The Acceptable Sacrifice

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise (Ps 51:17).

This psalm is David’s penitential psalm. It may fitly be called that, because it is a psalm that shows the genuine sorrow he had for his horrible sin in defiling Bathsheba and killing Uriah her husband. You have the full account of it in 2 Samuel 11-12. As this psalm shows, this poor man had many workings of heart as soon as conviction fell upon his spirit. One moment he cries for mercy; then he confesses his heinous offenses; then he bewails the depravity of his nature. Sometimes he cries out to be washed and sanctified, and then again he is afraid that God will cast him away from his presence and take his Holy Spirit utterly from him. And so he goes on until he comes to the text, and there he settles his mind, finding in himself that heart and spirit which God did not dislike. “The sacrifices of God,” he says, “are a broken spirit,” as if to say, “I thank God I have that.” “A broken and a contrite heart,” he says, “O God, thou wilt not despise,” as if to say, “I thank God I have that.”

The words consist of two parts: first, an assertion; second, a demonstration of that assertion. The assertion is this: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” The demonstration is this: because a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise.

In the assertion two things present themselves for our consideration. First, that a broken spirit is a sacrifice to God. Second, that to God it is something that answers to, or goes beyond, all sacrifices: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.”

The demonstration of this is plain, for God will not despise that heart: “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” From this I draw this conclusion: that a spirit rightly broken, a heart truly contrite, is an excellent thing to God. That is, it is a thing that goes beyond all external duties whatever. For that is what is intended by this saying, The sacrifices: it answers to all the sacrifices we can offer to God. Yes, it serves in the place of them all. All our sacrifices without this are nothing; this alone is all.

There are four things that are very acceptable to God.

1. The sacrifice of the body of Christ for our sins. You read of this in Hebrews 10, for there you find it preferred above all burnt offerings and sacrifices. It is this that pleases God; it is this that sanctifies, and so makes the people acceptable in the sight of God.

2. Genuine love for God is counted better than all sacrifices or external parts of worship: “And to love him [the Lord thy God] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33).

3. To walk holily, humbly and obediently toward God and before him is another (Mic 6:6-8). “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice; and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22).

4. And this in our text is the fourth: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

But note in passing that this broken heart, this broken and contrite heart, is excellent in this way only to God. “O God,” he says, “thou wilt not despise it.” This implies that the world has no such esteem or respect for such a heart, or for anyone who has a broken and contrite spirit. No, no. A man or a woman who is blessed with a broken heart is so far from gaining esteem with the world by it that they are nothing but burdens and troublemakers in every house wherever they are or go. Such people carry disturbance and disquiet with them. In carnal families they are what David was to the king of Gath: troublers of the house (1 Sam 21).

Their sighs, their tears, their groans day and night, their cries and prayers, and their solitary ways put the whole carnal family out of order. That is why you find them browbeaten by some, scorned by others, yes, and their company shunned and deserted by still others. But mark the text: “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise,” but rather accept. For with God, not to despise is to esteem, and to set a high price upon.

But we will demonstrate by several particulars that a broken spirit, a spirit rightly broken, a heart truly contrite, is an excellent thing to God.

1. This is evident from the comparison: “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit…” (Ps 51:16-17). Notice that he rejects sacrifices, offerings and sacrifices; that is, all the Levitical ceremonies under the law and all external performances under the gospel. But he accepts a broken heart. So it is plain from this, even if nothing else could be said to prove it, that a heart rightly broken, a heart truly contrite, is an excellent thing to God. For as you see, such a heart is set before all sacrifice. And yet those sacrifices were the ordinances of God, things that he commanded. But look: a broken spirit is above them all. A contrite heart goes beyond them, yes, beyond them even when they are all put together. You will not have the one, O God; you will not despise the other. Oh, brothers, a broken and a contrite heart is an excellent thing! I have said that a broken heart, a broken and a contrite heart, is valued above all sacrifices. Now I will add this:

2. It is of greater esteem with God than either heaven or earth, and that is more than being set before external duties. “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool, where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isa 66:1-2). Notice: God says he has made all these things, but he does not say that he will look to them, that is, take pleasure and delight in them. No, there is something lacking in all that he has made that could take up his heart and delight it. But now let a broken-hearted sinner come before him. Indeed, he ranges throughout the world to find such a person, and when he has found him, he says, “To this man will I look.” I say again that such a man is of more value to him than either heaven or earth. “They,” he says, “shall wax old”; “they shall perish” and vanish away (Heb 1:10-12). But this man continues. As he is presented to us in another place, under another description, “he shall abide for ever” (1 John 2:17).

“To this man will I look”: that is, with this man I will be delighted, for that is what “to look” sometimes means. “Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse,” Christ says to his humble-hearted one; “thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes” (Song 4:9), while that eye is like a conduit that lets the rivers out of your broken heart. He says he is taken “with one chain of thy neck” (Song 4:9). Here you see he looks and is ravished; he looks and is taken. As it says in another place, “The king is held in the galleries” (Song 7:5); that is, he is taken with his beloved, with the dove’s eyes of his beloved (Song 1:15), with the contrite spirit of his people. But nothing like this is reported of him with respect to heaven or earth. He sets less store by them, and them he “reserves unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Pet 3:7). But the broken in heart are his beloved, his jewels.

So what I have said on this point must stand as the truth of God: that a broken-hearted sinner, a sinner with a contrite spirit, is of more esteem with God than either heaven or earth. He says he has made them, but he does not say he will look to them. He says they are his throne and footstool, but he does not say they have taken or ravished his heart. No, it is those who are of a contrite spirit who do this. But there is still more in the words “To this man will I look.” That is: For this man I will care; around this man I will camp; I will put this man under my protection. For that is what it sometimes means to look to someone, and I take that to be the meaning in this place (Prov 27:23; Jer 39:12; Jer 40:4). “The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down” (Ps 145:14). And the broken-hearted are among this number. Therefore he cares for such a person, camps around him, and has set his eyes on him for good. This, then, is a second demonstration proving that the man whose spirit is rightly broken, whose heart is truly contrite, is of great esteem with God.

3. Yet further, God not only prefers such a person, as has been said, before heaven and earth; he also loves him, and desires to have that man for an intimate friend, for a companion. He must dwell, he must live together, with the one who has a broken heart, with those who are of a contrite spirit. “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I will dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit…” (Isa 57:15).

See here both the majesty and the condescension of the high and lofty One. His majesty is in this, that he is high and the inhabitant of eternity. “I am the high and lofty One,” he says; “I inhabit eternity.” Truly, this thought is enough to make the broken-hearted man creep into a mousehole to hide himself from such majesty! But see his heart, his condescending mind: I am for dwelling also with the one who has a broken heart, with the one who is of a contrite spirit. That is the man I would converse with; that is the man I will live with; that is the one, says God, whom I will choose for my companion. For to desire to dwell with someone implies all these things. And truly, of all the people in the world, none are acquainted with God, none understand what communion with him and what his teachings mean, but those who are of a broken and contrite heart. “He is nigh unto them that are of a broken spirit” (Ps 34:18). These are the ones meant in the fourteenth Psalm, where it is said, “The Lord looked down from heaven … to see if any did understand and seek God” (Ps 14:2), so that he might find somebody in the world with whom he might converse. For indeed there is no one else who either understands or can give their attention to listen to him. God, if I may put it this way, is forced to break people’s hearts before he can make them willing to cry to him, or willing that he should have anything to do with them. The rest shut their eyes, stop their ears, withdraw their hearts, or tell God to be gone (Job 21:14). But the broken in heart can give it attention. He has leisure, yes, leisure and will and understanding and everything; and therefore he is a fit man to have dealings with God. There is room also in this man’s house, in this man’s heart, in this man’s spirit, for God to dwell, for God to walk, for God to set up a kingdom.

Here, then, is a fitness between them. “Can two walk together,” says God, “except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). The broken-hearted man desires God’s company: “When wilt thou come unto me?” he says (Ps 101:2). The broken-hearted man loves to hear God speak and talk to him. Here is a fitness. “Make me,” he says, “to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice” (Ps 51:8). But here lies the glory: that the high and lofty One, the God who inhabits eternity and has a high and holy place for his habitation, should choose to dwell with the broken in heart and with those who are of a contrite spirit, and to be their companion. Yes, and here also is great comfort for such people.

4. God does not only prefer such a heart before all sacrifices, nor only esteem such a man above heaven and earth, nor yet only desire to be his acquaintance; he also reserves for him his chief comforts, his heart-reviving and soul-cherishing cordials. “I dwell,” he says, with such people to revive them, and to support and comfort them, “to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Isa 57:15). The broken-hearted man is a fainting man. He has his fainting spells, his sinking fits; he often faints away with pain and fear. He must be sustained with flagons and comforted with apples, or else he does not know what to do. He pines, he pines away in his iniquity, and nothing can keep him alive and make him well but the comforts and cordials of Almighty God (Ezek 33:10-11). Therefore God will dwell with such a person, to revive the heart, to revive the spirit: “To revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

God has cordials, but they are to comfort those who are cast down (2 Cor 7:6), and such are the broken-hearted. As for those who are whole, they have no need of the physician (Mark 2:17). It is the broken in spirit who stand in need of cordials. Physicians are men of no esteem except with those who feel their sickness. And this is one reason God is so little valued in the world: people have not been made sick by the wounding stroke of God. But when a man is wounded, has his bones broken, or is made sick and laid at the grave’s mouth, who is so highly esteemed by him as an able physician? What is so much desired as the cordials, comforts and suitable supplies of a physician skilled in such matters? And so it is with the broken-hearted man. He needs them, and God has prepared for him plenty of the comforts and cordials of heaven, to succor and relieve his sinking soul.

Therefore such a person lies under all the promises that hold succor and consolation for people who are sick and despondent under the sense of sin and the heavy wrath of God. And they, says God, shall be refreshed and revived by them. Yes, the promises are designed for them. That is why he has broken their hearts; that is why he has wounded their spirits: so that he might make them ready to relish his reviving cordials, so that he might minister his reviving comforts to them. For indeed, as soon as he has broken them, his heart yearns, and his compassions roll up and down within him, and will not allow him to go on afflicting. Ephraim was one of these. But as soon as God had struck him, see how his heart works toward him! “Is Ephraim,” he says, “my dear son?” That is, he is. “Is he a pleasant child?” That is, he is. “For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord” (Jer 31:18-20). This, therefore, is another demonstration.

5. As God prefers such a heart and esteems the man who has it above heaven and earth, and as he covets intimacy with such a person and prepares his cordials for him, so when he sent his Son Jesus into the world to be a Savior, he gave him a special charge to take care of such people. Yes, that was one of the main reasons he sent him down from heaven, anointed for his work on earth. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” he says, “because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted…” (Luke 4:18; Isa 61:1). That this is meant of Christ is confirmed by his own lips. For in the days of his flesh, when he was in the synagogue at Nazareth, he took this book in his hand and read this very passage to the people, and then told them that on that very day that Scripture was fulfilled in their ears (Luke 4:16-21).

But see, these are the souls whose welfare is planned in the heavens. God took counsel about their salvation, their deliverance, their health, before his Son came down from there. Does this not, therefore, demonstrate that a broken-hearted man, a man of a contrite spirit, is of great esteem with God? I have often wondered at David, that he should give Joab and the men of war a charge to take care that they dealt gently with that young rebel Absalom, his son (2 Sam 18:5). But that God, the high God, the God against whom we have sinned, should, as soon as he has struck, give his Son a command, a charge, a commission to take care of the broken in heart, to bind them up and heal them: this is what can never be sufficiently admired or wondered at by men or angels.

And as this was his commission, so he acted, as is clearly set forth in the parable of the man who fell among thieves. He went to him and poured wine and oil into his wounds. He bound him up, took him, set him on his own beast, brought him to an inn, and gave the host a charge to look well after him, with money in hand and a promise to repay him at his return for whatever further expense he might be put to while the man was under his care (Luke 10:30-35). See, then, the care God has for the broken in heart: he has given a charge to Christ his Son to look well after them, and to bind up and heal their wounds. See also the faithfulness of Christ, who does not hide this commission but reads it as soon as he enters on his ministry, and also sets about its practical part: “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (Ps 147:3).

And see again into whose care a broken heart and a contrite spirit has put this poor creature: he is under the care of God, the care and cure of Christ. If a man were sure that his disease had put him under the special care of the king and the queen, he still could not be sure of his life; he might die under their royal hands. Ah, but here is a man in the favor of God, and under the hand of Christ to be healed; and under Christ’s hand no one has ever yet died for lack of skill and power in him to save their life. Therefore this man must live. Christ has it in his commission not only to bind up his wounds but to heal him. He has explained it so himself in reading his commission. Therefore the one whose heart is broken, and who is of a contrite spirit, must not only be taken in hand but healed: healed of his pain, grief, sorrow, sin, and fears of death and hellfire. That is why he adds that he must give such people “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,” and must “comfort all that mourn” (Isa 61:2-3). This, I say, is in his commission. The broken-hearted man is put into his hand, and he has said himself that he will heal him. So he says of that same man, “I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners … and I will heal him” (Isa 57:18-19). And this is a fifth demonstration.

6. As God prefers such a heart and so esteems the man who has it, and as he desires his company, has provided his cordials for him, and has given a charge to Christ to heal him, so he has promised, in conclusion, to save him. “He saveth such as be of a contrite spirit,” or, as the margin has it, such as be “contrite of spirit” (Ps 34:18).

And this is the conclusion of all, for to save a man is the end of all special mercy. “He saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” To save is to forgive, for without forgiveness of sins we cannot be saved. To save is to preserve someone in this miserable world, and to deliver him from all those devils, temptations, snares and destructions that would destroy us body and soul forever, if we were not kept, if we were not preserved by God. To save is to bring a man, body and soul, to glory, and to give him an eternal mansion in heaven, so that he may dwell in the presence of this good God and the Lord Jesus, and sing to them the songs of his redemption forever and ever. This is what it is to be saved, and nothing less than this can complete the salvation of the sinner. Now this is to be the lot of the one who is of a broken heart, and the end God will bring about for the one who is of a contrite spirit. “He saveth such as be contrite of spirit.” He saves such! This is excellent!

But do the broken in spirit believe this? Can they imagine that this is the end God has designed them for, the end he intended to bring them to on the day he began to break their hearts? No, no; alas, they think quite the contrary. They are afraid that this is only the beginning of death, and a sign that they shall never see the face of God with comfort, either in this world or in the world to come. That is why they cry, “Cast me not away from thy presence” (Ps 51:11), or, Now I am “free among the dead whom God remembers no more” (Ps 88:4-5). For indeed, the breaking of the heart brings with it a visible appearance of the wrath of God, and a charge from heaven that drives the guilt of sin home to the conscience. To human reason this is very dreadful, for it cuts the soul down to the ground: “for a wounded spirit who can bear?” (Prov 18:14).

It also seems to this man now that this is only the beginning of hell, only the first step, as it were, down to the pit; when in truth all these things are only the beginnings of love, and only what makes way for life. The Lord kills before he makes alive (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6); he wounds before his hands make whole. Yes, he does the one in order to do the other, or because he means to do the other. He wounds because his purpose is to heal: “he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make whole” (Job 5:18). His design, I say, is the salvation of the soul. He scourges, he breaks the heart of every son whom he receives; and woe to the one whose heart God does not break!

And so I have proved what I asserted at first, namely, that a spirit rightly broken, a heart truly contrite, is an excellent thing to God. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 51:17). For this I say: First, this is evident because it is better than sacrifices, than all sacrifice. Second, the man who has it is of more esteem with God than heaven or earth. Third, God covets such a man for his intimate friend and house companion. Fourth, he reserves for them his cordials and spiritual comforts. Fifth, he has given his Son a charge, a commandment, to take care that the broken-hearted are healed, and he is resolved to heal them. Sixth, he has concluded that the broken-hearted, and those who are of a contrite spirit, shall be saved, that is, put in possession of the heavens.

I come now, in order, to show you what a broken heart and a contrite spirit are. This must be done, because in discovering this lies both the comfort of those who have it and the conviction of those who do not. Now, so that I may do this the better, I must set out and speak to these four things. First, I must show you what kind of heart that heart is which is not broken and not contrite. Second, I must show you how, or with what, the heart is broken and made contrite. Third, I will show you how it is, and what it is, when it is broken and made contrite. And fourth, last of all, I will give you some signs of a broken and contrite heart.

