Mercy Over Sacrifice

Mercy as the Fruit of Rightly Studying the Law

Pastor Connolly talked to us about the good works that God has for us, and the way the gospel coordinates with the law to produce in us good works. My message this afternoon from Hosea 6 .6, I'll read from 5 .15 down to 6 .6 in a moment, my message has to do a lot with the law, and you'll notice in the title, Mercy over Sacrifice, as we'll see, sacrifice, that word can easily be interchanged, and I think it was meant in context to stand for the law.

And so what I want to tell you, because of the message this morning, I want to tell you up front rather than saving it for the end, that mercy should be one of the results of studying the law, the way Pastor Connolly told us this morning.

To meditate upon the law, to love God's law, to look to God's law, to correct us, to guide us, to restrain us, to be that mirror for us, all these things. And this afternoon, the message I have for you is that when we look at the law properly, as Pastor Connolly enjoined us this morning, when you look at it properly, it produces in us an attitude, something in our heart, and that is mercy.

Therefore the title of my message, Mercy over Sacrifice. So please stand, I will read from Hosea chapter 5, beginning with verse 15, and then down to, excuse me, verse 6 of chapter 6, excuse me, and it's the word of Christ through the prophet Hosea.

I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. Come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us that he may heal us. He has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live.

Before him.

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going out is sure as the dawn. He will come to us as showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. The Lord says, What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?

What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore, I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. God bless the reading of the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. This last verse, Hosea 6, desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, that verse, that word of Christ through the prophet Hosea to Israel at that time, was also quoted twice by the Lord Jesus Christ in his incarnation.

Both times to Pharisees, both times telling them, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. So what Hosea 6, 6 meant to Israel, what Jesus meant for it to mean to the Pharisees he was speaking to, is the same as it means for us today in the church.

All of us need to learn, all of us need to relearn, and then study again what it means, and may God help us incorporate it into every facet of our lives, every facet of our lives in Christ. And that's mercy.

That's properly looking at the law and coming away with a merciful heart. A merciful heart, you see, merciful heart wants to give back to his and her fellow man the mercy that God our Father has given them in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me say that again. A merciful heart wants to give back to his or her fellow man the same mercy that God our Father in Christ Jesus our Savior has showered down upon them. So to borrow from Job, he says, where is wisdom to be found?

Let's borrow from Job and say, where is mercy to be found? Where is mercy to be found? Well, mercy, it might surprise you, and I gave it away a few moments ago, mercy is to be found and must be displayed with us in our dealings with our fellow image bearers from the law, actually from the law.

This is what Jesus said three times, once through Hosea and twice to the law-keeping Pharisees during his incarnation. So I want to look with you at the context of Hosea, and I want to look with you at examples of how God himself demonstrated his own self-declared preference for mercy over sacrifice.

And then we'll go to the New Testament, we'll see there from Jesus and from his apostles how it plays out in life, or better said, maybe, how it should play out in life. So where grace is the outpouring of undeserved blessing, mercy is the restraint of well-deserved punishment, right?

By God's grace, we get what we don't deserve. In his mercy, we don't get what we do deserve. Did you get that? Blessing because of grace, restraint because of mercy. That was Hosea's prophetic message.

If you read the entire message, which we only did a few verses, obviously, his prophetic message was to call Israel away from their idols. Remember, that began under their first king when the kingdom of Israel split from the kingdom of Judah.

And Jeroboam sent those two golden calves, one in the north, one in the south, and they've been idolaters ever since. Hosea's prophetic message was to call them away from that, and the other prophets of Israel as well were in Hosea, to call them away from idols and all the social ills that idols brought.

You see, idolatry necessitates. It inexorably leads to social injustice, moral failure, disunity, egos, my agenda over yours. That all comes as a direct result, as a logical consequence of the idolatry that Israel was enjoined.

If you read Hosea, you read about these social ills and other prophets as well. There's a call to repent here in what I read to you from Hosea. And in that call to repent, there's something very, very important.

And it was important to them then, and it's important for us today to hear this, because that call to repentance came with this very strong note of confidence in God and in the value to Him of true, heartfelt repentance.

We could say repentance brought on by the Holy Spirit, not worldly sorrow, which leads to death, true repentance. But hear the confidence that Hosea sends off to Israel, what he wants them to put their trust in, put their hope in.

He says, for He has torn us that He may heal us. He has struck us down and He will bind us up. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will raise us up that we may live before Him. You see, without God's forgiveness, without knowing for sure that God really, truly does forgive, repentance is just that death of worldly sorrow.

But godly, faith-filled repentance brings renewal. It brings restoration. It brings revived vigor in our journey towards Christ's image. And how does it do that? By giving us confidence because we know we truly are forgiven.

