Isaiah 1:11-15

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?

saith the Lord

Hypocrisy and partiality in religion

These words are not to be understood absolutely but comparatively, and with respect to the manners of these men. For--

I. GOD COULD NOT ABSOLUTELY REJECT SACRIFICES, because they were of His own appointing, as we are abundantly certified in the Books of Exodus and Leviticus. And they were instituted for very good put poses.

1. As federal rites between God and His people, that by eating of what was offered upon His altar they might profess their union and communion with Him, that they were of His family, He their Father, and they His children. And this is what made idolatry so odious to Him, and for which He declares Himself a jealous God, that when they sacrificed to idols they made the same acknowledgments to them.

2. Sacrifices were instituted to expiate sins of ignorance and trespasses of an inferior nature. It is true, St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews affirms, that it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should purify the conscience, so as to wash away the guilt of sin, which only can be atoned for by the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. But yet they availed to the purifying of the flesh, and were accepted of God in lieu of temporal punishments.

3. Sacrifices were designed to teach men that without shedding of blood there could be no remission of sins. They were hereby led to consider that infinite justice properly required the life of the offender, but that infinite mercy accepted of a vicarious life.

4. Peace offerings, or sacrifices of gratitude were offered to God in hope of obtaining some favour, or as a thanksgiving for having received some signal mercy from Him.

5. Sacrifices were instituted for types and representatives of that final sacrifice of the Son of God in whom they all centred and were consummated. (Psalms 40:6; Hebrews 10:5) “He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second,” i.e., the sacrifice of Himself; and consequently Paul calls the law our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and Christ the end of the law, because it was ended in Him and by Him. In this sense it is that our Lord affirms that He came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. He fulfilled the moral law by His perfect holiness and virtue, and the law of sacrifices by His death and passion. From all this I infer that God does not reject sacrifices as such, and therefore we must conclude that--

II. HIS AVERSION TO THEM WAS OCCASIONED BY THE ILL MANNERS OF THOSE THAT OFFERED THEM, who had no concern to accomplish the good ends which were intended by them, nor considered that by these sacraments they laid themselves under renewed obligations to be sensible of their own demerits, to repent and reform whatever they found amiss in their lives, and to abound in the love of God, and the fruits of His Holy Spirit. It appears from the characters of these men, especially in their latter and worst times, that they satisfied themselves with the opus operatum, the external duties of religion, and had no regard to the renovation of their hearts and minds. (W. Reading, M. A.)

Religiousness

The common man’s commonest refuge from conscience. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)

Sin offensive to God

1. The Scripture for our understanding ascribes senses to God, and here we find every sense displeased with their sins.

(1) They were offensive to His tasting; for their burnt offerings of rams, with the fat of lambs, etc., He could not relish--they delighted Him not, they were sour to His palate.

(2) They were offensive to His smelling; for He tells them that their incense was an abomination unto Him--that precious perfume, which was made with so many sweet spices and pure frankincense (Exodus 30:34), did stink in His nostrils, the scent thereof He could not abide.

(3) They were offensive to His feeling; for their new moons and appointed feasts were a burden unto Him, He was a weary to bear them. And though He be not weary of bearing the whole world, yet He is aweary of this burden; so heavy is it to His sense, that He complains He is “pressed under it, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves” (Amos 2:13).

(4) They were offensive to His seeing; and therefore He tells them, though they spread forth their hands, He will hide His eyes. His pure eyes “cannot behold evil,” nor endure to look upon iniquity, and therefore He must turn away His face from them.

(5) They were offensive to His hearing; for when they make many prayers He will not hear. Their prayers were as jarring in His ears as if divers distracted musicians should play upon divers bad instruments so many several tunes at one time.

2. Neither were their sins only displeasing to His senses, but also grievous to His mind, and therefore He tells them, their new moons and appointed feasts His soul did hate; which is an emphatical speech, and an argument of God’s hearty detestation. (N. Rogers.)

Dissembled piety

Dissembled piety is double iniquity. (M. Henry.)

Moral whitewash

God is not mocked, and even man is not long imposed upon by a vain show of devotion. We once heard Father Taylor, a noted preacher to sailors in America, pray that men who thought themselves good, and were not, might be undeceived; and he cried, “Lord, take off the whitewash!” (D. Fraser, D. D.)