The Heart That Is Not Broken

First, then, for the first of these: what kind of heart is the heart that is not a broken heart, not a contrite heart?

1. The heart, before it is broken, is hard and stubborn, and obstinate against God and against the salvation of the soul (Zech 7:12; Deut 2:30; Deut 9:27).

2. It is a heart full of evil imaginings and darkness (Gen 6:5; Rom 1:21).

3. It is a heart that is deceitful and easily deceived, especially about things of eternal concern (Isa 44:20; Deut 11:16).

4. It is a heart that gathers iniquity and vanity to itself rather than anything that is good for the soul (Ps 41:6; Ps 94:11).

5. It is an unbelieving heart, and one that will turn away from God to sin (Heb 3:12; Deut 17:17).

6. It is a heart not prepared for God, since it is uncircumcised, nor prepared to receive his holy Word (2 Chr 12:14; Ps 78:8; Acts 7:51).

7. It is a heart that is not single but double. It will pretend to serve God, but all the while it will lean toward the devil and sin (Ps 12:2; Ezek 33:31).

8. It is a proud and defiant heart. It does not like to be controlled, even when the one controlling it is God himself (Ps 101:5; Prov 16:5; Mal 3:13).

9. It is a heart that will make room for Satan but will resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3; Acts 7:51).

10. In a word, “It is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” so wicked that no one can know it (Jer 17:9).

That the heart is like this before it is broken, and worse than I have described it, is plain enough from the whole course of the world. Where is the man whose heart has not been broken, and whose spirit is not contrite, who deals honestly with his own soul according to the Word of God? One mark of a right heart is that it is sound in God’s statutes (Ps 119:80), and honest (Luke 8:15). Now, an honest heart will not fob itself off, or let itself be fobbed off, with anything that will not pass as current money with the merchant. I mean, with anything that will not pass for saving grace at the day of judgment. But alas, alas! However honest they are with others, few men are honest with themselves. And yet the worst of deceivers is the one who deceives his own soul, as James puts it (Jas 1:22, 26), about the things of his own soul.

With What and How the Heart Is Broken

Second, I now come to show you with what, and how, the heart is broken and the spirit made contrite.

The instrument with which the heart is broken, and with which the spirit is made contrite, is the Word. “Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” (Jer 23:29). The rock in this text is the heart, which in another place is compared to an adamant, and adamant is harder than flint (Zech 7:11-12; Ezek 3:9). This rock, this adamant, this stony heart, is broken and made contrite by the Word. But it is so only when the Word is like a fire and like a hammer to break and melt it. And the Word is like a fire and a hammer to break the heart then, and only then, when it is wielded by the arm of God. No man can break the heart with the Word; no angel can break the heart with the Word; that is, if God holds back from backing it with mighty power from heaven. This is why Balaam went away without a heart rightly broken and truly contrite, even though an angel rebuked him. And this is why the Pharisees died in their sins, even though the Savior of the world rebuked them for those sins and warned them to turn from them. So, although the Word is the instrument with which the heart is broken, the heart is not broken with the Word until that Word is wielded by the might and power of God.

This is what made the prophet Isaiah, after long preaching, cry out that he had labored for nothing and in vain (Isa 49:4). And this is what made him cry to God “to rend the heavens and come down” (Isa 64:1-2), so that the mountains, the rocky hills, that is, the hearts, might be broken and melt at his presence. For he found by experience that no effective work could be done here unless the Lord put his hand to it. The Scriptures often point to this too, where they say, when the preachers preached effectively to the breaking of people’s hearts, “the Lord wrought with them” (Mark 16:20), and “the hand of the Lord was with them” (Acts 11:21), and the like.

Now, when the hand of the Lord is with the Word, then it is mighty. It is “mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Cor 10:4). Then it is as sharp as a sword in the soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). It sticks like an arrow in the hearts of sinners, causing the people to fall at his feet for mercy (Ps 110:3). Then it is, as I said before, like a fire and like a hammer to break this rock in pieces. And so the Word is spoken of in two ways: first, as it stands by itself; second, as it comes with power from heaven.

1. As it stands by itself, and is not backed by saving work from heaven, it is called the Word only (1 Thess 1:5-7), the bare Word (1 Cor 4:19-20), or as if it were only the word of men (1 Thess 2:13). That is because, then, it is handled only by men, and they are not able to make it accomplish that work. The Word of God, when it is only in a man’s hand, is like a father’s sword in the hand of a nursing infant. However well pointed that sword is, and however sharp its edges, it cannot now conquer a foe, or make an enemy fall and cry out for mercy, because it is only in the hand of the child. But now, let the same sword be put into the hand of a skillful father (and God is both skillful and able to wield his Word), and then the sinner, and then the proud helpers too, are both made to stoop and submit. Therefore, I say, though the Word is the instrument, by itself it does no saving good to the soul. The heart is not broken by it, nor the spirit made contrite. It only works death, and leaves people in the chains of their sins, bound over still more tightly to eternal condemnation (2 Cor 2:15-16).

2. But when it is backed by mighty power, then the same Word is like the roaring of a lion (Jer 25:30; Amos 1:2; Amos 3:8), like the piercing of a sword (Acts 2:37), like a burning fire in the bones (Jer 20:9), like thunder (Ps 29:3-9), and like a hammer that dashes everything to pieces. From this, then, we must conclude that whoever has heard the Word preached, and has not heard the voice of the living God in it, has not yet had their heart broken, nor their spirit made contrite for their sins.

And this leads me to the second thing, namely, to show how the heart is broken and the spirit made contrite by the Word. And truly, it is when the Word comes home with power. But this is still only general; so, more particularly:

1. The Word works effectively to this end when it finds out the sinner and his sin, and convinces him that it has found him out. So it was with our first father. When he had sinned, he tried to hide himself from God. He gets in among the trees of the garden, and there he hides himself. But even then, not thinking himself safe, he covers himself with fig leaves, and now he lies still. “Now God won’t find me,” he thinks, “or know what I have done.” But look! Before long he “hears the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.” And now, Adam, what do you mean to do? Why, he still skulks and hides his head, and still tries to lie undiscovered. But see, the voice cries out, “Adam!” and now he begins to tremble. “Adam, where art thou?” says God, and now Adam is made to answer (Gen 3:7-11). But the voice of the Lord God does not leave him there. No, it now begins to search him and to inquire into what he has done, and to unravel what he had wrapped up and covered, until it made him bare and naked in his own sight before the face of God. This, then, is what the Word does when it is wielded by the arm of God. It finds out the sinner and singles him out, and the sinner knows it. It finds out the sinner’s sins. It unravels his whole life. It strips him and lays him naked in his own sight before the face of God. Neither the sinner nor his wickedness can be hidden and covered any longer, and now the sinner begins to see what he never saw before.

2. Another instance of this is David, the man of our text. He sins, he sins grossly, he sins and hides it; yes, and tries to hide it from the face of God and man. Well, Nathan is sent to preach a sermon to him, both in general and in particular: in general, by a parable; in particular, by applying it directly to him. While Nathan preached only in general, David was as whole as a fish, and stood as right in his own eyes as if he had been as innocent and as harmless as any man alive. But God had a love for David, and so he commands his servant Nathan to strike home, not only to David’s ears but to David’s conscience. Well, now David must fall. Nathan says, “Thou art the man”; David says, “I have sinned”; and then his heart was broken and his spirit made contrite, as this psalm and our text show (2 Sam 12:1-13).

3. A third instance is Saul. He had heard many a sermon, and had become a great professor of religion; yes, he was more zealous than many of his peers. But his heart was never broken, nor his spirit ever made contrite, until he heard one preach from heaven, until he heard God, in the Word of God, inquiring into his sins. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” says Jesus, and then he can stand no longer. For then his heart broke; then he falls to the ground; then he trembles; then he cries out, “Who art thou, Lord?” and, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9).

Therefore, as I said, the Word works effectively to this end when it finds out the sinner and his sin, and also when it convinces him that it has found him out. Only I must add a caution here, for not every working of the Word on the conscience is saving, nor does every conviction end in the saving conversion of the sinner. What I mean, then, is only that working of the Word which not only shows the sinner the evil of his ways but brings his heart sincerely over to God through Christ. And this brings me to the third thing.

The Meaning of Broken and Contrite

Third, then, I have come to show you how the heart is, and what it is, when it is broken and made contrite. And this I must do by opening to you the two chief expressions in the text: first, what is meant by the word broken; second, what is meant by the word contrite.

1. As for this word broken, Tyndale renders it as a troubled heart, but I think there is more in it. So I take it to mean a heart disabled as to its former actions, just as a man whose bones are broken is disabled from running, leaping, wrestling, or anything else he used to do in his vanity. That is why what the text calls a broken heart, he calls his broken bones in Psalm 51:8: “Cause me,” he says, “to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” And why is the breaking of the heart compared to the breaking of the bones? Because, just as the outward man is disabled from what he used to do when the bones are broken, so when the spirit is broken, the inward man is disabled from the vanity and folly it once delighted in. That is why feebleness is joined with this brokenness of heart. “I am feeble,” he says, “and sore broken” (Ps 38:8). In other words: I have lost my strength and my former vigor for vain and sinful ways.

This, then, is what it is to have the heart broken: to have it lamed, disabled, and drawn away, by a sense of God’s wrath due to sin, from the course of life it used to be engaged in. And to show that this work is no fancy, and is never done without great trouble to the soul, it is compared to putting the bones out of joint (Ps 22:14), the breaking of the bones, the burning of the bones with fire (Jer 20:9; Lam 1:13), the drying up of the bones’ natural moisture (Prov 17:22), the vexing of the bones (Ps 6:2), and so on. All these are expressions dressed in images that undeniably declare that, to sense and feeling, a broken heart is a grievous thing.

2. What is meant by the word contrite. A contrite spirit is a penitent one, one sorely grieved and deeply sorrowful for the sins it has committed against God and to the damage of the soul. And this is how it is to be taken in all the places where a contrite spirit is mentioned, as in Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 57:15, and Isaiah 66:2.

A man who has brought a broken leg or arm on himself by his own folly is heartily sorry that he was ever so foolish as to get caught up in such foolish ways of idleness and vanity. In the same way, the one whose heart is broken with a sense of God’s wrath due to his sin has deep sorrow in his soul, and greatly repents that he was ever such a fool as to bring himself and his soul into so much sharp affliction by his rebellious doings. So, while others are amusing themselves with vanity, such a person calls his sin his greatest folly. “My wounds stink, and are corrupt,” says David, “because of my foolishness” (Ps 38:5). And again, “O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee” (Ps 69:5).

Whatever men say with their lips, if their hearts still need breaking, they cannot conclude that sin is a foolish thing. That is why it says, “The foolishness of fools is folly” (Prov 14:24). That is, the foolishness of some men is that they take pleasure in their sins; for their sins are their foolishness, and the folly of their soul lies in their approving of this foolishness. But the man whose heart is broken is not one of these. He cannot be one of these, any more than a man whose bones are broken can rejoice at being asked to play a game of football. So for those whom God has wounded, hearing others talk foolishly is a grief (Ps 69:26); or, as it says in another place, such words are “like the piercings of a sword” (Prov 12:18). This, therefore, is what I take to be the meaning of these two words, a broken and a contrite spirit.

The Signs of a Broken Heart

Fourth, and lastly, as to this, I now come more particularly to give you some signs of a broken heart, of a broken and a contrite spirit.

(1) A broken-hearted man, such as the text intends, is a man of feeling. He is brought to exercise all the senses of his soul. All others are dead and senseless, without any true feeling of what the broken-hearted man is aware of.

[1] He sees himself to be what others are ignorant of. That is, he sees himself to be not only a sinful man, but a man by nature in the gall and bond of sin. “In the gall of sin”: it is Peter’s expression to Simon (Acts 8:23), and it is a saying that applies to all men. For every man in a state of nature is in the gall of sin. He was shaped in it and conceived in it (Ps 51:5). It also has possession of the whole of his soul and body, and by that possession has infected them. This he sees, this he understands. Not every professing believer sees this, because the blessing of a broken heart is not given to everyone. David says, “There is no soundness in my flesh” (Ps 38:3), and Solomon suggests that a plague or running sore is in the very heart (1 Kgs 8:38). But not everyone perceives this. David says again that his “wounds stank, and were corrupted” (Ps 38:5), and that his “sore ran, and ceased not” (Ps 77:2). But the brutish man, the man whose heart was never broken, has no understanding of these things. The broken-hearted man, though, the man who has a broken spirit, sees. As the prophet puts it, he sees his sickness, he sees his wound: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound” (Hos 5:13). He sees it to his grief; he sees it to his sorrow.

[2] He feels what others have no sense of. He feels the arrows of the Almighty, and feels that they stick fast in him (Ps 38:2). He feels how sore and sick his poor soul is made by the blows of God’s hammer upon his heart to break it (Hos 5:13). He feels a burden lying unbearably upon his spirit. “Mine iniquities,” he says, “are gone over mine head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Ps 38:4). He also feels the heavy hand of God upon his soul, a thing unknown to carnal men. Being wounded, he feels pain, such pain as others cannot understand, because they are not broken. “My heart,” says David, “is sore pained within me.” Why so? Why, “The terrors of death are fallen upon me” (Ps 55:4). The terrors of death cause pain, yes, pain of the highest kind. That is why what is here called pains is in another place called pangs (Isa 21:3).

You know that broken bones cause pain, strong pain, yes, pain that will make a man or woman groan “with the groanings of a deadly wounded man” (Ezek 30:24). Soul pain is the sorest pain. Compared with it, the pain of the body is a very bearable thing (Prov 18:14). Now here is soul pain, here is heart pain; here we are speaking of a wounded, of a broken spirit. So this is pain felt to the sinking of the whole man, and no one but God can hold him up under it. There is death in this pain, death forever, unless God shows special mercy. This is what the pain will bring the soul to, and this is what the broken-hearted man feels. “The sorrows of death,” says David, “compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me, I found trouble and sorrow” (Ps 116:3). Yes, I’ll warrant you did, poor man; you found trouble and sorrow indeed! For the pains of hell and the sorrows of death are the most unbearable pains and sorrows of all. But the man whose heart is broken is acquainted with them.

[3] As he sees and feels, so he hears what adds to his woe and sorrow. You know that if a man has broken bones, he not only sees and feels, but often also hears things that increase his grief: that his wounds are incurable; that his bone has not been set right; that there is danger of gangrene; that he may be lost for want of proper care. These are the voices, the sayings, that haunt the house of someone whose bones are broken. And a broken-hearted man knows what I mean by this. He hears what makes his lips quiver, and at the sound of it he seems to feel rottenness enter into his bones. He trembles within himself (Hab 3:16), and wishes that he might hear joy and gladness, so that the bones, the heart and spirit that God has broken, may rejoice (Ps 51:8). He thinks he hears God say, and the devil say, and his conscience say, and all good men whisper among themselves, that there is no help for him from God. Job heard this, David heard this, Heman heard this; and this is the common sound in the ears of the broken-hearted.

[4] The broken-hearted smell what others cannot scent. Alas! Sin never smelled to any man alive as it smells to the broken-hearted. You know that wounds will stink, but there is no stink like that of sin to the broken-hearted man. His own sins stink, and so do the sins of all the world to him. Sin is like carrion: it is a stinking thing; yes, it has the worst of smells, though some men like it. But none are offended by its scent except God and the broken-hearted sinner. “My wounds stink, and are corrupt,” he says (Ps 38:5): both in God’s nostrils and in my own. But alas! Who smells the stink of sin? None of the carnal world. Like carrion crows, they seek it, love it, and eat it as a child eats bread. “They eat up the sin of my people,” says God, “and they set their heart on their iniquity” (Hos 4:8). This, I say, they do, because they do not smell the nauseating scent of sin. You know that what is nauseating to the smell cannot be pleasant to the taste. The broken-hearted man finds that sin is nauseating, and so he cries out that it stinks. At times such people even think the smell of fire, of fire and brimstone, is upon them, so aware are they of the wages due to sin.

