Isaiah 1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?
Perhaps because we each know what we ourselves want more than we know what anyone else wants, it is very natural for us to assume that other people want exactly what we want and are motivated in the same way we are motivated. Some countries try to put pressure on other countries to do some certain things and they assume that the countries upon whom they are applying pressure are motivated in the same way as they are. Many times they are not. Cultures are different, and certainly the East and West are different in their thinking and often their motivations. Sometimes this is true between men and women. Men assume that women are motivated the same way they are and vice versa. We are talking, of course, in generalities. You can assume the family you marry into places importance on the same things as your family and that they have the same motivations. Sometimes in our relationship with God, we assume that God wants certain things, and maybe we are right but maybe we are not.
In Isaiah, the prophet gives God’s message to His wayward people. They were living in a day of thriving religion but a shriveling relationship with God. God calls them a sinful nation. He says that Judah is “gone away backward.” He says their country is desolate. Then in verses 11-12 He asks two questions that we ought to ask ourselves today. Verse 11 says, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” The Jewish people brought lambs, sheep, and other sacrifices to God, and He asks them about the purpose. Why were they doing this?
In verse 12 He says, “When you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand…?” He is asking, “Who told you to come to the temple and worship?” The answer could have been, “God, You set the sacrificial system.” Yet, these are rhetorical questions that point to the fact that God was not pleased with what they were giving. He calls their sacrifices vain and empty. He calls them an abomination. God was not just ambivalent about them; He hated them. He called them iniquity. In Proverbs it says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord.” Even the good that a wicked person does is deplorable to God. God says, “My soul hateth…they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them…I will not hear [your prayers].”
What is the point? The point is that God does not want what you have. In verse 16 He says, “Wash you, make you clean.” God doesn’t want what you have because God doesn’t need what you have. God gave you and me everything that we would be tempted to boast about; our intellect, our energies, and our personality. Any advantage at all that we may have, God is the One Who gives us the very breath to breathe. So, to think that God is desperate to have what He Himself has given us is an underestimation of what it is to be God and to be human. God doesn’t want what you have. No, God wants something much greater. God wants you. God doesn’t want yours; He wants you.
If God owns me, He is not going to need to quibble about my finances, my family, my future, or my decisions. God is not going to have to wrest these things out of my hands as if I am giving them grudgingly and doing Him some wild favor. Israel was under the illusion, especially Judah of whom He speaks specifically here, that they were doing good things, bringing sacrifices in a business of thriving religion.
What God wants today is not a religion. It is not as if I go to church, give money into the offering, read my Bible, and do good things, then I am a good Christian. The fact of the matter is that if you are not reading your Bible, you are not going to be as close to God as you ought to be. You are missing out. You should also be a giver. Those things are true, but if I am just doing those things by rote and thinking that is what God wants most, I am mistaken. God doesn’t want what I have or even strictly what I can give; God wants me because God loves me and God made me. If God has me, God has everything I could possibly give Him.
So, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to God, and who has required these things at your hand? We might well answer, “God.” But, God doesn’t want what you have; God wants you. When God has you, God has everything.