August 15th, 2022

God Wants You, Not Your Offerings

Isaiah 1:15-17 NIV

"When you spread out your hands in prayer; I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow."

      Today's thought has a lot to do with the message I will be giving you guys later on this week, and I wanted to give you this little sneak peek as something to consider as we move forward into that message. In this specific scripture, God spoke to the prophet Isaiah through a vision that was then relayed to the people of Judah regarding their sinful ways. What the people were doing was offering their prayers and sacrifices to God, all the while they were continuing to live sinful lives and doing absolutely nothing about it. And because they were parading around, offering sacrifices and prayers in public for all to see, they were not doing what really mattered to God; and that was turning away from their sinful ways and turning their faces to Him. Sounds familiar, right? We see a lot of this in today's society as well.

      We see a lot of sacrifices and offerings being made in the Old Testament. People sacrificed animals, they offered bread, grains, and flours, they offered oils and incense. But what they were not sacrificing and offering to God was their sinful nature and themselves fully. Today, we don't have to go out to the field, grab a ram and sacrifice it before the Lord for our sins to be forgiven. Jesus paid that price for us. And while this would be semi-equivalent to us dropping some money on the plate on Sunday morning, giving the most and telling the world about it means nothing if you're doing nothing to try to BE a better Christian. You see, God wants us fully. He doesn't need our offerings. And the only sacrifice He needs is for us to simply crucify the old us and start acting like the Christians we claim to be. That means opening the Bible, worshipping Him for the right reasons, and living the Christ-like life we're called to live. And if we can do those things, verse 19 tells us that we will eat the good things of the land. I'll let you ponder the meaning of that one.

What are you offering to the Lord?