That when we're forgiven, God no longer holds it against us, as we're not stymied by that. We're not stunted by that anymore. We don't have to worry about a consequence coming upon us. There may be consequences for sin.

But true forgiveness, when you have confidence in it, you rise from your knees after your prayers of confession and repentance before the Lord, knowing you've been forgiven and back on track. Brethren, we have to be sure.

You have to be sure in your heart and your soul, your mind and strength that when you pray to God in confession and true repentance, He truly does forgive and holds it against.

You no longer.

He says, He's torn us that He may heal. He struck us down. They'll bind us up. You see, the word of Christ strikes very hard, but it's the wounds of a friend. It's like the good Samaritan who then comes and binds them up.

He mends. He anoints the wounds with the salve of the Spirit. He picks you up and He sets you back on course, strengthened by the reminder of His mercy and the very real presence and help and power of His Holy Spirit, who, if you're in Christ, dwells within you.

Here's just what John meant, which you so often hear from me. First John 1 .9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Brethren, do you believe that?

Because we're going to sin. We're going to have need of forgiveness. But when we pray, do you really truly believe this literal, almost palpable forgiveness that comes from the throne of God? In Hosea 6, 4 and 5, we have a very short summary of Israel's sin and God's justification in judging them and, should He at any moment decide to, to punish them for it.

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. For I've hewn them by the prophets, I've slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

So praise the Lord after I read that to you. You must praise the Lord that it doesn't stop there. We need to thank God for what follows this. And here is why He didn't snuff them out in a moment. Here is why you and I and every believer was allowed to live, wallowing in our sin like pigs in mud until repentance and the knowledge of God brought cleansing and salvation.

Here lies the foundation for our blessed doctrine of predestination. What does He say next? After all the indictment against them, which could just as easily be against many of us, if not all of us, what does He say next?

And here's where we need to stop and just catch our breath at just the magnificence and the magnanimity of this God. Because He then says, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings, which reminds me so much of Paul answering our just condemnation when he says, but God, but God, we should say, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together in Christ, whom merciful God we serve.

You know, in Exodus 32, when Israel made those, that image, out came that calf and they worshiped it as Yahweh. It incited God to tell Moses, now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you.

Well, what won the day, of course, was Moses' intervention and the Lord ended up forgiving their sin and allowing them to continue, though the Levites did slay 3 ,000 of the calf people. But why did the Lord restrain Himself?

Was He not justified in consuming them in a moment? Could not fire have come down from heaven and just wiped that nation out? He has the right to. And if He wanted to make a nation out of Moses, could He not have done that, even as He did out of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Certainly He could have. Certainly it was within His rights. Certainly within His power. But very soon after that incident, Moses asks God to show him His glory. And so God passes him by. Remember, He puts him in the cleft of the rock and He covers him with His hand until He passes by.

Then Moses sees His glory, but he sees his back part fading away. But here's how the Lord announced Himself, declared Himself. Hear His own declaration of who and what He is. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

His mercy withholds judgment. His grace pours down blessing. He didn't consume them because of mercy. And when He allowed them to continue, which they certainly did not deserve, that was mercy. That was, excuse me, that was grace.

So in that self-declaration, you might have noticed mercy is mentioned six times, punishment twice. That doesn't minimize punishment, but it tells us where God puts the emphasis. That's why Paul could write later, excuse me, centuries later, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his what?

His mercy, He saved us. Mercy wins out over your and my self-made entrances into God's grace. That's what he says there, not by our works, not by the righteousness that we have defined, not by the righteousness that we have said, this is a good deed.

Here's a great work.

God will be impressed with this or that. And God in His mercy, the merciful God rejects that.

Why?

Because the best, most righteous act that the best, most righteous man or woman in all history ever did is before God. Filthy rags, as the prophet Isaiah would put it. No, except that he would reject our finest offerings, we would be disposed of in a moment.

It's His mercy that says, I will not accept your works.

Oh, there are good works.

We must do them. We're going to get to that. But what does He accept as our entrance to Him? What is accepted for us to be able to come before the throne of grace and there find help in our time of need?

Why can Paul say, therefore, with confidence we come? Because of His mercy and because of the work of one, of Jesus Christ. And in His mercy, He accepts that and that alone and none from us.

It's all mercy.

Mercy is why I believe there are 10 plagues in Egypt instead of just one and wiping that nation out all at once, that they might see His power and have a chance to repent, which of course they didn't.

That's why Nineveh believed Jonah and repented. And the king of that pagan nation, we didn't get his name, but he said, who knows? God may relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.

In a word, he hoped for mercy, which God, delighting in mercy, gave. How does God Himself show mercy? How does God Himself show His preference for showing mercy over sacrifice? In 2 Chronicles, we read of King Hezekiah.

