08/28/2026
God’s Priority
All over the pages of the Old Testament we see God commanding His people to offer sacrifices to Him, with painstaking detail given of how to do so, and on what occasions. One would think that this is a non-negotiable, perpetual requirement God has for His people. Actually, though, it’s merely representative of what He really wants. What He really wants, is obedience.
There were basically two reasons the Lord God required the sacrifices He commanded. The first was to give people something to obey, as a test of and strengthener of their faith. The second was to preview the ultimate sacrifice His Son, Jesus Christ, would undertake, for His people – the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. To continue to literally sacrifice animals after what Jesus did on the cross is to reject Jesus’ atonement as insufficient, and therefore needing supplemented by our ongoing sacrifices.
In any case, as to the priority of obedience over sacrifice per se, we have this principle, as it’s worded in Proverbs 21:3 – “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.”
Wait a minute. When people offer sacrifices, doesn’t God regard that as “righteousness”? I mean, isn’t it an act of obedience to do what He has said, and He has prescribed sacrifice? Technically, yes, but we need to keep the following in mind. While one could carry out sacrifices with the full intention of doing this out of obedience to God, this also tends to be an exercise that can be carried out with no genuine faith, with no heart commitment, with mere adherence to “religious duty” that sees to the externals while denying the underlying principle.
The same can be said for other things we might do that look right, on the outside, but can be tended to without one’s heart really being in it, but just to satisfy some superficial sense of obligation, out of guilt, or ritual habit, like bare church attendance, recognizing religious “holy days”, or doing anything that is carried out mindlessly just for the sake of tradition, to put on a performance, or meet one’s own criteria of “holiness”.
Righteousness and justice are put forward as God’s priorities to prevent anyone from thinking they’ve properly honored God when they’ve merely scratched at the surface of piety while “neglecting the weightier things” (Matthew 23:23). This is the difference between purity, and being puritanical; between being obedient versus legalistic; between being honorable versus “Pharisaical”.
It’s not only what we do, but why we do what we do that matters to God. He knows our hearts. We must inspect ours as well, and be certain the investments we make in our lives and our faith are received by Him as pleasing in His sight. When our actions match our hearts, and we are inspired by grace, and God’s glory and desire to bless people is what we truly want, God is … very pleased. “Without faith it is impossible to please God …” (Hebrews 11:6).
Pastor Craig
