1. Concepts from the Sacrificial System.
Olympia, WA. October 2, 2009

(A single Adobe Acrobat PDF file with all three talks' notes is available here.)

Main text: Isaiah 1

Introduction

So what’s the answer? What is God really looking for? This is at the heart of all religious systems—how God relates to us, and how we relate to him. Let’s think of some brief answers to this vital question that have been given over the centuries…

Obedience

Compliance

Servants

Sacrifice (Gifts, payment, animals, humans, blood, death)

Pleasing/satisfying/placating

Honor

Respect

Reverence

Worship/Praise

Love

Friendship

Relationship

Let’s begin with one of the main group of ideas that have so dominated our ideas of what God wants—sacrifice. In this I include all kinds of gifts, presents, offerings, and rituals that are done to “give” something valuable to God. A sacrifice is a giving up of something costly to show God how much he is valued, and to “please” him or even pay  him (“propitiate” etc)

Illustrations

I was visiting a church member in hospital. On the next bed lay a lady, who could hardly talk and couldn’t move after suffering a massive stroke. She called me over. “I see you’re a minister,” she began. “I’m really sick. Do you think if I gave God all my money he would heal me?”

How would you answer?

The idea of sacrificing to God to get something in return is such a familiar idea that we hardly see anything wrong in this bargaining. We do it all the time!

So I explained my ideas about God. But it seems she had already made her mind up. “If he gets me out of here, he can have all I’ve got,” were her last words to me.

Next time I visited, she was gone. I feared the worst, and asked the church member what had happened to the lady in the next bed.

“Oh, it was amazing, She got better really fast. She was sure it was God healing her because of her promise. And isn’t it great? She’s going to donate all her life savings to our church.”

Never saw her again. No donation! Not that I think we should have accepted it either. But maybe there’s running through your heads at this moment that she won’t do well because she didn’t do what she promised…

Is God like that?

Ted Turner, founder of CNN, tells the story of losing his sister to lupus. He prayed long and hard, really seriously, promising God all kinds of things, ready to make all kinds of sacrifices, if God would heal his sister. She died an agonizing death. After that, Ted Turner turned his back on God.

What would you say to Ted Turner? How would you say it?

What about when we say that God is testing us? That he wants us to sacrifice to show our faith? That God has told us to give everything we have to him? Why? What is it for?

Let’s use the Old Testament sacrificial system and God’s comments about that to try and understand what God is really looking for…

What’s the point?

What’s the point of the sacrificial system? God himself raises the question:

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” Isaiah 1:11 KJV. Especially in the context—of those who believe all that is required is to go through the ceremony. Why sacrifice? To repeat the old bumper sticker: “God has said it. I believe it. That’s all there is to it.”

God certainly did initiate the sacrificial system. He told the Israelites what to do—in great detail. In his instructions regarding the construction of the Tabernacle, the movable sanctuary in the wilderness, God specifies the kind of wood and textiles, their color measurements (see the precise details in Exodus 26 and on). It must have seemed to those receiving such a blueprint that God was more of an interior designer…

Whatever. Since God said it, they did what they were told. No matter as to the reason why, it seems. If God wanted a tent in the wilderness, who were they to argue? So they followed the instructions carefully, mindful that this God seemed ready to impose punishment for any infraction. The process was begun, and they concluded that this God they worshiped wanted blood to be spilt, fat to be burned on the altar, and that the smoke of an animal sacrifice smelled good to him. He even said so.

Noting all the various procedures and protocols, they slavishly followed every command, and then they were sure God would be satisfied. The concentration on the “nuts and bolts” led them to conclude that this is what God wanted.

Trouble was they got caught up in the system, the mechanics of salvation, and failed to see the point of it all. So eventually God himself had to intervene, and explain that what they were doing is not what he wanted!

What are you doing? He asks. What are you thinking? What is the point of all this ceremonial stuff? Most of all: what kind of God do you think I am that you should act this way?

God puts it bluntly:

“I have no desire for the blood of bulls, of sheep and he-goats. Whenever you come to enter my presence—who asked you for this?” Isaiah 1:11-12 NEB.

