“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Psalm 51:11

Can you imagine a friend looking down on you for saying “thanks” for something that he did for you? It wouldn’t seem likely to happen. would it? After all, if a friend did you a big favor, and you expressed your gratitude to him, you would expect him to accept that gratitude graciously and with pleasure. You would be both surprised and hurt if he snubbed you.

Unless, of course, your friend had some way of knowing that your gratitude was not sincere, that you were only being polite, but didn‘t mean it at all, that you were only going through the appropriate motions. If your friend knew that, and it was in fact true, then you could expect him not only to react negatively, but even to be offended.

There is a parallel to be found here with respect to our relationship to God. Though the Christian‘s thanksgiving is not limited to one day or one season of the year, the matter of thankfulness is called to our attention in the States in a special way during the month of November. We will be gathering in our churches for special thanksgiving worship, and we will be especially mindful of it in our family devotions. Well and good. We need special reminders such as this of the goodness and mercy of God.

But there is an attitude which must permeate our expressions of thanksgiving, lest God should reject it or even be offended by it. The Psalmist David, who had slain Urriah and stolen Bathsheba as his wife, and who had known the depths of human sin and misery, tells us about it in the text quoted above. He could have offered a multitude of sacrifices and numerous burnt–offerings as an expression of his penitence for sin, and as an offering of thanksgiving for the forgiveness he had experienced; but it all would have been quite meaningless to the Lord were it not preceded by a contrite spirit and a. broken heart. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.”

It is well that we desire to give concrete expression to our gratitude to God for all that He has done for us, by giving a special gift or offering to a worthy cause on Thanksgiving Day. That I do not wish to discourage, though I sometimes wonder why that desire isn‘t as strongly felt and practiced all through. out the year. But let us make sure that our expression of gratitude in this way is not activated by a desire to remunerate God, or to promote the inflation of our own ego. However complimentary from the human perspective our giving might be, it must, from God‘s perspective, be preceded by a broken and a contrite heart.

Which means this: a heart that has been cured of all stiff·necked pride and boasting. A heart that is overwhelmed by humility, in which there is a burning sense of God’s greatness and power and majesty and holiness and righteousness, and our own guilt and weakness and corruption. He must be acknowledged as the Fountain of all good, so that we rejoice not first of all in things, but in Him. Even as we ponder our bounteous blessings, we will give Him the thanks, and make mention of His name and power, and sing of the marvel of His grace and the wonder of His mercy.

It means that we will readily acknowledge how utterly helpless we are without Him, and that only as He provides can we live. He it is who sends the sunshine and the rain, summer and winter, who makes the grass to grow, the seed to sprout, and our labors fruitful. He it is who, as our covenant Father, cares for us as His people, leading in ways of joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, and who makes all things work together for good. It is not our ingenuity or power, our labor and toil, our wisdom or efforts that make us the beneficiaries of all these things, for even these are His gifts to us. That is what it means to have a broken and a contrite heart.

And even that, in the final analysis, is His gift to us, isn‘t it? I cannot of myself produce a heart which is thus characterized. That too must be a gift of His Almighty grace!

It is true that most things that are broken are of little or no value. We cannot drink from a broken glass, nor can we walk on a broken leg, or sit on a broken chair. But though other things, when broken, are the worse for it, the heart is at its best when broken; for until it is, we cannot know what is in it, nor can it be healed of its diseases. But when it is broken in sacrifice, then God heals it by His grace, and makes it a heart that is whole in affection.

Not the formal sacrifice Has acceptance in Thine eyes; Broken hearts are in Thy sight, More than sacrificial rite; Contrite spirit, pleading cries, Thou, O God, wilt not despise.