This is part of Isaiah’s prophecy.  He is telling the Jews that they should come back safe at last to their own land.  He tells them why God had driven them out, and why God was going to bring them back.

He had driven them out for their sins.  But he was not going to bring them back for their righteousness.  He was going to bring them back out of his own free grace, his own pure love and mercy, which was wider, deeper, and higher, than all their sins, or than the sins of the whole world.  He had sworn to Abraham to be the friend of those foolish rebellious Jews, and he would keep his promise for ever.  Their wickedness could not conquer his goodness, or their denying him make him deny himself.

But one thing he did require of them.  Not that they should turn and do right all at once.  That must come afterwards.  But that they should open their eyes, and see that they had done wrong.  He wanted to produce in them the humble and the contrite heart.

Now, as I told you last Sunday, a contrite heart does not merely mean a broken heart; it means more.  It means literally a heart crushed; a heart ground to powder.  You can have no stronger word.

It was this heart which God wished to breed in these rebellious Jews.  A heart like Isaiah’s heart, when he said, after having seen God’s glory, ’Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell among a people of unclean lips.’  A heart like Jeremiah’s heart, when he said, ’Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.’  A heart like Daniel’s heart, when he confessed before God that, to him and all his people belonged shame and confusion of face.

Why do I mention these three men?  They were not bad men, but good men.  What need had they of a contrite heart?

I mention them, because they were good men.  And why were they good men?  For any good works of their own?  Not in the least.  What made them good men was, just the having the humble and the contrite heart; just feeling that in themselves they were as bad as the sinners round them; that the only thing which kept them out of the idolatry and profligacy of their neighbours was confessing their own weakness, and clinging fast to God by faith; confessing that their own righteousness was as filthy rags, and that God must clothe them with his righteousness.

Do you suppose that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel would have been good men, if they had said to themselves, ’We are prophets; we are inspired; we know God’s law:  and therefore we are righteous; we are safe:  but these people—­these idolaters, these drunkards, these covetous, tyrannous, profligate people round, to whom we preach, and who know not the law—­they are accursed.’  If they had, they would have said just what the Pharisees said afterwards.  And what came of their saying so?  Instead of knowing the Lord Christ, when he came they crucified him, showing that they were really worse at heart than the ignorant common people, instead of better.