I know that's been brought before you in different contexts recently, different times. But there's a revival led by good King Hezekiah. His father Ahaz had left the temple and the priesthood in disrepair, and Hezekiah revived them both and then planned the greatest Passover ever seen.

And we read in verse 18,. For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed.

For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, May the good Lord pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness.

And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people. You see, they did it all wrong. And when Hezekiah prayed, note that God, the Lord, did not forgive. He said, May the Lord pardon, may the Lord forgive.

And that's not what happened. He went a step beyond. In His mercy, He went further than what was asked by Hezekiah. Hezekiah asked for all he could from a good and gracious and merciful God. And God heard them and installed the heart of Him and the people.

And He healed them because mercy won out over law. That's the God we serve. That's the God who sent His Son to save helpless and hapless and hateful and heinous and hideous sinners like you and me. That's the God who showed you and me and every believer mercy when He gave us faith to believe.

Mercy when He rejects our works of righteousness. Mercy when He gave us faith to believe in Jesus Christ and know that His work works and His alone are what brings us before the Lord.

Mercy.

And the Lord prefers to show mercy over sacrifice. And sacrifice is a stand-in. We could, without changing the meaning at all, say law. Mercy over law. And this doesn't give us leave to ignore the law.

You take this the wrong way, you're going to do what Paul was speaking of in Romans 6. You're going to send all the more so that grace might abound. He says, may it never be. So don't take this the wrong way.

The people in Hezekiah's day, and we were talking about this with some brothers after the message this morning, they did the best they could in the situation they had. And we have Christ who looked past the jots and the tittles and showered healing mercy on those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God.

And we had a bit of a laugh when we were able to point out that this Passover, where they didn't obey the rules properly, they didn't do it according to the sanctuary's rules, we did agree that once, count that with me, once in Israel's history, were those digressions from the Passover forgiven.

So it's not a pattern for us. We don't just get to ignore the law and do what feels good at the moment because of a certain circumstance. You take this the wrong way, you're going to say, well, that's the normative thing to do.

No, once, once in all of Israel's history, we have that. But it does show God's mercy. It does show when he was asked to pardon the people, he went further and healed the people. Hosea 6, 6, I prefer mercy over sacrifice.

It's God's own testimony. He explains why Israel had survived to hear the prophet Hosea. It's mercy, it's restraint, to not pour out the retribution that is his just due. It's God's explanation as to why Israel even had prophets in the first place, why they had any chance to repent, why we have the word of God, why that word of God sounds out from pulpits and from missionaries throughout the world, calling men and women to repent and to believe this gospel because of his mercy.

Because of his mercy, he restrained sending his son. There's a day set when he will send Jesus Christ to return. But in his mercy, he gives time for his people to repent and to come to him. Now, mercy is at least one reason why Jesus tells us that all heaven rejoices before the Lord when one sinner repents.

When a single sinner takes up the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, his son, and repents and believes the gospel. It's as if all heaven just puts it on hold for a moment, stops going about their business, assembles before the Lord, and rejoices before him because of a single sinner who repents.

Why?

Because he's a merciful God. He takes delight when a sinner takes hold of his son, Jesus Christ. That's just the quickest review of Hosea 6 .6 and some ideas of mercy from the Old Testament. And that's very quick because now we're quickly going to move from Hosea 6 .6 to how Jesus used this single verse two times and what that means to us.

Jesus' Use of Hosea 6:6 Against Pharisaic Legalism

The first time he quotes Hosea 6 .6 is in Matthew 9. And in Matthew 9, he had just called Matthew the tax collector to become a soul collector. The Lord is soon found having fellowship with Matthew and with his friends who are what?

They're all sinners and tax collectors. They're rejects according to some. The some are the Pharisees who rebuke Jesus for this, for sitting as a holy man, a law-abiding man, associating with such people against the law, unclean people.

Sinners. And how does the Lord Jesus Christ answer them? I desire mercy, not sacrifice. His word to Hosea back in chapter 6, verse 6. And now he himself puts it forth to these Pharisees. There's no specific law against eating with sinners and tax collectors.

So Jesus' rebuke, his use of Hosea 6 .6 is against what? It's against man-made rules. Now, not all man-made rules are bad, are they? No coffee in the sanctuary is a really good rule. That's a bit man-made.

It doesn't say that in the Bible, but it's a good rule. It promotes cleanliness, promotes order. It keeps the pews clean. Butter, salt, and bacon are the rule for a good breakfast, right? That's a man-made rule.

The rule of Matthew 9, like the rule Peter alludes to in Acts chapter 10, verse 28, where he says how lawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone from another nation, it's kind of a made-up rule that Jesus is rebuking there.