The ritualistic worshiper may be forgiven for being surprised. After all, isn’t he doing exactly what God told him to do? “Who asked for this—well you did, God!” The one doing the sacrificing can point to chapter and verse, declaring “See, it says so right here!”

But now God is saying that’s not what he wants: “Do you think I want all these sacrifices you keep offering to me? I have had more than enough…” Isaiah 1:11 TEV.

More than enough. Because the religious systematizers of Isaiah’s day had reduced the sacrificial system to just a mechanical process. Sinned? No problem—just sacrifice, and it’s all taken care of! So easy… Sinned again? Same answer—another sacrifice. More sins, more sacrifices. It’s an easy payback system—you get into debit, and so you gain credit through sacrifice. Simple!

Of course, the worshiper might wonder about the God who set up the system—what kind of person was this blood-and-fat demanding deity? But hey—he was the one who asked, so you did what you were told, right?

So God has to fix the misconception: “I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.” Isaiah 1:11 NIV. What were you thinking? That I was some kind of bloodthirsty ogre who could only be satisfied with blood and the violent death of animals?

Missing the point

The sacrificial system was designed by God to teach us. That sin kills. That without God’s healing salvation we inevitably die, die eternally. That sin impacts our whole lives, and those of others, and that no amount of good intentions will change us. Only God can save and heal. And what do we do with the whole system? Decide it’s not for us, but for God, and since he wants all these rituals and sacrifices, then we can do this for him and having kept our side of the bargain then he will keep hi. It’s a sin-removal system based on blood and animal flesh. No need to worry if it doesn’t make sense—if that’s what God wants, then no matter how bizarre it may seem to us, then just do it!

They miss the point completely and utterly. And we do the same today. We even turn the most incredible gift of God to us—himself—into a way of paying God off! Jesus on the cross, seen in this perverted way, is just another sacrifice demanded by God…

That such a wonderful teaching tool should be so utterly misunderstood is terrible tragic. More than this, it ends up saying the opposite of what God really is. We have a great capacity for misunderstanding.

I remember preaching a sermon in England, and using as an illustration the problem I was having with a particular weed in our garden. Ground elder is an invasive plant, kindly brought to England by the Romans. It has a very extensive root system, and takes ages to dig out. The real problem is that just a tiny part of root left in the ground is enough for the weed to regenerate itself, so you have to laboriously dig the ground and sift through the soil to make sure you remove every last part of root, or it will re-grow the next year and you’ll be back to a weed-filled garden. I used this illustration to point out the problem of how difficult it is to eradicate sin—just like the weed, it’s root system is extensive and it’s really hard to remove!

Just an illustration of the huge problem of sin. After the service one member stopped me and said he wanted to talk to me about the sermon. I was pleased to get some feedback, and to have a spiritual conversation.

“It’s about your weeds,” he said.

“Yes, I said—they’re just like sin in our lives.”

“Well, those weeds—you need to use some specific weedkillers.” And he went into a long gardening lecture about which weedkillers to use and when, and how to treat etc. Completely missing the point…

Just like us when it comes to the illustrations God has used about dealing with sin!

God is disgusted

In fact God has to put the whole system on the line, rejecting the gross perversion of what he had intended: “Who asked you to do all this tramping about in my Temple? It’s useless to bring your offerings. I am disgusted…” Isaiah 1:12 TEV.

God is disgusted. As we look at the sacrificial system, we’re likewise disgusted. This system seems to have more to do with some perverse market-place than the plan of salvation. Which is why Jesus came in and cleansed the Temple—throwing out the God-abusers, the religionists who were so perversely misrepresenting God and his relationship to us.

So what does God want, speaking through Isaiah to his people? “Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” Isaiah 1:16, 17 NIV. Instead of relying on some ritualistic system, do right! Instead of “taking care of sin” in some legal way, God tells his people to learn and accept the ways of right doing and right being.