Religious hypocrisy: Dukes Orleans and Burgundy

On the 20 th of November 1407, the two cousins heard mass, and partook of the holy sacrament together at the church of the Augustins. Never was there a blacker instance of sacrilegious hypocrisy. At the very moment when he thus profaned the most solemn rite of Christianity, Jean sans Peur had deliberately doomed his enemy to a bloody and violent death. (Student’s France.)

Formal religion

Dickens describes how in Genoa he once witnessed “a great fiesta on the hill behind the house, when the people alternately danced under tents in the open air and rushed to say a prayer or two in an adjoining church bright with red and gold and blue and sliver: so many minutes of dancing and of praying in regular turns of each.” (H. O.Mackey.)

Inconsistency

Writing of Lorenzo de Medici, Mr. Howells says: “After giving his whole mind and soul to the destruction of the last remnant of liberty, after pronouncing some fresh sentence of ruin or death, he entered the Platonic Academy, and ardently discussed virtue and the immortality of the soul; then sallying forth to mingle with the dissolute youth of the city, he sang his carnival songs, and abandoned himself to debauchery; returning home with Pulci and Politian, he recited verses and talked of poetry; and to each of these occupations he gave himself up as wholly as if it were the sole occupation of his life.” (H. O. Mackey.)

“Holiness becometh Thine house”

When Ruskin was making explorations about Venice, in the Church of St. James, he discovered, engraved on a stone, these words, “Around the temple let the merchant’s weights be true, his measures just, and his contracts without guile.” (Sunday School Chronicle.)

The Paris Figaro mentions that a curious discovery was made recently when the famous robber gang of Papakoritzopoulo was broken up. In the pocket of this most notorious of European brigands was found a small Bible, neatly bound and wrapped in a clean, silk handkerchief, a prayer book, holy relics in tiny boxes, a cross, and other religious objects.

Inconsistency

The son of Sirach asks of him that washeth himself after the touching of a dead body, and then touches it again, what availeth his washing? “So is it with a man that fasteth for his sins, and goeth again, and doeth the same: who will hear his prayer? or what doth his humbling profit him?” (F. Jacox, B. A.)

Audacious hypocrisy

When Pope Hadrian II consented at last to admit Lothair to the holy communion he warned him, “But if thou thinkest in thine heart to return to wallow in lust, beware of receiving this sacrament, lest thou provoke the terrible judgment of God.” And the king shuddered, but did not draw back. (F. Jacox, B. A.)

Detestable worship

Dr. South says of him who, by hypothesis, comes to church with an ill intention, that he comes to God’s house upon the devil’s errand, and the whole act is thereby rendered evil and detestable before God. The prayers of a wicked man are by Jeremy Taylor likened to “the breath of corrupted lungs: God turns away from such unwholesome breathings.” (F. Jacox, B. A.)

Smuggler and preacher too

The letters of Robert Louis Stevenson tell an astonishing story of smuggling in the Shetlands. The revenue official had great trouble with a man known as Preaching Peter, who, whenever he returned with his spoils, sent round handbills to announce his coming, and went about the country preaching. After he had much prayed and much preached, he gave the benediction, and this was the signal for all who knew him to crowd round. “How many gallons shall I give you? How many do you want?” Such was the conversation; and so he sold his smuggled spirits and improved the people’s souls while he filled his own purse. Worship and wickedness:--A famous brigand in Sicily was constantly robbing and sometimes murdering. But he would never go forth on his expeditions without first kneeling at a little shrine in his cave, where he kept an image of the Virgin. (Christian Commonwealth.)

Pew holding

Emerson, in an essay, refers to “what is called religion, but is, perhaps, pew holding.”

A red-handed religionist

There is no name in Scottish history round which darker or grimmer or bloodier associations gather than the name of John Graham of Claverhouse. He hunted and harried the men of the Covenant. He shot some of them with his own hand. He brought misery and weeping, widowhood and orphanhood, to many a lowly and godly home. Yet he was scrupulous in the observance of all religious ordinances. Let me beware of this double life. (A. Smellie, M. A.)