Bible Verses About Formalism

I am not rebuking you for your sacrifices; your burnt offerings are always before me.

I have no need for a bull from your farm or for male goats from your pens;

for all forest creatures are mine already, as are the animals on a thousand hills;

I know all the birds in the mountains; whatever moves in the fields is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is mine, and everything in it.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Offer thanksgiving as your sacrifice to God, pay your vows to the Most High,

and call on me when you are in trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me."

For you don't want sacrifices, or I would give them; you don't take pleasure in burnt offerings.

My sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; God, you won't spurn a broken, chastened heart.

I will praise God's name with a song and extol him with thanksgiving.

This will please ADONAI more than a bull, with its horns and hoofs.

"Why are all those sacrifices offered to me?" asks ADONAI. "I'm fed up with burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals! I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls, lambs and goats!

Yes, you come to appear in my presence; but who asked you to do this, to trample through my courtyards?

Stop bringing worthless grain offerings! They are like disgusting incense to me! Rosh-Hodesh, Shabbat, calling convocations - I can't stand evil together with your assemblies!

Everything in me hates your Rosh-Hodesh and your festivals; they are a burden to me - I'm tired of putting up with them!

"When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; no matter how much you pray, I won't be listening; because your hands are covered with blood.

Then Adonai said: "Because these people approach me with empty words, and the honor they bestow on me is mere lip-service; while in fact they have distanced their hearts from me, and their 'fear of me' is just a mitzvah of human origin

therefore, I will have to keep shocking these people with astounding and amazing things, until the 'wisdom' of their 'wise ones' vanishes, and the 'discernment' of their 'discerning ones' is hidden away."

Woe to those who burrow down deep to hide their plans from ADONAI! They work in the dark and say to themselves, "Nobody sees us, nobody knows us."

How you turn things upside down! - Is the potter not better than the clay, Does something made say of its maker, "He didn't make me"? Does the product say of its producer, "He has no discernment"?

"I hate, I utterly loathe your festivals; I take no pleasure in your solemn assemblies.

If you offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; nor will I consider the peace offerings of your stall-fed cattle.

Spare me the noise of your songs! I don't want to hear the strumming of your lutes!

"With what can I come before ADONAI to bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with burnt offerings? with calves in their first year?