with the same weight on his heart as before, with his moisture still like the drought in summer? That singing men and singing women should not avail to give him ease, he might have expected. But the sin-offering, the trespass-offering, the peace-offering—could not they do it? What did the Law mean—what did the whole service of the Tabernacle, the ordinance of the Passover—mean, if this were the case? This at least was clear: he was not at peace. His conscience told him so; his endeavours to persuade himself that the voice which spoke to him there was not the voice of God utterly failed. God evidently did not delight in David’s burnt-offering more than He delighted in Cain’s.

But the next step was a much longer and harder one. A man who has begun to negotiate and traffic with his Maker will not quickly give up the hope that he shall find something to sacrifice sooner or later which He will be content to receive. To part with this hope, to sink humbly on the knees; to say, Against thee I have sinned; I have done this evil in Thy sight—how is this possible;—what brings a man to this? And what kind of offering is this? David knew at last what it was. It was the sacrifice of God. He had not brought himself into that posture: God had brought him into it. He had corrected him and broken him. He had prepared the sacrifice. He had shown him that this was what he wanted. This great saint, and singer, and king of Israel, must positively understand that he has nothing whatever to do, but to say, ‘I am what thou knowest I am. Thou hast found me out. Thou art right, and I am wrong. I give up the struggle.’ That was the ultimate result. Now he believed that God was a Righteous Being who hated sin, not one who overlooked it in king or peasant, that He was willing to take it away from king and peasant, to give each of them a right heart. That now became his one desire. Not to be a deceiver, not to keep his secret; but to be a right and true man; to have his inmost spirit laid bare, that every cheat might be purged out of it.

Here was the explanation of the strange fact that a broken heart was better than a whole one; that the maimed offering might be presented by the Israelite, who was to bring only of the firstlings of his flock. The sacrifice was a more complete, a more entire one, than he had ever yet presented. He had never, even in his days of early shepherd faith, even when he threw himself away in battle, so absolutely and unreservedly given up himself. The discovery that he had nothing to present, that he was poor and worthless, was the discovery that he belonged wholly to God, that he was His, and that his sin had consisted in withdrawing from his allegiance, in choosing another condition than his true and actual one.

So subtle are the inventions of human pride that even these words of David—these words of simple renunciation—have furnished food for it. ‘We are to ’bring,’ says the casuist, ‘humble and contrite hearts. ’And, therefore, it must be ascertained what contrition ’is, and how much of contrition is needful to constitute ’a true repentance, an acceptable sacrifice.’ In what delicate scales have men’s tears and sorrows been weighed out by divines, to know whether they answered to this standard; how the hearts and consciences of suffering and penitent men have been, not tormented merely—that is nothing—but made utterly insincere and false, by their efforts to apply the rules and test their own condition! And vain it is to point out, in mere words, that as long as a man fancies that he has contrition, or any other present, to bring to God, in order to make himself acceptable, so long he is not really humbling himself; he is not confessing that he is a sinner: he is not giving up himself. Vain it is, I say, to point this out in words, for these words may be abused as much as any other. But God makes this known to a man in fact; His discipline brings us to understand it inwardly; that discipline cuts through the webs which we weave for ourselves, and breaks the spirit actually, not according to the maxims in books.

And it is by breaking the man’s spirit that He restores it to its true freedom and greatness. The child away from its home, seeking paths of its own, joining itself to any citizen of the country in which it is wandering, feeding upon husks, at last hungering and wishing for the bread of hired servants, comes to recollect that it has a father, that it is one of a family. It asks for its home; it finds that the Father has been seeking for it;—in knowing what He is, it begins to know itself. This is the history of King David; and his history is written that each man may read his own in it. The Book of Psalms is the most wonderful book in the world, because it is the most universal; because in it saints and seers and prophets and kings prove their title to their great names, by finding that they have a greater name still,—that they are men; that they are partakers in all the poverty, emptiness and sinfulness of their fellow-creatures; that there is nothing in themselves to boast of, or claim as their own; that all which they have is His, who would have all to know Him and to be partakers of His holiness. And therefore this fifty-first Psalm is, as it seems to me, the real explanation of all the Psalms, and of the continual references which they contain to another and higher King than David. It was, and is most natural, that the Jews reading of such a King, and honestly persuaded that he must be what the name King imports, should have rejected the notion of a broken-hearted man, a man of sorrows—as not at all answering to the idea of such a ruler and conqueror. Till they are brought as low as David himself was brought when he poured out this confession, they will not, from all the arguments and evidences in the world, find how that riddle is solved; they will not know why only such an one could be the King, because only such an one could be the sacrifice. And we too, brethren, we who are wont, perhaps, to think of Him more as a sacrifice than as a king, may have need of the same deep humiliation before we can know what His Sacrifice is, or who could truly offer it. We may build up for ourselves a notion of someone who has come to offer a great and gorgeous present to the Lord of all, which has changed His mind towards His creatures; we may unawares thrust into our Christian faith those heathen notions of sacrifice against which God’s witnesses before the flood, when the world rose out of it,—on the hill Moriah, amidst the idolaters of Egypt,—in the Wilderness, in the royal city, lifted up their voices. But if we are brought, as one of the psalmists says that he was, as all really were, to a horrible pit where no ground is, we shall find that there is one Rock, and only one, on which we can place our feet—the rock on which prophets and apostles alike stood—the Name of Him who said, Lo, I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of me—not to alter Thy purpose, but—to do Thy will, O God.