Meaningless Offerings

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!  Your incense is detestable to me.  New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.  Isaiah 1:13

What offerings and sacrifices are you presenting to your Savior and LORD?  Why are you brining your offerings?  Is it out of habit and obligation or is it out of sincere love and devotion for your Savior and LORD?  If we are presenting our offerings and sacrifices to Jesus without sincere love and devotion, He considers them meaningless.  Our offerings and sacrifices are an outward sign and expression of our inward faith in our LORD.  We must continually guard our hearts so that we do not place more faith in the ritual of presenting our offerings and sacrifices, than in worshiping Almighty God out of our love and devotion. 

Each child of God is called to bring a tithe into the storehouse.  God instituted the tithing system during the time of Moses.  Deuteronomy 15:22 – Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.  Everything we have is from the hand of Almighty God.  When we refuse to give to God a part of what He has given us, we rob Him.  God’s Word tells us in Malachi 3:10 – “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”  The blessings that God promises are not always material and may not be experienced completely until we reach our eternal home, but we will certainly receive them because Almighty God has spoken a promise to His children.  Our offerings are to be given with an attitude of love and a desire to be obedient to our Savior and LORD.  Prayerfully ask God to search your heart and reveal to you your motive behind your offerings and sacrifices. 

We are called to minister to others in the name of Jesus Christ.  When we minster to others, we will have to make sacrifices.  These sacrifices do not go unnoticed by our LORD.  We may have to sacrifice our time, our possessions, or our money.  We minister to others because of the love and devotion we have for our Savior and LORD.  Our faith lacks sincerity if it doesn’t reach out to others in the name of Christ.  Luke 3:11 tells us, Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same. 

 If we are ministering to others for recognition or to gain honor and praise, our LORD considers it meaningless.  I pray that we all will give freely and wholeheartedly because of our love and devotion to our Savior and LORD. 

I pray we never become like the people the LORD speaks of in Isaiah 29:13 – The Lord says:  “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”  God knows our heart.  He knows if we are presenting our offerings and sacrifices to Him out of love and devotion or out of ritual and tradition.  Let’s not slip into routine patterns when we present our offerings to our LORD.  If we do, He considers them meaningless.

Dear Heavenly Father, search our hearts and reveal to us whether we are presenting our offering to You out of love and devotion or out of ritual and tradition.  Place a desire in our heart to be cheerful givers.  Help us to recognize that all we have truly belongs to You.  In Jesus Name I Pray…..Amen.