I Have No Pleasure in You

The priests keep the healthy animals for themselves and bring God only the sick ones. God laments that he would rather someone shut the temple doors altogether.

Israel had learned of God’s greatness through the history of their forefathers and had known his protection at first hand. Yet instead of giving thanks, they despised his name and his law, and as his kindness and mercy continued, they went so far as to answer him back. The Gentile nations, by contrast, had suffered God’s judgment themselves and so feared him more than Israel did; and God foretold that this would one day lead to a work of faith in which the Gentiles would receive Christ.

People may be deceived, but God cannot be. Even when hunted by Saul, with his life hanging by a thread, David trusted God as his Father and held fast to a faith that turns back to him. God’s people must put away the folly of brazenly doing before God what they would not dare to do even before an earthly governor, and by faith in Christ choose the narrow way.