Instead of a preoccupation with legal status, what is far more important in God’s eyes is a life that is lived right. He would far rather you spend time in doing right for others than in fulfilling what you believe are significant religious niceties. For you can be wholly wrong even as you try to observe the religious laws. How? Because of the way you are thinking.

What God is looking for is a meaningful relationship. He identifies what he really wants:
“This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” Isaiah 66:2 NIV. Respect, honor, acceptance—a serious attitude that is thinking Godwards; not a blind following of the rules that will “fix” any problems with this demanding deity.

Pig’s blood

To those who preferred form and ceremony over the meaning, the actual symbols over what they pointed to, God in the very next verse has strong words:

But whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig’s blood, and whoever burns memorial incense, like one who worships an idol. They have chosen their own ways, and their souls delight in their abominations. Isaiah 66:3 NIV.

With the wrong perspective, says God, sacrifice is like murder; offerings are just killing animals—even a pet dog. Horrifyingly, God says that your gifts to him are like a present of pig’s blood—a particularly dreadful thought to the Israelites to whom he was speaking. Even burning incense is likened to idolatry. In other words, the whole system has been so corrupted and perverted that it teaches the opposite of what God intended—because of the attitude of the worshipers. They have “chosen their own ways”—doing their own thing—and are evil self-centered religionists who use the sacrificial system to take care of the “God problem.”

Worthless worship

This is absolutely worthless worship, says God. As if he really needed such sacrifices:
“I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens… Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” Psalm 50:9, 13 NIV.

No—such ideas come from paganism: the perverted ideas that claim god needs to be appeased and propitiated and satisfied with violent death, with plenty of blood. Does the true God need blood? Is he some vampire that drinks blood? What kind of God do such ideas portray?

Israel even fell into the trap of those nations around them and thought that if animal sacrifices were good, the human sacrifice must be even better! The logic is that it costs you something to sacrifice your valuable farm animals. But if you were to sacrifice something (someone) even more valuable, wouldn’t that get God’s attention even better, and please him more. In the “blended” worship that seems to be described in Jephthah’s time, the vow to sacrifice the first living thing to cross his threshold must have included the possibility of a person.

And later, Israel if doing exactly that in worshiping Molech, sacrificing their children in his red-hot arms. What a travesty—but in a sense logical, if that is what sacrifice is for.

God condemns the thought—not just because the sacrifice is to a pagan god, but because this is the last thing he would ever want. Indeed, if this is the thought behind sacrificing, then God wants none of it.

The truth is, says David at the end of the same Psalm 50, the kind of sacrifices are those that describe our relationship to our loving Lord, representing the right image of who God truly is, “that I may show him the salvation of God.” Psalm 50:23 NIV.

It was not just Isaiah among the prophets that condemned such futile attempts to manipulate and control God, to try to gain salvation through killing livestock:

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,” says God through Amos (5:21, 22 NIV).

Why? Again God is tired of lip service, and the failure of his people to recognize meaning and significance. They seem quite content to use the “required payment system” of animal sacrifice to balance their sin deficit. As the system became such a routine part of life, the people came to see this sacrificial duty as just another part of life, another habit to go through to placate and satisfy this demanding God.

Instead of meaningless and futile offerings, God wants his followers to realize the situation and look to the deeper meaning and significance of relating to him. It’s not the sacrificial process, but what it signifies:

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” Amos 5:24 NIV.

Business transactions

Similarly God through Jeremiah inveighed against the failure of the people to even listen as they made their ritualistic sacrifices:

Hear, O earth: I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their schemes, because they have not listened to my words and have rejected my law. What do I care about incense from Sheba or sweet calamus from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable; your sacrifices do not please me. Jeremiah 6:19, 20 NIV.

“We’re giving God so much,” the people would tell themselves. “Even the costliest incense from Arabia—the land of Sheba—nothing is too good for our God. We pay the highest of prices, so God should fix everything for us!”

Such an attitude reflects a total failure to listen to God, to understand the meaning of his laws. Most of all, it represents a complete rejection of a personal relationship, and turns the whole process into just a business transaction.

