9 March 2013 - superficial sacrifices

9 March 2013 - superficial sacrifices 

Be bountiful, O LORD, to Zion in your kindness
by rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem;
Then shall you be pleased with due sacrifices,
burnt offerings and holocausts.

We sometimes feel like our walls have been pulled down.  We feel as though there is no barrier between us and the pains of life.  We don't feel as though we even have the traction to come to the LORD.  There is just too much, and we cannot escape.  Why would the LORD even allow such a thing?

Your piety is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that early passes away.
For this reason I smote them through the prophets,
I slew them by the words of my mouth;

The walls of our piety turn out to be insubstantial.  It is good to have this exposed even though it hurts.  We don't want to remain like the Pharisee.  We might not phrase it just this way, but our hearts are in the same place.

O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — 
greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week,
and I pay tithes on my whole income.’

We believe, essentially, that we are doing our work and ought to be paid with comfort and prosperity.  And for every judgment of another we further acquit ourselves if any need for conversion and further show our own sense of entitlement.  With this attitude we will not go home justified.

Externals with our hearts in the wrong place are almost worse than nothing if they start to insulate us from God's saving help and begin building self-sufficiency within us.

The tax collector doubtlessly suffers quite an ordeal as the LORD brings him to this place of humility where he can only say ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’  He has moved beyond the externals of sacrifice and can pray with the Psalmist:

My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

In his heart is the cry of Hosea:

“Come, let us return to the LORD,
it is he who has rent, but he will heal us;
he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.
He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence.

And because of his contrition and faith he does go home justified.  

Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD;
as certain as the dawn is his coming,
and his judgment shines forth like the light of day!
He will come to us like the rain,
like spring rain that waters the earth.”

If we strive to know that LORD we will trust that he rends only to heal.  We know that he wants to bring us through to a place that is better than where we began.  He will teach us to look to the third day even as we bear the cross.