[5] The broken-hearted man is also a tasting man. Wounds, if they are sore and full of pain, of great pain, sometimes alter a man’s taste. They make him think that his food, his drink, yes, even his medicines, have a bitter taste. How many times the poor people of God, who are the only ones who know what a broken heart means, cry out that gravel, wormwood, gall and vinegar were made their food (Lam 3:15-16, 19)! This gravel, gall and wormwood is the true taste of sin here in time. And to make them loathe it forever, God feeds them with it till their hearts both ache and break with it. Wickedness tastes pleasant to the world; that is why it is said that they feed on ashes, they feed on the wind (Isa 44:20; Hos 12:1). The carnal world thinks lusts, or anything vile and worthless, taste good, as is set out most notably in the parable of the prodigal son: “He would fain have filled his belly,” says our Lord, “with the husks that the swine did eat” (Luke 15:16). But the broken-hearted man has a true sense of taste concerning these things, even though his soul, because of its anguish, loathes all manner of dainty food (Job 33:19-20; Ps 107:17-19).

So I have shown you one sign of a broken-hearted man: he is a man of feeling. All the senses of his soul are awakened. He can see, hear, feel, taste and smell, and that as no one but himself can do. I come now to another sign of a broken and contrite man.

(2) And that is, he is a very sorrowful man. This, like the other, is natural. It is natural for someone in pain, someone whose bones are broken, to be a grieved and sorrowful man. He is not one of the jolly people of the day; nor can he be, for his bones, his heart, his heart is broken.

[1] He is sorry because he feels and finds in himself a depraved nature. I told you before that he is aware of it, that he sees it and feels it; and here I say that he is sorry for it. It is this that makes him call himself a wretched man (Rom 7:24). It is this that makes him loathe and abhor himself (Job 42:5-6). It is this that makes him blush, blush before God, and be ashamed (Ezek 36:31). He finds by nature no form nor comeliness in himself. On the contrary, the more he looks in the mirror of the Word, the uglier and more deformed he sees that sin has made him. Not everybody sees this, so not everybody is sorry for it. But the man who is broken in heart sees that sin has corrupted and marred him and made him full of lewdness and wickedness. He sees that in him, that is, in his flesh, dwells no good thing. And this makes him sorry, yes, it makes him sorry at heart. A man whose bones are broken finds that he is spoiled, marred, and disabled from doing as he would and should, and he is grieved and made sorry by it.

Many are sorry for actual transgressions, because they often bring them to shame before men. But few are sorry for the defects that sin has made in their nature, because they do not see those defects themselves. A man cannot be sorry for the sinful defects of his nature until he sees that they have made him contemptible to God. And nothing but a sight of God can make him truly see what he is, and so be heartily sorry for being so. Now “mine eye seeth thee,” says Job; now “I abhor myself” (Job 42:5-6). “Woe is me, for I am undone,” says the prophet, “for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord” (Isa 6:1-5). And it was this that made Daniel say that his “comeliness was turned in him into corruption,” for he had now seen the vision of the Holy One (Dan 10:8). Visions of God break the heart because, by the sight the soul then has of his perfections, it sees its own infinite and unspeakable disproportion to him, because of the vileness of its nature.

Suppose a company of ugly, unsightly, deformed people lived together in one house. And suppose they had never yet seen any man or woman but themselves, or anyone clothed with the splendors and perfections of nature. They would not be able to compare themselves with anyone but themselves, and consequently would not be troubled and made sorry for their unsightly natural defects. But now bring them out of their cells and holes of darkness, where they have been shut up by themselves, and let them take a view of the splendor and perfections of beauty that are in others. Then, if ever, they will be sorry and downcast at the sight of their own defects. This is the case. Men are marred, spoiled, corrupted and depraved by sin, but they may live by themselves in the dark. They see neither God, nor angels, nor saints in their excellent nature and beauty, and so they are apt to count their own unsightly parts their ornaments and their glory. But now let such people, as I said, see God, see saints, or the ornaments of the Holy Spirit, and see themselves as they are without them, and then they cannot help being moved by their own deformity and sorry for it. When the Lord Christ showed only a little of his excellency before his servant Peter’s face, it brought the depravity of Peter’s nature up before him, to his great confusion and shame. It made him cry out to Christ in the midst of all his companions, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:1-8).

This, therefore, is the cause of a broken heart: a sight of divine excellencies, and a sense that I am a poor, depraved, spoiled, defiled wretch. And this sight, having broken the heart, produces sorrow in the broken-hearted.

[2] The broken-hearted man is a sorrowful man because he finds the depravity of his nature strong in him, so strong that it puts itself forward to oppose and overthrow what his changed mind prompts him to do. “When I would do good,” says Paul, “evil is present with me” (Rom 7:21). Evil is present to oppose, to resist, and to rise up against the desires of my soul. The man whose bones are broken may still have a mind to work hard at a lawful and honest calling. But he finds by experience that a weakness goes with his present condition that strongly resists his good efforts. At this he shakes his head and complains, and with sorrow of heart he sighs and says, I “cannot do the thing that I would” (Rom 7:15; Gal 5:17). I am weak, I am feeble. I am not only depraved, but by that depravity I am deprived of the ability to carry out good impulses, good intentions and desires, to completion. Oh, he says, I am ready to halt; my sorrow is continually before me!

You must know that the broken-hearted man loves God, loves his own soul, loves good, and hates evil. Now, for such a person to find in himself an opposition and continual contradiction to this holy passion must cause sorrow, godly sorrow, as the apostle Paul calls it. For such people are made sorry in a godly way. To be sorry that your nature is depraved with sin, and that through this depravity you are deprived of the ability to do what the Word and your holy mind prompt you to do, is to be sorry in a godly way. For this sorrow works something in you that you will never have cause to repent of, no, not for all eternity (2 Cor 7:9-11).

[3] The broken-hearted man is sorry for the breaches that the depravity of his nature has made in his life and conduct. And this was the case of the man in our text. The vileness of his nature had broken out so as to defile his life, and to make him, at this time, base in his conduct. This, this was what broke his heart all to pieces. He saw that in this he had dishonored God, and that cut him: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight” (Ps 51:4). He saw that in this he had caused the enemies of God to open their mouths and blaspheme, and this cut him to the heart. This made him cry, I have sinned against you, Lord. This made him say, “I will declare mine iniquity, I will be sorry for my sin” (Ps 38:18).

When a man has determined to do something, when his heart is set on it (and the broken-hearted man is determined to glorify God), then an obstruction to that purpose, the spoiling of this work, makes him sorrowful. Hannah longed for children but could not have them, and this made her “a woman of a sorrowful spirit” (1 Sam 1:15). A broken-hearted man would be right inwardly, and do what is right outwardly; but he feels, he finds, he sees that he is hindered, hindered at least in part. This makes him sorrowful. Under this he groans, groans earnestly, being burdened with his imperfections (2 Cor 5:1-3). You know that someone with broken bones has many imperfections, and, as was said before, is more aware of them than any other man. This makes him sorrowful, yes, and makes him conclude that he will go softly all his days in the bitterness of his soul (Isa 38:15).

(3) The man with a broken heart is a very humble man; or, to put it another way, true humility is a sign of a broken heart. That is why brokenness of heart, contrition of spirit and humbleness of mind are put together: “To revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Isa 57:15).

To follow our comparison: suppose a man in bodily health is stout and strong, one who fears and cares for no one. Yet let this man have only a leg or an arm broken, and his courage is quelled. He is now so far from blustering at anyone that he is afraid of every little child who even offers to touch him. Now he will plead with the feeblest person who has anything to do with him to treat him and handle him gently. Now he has become a child in courage, a child in fear, and humbles himself as a little child.

Why, so it is with the man who is of a broken and contrite spirit. There was a time, indeed, when he could bluster, even bluster against God himself, saying, “What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?” or, What profit will I have if I keep his commandments? (Job 21:15; Mal 3:13-14). Yes! But now his heart is broken. God has wrestled with him and given him a fall, to the breaking of his bones, his heart. And now he crouches, now he cringes, now he begs God not only to do him good, but to do it with tender hands. “Have mercy upon me, O God,” said David; yes, “according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions” (Ps 51:1).

He sees that he stands in need not only of mercy, but of the tenderest mercies. God has several sorts of mercies, some rougher, some more tender. God can save a man and yet give him a dreadful way to heaven! The broken-hearted man sees this, and the broken-hearted man dreads this, and so he pleads for the tenderest sort of mercies. And here we read of God’s gentle dealing, that he is very pitiful, and that he deals tenderly with his own. But no one knows the reason for such expressions except the man who is broken-hearted. He has his sores, his running sores, his stinking sores; so he is in pain, and therefore longs to be handled tenderly. In this way God has broken the pride of his spirit and humbled the loftiness of man. And his humility appears further:

[1] In his thankfulness for natural life. At night, when he goes to bed, he reckons that, like a lion, God will tear him to pieces before the morning light (Isa 38:13). No judgment has fallen on others but he reckons that by rights he should be swallowed up by it. “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments” (Ps 119:120). But when he sees a day added to his life, and that in the morning he is still on this side of hell, he cannot help taking notice of it and acknowledging it as a special favor, saying, God be thanked for holding my soul in life till now, and for keeping my life back from the destroyer (Job 33:22; Ps 56:13; Ps 86:13).

Before his heart is broken, a man counts his time his own, and so he spends it lavishly on every idle thing. His soul is far from fear, because the rod of God is not upon him. But when he sees himself under the wounding hand of God, or when God, like a lion, is breaking all his bones, then he humbles himself before him and falls at his feet. Now he has learned to count every moment a mercy, and every small morsel a mercy.

[2] Now also the least hope of mercy for his soul, oh, how precious it is! He who used to treat the gospel as table scraps, and valued promises no more than stubble, and the words of God no more than rotten wood, now, with what eyes he looks on the promise! Yes, he counts a mere “perhaps” of mercy richer and worth more than the whole world. Now, as we say, he is glad to jump at a crust. Now, to be a dog in God’s house is counted better by him than to “dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Ps 84:10; Matt 15:26-27; Luke 15:17-19).

[3] Now he who used to look scornfully on the people of God, yes, who used to scorn to give them so much as a kindly glance, admires them and bows before them. He is ready to lick the dust of their feet, and would count it his greatest, his highest honor to be as one of the least of them. “Make me as one of thy hired servants,” he says (Luke 15:19).

[4] Now he is, in his own eyes, the greatest fool alive, because he sees that he has been so mistaken in his ways, and has as yet only a little true knowledge of God, if any. Everyone now, he says, has more knowledge of God than I; everyone serves him better than I (Ps 73:21-22; Prov 30:2-3).

[5] Now if only he may be one, though the least, in the kingdom of heaven! Now if only he may be one, though the least, in the church on earth! Now if only he may be loved, though the least beloved of the saints! How highly he values that!

[6] Now, when he talks with God or men, how he lowers himself before them! If with God, how he accuses himself, and loads himself with confessions of the villainies he committed in the days when he was the enemy of God! “Lord,” said Paul, that contrite man, “I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee. And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him” (Acts 22:19-20). Yes, I punished your saints “oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities” (Acts 26:9-11).

Also, when he comes to speak to saints, how he makes himself vile before them! “I am,” he says, “the least of the apostles; that am not meet to be called an apostle” (1 Cor 15:9); I am “less than the least of all saints” (Eph 3:8); I was a blasphemer, I was a persecutor, and injurious (1 Tim 1:13). What humility, what self-abasing thoughts a broken heart produces! When David danced before the ark of God, how he also uncovered himself, to the displeasure of his wife! And when she taunted him for what he had done, he said, “It was before the Lord …” and “I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight” (2 Sam 6:20-22). Oh, the man who is, or who has been, truly broken in his spirit, and who is of a contrite heart, is a lowly, humble man.

(4) The broken-hearted man is a man who sees himself to be poor in spiritual things. Therefore, just as humble and contrite are put together in the Word, so are poor and contrite: “But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit” (Isa 66:1-2). And here we still pursue our metaphor. A wounded man, a man with broken bones, concludes that his condition is poor, very poor. Ask him how he is doing, and he answers, “Truly, neighbors, in a very poor condition!” You also have the spiritual poverty of those who have, or have had their hearts broken, and who have been of contrite spirits, much spoken of in the Word. And they go by two names that distinguish them from others. They are called thy poor, that is, God’s poor (Ps 72:2; Ps 74:19); and they are also called “the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3). Now the man who is poor in his own eyes (for he is the one we are now speaking of, and the broken-hearted man is such a one) is aware of his needs. He knows he cannot help himself, and so he is forced to be content to live on the charity of others. That is how it is in nature, and that is how it is in grace.

[1] The broken-hearted man now knows his needs, and he did not know them until now. It is like the man with a broken bone: he felt no need of a bone-setter until he knew his bone was broken. His broken bone makes him know it; his pain and anguish make him know it. And so it is in spiritual things. Now he sees that to be poor indeed is to lack the sense of God’s favor; for his great pain is a sense of wrath, as has been shown before. And the voice of joy would heal his broken bones (Ps 51:8). Two things, he thinks, would make him rich: first, a right and title to Jesus Christ and all his benefits; and second, saving faith in him. Those who are spiritually rich are rich in him, and in faith in him (2 Cor 8:9; Jas 2:5).

The first of these gives us a right to the kingdom of heaven, and the second gives the soul the comfort of it. And the broken-hearted man lacks the sense and knowledge of his interest in these. That he knows he lacks them is plain; but to know that he has them is something he has not yet attained. That is why he says, “The poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst” (Isa 41:17). There is none in their sight; none in their sight for them. So David, when he had his broken heart, felt that he needed washing, he needed purging, he needed to be made white. He knew that spiritual riches lay there, but he did not so clearly see that God had washed and purged him. Indeed, he was rather afraid that everything was slipping away: that he was in danger of being cast out of God’s presence, and that the Spirit of grace would be taken from him altogether (Ps 51). That is the first thing: the broken-hearted man is poor because he knows his needs.

[2] The broken-hearted man is poor because he knows he cannot help himself to what he knows he needs. The man with a broken arm knows it is broken, and he also knows he cannot set it himself. This, then, is a second thing that shows a man is poor; without it he is not poor. For suppose a man lacks ever so much: if he can only help himself, if he can provide for himself, if he can supply his own wants out of what he has, he cannot be a poor man. Indeed, the more he lacks, the greater his riches, if he can supply his own wants out of his own purse.

The poor man, then, is the one who knows his spiritual need and also knows he cannot supply it or help himself. But the broken-hearted man knows this, and therefore in his own eyes he is the only poor man. True, he may have something of his own, but it will not supply his need, and so he is a poor man still. I have sacrifices, says David, but you do not desire them; therefore my poverty remains (Ps 51:16). Lead is not gold; lead is not current money with the merchants. No one has spiritual gold to sell but Christ (Rev 3:18). What can a man do to procure Christ, or to procure faith or love? Even if he had ever so much of his own carnal excellence, not one penny of it would pass as payment in the market where grace is to be had. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned” (Song 8:7).

The broken-hearted man sees this, and so he sees himself to be spiritually poor. True, he has a broken heart, and that is greatly valued by God. But that does not come from any goodness in nature; it is a gift, a work of God, and it is “the sacrifices of God.” Besides, a man cannot rest content with that, for by its very nature it only shows him that he is poor, and that his needs are such as he himself cannot supply. Besides, there is little ease in a broken heart.

[3] The broken-hearted man is poor, and sees it, because he finds that he is now unable to live any other way but by begging. David turned to this, though he was a king; for he knew that, as to his soul’s health, he could live no other way. “This poor man cried,” he says, “and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Ps 34:6). And this leads me to the fifth sign.

(5) Another sign of a broken heart is crying, crying out. Pain, you know, will make a person cry. Go to those who are suffering the anguish of broken bones, and see whether they do not cry; anguish makes them cry. This, this is what quickly follows, once your heart is broken and your spirit truly made contrite.

[1] I say, anguish will make you cry. “Trouble and anguish,” says David, “have taken hold on me” (Ps 119:143). Anguish, you know, naturally provokes crying. Now, as a broken bone has anguish, so a broken heart has anguish. That is why the pains of one who has a broken heart are compared to the pangs of a woman in labor (John 16:20-22).

