The Book of Proverbs contains many contrasts, including verses where the wicked are put over against the upright. Among them is: “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is His delight” (15:8). Here the offering of sacrifice and prayer are examples of how people worshipped God, and we are told something of God’s attitude to such worship. On the one hand, He does not accept the worship of the wicked – of those who do not submit to His will but go on in rebellion against Him. He finds their worship abominable because they do not engage in it with a sincere, loving heart. On the other hand, He delights in the worship of people who are upright – not people who are perfect, because there are none such in this world, but those who follow “after righteousness” (Prov 15:9). And to follow after righteousness is contrasted with going in the way of the wicked.
Charles Bridges comments1 on Proverbs 15:8: “Let the reader ponder this awful question:2 ‘What am I? What is my service when upon my knees before God? An abomination or a delight?’ Man judges by acts; God by principles. ‘The sacrifice of the wicked’, though it be part of God’s own service, yet ‘will be found in His register in the catalogue of sins to be accounted for’.3 . . . It is ‘the sacrifice of fools’ (Ecc 5:1) – heedless and unreflecting, performed without interest, with a heart asleep. Nay more – where the heart is deliberately and habitually absent – it is the acting of a lie.” In pointing to the heartlessness of such worship, Bridges references Isaiah 29:13, where the Lord says, “This people draw near Me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the precept of men”. When the Israelites in Isaiah’s time came to worship God, everything was outward for most of them; nothing was inward; certainly nothing was sincere; nothing came from the heart. And Jesus quoted these words against the scribes and Pharisees, for they were making “the commandment of God of none effect by [their] tradition” (Mt 15:6); their obedience was hypocrisy. More generally, it is the absence of a sense of sin and a corresponding lack of submission to the great God of eternity that leads to Jesus pronouncing people’s sacrifices, among other acts of worship, to be an abomination, something disgusting.
Bridges continues: “And whether [the sacrifice] be smoothly fashioned to impose on man, or whether it be forced by the sting of an awakened conscience – instead of possessing the virtue of a sacrifice, it is an insulting provocation; not only vain (Mt 15:7-9), but abominable – yea abomination itself (Prov 21:27)”. What is lacking? Bridges’ answers: That “without which ‘it is impossible to please God’; the lack of which stamped the sacrifice of Cain as an abomination (Gen 4:3-5 with Heb 11:4). It is a ‘work that doth not flow from a lively faith, and therefore hath in it the nature of sin’ (Article 13 of the Church of England).”
Sacrifice was instituted by God for the spiritual instruction of the people of Old Testament times; yet He told a later generation: “I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you” (Jer 7:22,23). These verses are to be understood in the light of Matthew Poole’s comment: “Negatives are often put for comparatives”; so it was more important for the Israelites to obey God’s moral law than to offer sacrifice. What was the worth of offering a sacrifice if there was no willingness to obey God’s other commands from the heart? Indeed He told them: “Bring no more vain oblations [offerings]” (Is 1:13). But He did not stop there; He further directed them: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil” (Is 1:16). They were being told, in other words, to stop sinning; no one has any right to sin. It is, of course, true that “there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” (Ecc 7:20), but human inability to keep God’s laws perfectly is no excuse for sinning. Instead, the people of Israel were to “learn to do well”.
Yet where did their inability to keep from sinning leave them? And where does our inability to keep from sin leave us? We must bring our inability before God. He invites us: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord” (Is 1:18). We are to come to Him, confessing our sin and our inability to turn from sin in our own strength. But we are to say to Him: Thou art able to deliver us from the power of sin; Thou art able to make us able and willing to come to Thee for forgiveness and for every other spiritual blessing; Thou art able to make us sincere by giving us new hearts – and keeping grace alive in our hearts so that we continue to be sincere.
As sinners, we need to bring a sacrifice, a sacrifice that will be acceptable to God. And God has provided such a sacrifice. He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to offer Himself up as a sacrifice for sinners, a sacrifice that would satisfy His own justice. Yes, Christ has come; He offered Himself as a sacrifice in the place of sinners, and God accepted that sacrifice. And we can be sure that the sacrifice was accepted because God raised up Christ from the dead, for He received the full wages of sin, which is death – the wages that were due to sinners. He did all that was necessary for man’s redemption; He died in the place of sinners. So let us reason thus before God: Thou hast provided salvation for sinners in Christ; Thou art calling sinners like me to look to Christ and be saved. (Is 45:22); draw me then by the Holy Spirit and I will run after Thee (Song 1:4).