And while today we do not physically sacrifice, many still are most comfortable operating the system, transacting business with the One who would rather have our love, not our check books.

Playing the game

A compelling example is that of King Saul as he lost his way. Saul knew that religious observance was a powerful tool, and tried to use the power of religion to bolster his fading fortunes. In his arrogance, Saul usurped the right to offer sacrifices—seeking to play the system to his political advantage. But the result was disaster, as Samuel realized, pointing out that it was not the actual sacrifices God desired, but the right attitude of mind:

But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” 1 Samuel 15:22, 23 NIV.

Saul lost out precisely because he thought he could utilize the sacrificial system. He was not looking for an appropriate relationship with God, rather he simply wanted to manipulate the process to his own advantage.

Despite God’s provision of the sacrificial system for the Israelites (and notice that for a significant part of the Old Testament period the system was not in place), many Biblical passages relate to the inability of the system to actually “work” and achieve what God most wanted. As just one example, take this recognition from David:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have opened; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.” Psalm 40:6 NIV (alternative reading).

Meaningless

“I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.  If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:6-8 NIV.

Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” (NIV). Even the system given by God is not expressing what God really wants, says Jesus. For sacrifice without thought, as a legal and ritual ceremony, brings the worshiper no closer to God, nor to understanding.

For as Hebrews makes clear, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Hebrews 10:4 NIV.

Nor is it a question of Jesus providing a “better sacrifice” to God, in the same way the Israelites came to think that a human sacrifice was better than an animal sacrifice. This is pure paganism!

How we see the Old Testament sacrifices and their meaning are vital for our understanding of God, since they point to the sacrifice of Jesus. If we see sacrifices as paying God off in some way, or trying to propitiate him, then we will see Jesus’ sacrifice in the same way. But as Isaiah makes clear, “we thought” it was God punishing his Son—but this is not true. Nor is Jesus trying to change God in any way, for the Father loves us himself. Just like the sacrifices of the Old Testament, Jesus’ sacrifice is directed at us, not God!

What God is rejecting is meaningless worship, as He told His people through Isaiah:

“The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the LORD. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats… Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” Isaiah 1:11-14 NIV.

Enough! says God. You do not get the point. For no amount of sacrificial blood or ritual observance provides what I want—a true relationship with each one of you!

What does God want then? David answers in the same psalm, pointing to the relational aspect, the love of salvation:

“But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation always say, ‘The LORD be exalted!’” Psalm 40:16 NIV.

What God really wants: answers in the sacrificial context

Even the very last Old Testament book once again concludes with the vanity of meaningless offerings, the futility of sacrificing without thoughtful recognition, and the desire for a true relationship with God. In fact, God is so moved that he wishes the temple to be closed to such pointless actions that achieved nothing:

“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.” Malachi 1:10 NIV.

Divine displeasure—not because of the wrong rituals, or inappropriate sacrifices, or even the defective system, but because the worshiper is just going through the motions, acting a part, fulfilling obligations. There is no attempt at understanding, no desire for a close connection with this God—their chief concern is “just make the payment!”

What God truly seeks is made clear earlier in the book:

“‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD. But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’” Malachi 1:2 NIV.

God wants true love and agreement, true obedience that is based on recognizing right rather than blind, uncaring ritual.

Only God can heal the damage of sin—and systems are no substitute for a deeply personal relationship with our loving Lord, which is what God has wanted all along.

-end-

Additional Texts: Bring no more futile... offerings. Isaiah 1:13 NJB.
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 sacrifices. [1 Sam. 15:22]
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart. [Psalm 51:17]
To do justice ... is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. [Psalm 21:3]
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? I delight not in the blood ... of lambs! [Is. 1:11]
I gave them also statutes that were not good. [Eze. 20:25]
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet to me. [Jer. 6:20]
For I spake not ... nor commanded ... concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: but this I commanded ... obey my voice. [Jer. 7:22]
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy. [Mic. 6:6-8]
I will have mercy and not sacrifice. [Matt.9:13]© Jonathan Gallagher 2009