Anguish will make a person cry alone, cry to himself; and this is called bemoaning oneself. “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself,” says God (Jer 31:18). That is, while he was under the breaking, chastening hand of God. “Thou hast chastised me,” he says, “and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke.” This is also what he meant who said, “I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise.” And why? Why, “My heart is sore pained within me” (Ps 55:2-4).

This is self-bemoaning: people bemoaning themselves in secret and out-of-the-way places. You know it is common for those who are in the grip of anguish, even when all alone, to cry out to themselves about their present pain, saying, “Oh, my leg! Oh, my arm! Oh, my belly!” Or, like the son of the Shunammite, “My head! my head!” (2 Kgs 4:19). Oh, the groans, the sighs, the cries that the broken-hearted have when they are by themselves, alone! “Oh,” they say, “my sins! my sins! my soul! my soul! How loaded down I am with guilt! How surrounded I am with fear! Oh, this hard, this desperate, this unbelieving heart! Oh, how sin defiles my will, my mind, my conscience!” “I am afflicted and ready to die” (Ps 88:15).

If some of you carnal people could only get behind the bedroom door and hear Ephraim when he is at the work of bemoaning himself, it would leave you amazed. You would hear him bewail the very sin in himself that you take delight in. You would hear him bemoan his misspent time, while you spend all of yours pursuing your filthy lusts. You would hear him offended with his own heart because it will not comply better with God’s holy will, while you are afraid of God’s Word and ways, and never think yourselves better off than when you are farthest from God. The unruliness of their passions and lusts often drives the broken-hearted into a corner, to bemoan themselves like this.

[2] As they cry out in this bemoaning way about themselves and to themselves, so they also make their outcries about themselves and against themselves to others; as she said in another case, “Behold and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow” (Lam 1:12). Oh, the bitter cries and complaints the broken-hearted have, and make to one another! Each one keeps imagining that his own wounds are the deepest, and his own sores the fullest of anguish and the hardest to cure. They say: if our iniquities are upon us, and we pine away in them, how then can we live? (Ezek 33:10).

Once, when I was at the house of an honest woman, after a pause I asked her how she was. She said, “Very badly.” I asked her if she was sick. She answered, “No.” “What, then,” I said, “are any of your children ill?” She told me, “No.” “What,” I said, “is something wrong with your husband, or are you going down in the world?” “No, no,” she said, “but I am afraid I shall not be saved.” And she broke out with a heavy heart, saying, “Ah, Goodman Bunyan! Christ and a pitcher! If I had Christ, even if I went and begged my bread with a pitcher, it would be better with me than I think it is now!” This woman had her heart broken; this woman wanted Christ; this woman was concerned for her soul. There are only a few women, rich women, who count Christ and a pitcher better than the world, their pride and their pleasures. This woman’s cries deserve to be recorded. It was a cry that carried in it a sense not only of the want of Christ but also of his worth. This cry, “Christ and a pitcher,” made a melodious noise in the ears of the very angels!

But, I say, few women cry out like this. Few women are so in love with their own eternal salvation that they are willing to part with all their lusts and vanities for Jesus Christ and a pitcher. Good Jacob was like this too: If the Lord, he said, will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, then he shall be my God. Indeed, he vowed it would be so: “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on; so that I come again to my father’s house in peace: then shall the Lord be my God” (Gen 28:20-21).

[3] As they bemoan themselves, and make their complaints to one another, so they cry to God. “O God,” said Heman, “I have cried day and night before thee.” But when? Why, when his soul was full of trouble and his life drew near to the grave (Ps 88:1-3). Or, as it says in another place, out of the deep (Ps 130:1), “out of the belly of hell cried I” (Jonah 2:2). By such words they express how painful a condition they were in when they cried.

See how God himself words it. “My pleasant portion,” he says, has become “a desolate wilderness, and being desolate it mourneth unto me” (Jer 12:10-11). And this too is natural to those whose hearts are broken. Where does a child go when it gets hurt, but to its father, to its mother? Where does it lay its head but in their laps? Into whose bosom does it pour out its complaint, above all, but into the bosom of its father or its mother, because there is tenderness there, there is pity, there is relief and help? And so it is with those whose bones, whose hearts, are broken. It is natural to them; they must cry; they cannot help crying to him. “Lord, heal me,” said David, “for my bones are vexed; Lord, heal me, for my soul is also sore vexed” (Ps 6:1-3). Whoever cannot cry feels no pain, sees no need, fears no danger, or else is dead.

(6) Another sign of a broken heart and a contrite spirit is that it trembles at God’s Word: “To him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my Word” (Isa 66:2).

The Word of God is a Word that fills a broken-hearted man with awe. Solomon says, “The word of a king is as the roaring of a lion” (Prov 19:12; Prov 20:2); and if so, what is the Word of God? For by the king’s wrath and fear, Solomon means the authoritative word of a king. We have a proverb, “The burnt child dreads the fire, the whipped child fears the rod”; even so the broken-hearted man fears the Word of God. So you find special notice taken of those who tremble at God’s Word: they are the ones who keep among the godly; they are the ones who keep within bounds; they are the ones most ready to mourn, and to stand in the gap when God is angry, and to turn his wrath away from a people.

It is a sign that the Word of God has found a place and worked powerfully when the heart trembles at it, is afraid, and stands in awe of it. When Joseph’s mistress tempted him to lie with her, he was afraid of the Word of God. “How then can I do this great wickedness,” he said, “and sin against God?” (Gen 39:7-9). He stood in awe of God’s Word and dared not do it, because he kept in mind what a dreadful thing it was to rebel against God’s Word. When old Eli heard that the ark was taken, his very heart trembled within him; for he read in that sad loss that God was angry with Israel, and he knew that the anger of God was a great and terrible thing (1 Sam 4:13). When Samuel went to Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled; for they feared he had come to them with some sad message from God, and they had known the dread of such things before (1 Sam 16:1-4). When Ezra wanted a time of mourning in Israel for the sins of the land, he sent word, and there came to him “every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgressions of those that had been carried away” (Ezra 9:4).

There is, I say, a kind of people who tremble at the words of God and are afraid of doing anything contrary to them; but they are only those whose souls and spirits the Word has dealt with. As for the rest, they are resolved to go on in their own course, let God say what he will. “As for the word” of the Lord, rebellious Israel said to Jeremiah, “that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth” (Jer 44:16-17). But do you think these people ever felt the power and majesty of the Word of God breaking their hearts? No, truly. Had that been so, they would have trembled at the words of God; they would have been afraid of the words of God. God may command some people whatever he will, and they will still do as they please. What do they care for God? What do they care for his Word? Neither threats nor promises, neither punishments nor favors, will make them obey the Word of God; and all because they have not felt its power, and their hearts have not been broken by it. When King Josiah merely read in God’s Book what punishment God had threatened against rebellious Israel, though he himself was a holy and good man, he humbled himself, “he rent his clothes,” and wept before the Lord, and was afraid of the judgment threatened (2 Kgs 22; 2 Chr 34). For he knew what a dreadful thing the Word of God is. Some men, as I said before, dare do anything, however much the Word of God is against it; but those who tremble at the Word dare not do so. No, they must make the Word the rule for all they do. They must go to the Holy Bible and inquire there what may and may not be done, for they tremble at the Word.

This, then, is another sign, a true sign, that the heart has been broken: when the heart is made afraid of the Word and trembles at it (Acts 9:4-6; Acts 16:29-30). Trembling at the Word is caused by believing what is deserved, what is threatened, and what will come if repentance does not prevent it; and so the heart melts and breaks before the Lord.

I come, in the next place, to speak to this question.

But what necessity is there that the heart must be broken? Can a man not be saved unless his heart is broken? I answer: setting aside secret things, which belong to God alone, there is a necessity that the heart be broken in order to salvation, because a man will not sincerely comply with the means that lead to it until his heart is broken. For consider the following.

1. Take man as he comes into the world. As to spiritual things, as to the things of the gospel, in which man’s eternal happiness chiefly lies, he is like one dead. He is so stupefied, and so wholly taken up with himself, that he is unconcerned with them. Nor can any call or warning that does not carry a heart-breaking power with it bring him to a proper consideration of his present state, and so to an effectual desire to be saved.

God has shown this in many ways. He has threatened men with temporal judgments; yes, he has sent such judgments upon them, once and again, over and over, but they are not enough. What! he says, “I have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities; I have withholden the rain from you; I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; I have sent among you the pestilence; I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord” (Amos 4:6-11). See here! Here is judgment upon judgment, stroke after stroke, punishment after punishment, but none of it is enough unless the heart is broken. Yes, another prophet seems to say that such things, instead of converting the soul, set it further off. Unless heart-breaking work goes along with such strokes, “Why should ye be stricken any more?” he says; “ye will revolt more and more” (Isa 1:5).

Man’s heart is fenced; it has grown thick and dull. There is a skin that, like a coat of mail, has wrapped it up and enclosed it on every side. Unless this skin, this coat of mail, is cut off and taken away, the heart remains untouched and whole, and so unconcerned, whatever judgments or afflictions light upon the body (Matt 13:15; Acts 28:27). This thing that I call the coat of mail, the fence of the heart, has two great names in Scripture. It is called “the foreskin of the heart” (Deut 10:16), and the armor in which the devil trusts (Luke 11:22).

Because these shield and fence the heart from all gospel doctrine, and from all the punishments of the law, nothing can reach it until they are removed. Therefore, in order to conversion, the heart is said to be circumcised; that is, this foreskin is taken away, and this coat of mail is stripped off as plunder. “I will circumcise thy heart,” he says, “to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart” (and then the devil’s goods are plundered) “that thou mayst live” (Deut 30:6; Luke 11:22).

And now the heart lies open. Now the Word will prick, cut, and pierce it; and being cut, pricked, and pierced, it bleeds, it faints, it falls, and it dies at the foot of God, unless it is held up by the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ. Conversion, you know, begins at the heart; but if the heart is so secured by sin and Satan, as I have said, all judgments are in vain as long as it stays that way. Hence Moses, after he had given the children of Israel a long account of mercy and judgment, suggests that the great thing was still lacking in them. And that thing was a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to that very day (Deut 29:2-4). Their hearts were not yet touched to the quick. They had not been awakened and wounded by the holy Word of God, and made to tremble at its truth and terror.

But I say, before the heart is touched, pricked, made to smart, and so on, how can anyone think, however great the danger, that it should repent, cry, bow, and break at the foot of God, and plead there for mercy? And yet this is what it must do; for so God has ordained, and so God has appointed it, and men cannot be saved without it. But, I say, can a man who is spiritually dead, a stupefied man whose heart is past feeling, do this before his dead and stupid heart is awakened to see and feel its state, and its misery without it?

2. Again, take man as he comes into the world, and however wise he is in worldly and temporal things, he is still a fool as to what is spiritual and heavenly. Hence Paul says, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him,” because he is indeed a fool to them; “neither,” says the text, “can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14). But how must this fool now be made wise? Why, wisdom must be put into his heart (Job 38:36). Now, no one can put it there but God. And how does he put it there, except by making room for it, by taking away the thing that hinders, which is the folly and madness that naturally dwells there? But how does he take that away, except by severely chastising the man’s soul for it, until he has made him weary of it? The whip and the lash are provided for the natural fool, and so it is for the one who is a fool spiritually (Prov 19:29).

Solomon hints that it is a hard thing to make a fool become wise: “Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him” (Prov 27:22). By this it appears that it is a hard thing to make a fool a wise man. To pound someone in a mortar is a dreadful thing, to pound him there with a pestle; and yet it seems that a whip, a mortar, and a pestle are the way. And if this is the way to make someone wise in this world, and if all this will hardly do it, how must the fool who is a fool in spiritual things be whipped and beaten and stripped before he is made wise in them? Yes, his heart must be put into God’s mortar and beaten there; yes, pounded there with the pestle of the law, before it loves to listen to heavenly things.

It is a great word in Jeremiah: “Through deceit,” that is, folly, “they refuse to know me, saith the Lord.” And what follows? Why, “Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, behold I will melt them, and try them,” that is, with fire, “for how shall I do for the daughter of my people” (Jer 9:6-7). I will melt them: I will put them into my furnace, and there I will try them, and there I will make them know me, says the Lord.

When David was under spiritual chastisement for his sin, and had his heart under the breaking hand of God, then he said that God would make him know wisdom (Ps 51:6). Now he was in the mortar; now he was in the furnace; now he was bruised and melted. Yes, now his bones, his heart, were breaking, and now his folly was departing. Now, he says, “thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” If I know anything of the way of God with us fools, there is nothing else that will make us wise men; yes, a thousand breakings will not make us as wise as we should be.

We say, “Wisdom is not good until it is bought”; and the one who buys it, in the sense that proverb intends, usually smarts for it. The fool is wise in his own opinion; so a double difficulty stands in his way before he can be wise indeed. Not only his folly but his wisdom must be removed from him. And how shall that happen, except by the ripping up of his heart through some sharp conviction that may show him plainly that his wisdom is his folly, and the very thing that will undo him? A fool loves his folly; he is as much in love with it as if it were treasure. Now then, it must be a great thing that makes a fool forsake his folly. The foolish will not weigh, nor consider, nor compare wisdom with their folly. “Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom” (Prov 15:21). “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly” (Prov 26:11). So unwilling are they, even when they are driven from it, to let it go, to let it depart from them.

Therefore it takes a great deal to make a man a Christian. For in that respect every man is a fool; yes, the greatest fool, the most unconcerned fool, the most self-willed fool of all fools; yes, one who will not be turned from his folly except by the breaking of his heart. David was one of these fools; Manasseh was one of these fools; Saul, otherwise called Paul, was one of these fools; and so was I, and the biggest of them all.

3. Take man as he comes into the world, and he is not only a dead man and a fool, but a proud man also. Pride is one of the sins that first shows itself in children; yes, it grows up with them and mixes itself into all they do. But it lies most hidden and most deep in man where the concerns of his soul are at stake. For the nature of sin, as sin, is not only to be vile but to hide its vileness from the soul. Hence many think they do well when they sin. Jonah thought he did well to be angry with God (Jonah 4:9). The Pharisees thought they did well when they said that Christ had a devil (John 8:48). And Paul truly thought that he ought to do many things against, or contrary to, the name of Jesus, which he also did with great madness (Acts 26:9-10).

And so sin puffs men up with pride, and with a conceit of themselves, so that they think they are a thousand times better than they are. Hence they think they are the children of God when they are the children of the devil (John 8:41-44), and that they are something as to Christianity when they neither are such, nor know what it is that they must have to make them such (Gal 6:3).

Now, where does this come from but from pride, and a self-conceit, and a notion that their state is good for another world, when they are still in their sins and under the curse of God? Yes, and this pride is so strong and high, and yet so hidden in them, that all the ministers in the world cannot persuade them that the thing in which they are so confident is pride, not grace. Hence they slight all the reproofs, rebukes, threatenings, or admonitions pressed upon them to prevail with them to take heed that they are not deceived in this. “Hear ye,” says the prophet, “and give ear: be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken.” “But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride” (Jer 13:15-17). And what was the outcome? Why, all the proud men still held out and kept up their resistance to God and his holy prophet (Jer 43:2).

Nor is there anything that will prevail with these people to the saving of their souls until their hearts are broken. David, after he had defiled Bathsheba and slain her husband, still boasted himself in his justice and holiness. He would by all means have the man put to death who had only taken the poor man’s lamb, when, alas, poor soul, he himself was the great transgressor. But would he believe it? No, no; he insisted on vindicating himself as one who did justly. Nor would he be made to fall until Nathan, by authority from God, told him that he was the man whom he himself had condemned. “Thou art the man,” Nathan said. At that word David’s conscience was awakened and his heart wounded, and so his soul was made to fall under the burden of his guilt, at the feet of the God of heaven, for mercy (2 Sam 12:1-13).

Ah, pride, pride! You are the thing that holds many a man in the chains of his sins. You are the one, you cursed self-conceit, that keeps them from believing that their state is damnable. “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God” (Ps 10:4). And if there is so much in the pride of his countenance, what is there, do you think, in the pride of his heart? Therefore Job says that it is to hide pride from man, and so to save his soul from hell, that God chastens him with pain upon his bed, until the multitude of his bones stick out, and until his life draws near to the destroyer (Job 33:17-22).

