Proverbs 21:27 comments; the sacrifice of the wicked

 

Proverbs 21:27 ¶ The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind? 

Proverbs 15:8 ¶ The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.

While the literal application of this Proverb to the Hebrew under the Law is obvious, that God wants genuine worship from His people, it is also not hard to understand this Proverb from the point of view of the Christian who is not under the Law.

As I have noted previously, the righteous is righteous only because He has the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, in him by virtue of His trusting in Christ to get him to heaven and eternal life. By trusting Christ and in His righteousness and not our own we can be saved by Him. So, the wicked is wicked because he has rejected Christ and is trusting in his own goodness to obtain some reward after his or her physical body dies. That is, if they just don’t believe on or don’t care about the God who created them anyway.

There are thousands and tens of thousands of wicked unbelievers sitting in church gatherings around the nation. Notice in 15:8 above that sacrifice and prayer are linked as an offering to God by the contrast in which they are used. The body of Christ unites on Sunday morning and offers up their prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (A.C.T.S.) as a sacrifice to God just as the individual Christian does every day of the week.

Proverbs 15:29 The LORD is far from the wicked: but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.

God does not want, need, or request the prayers of the wicked unless those prayers are for salvation. How much more wicked then is someone professing to be a Christian, sitting in a church pew, but trusting in his own righteousness to get to heaven or simply sitting there in cynical disbelief using his attendance to some advantage; either socially, for business, for politics, to appease family, or just to make themselves feel acceptable to others, even superior to them.

How much more wicked is this person’s prayer if he brings it to God with a wicked mind, filled with hatred of women, bigotry against anyone not just like them, unconfessed sin, and a desire to ensnare, control, dominate, manipulate, or to deceive others.

Churches in America contain many people with a distinct love of their own will who make a pretense of praying to God for an answer to a problem or issue and then use the results of their own wicked imaginations and say that God has laid that decision on their heart. In their own wicked mind they have pride, arrogancy, and a haughty spirit, not being able to even hear what God has to say them if they were interested in what God said.

Their sacrifice of prayer is wicked and even more so because of the wickedness of their thoughts. Wicked men and women will come to the front to pray alongside of those who sincerely are grappling with an issue, thinking about work, money, sex, or some other thought without even a thought of God while that person next to them is in tears, pleading with the Lord, their heart broken. They’ll sing hymns loudly with the biggest voice they can muster and all the while consider the possible outcome of the day’s ball game on television rather than truly praising God.

The wicked, fake Christian comes to unite with the body of Christ, unsaved and unsubmitted to Christ, all the while looking for an opportunity to press their business card in some unsuspecting Christian’s hand, perhaps hoping to make a sale. They’re more impressed with the flag on the platform than the Bible on the pulpit. They’re more concerned about how convenient the parking is than how sincere the hymn singing. They’re more interested in the political affiliation of the preacher than how much the other Christians love Christ. They’re more afraid of what someone is thinking of their fashion sense than they are of the wrath of God. They’re more fascinated with the trim of a woman’s skirt than with Will of God. Not only is their sacrifice, their prayer, an abomination to God, it is so much more an abomination because of the wickedness of their own mind.