Doing what is righteous and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. (Proverbs 21:3)
If you’re frequently reading the Scriptures, our daily boosts, and other biblical resources that strengthen your faith, then you’ve developed very good disciplines. This is central to our faith as followers and worshipers of Jesus. However, any good discipline, or what could be called a “spiritual ritual,” can be done on autopilot, causing us to miss the entire point of the activity. This is what happened to many of the Jews. God created the sacrificial system to be a tangible act of worship to him, but they thought the act itself was the most important part. What God was really after was their changed and sincere heart, symbolized by the sacrifice they offered.
Sometimes without realizing it, we come to spiritual rituals like God’s word and miss the entire purpose of it. We can get caught up on the amount of time we spend. “Has it been twenty minutes yet?” The more time we spend, the more spiritual the time must have be. Other times we can come to God’s word and think that understanding the passage is the goal. Gaining some information or insight about some difficult passage means we’ve done well with God. So our time in the Bible turns into an intellectual pursuit instead of a change in our hearts. James tells us that the person who is actually “blessed” by their time in God’s word, is the person who obeys what they just read (Jas. 1:25). So what might be the last thing you heard or read from God’s word that you need to work in your life?
Developing spiritual disciplines like reading Scripture daily and worshiping on Sundays with God’s people are worthy and soul benefitting pursuits, but we must remember that the entire purpose of these spiritual activities is to be changed by God, to apply and practice the things that God has told us in his word. Paul explained what true sacrifices look like for the believer: Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship (Romans 12:1).