Posted on 05/15/2022 12:30:42 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight. The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD: but he loveth him that followeth after righteousness” (Proverbs 15:8).
“The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD,” it doesn’t matter how religious a wicked man is, God will not accept it. Every man outside of Jesus Christ is a wicked man, so there is no religious apart from the cross that God will accept. “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalms 51:16-17).
In Isaiah 1, there were sacrifices that Israel was doing that God hated, because their hearts weren’t right, and He found them hateful. They were just trying to justify themselves, but God saw it all as an abomination.
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats” (Isaiah 1:11).
A man can sacrifice himself, or his money, for God but if it is for his honor, and not God’s glory—God hates it.
“. . . but the prayer of the upright is his delight,” just the simple prayer delights the heart of God. All the wicked are out there sacrificing their children to Dagon, they are performing useless religious rituals as the First Church of Your Own Choice down on the corner of Vine and Broad street, they are repeating vain repetitions over and over—while some simple blood-washed believer is simply talking to his God as one “speaketh to a friend” (Exodus 33:11) that pleases God to no end.
The former is an abomination and a stench in the nostrils of God, while the latter is his delight. A righteous, saved man, gets down to pray, God says, “I love that.”
In this life, you follow after righteousness. You just keep following it, you’ll not attain it in this life, but one day in the future you will, and you will be rewarded for it. We have no righteousness of our own, it is all of God through Jesus Christ.
Paul said, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead” (Philippians 3:9-11). He also said, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).
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