Mercy More than Sacrifice
In my devotion time this morning, I saw something in Matthew that I had never noticed before. Twice, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The first time is while at a party at Matthew’s home shortly after the Lord had called him to be a disciple. Some Pharisees were critical of the attendees at this party—tax collectors and sinners. In response, Jesus told them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (9:12) Then he told them to go meditate on Hosea 6:6.
A while later, Jesus and his disciples were walking in a field of grain one Sabbath day. Being hungry, the disciples began picking the kernels and eating them. A group of Pharisees happened to see them and challenged Jesus: “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:2) Jesus replied recalling the story of David entering the house of God and eating the consecrated bread while on the run from Saul. (I Samuel 21:1-6) And then he says in verse 7: If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.”
Could this have been the same group of Pharisees that had criticized him at Matthew’s home? There he challenged them to meditate on Hosea 6:6; now he is pointing out the fact that they didn’t do that and thus repeated their earlier sin of condemnation. When Jesus uses a passage from the Old Testament twice, it is wise to pay attention, and, unlike this group of Pharisees, meditate on it to uncover its full application to our lives.
In my earlier days as a follower of Jesus, I was in the habit of condemning (more often in my mind rather than with my lips) a lot of people who believed or acted in ways I found highly objectionable. In no particular chronological order, the political left, homosexuals, people who were divorced, students who claimed to be Christians but lived as they weren’t, couples living together unmarried, women who became pregnant out of wedlock, Calvinists, Catholics, liberal (now called “progressive”) religious studies professors, and Bible college professors and administrations (a particular weakness among campus pastors who came up in the 1970’s and 80’s).
Over the years, I have done a lot of examination of the Scriptures and how my thoughts and actions aligned with them. I was found wanting. I had unknowingly fallen into the same trap that caught many of the Pharisees (they weren’t all this way—for example Nicodemus)—self-righteousness. I was intent on offering my sacrifices—right doctrine, right living—but I showed little interest in what the Lord truly cared about—mercy. I was much quicker to condemn than I was to show grace. I am far from alone.
As I observe how Christians from across the spectrum of doctrinal and religious practice are interacting with one another and with the world, I see much more sacrifice than mercy. The condemnation is often swift and unrelenting. The Pharisees condemned those they saw as apostates (tax collectors) and they condemned those whom they believed did not abide by the law as they interpreted it. Today, so many of us do the same. We condemn those who disagree with our particular interpretation of the Scriptures, and we condemn those who are doing things which we don’t approve of.
Perhaps it’s time to go back to Hosea 6:6 and spend much time meditating upon its meaning and its application for our lives. If Jesus criticized the Pharisees for not grasping its meaning and living it out in their lives, perhaps that should be a lesson to us all. And given that many of us have sons and daughters observing how we live is all the more reason to mine the depths of this verse so that we are less like those Pharisees and much more like Jesus.
© Jim Musser 2022 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.