#4: “Our Hearts Must Be Broken”
INTRO:
Last Sunday the message was “The Heart Is Deceitful,” based on
Jeremiah 17:9, where God said through the prophet:
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
sick; who can understand it?”
In that message I said:
1. The heart is deceitful to the extent that it has caused us to do
very terribly wrong things. It is so deceitful that we can’t fix it.
2. Our hearts were created pure, good, and eternal, but sin
destroyed all of that.
3. We must give our hearts to God; He alone can make them pure,
good, and eternal again.
Today’s message, “Our Hearts Must Be Broken,” is born of Psalm
51, a Psalm of David, who was known as “a man after God’s own
heart.” His words here are not the words of an atheist or pagan, but
those of a believer – someone like us in many ways – not a terribly
“bad” man – someone who really wanted to live right but struggled to
keep a steadfast spirit. He says in verse 10:
“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.”
I want “a pure heart” and “a right spirit” too. How about
you?
Then, in verse 17 he says:
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God,
you will not despise.”

David recognizes that a “pure heart” and a “right spirit” do
not come without a price. He had a very impure heart and a spirit that
was anything but right.
God had replaced the disobedient Saul with young David, and he
was an obedient and very successful king. But at the height of his
success, he became careless in his personal responsibilities. He sent
Joab out to lead his army when he himself should have led them. He
allowed the lust of the flesh and his position of power to get the best
of him and committed sexual immorality with Bathsheba, the wife of
Uriah, one of his commanders. To hide his sin, he plotted and
schemed, but to no avail. He finally put Uriah in a position in battle
that guaranteed he would be killed.
David thought he had successfully hidden his sin, but God let
him know through the prophet Nathan that He was fully aware of all
that he had done, and David sought forgiveness. This Psalm is, in a
sense, David’s journal in which he recounts his path to that
forgiveness.
As we consider the Psalm, we can determine the steps David
took…