It is a hard thing to take a man off his pride, and to make him, instead of trusting in and boasting of his goodness, wisdom, honesty, and the like, see himself as a sinner, a fool, yes, a man who is cruel to his own immortal soul. Pride of heart has power in it, and is therefore compared to an iron sinew and an iron chain, by which people are made stubborn, and with which they are held in that stubbornness, to oppose the Lord and drive his Word from their hearts (Lev 26:19; Ps 73:6).

This was the sin of devils, and it is the sin of man; and it is the sin, I say, from which no man can be delivered until his heart is broken. And then his pride is ruined; then he will be glad to yield. If a man is proud of his strength or manhood, a broken leg will maul him; and if a man is proud of his goodness, a broken heart will maul him. For, as has been said, a broken heart comes by the uncovering of sin and the charging of it home, by the power of God upon the conscience.

4. Take man as he comes into the world, and he is not only a dead man, a fool, and proud, but also self-willed and headstrong (2 Pet 2:10). Man is a stubborn, unmanageable creature before his heart is broken. Hence people are so often called rebels, rebellious, and disobedient: they will only do what they please. “All day long,” says God, “have I stretched out my hand to a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom 10:21). And hence, again, they are compared to a self-willed or headstrong horse that will rush into the battle in spite of its rider. “Every one,” says God, “turneth to his course, as the horse rusheth into battle” (Jer 8:6). They say, “With our tongue will we prevail, our lips are our own; who is lord over us” (Ps 12:4).

Hence they are said to stop their ears, to pull away their shoulder, to shut their eyes, and to harden their hearts, “against the words of God, and contemned the counsel of the Most High” (Ps 107:11; Zech 7:11-12). They are fitly compared to the rebellious son who would not be ruled by his parents (Deut 21:20), or to the prodigal, who would have everything in his own hand and remove himself far away from his father and his father’s house (Luke 15:13). Now for such creatures nothing will do but violence. The stubborn son must be stoned until he dies (Deut 21:21), and the prodigal must be starved out of everything (Luke 15:14-17); nothing else, I say, will do. Their self-willed, stubborn heart will not comply with the will of God before it is broken. These are the ones who are called the stout-hearted; these are said to be far from righteousness, and so they will remain until their hearts are broken, for that is how they must be made to know themselves (Isa 9:9-11).

5. Man, as he comes into the world, is not only a dead man, a fool, proud, and self-willed, but also a fearless creature. “There is,” says the text, “no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18). No fear of God! There is fear of man: fear of losing his favor, his love, his goodwill, his help, his friendship. This is seen everywhere. How the poor fear the rich, the weak fear the strong, and those who are threatened fear those who threaten them! But come now to God: why, no one fears him; that is, by nature no one reverences him. They neither fear his frowns, nor seek his favor, nor ask how they may escape his avenging hand, which is lifted up against their sins, and against their souls because of sin. They fear losing little things, but they are not afraid to lose the soul. “They fear not me, saith the Lord” (Mal 3:5).

How many times are some men reminded of death by sickness in themselves, by graves, by the death of others? How many times are they reminded of hell by reading the Word, by the lashes of conscience, and by some who go roaring in despair out of this world? How many times are they reminded of the day of judgment? For instance: (1) by God’s binding the fallen angels over to judgment; (2) by the drowning of the old world (2 Pet 2:4-5; Jude 6-7); (3) by the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven (2 Pet 2:6; Jude 7); (4) by appointing a day (Acts 17:29-31); (5) by appointing a judge (Acts 10:40-42); (6) by keeping their crimes on record (Isa 30:8; Rev 20:12); (7) by appointing and preparing witnesses (Rom 2:15); (8) and by promising, yes, threatening, yes, resolving, to call the whole world to his bar, there to be judged for all that they have done and said, and for every secret thing (Matt 25:31-33; Matt 12:36; Eccl 11:9; Eccl 12:14).

And yet they do not fear God. Alas, they do not believe these things. To carnal men these things are like Lot’s preaching to his sons and daughters who were in Sodom. When he told them that God would destroy that place, he seemed to them like one who mocked, and his words were to them as idle tales (Gen 19:14).

Fearless men are not won by words; blows, wounds, and killings are the things that must bring them under fear. How many struggling fits did Israel have with God in the wilderness? How many times did they declare there that they did not fear him? And observe: they were seldom, if ever, brought to fear and dread his glorious name unless he surrounded them with death and the grave. Nothing, nothing but a severe hand will make the fearless fear. Hence, to speak after the manner of men, God is driven to take this way with sinners when he would save their souls. He must bring them and lay them at the mouth of hell and everlasting damnation, within sight of it, and there also charge them with sin and guilt, to the breaking of their hearts, before they will fear his name.

6. Man, as he comes into the world, is not only a dead man, a fool, proud, self-willed, and fearless, but he is a false believer concerning God. However plainly God reports about himself, man by nature will not believe this report of him. No, they have become vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart is darkened, so that they turn the glory of God, which is his truth, into a lie (Rom 1:21-25). God says he sees; they say he does not see. God says he knows; they say he does not know (Job 22:13-14). God says none is like him; yet they say he is altogether like them (Ps 50:21). God says none shall keep his door for nothing; they say it is vain, and of no profit, to serve him (Job 21:14-15; Mal 3:14). He says he will do good; they say he will do neither good nor evil (Zeph 1:12). So they believe falsely concerning God. Yes, and as to the word of his grace and the revelation of his mercy in Christ, they do not hesitate to say by their practice that it is a downright lie, and not to be trusted (1 John 5:10); for a wicked man speaks with his feet (Prov 6:13).

Now, what shall God do to save these men? If he hides himself and conceals his glory, they perish. If he sends to them by his messengers but holds back from coming to them himself, they perish. If he comes to them but holds back from working on them by his word, they perish. If he works on them, but not effectually, they perish. If he works effectually, he must break their hearts and make them fall at his feet for mercy like men wounded to death, or no good can be done on them. They will not rightly believe until he fires them out of their false belief and makes them know, by the breaking of their bones for their false faith, that he is, and will be, what he has said of himself in his holy Word. The heart, therefore, must be broken before the man can come to good.

7. Man, as he comes into the world, is not only a dead man, a fool, proud, self-willed, fearless, and a false believer, but a great lover of sin. He is captivated, ravished, drowned in its delights. That is why the Word says that they love sin (John 3:19), delight in lies (Ps 62:4), and take pleasure in iniquity and in those who do it (Rom 1:32); that they sport themselves in their own deceivings (2 Pet 2:13), and glory in their shame (Phil 3:19).

This is the temper of man by nature, for sin is mixed with all the powers of his soul and has the mastery of them. That is why they are said to be captives to it, and to be led captive into its pleasures at the will of the devil (2 Tim 2:26). And you know it is no easy thing to break love, or to take the affections off an object on which they are so deeply set, and in which they are so deeply rooted, as man’s heart is in his sins. Alas! How many there are who scorn all the allurements of heaven, who trample on all the threatenings of God, and who say “Tush” at all the flames of hell, whenever these are set before them as motives to draw them off their sinful delights! So fixed are they, so mad are they, on these beastly idols. Yes, whoever takes it in hand to stop their course in this way of theirs is like one who tries to hold back the raging waves of the sea from their course when they are driven by the mighty winds.

When men are somewhat hard pressed, when reason and conscience begin to listen a little to a preacher, or when a judgment begins to hunt out their iniquity, how many tricks, evasions, excuses, stalls, delays, and hiding places will they make, invent, and find, to hide and preserve their sweet sins, and to keep themselves and their souls in the delights of them, to their own eternal ruin? So they try to stifle conscience, to choke convictions, to forget God, to make themselves atheists, to contradict preachers who are plain and honest, and to heap up for themselves only such preachers as are like themselves, who speak smooth things to them and prophesy deceits. Yes, they even say to such preachers, “Get you out of the way; turn aside out of the path; cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us” (Isa 30:8-11). If they are still pursued, and conscience and guilt, like bloodhounds, find them out in their secret places and roar against them for their wicked lives, then they will flatter, wheedle, dissemble, and lie against their own souls, promising to mend, to turn, to repent, and to grow better shortly. And all this is to shake off convictions and disturbances in their wicked ways, so that they may still pursue their lusts, their pleasures, and their sinful delights in quiet and without restraint.

Yes, further, I have known some who have been made to roar like bears, to yell like dragons, and to howl like dogs (Hos 7:14) because of the weight of guilt and the lashes of hell on their conscience for their evil deeds. Yet as soon as their present torments and fears were gone, they have returned again with the “dog to his vomit; and as the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Pet 2:20-22).

Once again, some have been made to taste the good Word of God, the joy of heaven, and the powers of the world to come, and yet could not be brought by any one of these, no, nor by all of them together, to break their league with their lusts and sins forever (Heb 6:4-5; Luke 8:13; John 5:33-35). O Lord, “what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Ps 8:4) “Wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isa 2:22) He has sinned against you; he loves his sins more than you. He is a lover of pleasures more than he is a lover of God!

But now, how shall this man be reclaimed from this sin? How shall he be brought, wrought, and made to fall out of love with it? Doubtless it can be by no other means, as far as we can see in the Word, but by wounding, breaking, and disabling the heart that loves it, and in that way making sin a plague and gall to it. Sin may be made an affliction, and like gall and wormwood, to those who love it; but making it so bitter a thing to such a man will not be done except by great and severe means.

I remember that some time ago we had a little girl in our town who loved to eat the heads of dirty tobacco pipes, and neither the rod nor kind words could reclaim her and make her leave them alone. So her father asked a doctor’s advice on how to wean her from them, and this was it: “Take,” he said, “a great many of the foulest tobacco-pipe heads you can get, and boil them in milk, and make a posset of that milk, and make your daughter drink the posset up.” He did so. He gave it to his girl and made her drink it all up, and it became so disgusting and nauseating to her stomach, and made her so sick, that she could never bear to touch tobacco-pipe heads again. And so she was cured of that disease.

You love your sin, and neither the rod nor kind words will reclaim you yet. Well, take heed: if you will not be reclaimed, God will make you a posset of your sins, which shall be so bitter to your soul, so disgusting to your taste, so loathsome to your mind, and so afflicting to your heart, that it shall break your heart with sickness and grief, until sin is loathsome to you. I say, he will do this if he loves you; if not, he will let you take your own course, and will let you go on with your tobacco-pipe heads!

The children of Israel will have flesh, must have flesh. They weep, cry, and murmur because they have no flesh; the bread of heaven is only light and poor stuff in their esteem (Num 11:1-6). Moses goes and tells God how the people despised his heavenly bread, and how they longed, lusted, and desired to be fed with flesh. Well, says God, they shall have flesh, they shall have their fill of flesh; I will feed them with it; they shall have it to the full; and “ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you; because ye have despised the Lord” (Num 11:11-20). He knows how to make the very thing on which you most set your evil heart loathsome to you. And he will do so if he loves you. Otherwise, as I said, he will not make you sick by striking you, nor punish you for your whoredom or when you commit it, but will leave you alone until the judgment day, and call you to a reckoning for all your sins then. But let me pass on from this.

8. Man, as he comes into the world, is not only a dead man, a fool, proud, self-willed, fearless, a false believer, and a lover of sin, but a wild man. He is of the wild olive tree, of that which is wild by nature (Rom 11:17, 24). So, in another place, man by nature is compared to the ass, to a wild ass: “For vain or empty man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt” (Job 11:12). Isaac was a figure of Christ and of all converted men (Gal 4:28). But Ishmael was a figure of man by nature, and in that respect the Holy Spirit says this of him: “And he will be a wild man” (Gen 16:12). This man, I say, was a figure of all carnal men in their wildness, or estrangement from God.

That is why it is said of the prodigal at his conversion that he came to himself then (Luke 15:17), implying that before this he was mad, wild, or out of his wits. I know there is sometimes a difference between being wild and being mad; yet sometimes wildness reaches such a degree that one may rightly be called mad. And it is always true in spiritual things, namely, that he who is wild toward God is mad, or beside himself, and so is not capable, before he is tamed, of minding his own eternal good as he should. There are several things that are tokens of one who is wild or mad, and they all meet in a carnal man.

(1) A wild or mad man pays no heed to good counsel. The frenzy of his head shuts it all out, and by its force leads him away from men who are wise and sober. And so it is with carnal men: good counsel is to them like pearls cast before swine; they trample it underfoot, and the man who brings it is despised (Matt 7:6). “The poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard” (Eccl 9:16).

(2) Leave a wild or mad man alone, and he will busy himself greatly all his life to accomplish something that amounts to nothing when it is finished. The work, the toil, the travail of such a one comes to nothing, except to declare that the man who did it was out of his wits. David, imitating such a one, scribbled on the gate of the king, as fools do with chalk (1 Sam 21:12-13); and all the work of all carnal men in the world is like this. That is why such a one is said to labor for the wind (Eccl 5:16), or for what amounts to no more than if he filled his belly with the east wind (Job 15:2).

(3) If you set a wild or mad man to do anything, and he does it, he will still do it not by or according to your bidding, but after the folly of his own wild fancy. That is how Jehu carried out the commandment of the Lord: he did it in his own madness (2 Kgs 9:20), taking no heed to the commandment of the Lord (2 Kgs 10:31). And so carnal men do when they meddle with any of God’s matters, such as hearing, praying, reading, and professing. They do it all according to their own wild fancy; they take no heed to do these things according to the commandment of the Lord.

(4) If wild or mad men deck or array themselves with anything, as they often do, why, the spirit of their wildness or frenzy shows itself even in the fashion and manner in which they do it. Either the things themselves that they use for that purpose are mere toys and trifles, or, if they seem to be better, they are put on in a clownish way that makes them ridiculous rather than showing them to be sober, judicious, or wise. And so natural men array themselves with the things in which they hope to be accepted by God. Would anyone in his right mind think to make himself fine or acceptable to men by dressing himself in menstrual cloths, or by painting his face with dross and dung? And yet this is the finery of carnal men when they come into the presence of God for acceptance (Isa 64:6; Phil 3:7-8).

O the wildness, the frenzy, the madness that possesses the heart and mind of carnal men! They walk according to the course of this world, according to or after that spirit which is in truth the spirit of the devil, which works in the children of disobedience (Eph 2:1-3). But do they believe that this is how it is with them? No; in their own account, like other madmen, they are the only ones in the world. That is why they are so taken and tickled with their own frantic notions, and deride everyone else who lives in the world.

But what is the way to make one who is wild, or a madman, sober? Leaving him alone will not do it; giving him good words only will not do it. No, he must be tamed; means must be used to tame him. “He brought down their hearts with labour,” or by continual troubling, as you have it in Psalm 107:10-12. He speaks there of madmen who are shut up in darkness and bound in afflictions and irons because they rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.

This, therefore, is the way to deal with such people, and none but God can deal with them this way. They must be seized; they must be separated from men; they must be laid in chains, in darkness, afflictions, and irons; they must be bled, half-starved, whipped, purged, and dealt with as mad people are dealt with. And they must be dealt with in this way until they come to themselves and cry out in their distresses. And then they cry to the Lord in their troubles, and he saves them out of their distresses; then he brings them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and breaks their bonds apart (Ps 107:13-15). In this way, I say, God tames the wild, and brings mad prodigals to themselves, and so to him for mercy.

9. Man, as he comes into the world, is not only a dead man, a fool, proud, self-willed, fearless, a false believer, a lover of sin, and a wild man, but a man who has a distaste for the things of the kingdom of God. I told you before that unconverted man is one who does not taste things; but now I add that he has a distaste for them. He calls bitter things sweet, and sweet things bitter; he judges quite amiss. These are the ones God threatens with a woe: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa 5:20).

The latter part of this text plainly shows us that the things of God are distasteful to some. They call his sweet things bitter, and the devil’s bitter things sweet; and all this is for lack of a broken heart. A broken heart tastes things differently from a whole or unbroken one. A man who has no pain or bodily distress cannot find or feel any virtue or good in the most sovereign healing plaster, even if it were applied to his arm or leg. No, he would rather say, “Away with these stinking, smearing things!” Oh, but lay the same plasters where there is need, and the patient will relish, taste, and savor their goodness; yes, he will prize them and commend them to others.