Let us stress again that, while the spiritual activities of the wicked are not acceptable to the Lord, it is a greater sin for them to hold back from praying. Bridges emphasises, “Not that prayer itself is a sin”. He quotes from James Ussher: “It is a good duty, but spoiled in the carriage” [that is, in carrying it out]. And Bridges adds, “Far indeed would we be from discouraging the wicked from prayer. We would only press the awakening conviction that it must be done in God’s order and way; else never can it find His acceptance.” Bridges here points to Acts 8:22, which gives Peter’s counsel to Simon the sorcerer, whom everyone assumed had truly believed in the Saviour. But Simon then demonstrated, by offering to pay the Apostles if they would give him the power to give the Holy Ghost to others, that he was not a sincere believer. Peter called on him to pray to God, “if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee”. It was his duty to pray to God, and the Most High might sovereignly hear his prayer and forgive him. Yet your answer to this might be: I do not know how to pray. But God gives us instruction on this point in His Word, for He gives light on every matter we need to know in the spiritual realm. For instance, when He directs Israel to return to Himself – for they had fallen by their iniquity – He commands, “Take with you words, and turn to the Lord”. But what words were they to use if they would return. He tells them: “Say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously”. He gives them the words that they should use in turning to Him. And these words are altogether appropriate for sinners like us to use. What is more, if we do return to the Lord, using these or other suitable words, then “will we render the calves of our lips” (Hos 14:2). “The calves of our lips” are spiritual sacrifices, such as thanksgiving to God, which we will offer to Him with a degree of sincerity if we have indeed returned to Him in faith and repentance. Such a return implies a change of heart and at least a beginning of sincere worship, which God delights in, for “the prayer of the upright is His delight”.
The Lord delights in the first actings of grace in the soul of a sinner. After all, it is the result of His own work there; it is God the Holy Spirit, who has begun new life in the soul, that makes sincere spiritual activity possible and makes this person’s inward and outward life upright before God. So one of the first indications of new life in the heart of Saul of Tarsus was that he was praying – no longer in a Pharisaic, formal way, but sincerely expressing the desires of his heart for spiritual blessing. God saw these desires and He delighted in them, as He delighted in Saul’s uprightness. Saul himself was no longer satisfied with his self-righteousness; he no longer considered it a sufficient preparation for heaven; he knew he needed a better righteousness. So he prayed – no doubt very often – to “be found in [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil 3:9).
We can be sure that the Lord delighted in that prayer, just as surely as He delighted in the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Spirit in Paul’s heart and life, as a result of which he was now following after righteousness. We can also be sure that God answered his prayer and that Paul is now in heaven and perfectly upright – which will be true of all who, following after righteousness, are echoing his prayer to be united to Christ. The Lord has imputed Christ’s perfect righteousness to each of them.
As we read through the Scriptures, we find prayers offered up by a great variety of godly men and women, and we can be sure that the Lord delighted in them all. The upright are not self-sufficient; it was because David, an upright man, knew that he could not depend on his own spiritual powers that he prayed, “Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not” (Ps 17:5). And he could claim that the petitions of this Psalm were sincere: that they did not come “out of feigned lips” (v 1); indeed he was inspired by the Spirit in saying so. Such petitions were the sincere expression of David’s heart; he knew he needed God to hold him up, so that he would not slip into sin. And God delighted in that expression of dependence on Himself.
The Lord intends such petitions to be used in every generation. How much we all need a new heart, so that our worship would be sincere – what God would delight in, rather than find abominable! May we seek Him now, each of us for ourselves, and do so for the sake of Christ, who died for abominable sinners and rose again for their justification. And if we have already found Him, may we go on seeking Him!
1All quotations from Bridges in this article are taken from his comments on Proverbs 15:8, in his Exposition of the Book of Proverbs, Banner of Truth reprint, 1968. This fine work is still available.
2That is, a question that should make one full of awe.
3A quotation from Ezekiel Hopkins’ Works.