The Sacrifice Of Contrition

"For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:6, NIV).   "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God you will not despise" (Psalm 51:16-17, NIV).   "... 'Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD?  To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams'" (1 Samuel 15:22, NIV). 

 "... All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife..." (hymn by Bill Gaither--Maranatha Music: "Something Good").  

Christians offer multiple sacrifices:   of thanksgiving, of praise, of doing good and sharing, of a broken heart, and even of offering themselves as living sacrifices; however, "to obey is better than sacrifice" (cf. 1 Sam. 15:22).  Jesus came to be the fulfillment of all sacrifices; i.e., the law's demands.  He did this by fulfilling the law and doing everything it required on our behalf--He not only died for us but lived for us as well!  Jesus learned obedience by what He suffered (cf. Heb. 5:8) and feels our pain because He's been there; however, we are completing the suffering of Christ and living out His life in our adversities (cf. Col. 1:26).  Could you trust in a God who didn't understand suffering and couldn't identify with us and know what we are going through?

We must bear in mind that there is always light at the end of the tunnel and "this too shall pass!"   We experience brokenness so that we can be patient with others in the same boat and witness or minister to them in their pain.  We can thus comfort others with the same comfort we have known in Christ.  God knows everything about us and always did!  He is not surprised by our failings and shortcomings.  He knew of them before our salvation.  There is a reason for suffering, but God isn't obliged to explain Himself: He's too deep to understand, too wise to make a mistake, and too kind to be cruel.  We are not to think like Job's friends that we are only getting punished for our sins and aren't even getting what we deserve.  Jesus paid the full penalty for our sins, and we are not punished for our sins, but by them!  By and large, we don't break God's laws; they break us!  What we do is break God's heart and that's why He knows what hurt is and wants to heal us of our suffering.

Christ's legacy to be gained is a peace that passes all understanding and cannot be taken away. We can experience this legacy in the midst of suffering and find out it works by experience--the proof of the pudding is in the eating!  We can become seasoned believers having been trained in the trenches of the warfare of life and having had O.J.T. in battling the enemy.  Thank God, His mercies are new every morning and they never come to an end for us--He never gives upon us and we are just "works in progress" no matter how mature we are and should not assume we are always good soil or that we've arrived--even Paul didn't claim to have laid hold of it yet.  There are no hopeless believers, only those who've given up hope!

This is precisely why we must localize or tailor the gospel to the recipients. Paul was the evangelist to the Gentiles while Peter was to the Jews, but Paul strived to be all things to all men so he could, by all means, save some!   Not everyone is on the same page and God must use different strokes for different folks. Some water, some plant, some reap!  But God gives the increase!  God is only using us as honorable vessels or servants to do His will, we can only venture to boast of what He does through us, not what we do for Him, but what God does through us is what counts.

We need to know about the prowling of Satan to devour us in our weak spots because he knows our vulnerabilities.  The danger we must beware of is Satan using us for his schemes or giving us temptations and thoughts that we carry out, like when Peter was rebuked by the Lord to get behind Him.  Satan can put thoughts into our minds and can distract us from the Word.  Winning entails knowing our enemy as well as knowing ourselves.  Shakespeare (Polonius in Hamlet) said, "To thine own self be true"!  The Greeks of antiquity said, "Know thyself!" and Sun Tzu, the Chinese author of The Art of War,  said, "Know your enemy!"   But the Bible says "Know God!"  All three are necessary to mature in Christ and to engage in the angelic conflict with all the onslaught of Satan known as the Anfectung (attack in German) by Martin Luther in order that we do not succumb to the schemes of the devil.

Only when we realize our sinfulness and realize that we are no better than sinners are we grace-oriented.  George Whitefield was asked what he thought of a man going to the gallows:  "There but for the grace of God, go I."  We must come to Paul's awakening when he said, "I am what I am by the grace of God."  William Jay of Bath said, "I am a great sinner, and I have a great Savior."  We are in essence just beggars tellers other beggars where to get a meal, it's been put.  Peter realized his unworthiness and said, "Depart from me O Lord, for I am a sinner."  It's a fact that the closer we get to God, the more we become sensitized to sin and aware of our failures.  Samuel Rutherford said we should pray for a lively sense of sin, "the greater sense of sin, the less sin!"

We must realize our sinfulness in toto and not cling to any self-righteousness, fully repentant and willing to change our ways exhibiting it by a change in behavior to be saved--believing repentance or penitent faith is necessary for salvation.  A person who feels he is righteous or has no sin cannot be saved, and Christ and His gospel have nothing to say to those unwilling to confess and repent of their sins.  If we feel no brokenness for our own sin (contrition), how can we feel brokenness for the lost and feel their pain knowing and feeling their despair?

In sum, we must be reassured and comforted in knowing that Jesus was indeed a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" and was "tempted in all ways like we are, yet without sin."    Soli Deo Gloria!