So it is in spiritual things. The world does not know what the anguish or pain of a broken heart means. They say, “Who will show us any good?” that is, anything better than we find in our sports, pleasures, estates, and promotions. “There be many,” says the Psalmist, who speak this way. But what does the distressed man say? Why, “Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us”; and then he adds, “Thou hast put gladness in my heart,” that is, by the light of your countenance, for that is the plaster for a broken heart. “Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increaseth” (Ps 4:1-7).

Oh, a broken heart can savor pardon; it can savor the consolations of the Holy Spirit. Yes, as a hungry or thirsty man prizes bread and water when he lacks them, so the broken in heart prize and set a high value on the things of the Lord Jesus. His flesh, his blood, his promise, and the light of his countenance are the only sweet things, both to smell and to taste, to those who are of a wounded spirit. The full soul loathes the honeycomb; those who are whole despise the gospel; they do not savor the things that are of God.

If twenty men were to hear a pardon read, and only one of those twenty were condemned to die, and the pardon was for none but such as he, which of these men, do you think, would taste the sweetness of that pardon: those who are not condemned, or he who was? The condemned man, no doubt. This is the case in hand. The broken in heart is a condemned man; yes, it is a sense of condemnation, along with other things, that has indeed broken his heart. Nor is there anything but a sense of forgiveness that can bind it up or heal it. But could that heal it if he could not taste, truly taste, or rightly relish this forgiveness? No; forgiveness would then be to him as it is to the man who has no sense of his need of it.

But, I say, what is the reason that some so prize what others so despise, since they both stand in need of the same grace and mercy of God in Christ? Why, the one sees this woeful, miserable state, and the other sees nothing of it.

And so I have shown you the necessity of a broken heart. First, man is dead, and must be made alive. Second, man is a fool, and must be made wise. Third, man is proud, and must be humbled. Fourth, man is self-willed, and must be broken. Fifth, man is fearless, and must be made to consider. Sixth, man is a false believer, and must be set right. Seventh, man is a lover of sin, and must be weaned from it. Eighth, man is wild, and must be tamed. Ninth, man has a distaste for the things of God, and can find no savor in them until his heart is broken.

And so I have finished with this, and now come to the reasons for the point: that is, to show you why or how it comes about that a broken heart, a heart truly contrite, is such an excellent thing to God. That it is so to him, we have proved by six demonstrations. What it is, we have shown by its six signs. That it must be, is plain from the nine reasons just urged. And why it is an excellent thing with God, or in his esteem, is shown by what follows.

1. A broken heart is the handiwork of God: a heart of his own preparing, for his own service. It is a sacrifice of his own providing, provided by him for himself; as Abraham said in another case, “God will provide himself a lamb” (Gen 22:8). Hence it is said, “The preparations of the heart in man … is from the Lord” (Prov 16:1). And again, “God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me” (Job 23:16).

The heart is by nature hard, stupid, and impenetrable, and so it remains, and so it will remain, until God, as was said, bruises it with his hammer and melts it with his fire. That is why its stony nature is said to be taken away by God. “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you,” he says, “an heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26). I will take away the stony heart, or the stoniness, or the hardness of your heart, and I will give you a heart of flesh; that is, I will make your heart sensitive, soft, pliable, governable, and penitent. Sometimes he bids people rend their hearts, not because they can, but rather to convince them that, though it must be done, they cannot do it. In the same way, and for the same purpose, he bids them make themselves a new heart and a new spirit. For if God does not rend it, it remains unrent; if God does not make it new, it stays an old one still.

This is what is meant by his bending people for himself (Zech 9:13), and by his working in them what is pleasing in his sight. The heart, soul, or spirit, as it is in itself, as it came from God’s fingers, is a precious thing, a thing worth more in God’s account than all the world. This heart, soul, or spirit, sin has hardened, the devil has bewitched, and the world has deceived. This heart, so beguiled, God covets and desires. “My son,” he says, “give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways” (Prov 23:26).

A man cannot do this thing, because his heart has the mastery of him and will carry him off after every kind of vanity. What must be done now? Why, God must take the heart by storm, by power, and bring it to comply with the Word; for the heart of itself will not. It is deluded, carried away to another than God. So God now takes up his sword and brings the heart down with hard labor. He opens it, and drives out the strong man armed who kept it. He wounds it and makes it smart for its rebellion, so that it may cry out; and so he sets it right for himself. “He maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make whole” (Job 5:18). When he has shaped it for himself in this way, it becomes his habitation, his dwelling place: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Eph 3:17).

But I would not swerve from the matter in hand. I have told you that a broken heart is the handiwork of God, a sacrifice of his own preparing, a material fitted for himself.

(1) By breaking the heart he opens it and makes it a receptacle for the graces of his Spirit. That is the cabinet, once unlocked, where God lays up the jewels of the gospel. There he puts his fear: “I will put my fear in their hearts” (Jer 32:39-41). There he writes his law: “I will write my law in their heart” (Jer 31:31-33). There he puts his Spirit: “I will put my Spirit within you” (Ezek 36:26-27). The heart, I say, God chooses for his cabinet. There he hides his treasure; there is the seat of justice, of mercy, and of every grace of God. I mean, when it is broken, made contrite, and so regulated by the holy Word.

(2) The heart, when broken, is like sweet gums and spices when they are beaten. For as these send their fragrant scent into people’s nostrils, so the heart, when broken, sends its sweet smells into the nostrils of God. The incense, which of old was a type of prayer, had to be beaten or bruised, and so burned in the censer. The heart must be beaten or bruised, and then the sweet scent will come out: even groans, and cries, and sighs for the mercy of God. These cries and the rest, going up to him, are a very excellent thing and pleasing in his nostrils.

2. A broken heart is an excellent thing in the sight of God because a broken heart is submissive: it falls down before God and gives him his glory. All this is true from a multitude of scriptures, which I need not mention here. Hence such a heart is called an honest heart, a good heart, a perfect heart, a heart that fears God, and one that is sound in God’s statutes.

Now this cannot help but be an excellent thing, if we consider that by such a heart unfeigned obedience is yielded to him who calls for it. “Ye have obeyed from the heart,” says Paul to the believers at Rome, “that form of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom 6:17). Alas! the heart, before it is broken and made contrite, is of quite another temper: “It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom 8:7). Before the heart is broken, the great quarrel is over who shall be Lord, God or the sinner. True, the right of dominion is the Lord’s; but the sinner will not allow it, and will be wholly his own master, saying, “Who is Lord over us?” (Ps 12:4). And again they say to God, “We are lords, we will come no more unto thee” (Jer 2:31).

This is also evident from their practice. God may say what he will, but they will do what they please. “Keep my Sabbath,” says God; “I will not,” says the sinner. “Leave your whoring,” says God; “I will not,” says the sinner. “Do not tell lies, or swear, or curse, or blaspheme my holy name,” says God; “Oh, but I will,” says the sinner. “Turn to me,” says God; “I will not,” says the sinner. “The right of dominion is mine,” says God; but, like that young rebel (1 Kgs 1:5), “I will be king,” says the sinner. Now this is intolerable, this is insufferable; and yet every sinner says this by his practice, for they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.

Here there can be no concord, no communion, no agreement, no fellowship (2 Cor 6:14-16). Here, here is enmity on the one side and flaming justice on the other (Zech 11:8). And what delight, what contentment, what pleasure can God take in such people? None at all; no, not even if they were mingled with the best of the saints of God; yes, not even if the best of saints should plead for them. So says Jeremiah: “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me,” that is, to pray for them, “yet my mind could not be toward this people; cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth” (Jer 15:1).

Here is nothing but open war, acts of hostility, and shameful rebellion on the sinner’s side; and what delight can God take in that? Therefore, if God will bend and buckle the spirit of such a one, he must shoot an arrow at him, a barbed arrow, such as cannot be plucked out of the wound: an arrow that will stick fast and make the sinner fall down as dead at God’s feet (Ps 38:1-2). Then the sinner will give up his weapons, surrender himself as one conquered into the Lord’s hand, and beg for the Lord’s pardon; and not until then, not sincerely, I mean.

And now God has overcome, and his right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory. Now he rides in triumph with his captive at his chariot wheel; now he glories; now the bells in heaven ring; now the angels shout for joy, yes, are bidden to do so: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:1-10). Now also the sinner, as a token of being overcome, lies groveling at his feet, saying, “Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies, whereby the people fall under thee” (Ps 45:3-5).

Now the sinner submits; now he follows his conqueror in chains; now he seeks peace, and would give all the world, if it were his, to be in the favor of God and to have hope through Christ of being saved. Now this must be pleasing; this cannot help but be acceptable in God’s sight: “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 51:17). For it is the desire of his own heart, the work of his own hands.

3. Another reason why a broken heart is such an excellent thing to God is this: a broken heart prizes Christ and has a high esteem for him. The healthy have no need of a physician, but the sick do (Mark 2:17); and this sick man is the broken-hearted one in the text. For God makes people sick by striking them, by breaking their hearts. That is why sickness and wounds are put together, for the one is a true effect of the other (Mic 6:13; Hos 5:13). Can anyone think that God should be pleased when people despise his Son, saying, “He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa 53:2)? And yet that is what they say of him whose hearts God has not softened. Yes, the elect themselves confess that before their hearts were broken, they too made light of him. He is, they say, “despised and rejected of men … and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa 53:3).

He is indeed the great deliverer; but what is a deliverer to those who never saw themselves in bondage, as was said before? Hence it is said of the man who delivered the city, “No man remembered that same poor man” (Eccl 9:15). He has suffered sorely, and been bruised for the transgression of man, so that they might not receive the smart, and the hell, which by their sins they have brought on themselves. But what is that to those who never saw anything but beauty, and never tasted anything but sweetness, in sin? It is he who by his intercession holds back the hands of God, and makes him forbear to cut off the drunkard, the liar, and the unclean person, even when they are in the very act and work of their abomination. But their hard heart, their stupefied heart, has no sense of such kindness as this, and therefore they take no notice of it. How many times has God said to this dresser of his vineyard, “Cut down the barren fig tree,” while he, by his intercession, has still won a reprieve for another year (Luke 13:6-9)! But no notice is taken of this; no thanks are returned to him from them for such kindness of Christ. So such ungrateful, unthankful, thoughtless wretches as these must be a continual eyesore, as I may say, and a great provocation to God; and yet this is how people will behave before their hearts are broken.

Christ, as I said, is called a physician; yes, he is the only physician of souls. He heals, however desperate the disease may be; yes, and those he undertakes for, he heals forever: “I give unto them eternal life” (John 10:28). And he does it all free of cost, out of pure mercy and compassion. But what is all this to one who does not see his sickness, who sees nothing of a wound? What is the best physician alive, or all the physicians in the world put together, to someone who knows no sickness, who feels no disease? Physicians, as was said, may go begging, for all the healthy care. Physicians are valued by no one but the sick, or by those who suppose they are sick now or may be at some other time.

Why, this is the reason Christ is so little valued in the world. God has not made them sick by striking them; his sword has not given them the wound; his dart has not been struck through their liver; they have not been broken with his hammer, nor melted with his fire. So they have no regard for his physician; so they slight all the provision God has made for the salvation of the soul. But now, let such a soul be wounded; let such a man’s heart be broken; let such a man be made sick through the sting of guilt, and be made to wallow in ashes under the burden of his transgressions; and then, who but Christ? As has been shown before, then it is the physician! Then it is, “Wash me, Lord”; then, “Soothe my wounds; pour your wine and oil into my sore”; then, “Lord Jesus, cause me to hear the voice of joy and gladness, that the bones which you have broken may rejoice.” Nothing is now so welcome as healing; and so nothing, no one, is now so desirable as Christ. His name to such a person is the best of names; his love to such a person is the best of love; for he is now, not only in himself but also to such a soul, the chiefest of ten thousand (Song 5:10).

As bread is to the hungry, as water to the thirsty, as light to the blind, and liberty to the imprisoned, so, and a thousand times more, is Jesus Christ to the wounded and to those who are broken-hearted.

Now, as was said, this must be excellent in God’s eyes, since Christ Jesus is so glorious in his eyes. To despise what a man counts excellent is an offense to him; but to value, esteem, or think highly of what I esteem pleases me; such an opinion is excellent in my sight. What does Christ say? “My Father loveth you, because ye loved me” (John 16:27). Whoever has a high esteem for Christ, the Father has a high esteem for them. Hence it is said, “He that hath the Son, hath the Father.” The Father will be his, and will act as a Father toward the one who receives his Son and sets an honorable esteem on him.

But none will, none can, do this except the broken-hearted, because they, and they only, are aware of their need of a share in him and of what it is worth. I dare appeal to the whole world for the truth of this; and I say again that these, and none but these, have hearts that are esteemed in the sight of God. Alas! “the heart of the wicked is little worth” (Prov 10:20), for it lacks a precious esteem of Christ. And it cannot help but lack it, because it is not wounded, broken, and made aware of its need of mercy through him.

4. A broken heart is of great esteem with God because it is a heart thankful for the sense of sin and of grace it has received. The broken heart is a feeling heart; we touched on this before. It is aware of the dangers sin leads to; yes, and it has cause to be aware of them, because it has seen and felt what sin is, both in the guilt and in the punishment that by law is due to it. As a broken heart is aware of sin, in its evil nature and its consequences, so it is also aware of the way God delivers the soul from the day of judgment; and consequently it must be a thankful heart. Now, says God, the one who praises me glorifies me (Ps 50:23); and God loves to be glorified. God’s glory is dear to him; he will not part with that (Isa 42:8).

Since the broken-hearted man, I say, is the soul that feels, it follows that he is the thankful soul. “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” said David, “and all that is within me bless his holy name” (Ps 103:1). See what blessing of God is here! And yet, not content with this, he goes on with it again, saying, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps 103:2). But what is the matter? Oh! he has “forgiven all thine iniquities, and healed all thy diseases. He has redeemed thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving kindnesses and tender mercies” (Ps 103:3-4). But how did he come to be so moved by this? Why, he knew what it was to hang over the mouth of hell for sin. Yes, he knew what it was for death and hell to beset him and surround him; yes, they took hold of him, as we have said, and were pulling him down into the deep. This he saw, to the breaking of his heart. He also saw the way of life, and had his soul relieved by faith in it and a sense of it, and that made him a thankful man.

If a man who has had a broken leg is only made to understand that by breaking it he was kept from breaking his neck, he will be thankful to God for a broken leg. “It is good for me,” said David, “that I have been afflicted” (Ps 119:71). By that I was preserved from a great danger, for before that I went astray (Ps 119:67).

And who can be thankful for a mercy unless they are aware that they need it, that they have it, and that they have it by mercy? Now the broken-hearted, the man of a contrite spirit, is aware of this, and that with reference to mercies of the best sort. Therefore he must be a thankful man, and so have a heart of esteem with God, because it is a thankful heart.

5. A broken heart is of great esteem with God, or an excellent thing in his sight, because it is a heart that now desires to become a receptacle or dwelling for the Spirit and the graces of the Spirit of God. Before, it was the devil’s stronghold, and was content to be so. But now it is all for entertaining, for being possessed by, the Holy Spirit of God. “Create in me a clean heart,” said David, “and renew a right spirit within me. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me, uphold me with thy free Spirit” (Ps 51:10-12). Now he was for a clean heart and a right spirit; now he was for the sanctifying of the blessed Spirit of grace, a thing which the uncircumcised in heart resist (Acts 7:51) and treat with contempt (Heb 10:29).

A broken heart, therefore, suits the heart of God; a contrite spirit is one spirit with him. God, as I told you before, longs to dwell with the broken in heart, and the broken in heart desire communion with him. Now here is agreement, a oneness of mind; now the same mind is in you which was also in Christ Jesus. This must be an excellent spirit; this must be better with God, and in his sight, than thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil. But does the carnal world covet this, this spirit and its blessed graces? No, they despise it, as I said before; they mock at it; they would rather prefer and favor any sorry, dirty lust. And the reason is that they lack a broken heart, that heart so highly esteemed by God, and for lack of it they remain in their enmity against God.

