Daily Sacrifice, May 14 (5:21-22)
“I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer Me burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts”— Amos 5:21, 22.
IN these verses Jehovah expresses His abhorrence and detestation of religious rites and ceremonies which are used to cover up iniquity, as though God could be appeased by ceremonial observances by those who persisted in sin. The feasts and solemn assemblies here referred to were those He Himself had commanded (see Leviticus 23; Deut. 26), but which were only acceptable to Him when accompanied by rectitude of life on the part of those who draw near to Him in faith.
“I will not accept them.” It is of the offerings prescribed in Leviticus 1 to 7 that God so speaks, Yet these all typified the person and work of His blessed Son, and were divinely commanded. But when wicked men drew near to His altar with their sacrifices, which they presumptuously offered, He refused to receive or acknowledge them. It was not that the offerings were wrong or opposed to His will, but the people were wrong because they lived in gross self-indulgence and yet dared to come into His courts with their gifts as though nothing had happened to incur His disfavor.