Anti-Sacrifice

Psalm 40:6

Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; my ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.

Psalm 51:16-17

For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise.

Proverbs 21:2-3

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.

Isaiah 1:10-13a

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, to trample My courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices.

Isaiah 66:2b-4a

“But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word. “He who kills a bull is as if he slays a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he breaks a dog’s neck; he who offers a grain offering, as if he offers swine’s blood; he who burns incense, as if he blesses an idol. Just as they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations, So will I choose their delusions, and bring their fears on them;

Jeremiah 7:20-23

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place—on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched.” Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat. [sarcasm] For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’

Hosea 6:5-7

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of My mouth; and your judgments are like light that goes forth. For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But like men they transgressed the covenant;

Matthew 9:13

But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’

Matthew 12:7

But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless

Mark 12:33

And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

[If love is worth more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices then clearly they were not needed to begin with. We simply needed to focus on love.]

Acts 7:42

Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘Did you offer Me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship.

[The answer is no, they did not do any sacrifices during the 40 years in the desert. Thus, he is saying that it was not worthwhile to do so and doing so is merely following the path of Molek—a man-made idol.]