“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.”
Psalm 51:16 (NIV)
As we continue our quest to obey our Lord by learning what Hosea 6:6 means, in the hopes that by us truly learning this lesson we will take the gospel to the lost, we need to meditate on why our Lord would tell us that He does not desire sacrifice. At first thought, it seems to be a contradiction to the entire canon of scripture, for we have sacrifices recorded beginning in Genesis, and then a multitude of sacrifices commanded in the Law, as well as our Lord’s sacrifice fulfilling all of the shortcomings of the previous sacrifices. How can God’s Word tell us that He does not desire sacrifice? Psalm 51 provides us a beginning of an answer, or rather a way forward to help us to learn this truth. In this great penitent psalm, David pleads for mercy and prays for restoration with God, and as he does so he realizes that God doesn’t desire sacrifices, but rather God desires a broken and contrite heart. This is the first step to learning, truly learning, not book knowledge, but experiential learning of the truth that God does not desire nor delight in burnt offerings. No, what He desires is that I approach Him with a broken and contrite spirit. We will only learn this lesson as we confess our sins! Do we truly want to obey our Lord and learn what it means in Hosea 6:6 where it says that God desires mercy, not sacrifice? If we truly want to embark on this journey of learning we will begin to regularly confess our sins to the LORD. Perhaps we could use Psalm 51 as a template, but we should be careful that it is true confession – from the heart- and not a rote thing that we repeat. God forbid that we would forget that God looks at our hearts and that if our hearts and our words are not lined we will have learned nothing! But if we face our sins and truly confess and truly experience forgiveness - we will begin our journey of learning.
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