Bible Verses About Formalism

I don’t rebuke you for your sacrifices. Your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I have no need for a bull from your stall, nor male goats from your pens.

For every animal of the forest is mine, and the livestock on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the mountains. The wild animals of the field are mine.

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

Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

For you don’t delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving.

It will please the LORD better than an ox, or a bull that has horns and hoofs.

“What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?”, says the LORD. “I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don’t delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.

When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand, to trample my courts?

Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me; new moons, Sabbaths, and convocations: I can’t bear with evil assemblies.

My soul hates your New Moons and your appointed feasts. They are a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

The Lord said, “Because this people draws near with their mouth and with their lips to honor me, but they have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which has been taught;

therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their prudent men will be hidden.”

Woe to those who deeply hide their counsel from the LORD, and whose works are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us?” and “Who knows us?”

You turn things upside down! Should the potter be thought to be like clay; that the thing made should say about him who made it, “He didn’t make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding?”

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.

Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals.

Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

How shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?