The broken-hearted know that the sanctifying of the Spirit is a good means of keeping them from that relapse out of which a man cannot come unless his heart is wounded a second time. No doubt David had a broken heart at his first conversion; and if that brokenness had remained, that is, if he had not given way to hardness of heart again, he would never have fallen into that sin from which he could not be recovered except by the breaking of his bones a second time. Therefore, I say, a broken heart is of great esteem with God; for it (and I will add, so long as it keeps its tenderness) covets none but God and the things of his Holy Spirit. Sin is an abomination to it.

And here, as in a fitting place, before I go any further, I will show you some of the advantages a Christian gets by keeping his heart tender. For just as to have a broken heart is to have an excellent thing, so to keep this broken heart tender is also very advantageous.

1. This is the way to keep a fear of sinning against God always alive in your soul. Christians do not wink at sin or give way to it until their hearts begin to lose their tenderness. A tender heart will be affected by the sin of another; much more will it be afraid of committing sin itself (2 Kgs 22:19).

2. A tender heart quickly yields to prayer; yes, it prompts us to pray, and puts an edge and fire into our praying. We are never backward to pray until our heart has lost its tenderness. But then it grows cold, flat, and formal, and so carnal toward that holy duty and in it.

3. A tender heart always has repentance at hand for the least fault or slip, or for any sinful thought the soul is guilty of. In many things the best of us offend. But if a Christian loses his tenderness, if he says he has his repentance still to look for, his heart has grown hard. It has lost that spirit, that kind spirit of repentance, that it used to have. That is how it was with the Corinthians. They had decayed and lost their tenderness, and so their sin, yes, their great sins, remained unrepented of (2 Cor 12:20).

4. A tender heart wants to receive its communion with God often. But the one who is hardened, though the seed of grace is in him, will be content to eat, drink, sleep, wake, and go days without number without God (Isa 17:10; Jer 2:32).

5. A tender heart is a wakeful, watchful heart. It watches against sin in the soul, sin in the family, sin in one’s calling, sin in spiritual duties and performances, and so on. It watches against Satan, against the world, against the flesh, and so on. But when the heart is not tender, there is sleepiness, unwatchfulness, and idleness. The heart, the family, and the calling are allowed to be much defiled, spotted, and blemished with sin. For a hard heart departs from God and turns aside in all these things.

6. A tender heart will deny itself, even in lawful things. It will hold back even from what may lawfully be done, lest some Jew, or Gentile, or the church of God, or any member of it, should be offended or made weak by it. But the Christian who is not tender, who has lost his tenderness, is so far from denying himself in lawful things that he will even venture to meddle in things utterly forbidden, no matter who is offended, grieved, or made weak by it. For an example of this we need go no further than the man in our text. While he was tender, he trembled at little things. But when his heart was hardened, he could take Bathsheba to satisfy his lust, and kill her husband to cover his wickedness.

7. A tender heart (I mean, the heart kept tender) is preserved from many a blow, lash, and fatherly chastening, because it shuns the cause of God’s scourging hand, which is sin. “With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, but with the froward thou wilt show thyself unsavoury” (2 Sam 22:27; Ps 18:25-27).

Many a needless rebuke and wound comes upon the saints of God through their unwise behavior. When I say needless, I mean that they would not be necessary except to reclaim us from our vanities; for we would not feel their sting if it were not for our follies. That is why the afflicted person is called a fool: his folly brings his affliction upon him. “Fools,” says David, “because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted” (Ps 107:17). And that is why, as was said before, David calls his sin his foolishness (Ps 38:5). And again: “God will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints; but let them not turn again to folly” (Ps 85:8). “If his children transgress my laws, then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes” (Ps 89:30-32).

How to Keep the Heart Tender

Question. But what should a Christian do, when God has broken his heart, to keep it tender?

Answer. I will speak to this briefly. First, I will give you several cautions; second, several directions.

Cautions

1. Be careful not to choke the convictions that are now breaking your heart by laboring to put out of your mind the things that caused them. Instead, nourish and cherish those things by keeping a deep and sober remembrance of them. So think to yourself like this: What was it that first wounded my heart? And let that stay there until, by the grace of God and the redeeming blood of Christ, it is removed.

2. Shun vain company. Keeping vain company has stifled many a conviction, killed many a desire, and made many a soul fall into hell that was once hot in its pursuit of heaven. A companion who is not profitable to the soul is hurtful. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov 13:20).

3. Beware of idle talk, so that you neither listen to it nor join in it. “Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge” (Prov 14:7). “Evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor 15:33). “And a fool’s lips are the snare of his soul” (Prov 18:7). Therefore beware of these things.

4. Beware of the least stirring toward sin. Give it no encouragement, lest encouraging that one make way for a bigger one. David’s eye captured his heart; and so his heart, by nourishing the thought, made way for the woman’s company, the act of adultery, and bloody murder. Take heed, therefore, brothers, “lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:12-13). And remember that whoever means to split a block of wood puts the thin end of the wedge to it first, and so, by driving it in, does his work.

5. Beware of bad examples among the godly. Learn from no one to do what the Word of God forbids. Sometimes Satan uses a good man’s bad ways to spoil and harden the hearts of those who come after him. Peter’s false dealing nearly spoiled Barnabas, yes, and several others besides (Gal 2:11-13). So beware of men, even of good men’s ways, and measure both theirs and your own by no other rule than the holy Word of God.

6. Beware of unbelief and atheistic thoughts. Do not question the truth and reality of heavenly things. For know this: unbelief is the worst of evils, and no heart can be tender that nourishes it or gives place to it. “Take heed, therefore, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” (Heb 3:12).

These cautions must be observed with all diligence by everyone who wants to keep their heart tender once it has been made tender. And now to come to the directions.

Directions

1. Labor after a deep knowledge of God, to keep it warm upon your heart. Labor after a knowledge of his presence, which is everywhere: “Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?” (Jer 23:24).

(1) Labor after a knowledge of his piercing eye: that it runs to and fro through the earth, beholding the evil and the good in every place; that his eyes behold, and his eyelids try, the children of men (Prov 15:3).

(2) Labor after the knowledge of his power: that he is able to turn heaven and earth and dissolve them into dust and ashes, and that in his hand they are no more than a scroll or a garment (Heb 1:11-12).

(3) Labor after the knowledge of his justice: that its rebukes are like devouring fire (Heb 12:29).

(4) Labor after the knowledge of his faithfulness, both in fulfilling his promises to those to whom they are made, and in fulfilling his threatenings on the impenitent (Matt 5:18; Matt 24:35; Mark 13:31).

2. Labor to get and keep a deep sense of sin, both in its evil nature and in its soul-destroying effects on your heart. Be persuaded that sin is the only enemy of God, and that no one hates God, or is hated by God, except through sin.

(1) Remember that sin turned angels into devils, and thrust them down from heaven to hell.

(2) Remember that it is the chain in which they are held and bound over to judgment (2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6).

(3) Remember that it was for sin that Adam was turned out of paradise; that it was for sin that the old world was drowned; that it was for sin that Sodom and Gomorrah were burned with fire from heaven. It was sin that cost Christ his blood to redeem you from the curse it has brought upon you. And it is sin that, if anything does, will keep you out of heaven forever and ever.

(4) Consider the pains of hell. Christ uses them as an argument to keep the heart tender. Yes, to that end he repeats, and repeats, and repeats, both the nature and the endlessness of its burning flame, and the gnawing of the never-dying worm that dwells there (Mark 9:43-48).

3. Consider death, both the certainty of your dying and the uncertainty of the time when. We must die; we cannot avoid dying. Our days are determined. The number of our months is with God, though not with us. Nor can we pass beyond them, even if we would give a thousand worlds to do it, had we them to give (2 Sam 14:14; Job 7:1; Job 14:1-5). Consider that you must die only once, I mean only once as far as this world is concerned. For if you do not die well when you go from here, you cannot come back again and die better. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27).

4. Consider also the certainty and terribleness of the day of judgment. Then Christ will sit upon his great white throne. Then the dead will be raised up by the sound of the trump of God. Then the elements, with heaven and earth, will be in a burning flame. Then Christ will separate people from one another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. Then the books will be opened, the witnesses produced, and every man judged according to his works. Then heaven’s gate will stand open to those who will be saved, and the jaws of hell will stand gaping for those who will be damned (Acts 5:30-31; Acts 10:42; Matt 25:31-32, 34, 41; Rev 20:11; 1 Cor 15:51; Rev 20:12, 15; 2 Pet 3:7, 10, 12; Rom 2:2, 15-16; Rev 22:12).

5. Consider that Christ Jesus used no means to harden his heart against doing and suffering those sorrows that were necessary for the redemption of your soul. No; though he could have hardened his heart against you in the way of justice and righteousness, because you had sinned against him, he instead stirred himself up and put on all pity, tender affection, and compassion, yes, tender mercies, and did it. In his love and in his pity he saved us. His tender mercies from on high have visited us. He loved us, and gave himself for us. Learn, then, from Christ to be tender toward yourself, and to endeavor to keep your heart tender toward God and toward the salvation of your soul. But now to draw to a conclusion.

Let us now, then, make some use of this doctrine, as follows.

First Use. Take the truth of the matter, namely, that the man who has truly come to God has had his heart broken, his heart broken in order to his coming to him. This shows us what to think of the league that exists between sin and the soul. It is so firm, so strong, so inviolable, that nothing can break it, cancel it, or make it void, unless the heart is broken for it. It was so with David; yes, his new league with sin could not be broken until his heart was broken.

It is amazing to consider what hold sin has on some men’s souls, spirits, wills, and affections. To them it is better than heaven, better than God, better than their souls, yes, better than salvation. This is evident, because though all these are offered to them on this one condition, that they will only leave their sins, they will still choose rather to stay in them, and to stand or fall by them. What do you say, sinner? Isn’t this true? How many times have you had heaven and salvation offered to you freely, if you would only break your league with this great enemy of God? Of God, did I say? If you would only break this league with this great enemy of your soul! And yet you could never be brought to do it; no, neither by threatening nor by promise could you ever yet be brought to do it.

It is said of Ahab that he sold himself to work wickedness (1 Kgs 21:25). And in another place it says, “for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves” (Isa 50:1). But what is this iniquity? Why, a thing of nought; no, a thousand times worse than nought. But because nought is, as we say, nought, it goes under that name, where God says again to the people, “Ye have sold yourselves for nought” (Isa 52:3). But, I say, what an amazing thing this is, that a rational creature should make no better a bargain! That one who is so wise in all earthly things should be such a fool in the thing that matters most! And yet such a fool he is, and he tells everyone who goes by the way that he is such a fool, because he will not break his league with sin until his heart is broken for it. Men love darkness rather than light. Yes, they make it plain that they love it, since so great an offer will not prevail with them to leave it.

Second Use. Is it true that the man who truly comes to God has, in order to come, had his heart broken? Then this shows us a reason why some men’s hearts are broken. It shows us, in fact, a reason why God breaks some men’s hearts for sin, namely, because he would not have them die in it, but would rather have them come to God so that they might be saved.

See, therefore, in this, how resolved God is about saving some men’s souls! He will have them, he will save them; he will break their hearts, but he will save them. He will kill them, so that they may live; he will wound them, so that he may heal them. And it seems from our discourse that now there is no other way left but this. Fair means, as we say, will not do. Good words, a glorious gospel, pleadings, beseeching with blood and tears, will not do. Men are resolved to put God to the utmost. If he will have them, he must fetch them, follow them, catch them, lame them; yes, break their bones, or else he shall not save them.

Some men think an invitation, an outward call, a rational discourse, will do. But they are much deceived. A power, an exceedingly great and mighty power, must accompany the Word, or it does not work effectually for the salvation of the soul. I know these things are enough to leave men without excuse, but they are still not enough to bring men home to God. Sin has hold of them; they have sold themselves to it. The power of the devil has hold of them; they are his captives at his will. Yes, and more than all this, their will is one with sin and with the devil, to be held captive by them. And if God does not give contrition, repentance, or a broken heart for sin, there will not be, no, not so much as a mind in man to forsake this horrible conspiracy and plot against his soul (2 Tim 2:24-25).

This is why those who come, or who are brought, to him are said to be drawn from these breasts (Isa 28:9; John 6:44). So John might well say, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us!” (1 John 3:1). Here is cost bestowed, pains bestowed, labor bestowed, repentance bestowed; yes, and a heart made sore, wounded, broken, and filled with pain and sorrow, in order to the salvation of the soul.

Third Use. This, then, may teach us how highly to value a broken heart. A broken heart is the kind of heart God esteems; yes, he counts it better than all external service. A broken heart is what leads to salvation, what leads to your coming to Christ for life. The world does not know what to make of it, or what to say to someone who has a broken heart. So it despises it, and counts the man who carries it in his bosom a moping fool, a miserable wretch, an undone soul. “But a broken and a contrite spirit, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 51:17). A broken heart catches your eye, O God, and your heart. You choose it for your companion; yes, you have given your Son a charge to look well after such a man, and have promised him your salvation, as has been proved before.

Sinner, have you obtained a broken heart? Has God bestowed a contrite spirit on you? He has given you what he himself is pleased with. He has given you a cabinet to keep his grace in. He has given you a heart that can heartily desire his salvation, a heart after his own heart, that is, a heart that suits his mind. True, it is painful now, sorrowful now, penitent now, grieved now. Now it is broken, now it bleeds, now, now it sobs, now it sighs, now it mourns and cries to God. Well, very well. All this is because he has a mind to make you laugh. He has made you sorry on earth so that you might rejoice in heaven. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt 5:4). “Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh” (Luke 6:21).

But, soul, make sure you have this broken heart. Not all hearts are broken hearts, and not every heart that seems to have a wound is a heart that is truly broken. A man may be cut to the heart, yet not cut into it (Acts 7:54); a man may have another heart, yet not a broken heart (1 Sam 10:9). We know there is a difference between a wound in the flesh and a wound in the spirit. Yes, a man’s sin may be wounded, and yet his heart not be broken. So it was with Pharaoh, so it was with Saul, so it was with Ahab; but none of them had the mercy of a broken heart. Therefore, I say, take heed. Every scratch with a pin, every prick with a thorn, no, every blow that God gives with his Word on the heart of sinners, does not for that reason break them. God gave Ahab such a blow that it made him stoop, fast, humble himself, wrap himself in sackcloth and lie in it (which was a great matter for a king), and go softly; and yet he never had a broken heart (1 Kgs 21:27, 29).

What shall I say? Pharaoh confessed his sins (Exod 10:16), and so did Saul (1 Sam 26:21). Judas repented of his doings (Matt 27:3). Esau sought the blessing, and that carefully, with tears (Heb 12:14-17). And yet none of these had a heart rightly broken, or a spirit truly contrite. Pharaoh, Saul, and Judas were Pharaoh, Saul, and Judas still; Esau was Esau still. There was no gracious change, no thorough turning to God, no unfeigned parting with their sins, no wholehearted flight for refuge to lay hold on the hope of glory, though they had indeed been touched in this way.

The consideration of these things calls aloud to us to take heed that we do not take for a broken and a contrite spirit what will not pass for one at the day of death and judgment. Therefore, seeking soul, let me advise you, so that you may not be deceived in this matter of such great weight.

1. Go back toward the beginning of this book, and compare yourself with those six or seven signs of a broken and contrite heart which I gave you there, according to the Word of God, for that very purpose; and deal impartially with your soul about them.

2. Or else (and this may and will be a great help to you, if you are sincere in it), give yourself to searching the Word, especially where you read of the conversion of men, and test whether your conversion is like theirs, or bears a good resemblance to, or oneness with, theirs. But in this, take care that you do not compare yourself with those good people whose conversion you do not read of, or the breaking of whose heart is not mentioned in Scripture. For not all who are recorded in Scripture as saints have their conversion, as to its manner or nature, recorded in Scripture.

3. Or else consider truly the true signs of repentance which are laid down in Scripture, for repentance is the true effect of a broken heart and of a wounded spirit. For this, see these passages (Matt 3:5-6; Luke 18:13; Luke 19:8; Acts 2:37-40; Acts 16:29-30; Acts 19:18-19; 2 Cor 7:8-11).

4. Or else take into consideration how God has said that those he intends to save shall be in their spirits. For this, read these scriptures.

(1) The one in Jeremiah: “They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them” (Jer 31:9).

(2) Read Jeremiah 50:4-5: “In those days, and in that time, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.”

(3) Read Ezekiel 6:9: “And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which have departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a-whoring after their idols: and they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.”

(4) Read Ezekiel 7:16: “But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity.”

(5) Read Ezekiel 20:43: “And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed.”

(6) Read Ezekiel 36:31: “Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.”

(7) Read Zechariah 12:10: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”

Now all these are the fruits of the Spirit of God, and of the heart when it is broken. Therefore, soul, take notice of them. And because these are texts in which God promises that those whom he saves shall have this heart, this spirit, and these holy effects in them, consider again, and examine yourself whether this is the state and condition of your soul. And so that you may do it fully, consider again, and do this:

(1) Remember that here is such a sense of sin, and of its loathsomeness, as makes the man abhor not only the sin, but himself because of it. This is worth your noting.

(2) Remember again that here is not only self-abhorrence, but a sorrowful kind of mourning to God, at the thought that the soul by sin has affronted, scorned, disregarded, and set at nought both God and his holy Word.

(3) Remember also that here are prayers and tears for mercy, with desires to be out of love with sin now and forever, and to be firmly joined and knit to God in heart and soul.

(4) Remember also that the people spoken of here have strewn the whole way from Satan to God, from sin to grace, from death to life, with tears and prayers, with weeping and supplication. They shall go weeping, and seeking the Lord their God.

(5) Remember that these people, as strangers and pilgrims do, are not ashamed to ask those they meet the way to Zion, or the heavenly country. By this they confess their ignorance, as was fitting for them, and their desire to know the way to life. Yes, by this they declare that there is nothing in this world, under the sun, or this side of heaven, that can satisfy the longings, the desire, and the cravings of a broken and a contrite spirit. Reader, be advised: consider these things seriously, and compare your soul with them, and with whatever else you find written here for your conviction and instruction.

Fourth Use. If a broken heart and a contrite spirit are so highly esteemed by God, then this should encourage those who have one to come to God with it. I know the great encouragement for men to come to God is that there “is a mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). This, I say, is the great encouragement, and in its place there is none but that. But there are other encouragements subordinate to that one, and a broken and a contrite spirit is one of them. This is evident from several places of Scripture.

So you who can carry a broken heart and a sorrowful spirit with you when you go to God, tell him your heart is wounded within you, that you have sorrow in your heart, and that you are sorry for your sins. But take heed of lying. Confess your sins to him as well, and tell him they are continually before you. David made an argument of these things when he went to God in prayer. “O Lord,” he says, “rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.” But why so? Oh, he says, “Thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger: neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink, and are corrupt, because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken; I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore.” And so he goes on (Ps 38:1-11).

These are the words, sighs, complaints, prayers, and arguments of a broken heart to God for mercy. And so are these: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me” (Ps 51:1-3).

God allows poor creatures who can do so without lying to plead and argue with him in this way. “I am poor and sorrowful,” the good man said to him, “let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high” (Ps 69:29). Therefore, you who have a broken heart, take courage; God bids you take courage. So say to your soul, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” (as the broken-hearted usually are), “and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God” (Ps 42:11; Ps 43:5). “I had fainted,” if I had not been of good courage; therefore, “be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart” (Ps 27:12-14).

But alas! The broken-hearted are far from this. They faint; they count themselves among the dead; they think God will remember them no more, and that the thoughts of the greatness of God and of his holiness, and of their own sins and vileness, will certainly consume them. They feel guilt and anguish of soul; they go mourning all the day long. Their mouth is full of gravel and gall, and they are made to drink draughts of wormwood and gall. So he must be a real artist at believing who can come to God under his guilt and horror, and plead in faith that the sacrifices of God are a broken heart, such as he has, and that “a broken and a contrite spirit God will not despise.”

Fifth Use. If a broken heart, if a broken and contrite spirit, is so highly esteemed by God, then why should some people be, as they are, so afraid of a broken heart, and so shy of a contrite spirit?

I have observed that some men are as afraid of a broken heart, or of having their hearts broken for their sins, as the dog is of the whip. Oh, they cannot stand such books, such sermons, such preachers, or such talk as tends to make a man aware of his sins, and to break his heart, and to make him contrite for them. So they heap up for themselves such teachers, get such books, love such company, and delight in such discourse as tends rather to harden than to soften, to make them desperate in their sin rather than sorrowful for it. They say to such sermons, books, and preachers what Amaziah said to Amos: “O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there, but prophesy not again any more at Bethel; for it is the king’s chapel, and it is the king’s court” (Amos 7:12-13).

But do these people know what they are doing? Yes, they think, for such preachers, such books, such discourses tend to make a person melancholy or mad. They make us unable to take pleasure in ourselves, in our concerns, in our lives. But, you dyed-in-the-wool fool, let me speak to you! Is this a time to take pleasure, and to amuse yourself with anything, before you have mourned and been sorry for your sins? The mirth that comes before repentance for sin will certainly end in heaviness. That is why the wise man, putting both together, says that mourning must come first. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Eccl 3:4). What, an unconverted man, and laughing! If you saw someone singing merry songs while riding up Holborn to Tyburn to be hanged for felony, wouldn’t you count him out of his mind, if not worse? And yet this is how it is with the man who is all for mirth while he stands condemned by the Book of God for his trespasses.

Man, man, you have cause to mourn! Yes, you must mourn if you are ever to be saved. So my advice is that instead of shunning such books, such preachers, and such discourses as tend to make a man aware of his sin and to break his heart for it, you should covet them all. The reason is this: you will never be concerned, as you should be, about the salvation of your own soul, nor seek it, until you have a broken heart, a broken and a contrite spirit. Therefore, do not be afraid of a broken heart; do not be shy of a contrite spirit. It is one of the greatest mercies God bestows on a man or a woman. The heart that is rightly broken by the sense of transgression, and made truly contrite for it, is a certain forerunner of salvation. This is evident from those six demonstrations which were laid down at the beginning to prove the point at hand.

And to awaken you in this matter, let me tell you (and you will find it so) that you must have your heart broken whether you are willing or not. God is resolved to break all hearts for sin at some time or other. Can it be imagined, sin being what it is, and God being what he is (namely, an avenger of disobedience), that man will not smart for sin at one time or another? Smart, I say, either to repentance or to condemnation. He who does not mourn now, while the door of mercy is open, must mourn for sin when the door of mercy is shut.

Shall men despise God, break his law, scorn his threats, abuse his grace, yes, shut their eyes when he says, See, and stop their ears when he says, Hear, and shall they escape like that? No, no. Because he called and they refused, because he stretched out his hand and they did not regard it, therefore calamity shall come on them as on a woman in labor. They shall cry out in their destruction, and then God will laugh at their destruction and mock when their fear comes. Then, he says, they shall cry (Prov 1:24-26). I have often observed that this threatening is repeated at least seven times in the New Testament, saying, “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” and “there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:12; Matt 13:42, 50; Matt 22:13; Matt 24:51; Matt 25:30; Luke 13:28). There. Where? In hell, and at the bar of Christ’s tribunal, when he comes to judge the world, and has shut the door to keep out of glory those who here despised the offer of his grace and overlooked the day of his patience. “There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” They shall weep and wail for this.

There are only two more scriptures that I will use, and then I will draw toward a conclusion. One is in Proverbs, where Solomon counsels young men to beware of strange women, that is, wanton, loose, and ensnaring women. Take heed of such women, he says, lest “thou mourn at the last” (that is, in hell, when you are dead), “when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ears to them that instructed me!” (Prov 5:11-13).

The other scripture is in Isaiah, where he says, “Because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed; behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit” (Isa 65:12-14).

How many beholds are here! And every behold is not only a call to careless ones to consider, but also a declaration from heaven that this is how it shall be at last with all impenitent sinners. That is, when others sing for joy in the kingdom of heaven, they, they shall sorrow in hell, and howl for vexation of spirit there.

Therefore, let me advise you not to be afraid of a broken heart, but rather to covet it, and to prize a contrite spirit. I say, covet it now, now while the white flag is hung out, now while the golden scepter of grace is held out to you. Better to mourn now, while God is inclined to mercy and pardon, than to mourn when the door is completely shut. And take notice that this is not the first time I have given you this advice.

Sixth Use. Lastly, if a broken heart is a thing of such great esteem with God as has been said, and if duties cannot be rightly performed by a heart that has not been broken, then this shows the vanity of the minds of those people, and also the worthlessness of their pretended divine services, who worship God with a heart that was never broken, and without a contrite spirit. There have indeed been great flocks of such professors of religion in the world in every age, but to little purpose, unless it be to deceive themselves, to mock God, and to lay stumbling blocks in the way of others. For a man whose heart was never truly broken, and whose spirit was never contrite, cannot profess Christ in earnest, and cannot love his own soul in earnest. I mean, he cannot do these things in truth, and seek his own good the right way, for he lacks a foundation for it, namely, a broken heart for sin and a contrite spirit.

What makes a man a hearty, unfeigned, sincere seeker after the good of his own soul is a sense of sin, and a godly fear of being overtaken by the danger it brings him into. This makes him contrite or repentant, and sets him seeking Christ the Savior with heart-aching and heart-breaking thoughts. But this cannot happen where this sense, this godly fear, and this holy contrition are lacking. Men may profess, and make a noise, as the empty barrel makes the biggest sound; but test them, and they are full of air, full of emptiness, and that is all.

Nor are such professors tender of God’s name, or of the credit of the gospel they profess. Nor can they be, for they lack what should bind them to it, which is a sense of pardon and forgiveness, by which their broken hearts have been replenished, succored, and made to hope in God. Paul said that the love of Christ constrained him (2 Cor 5:14). But what was Paul but a broken-hearted and contrite sinner (Acts 9:3-6)? When God shows a man the sin he has committed, the hell he has deserved, the heaven he has lost, and yet shows him that Christ and grace and pardon may still be had, this will make him serious. This will make him melt, this will break his heart, this will show him that there is more in religion than air, than a noise, than an empty sound. And this is the man whose heart, whose life, whose conduct and everything will be engaged in the matters of the eternal salvation of his precious and immortal soul.

Objection 1. But someone may object that in saying this I seem too rigid and censorious, and that unless I soften these lines afterward with something milder, I will discourage many an honest soul.

Answer. Not a bit. Not one honest soul in all the world will be offended at my words. For no one can be an honest soul (I mean with respect to its concerns in another world) who has not had a broken heart, who never had a contrite spirit. This much I will say, because I want to be understood rightly: not everyone reaches the same degree of trouble, or lies under it as long, as some of their brothers do. But to go to heaven without a broken heart, or to be forgiven sin without a contrite spirit, is no article of my belief. We are not speaking now of what is secret. Revealed things belong to us and to our children, and we must not venture to go further in our faith. Doesn’t Christ say, “The whole have no need of a physician” (Mark 2:17)? That is, they see no need. But Christ will make them see their need before he ministers his sovereign grace to them. And there is good reason for it; otherwise he would get little thanks for his kindness.

Objection 2. But there are those who are brought up in godliness from their childhood, and so drink in the principles of Christianity without knowing how.

Answer. I count it one thing to receive the faith of Christ from men only, and another to receive it from God by the means. Even if you are taught by an angel, if you are not taught by God you will never come to Christ. I do not say you will never profess him. But if God speaks, and you hear and understand him, that voice will do such work within you as was never done before. The voice of God is a voice by itself, and those who are taught by it can tell it apart from every other (John 6:44-45; Ps 29; Hab 3:12-16; Eph 4:20-21; 1 Pet 2:2-3).

Objection 3. But some people are not as debauched and profane as others, and so they do not need to be hammered and fired as much as others, or broken and wounded as much as others.

Answer. God knows best what we need. Paul, I suppose, was as righteous before his conversion as anyone today who can lay claim to decent living. And yet, for all that, he was made to shake, and was astonished at himself at his conversion. And truly I think that the more righteous anyone is in his own eyes before conversion, the more he needs heart-breaking work in order to be saved. For a man is not by nature so easily convinced that his righteousness is abominable to God as he is that his debauchery and profaneness are.

A man’s goodness is what blinds him most. It is dearest to him, and he hardly parts with it. And therefore, when such a man is converted, one who thinks he has goodness enough of his own to commend him to God in whole or in part (though few such are converted), a great deal of breaking work is required on his heart to bring him to Paul’s conclusion: “What! are we better than they? No, in no wise” (Rom 3:9). I say, it is required before he can be brought to see that his glorious robes are filthy rags (Isa 64), and his gainful things only loss and dung (Phil 3).

This is also gathered from these words: Publicans and harlots enter into the kingdom of God before the Pharisees (Matt 21:31). Why before them? Only because they lie more open to the Word, are more easily convinced of their need of Christ, and so are brought home to him without (if I may put it this way) all the ado that the Holy Spirit makes to bring one of these Pharisees home to him.

True, nothing is hard or difficult for God. But I am speaking in human terms. Let anyone who will take to task a man who has lived a debauched life, and another who has not. If he labors to convince them both that they are in a state of condemnation by nature, he will see that the Pharisee makes his appeals to God with one “God, I thank thee” after another, while the publican hangs his head, shakes at heart, and beats on his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:11-13).

Therefore a self-righteous man is only a painted Satan, a devil in fine clothes. But does he think so of himself? No, no! He says to others, “Stand back, come not near me, I am holier than thou.” It is almost impossible that a self-righteous man should be saved. But he who can drive a camel through the eye of a needle can make even such a man see his lost condition, and see that he needs the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. He can make him see, I say, that his own goodness stood more in his way to the kingdom of heaven than he was aware. And he can make him feel, too, that his leaning on it is as great an iniquity as any immorality that people commit.

The sum, then, is this: those who are converted to God by Christ, through the Word and Spirit (for all of this must go into effectual conversion), must have their hearts broken and their spirits made contrite. I say, it must be so, for the reasons shown before. Yes, and all decayed, apostate and backslidden Christians must, in order to be recovered to God again, have their hearts broken, their souls wounded, and their spirits made contrite and sorry for their sins.

Come, come, conversion to God is not as easy and smooth a thing as some would have people believe. Why is man’s heart compared to fallow ground, God’s Word to a plow, and his ministers to plowmen (Jer 4:3; Luke 9:62; 1 Cor 9:10), if the heart really has no need of breaking in order to receive the seed of God to eternal life? Who doesn’t know that fallow ground must be plowed, and plowed in earnest, before the farmer will risk his seed? Yes, and after that it must often be soundly harrowed, or else he will have only a slender harvest.

Why is the conversion of the soul compared to the grafting of a tree, if that can be done without cutting? The Word is the graft, the soul is the tree, and the Word, as the scion, must be let in by a wound. For to stick it on the outside, or to tie it on with a string, will do no good here. Heart must be set to heart, and back to back, or your pretended grafting will come to nothing (Rom 11:17, 24; Jas 1:21).

I say, heart must be set to heart, and back to back, or the sap will not be carried from the root to the branch. And I say, this must be done by a wound. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia as a man opens the stock to graft in the scions; and so the word was let into her soul, and so the word and her heart were cemented together and became one (Acts 16:14).

Why is Christ told to gird his sword on his thigh? And why must he make his arrows sharp, and all this, so that the heart may be shot, wounded and made to bleed with this sword and these arrows? Yes, why is he commanded to let it be so, if the people would bow and fall kindly under him, and heartily implore his grace without it (Ps 45:3-5)? Alas! People are too lofty, too proud, too wild, too devilishly resolved in the ways of their own destruction. In their pursuits they are like the wild donkeys on the wild mountains. Nothing can break them of their purposes, or keep them from ruining their own precious and immortal souls, except the breaking of their hearts.

Why is a broken heart put in the place of all the sacrifices we can offer to God, and a contrite spirit in the place of all offerings? For so they are, as you may see if you compare the text with the verse that comes before it. I say, why is it counted better than all of them, even if they were all put together, if any one part of external worship, or all its parts put together, could make a man a sound and rightly made new creature without it? “A broken heart, a contrite spirit, God will not despise” (Ps 51:17). But he will certainly slight and reject both you and all your service if, when you come to him, a broken heart is lacking. So here is the point: Come broken, come contrite, come aware of your sins and sorry for them, or your coming will not be counted as coming to God rightly. And if that is so, it follows that you will get no benefit from it.