It's something that went beyond God's stated law. Like the 40 lashes minus one that Paul endured. Do you know what that's about? Because the rule is if a man deserves a beating, you give him 40, no more, because 41 is going to humiliate the man.

It's going to denigrate the man. And so the Jews in Paul's day would stop at 39, just in case the counter missed a count. As if 41 strokes would degrade a man and 39 would not. You see, it's the degradation more than the strokes that's in play here.

It's mercy that punishes sin and leaves dignity intact. Do you hear that? Sin's not winked at here. God nor the church is shrugging their shoulders at sin. Mercy that punishes sin, leaving dignity intact.

Remember that we're dealing with an image bearer, a fellow human, and in most cases here, a fellow believer. Mercy punishes and leaves dignity intact. The Pharisees missed from the law what Jesus says is infused in the law.

And what is that?

Mercy.

It's God's mercy. The Lord even told them, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of what?

Of the law.

The law required the tithing of mint and dill and cumin.

Sure.

What's the weightier matter of the law? Justice and mercy and faithfulness. Those you ought to have done without neglecting the others. In other words, don't neglect what the law commands you to do. Don't neglect the good works that the law would lead you towards.

Don't forget what the law says to you in all the ways it was explained to you at this point. Those three uses of the law. Where it curbs us. Where it guides us. What's the third one? Mirror, thank you.

Where it shows a mirror to us of how much we need Christ. This is the risk we take when we use God's good and holy law for purposes other than God intended and still intends. Stray from God's word, add a jot or tittle from our own flesh, and we'll miss the mark every time.

When we only see the rigor of the law and start counting, one tiny seed for God, nine for me, that sort of thing. The purpose of the law, according to none other than Jesus Christ himself, that purpose is missed entirely.

We get bogged down in strict obedience. Legalism. Where I know that if a wind comes through while I'm counting my little cumin seeds, it's gonna blow them off the table. I've got to start again because God's gonna be angry if I don't get one for him and nine for myself.

That's not our God. That's not our God, and that's just what Jesus is rebuking here. And that's the risk we take if we add anything to the law. We miss everything entirely, just as the Pharisees did. We make out God to be a severe, mean-spirited, seed-counting God.

And so the practitioners of that kind of legalism become that themselves. We become that ourselves when we start playing with the law like that and missing the weightier matters of the law. According to Jesus, what did he say?

What's the weightier matter of the law? What should you see and come away with when you read the law, when you compare the law to your own conduct, when you look to it for guidance, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness?

Mercy, the Sabbath, and the Weightier Matters of the Law

The second time Hosea 6 -6 comes into play is in Matthew 12, when the Pharisees rebuke Jesus for allowing his disciples to pick grain in violation of the fourth command. Here's how Jesus answers them.

Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. You see, the Lord, or excuse me, the law thundered, saying that the bread is holy. Mercy said, yes, but these men are hungry. The Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus, the only man who ever kept the law, Christ, whose perfect obedience stands before the Father as our own, Jesus, the word of God himself and our lawgiver, he is the one who demands mercy over law.

The law tells us what went wrong. The law tells us what went wrong in ourselves or in an offender. Mercy is what tells us how to respond. Mercy does not ignore sin. Mercy is not antithetical to the law.

But mercy does tell us the heart and how it responds. You know the law in baseball? Nine innings, 27 outs, three strikes, you're out, four balls, you get to walk.

Those laws.

Well, there's a law in baseball for the younger kids called the mercy law. And I looked it up and there's a couple of versions of it. But the Little League mercy rule, mercy rule, says that if one team is up by 15 runs after three innings, the game ends.

They break the law. One third of a game, three innings, it's supposed to be nine. The law says nine innings, 27 outs. What does mercy say? It says three innings is enough because any more is going to humiliate and degrade these kids in Little League.

Mercy.

Jesus broke the law and touched lepers because of his mercy. The woman with the flow of blood was as unclean as someone could be. Flowing blood, my goodness, read the law in Leviticus. That is as unclean as you can get.

That's almost as bad as leprosy. And yet he allowed his healing mercy to flow to her. Because he was a lawbreaker? No, the finest law keeper, the perfect law keeper showed mercy. We do not set God's law against his mercy.

They're different, but they're not in conflict. Jesus had a high regard for it, as did the apostles. But God didn't so love the world that he sent more law. He sent grace and truth in his son, Jesus Christ.

We have a Lord who takes pleasure in showing mercy and one that would see that in us, in his people. The law's first use is a mirror that shows us our sin. And when you see your sin, think of how your sin is covered by Jesus' blood.

When you see what went wrong, when it's that guide, when it's that mirror, when it's restraining sin, you see how much it's restraining. And then you see how much punishment you actually deserve when you close that book.

What are you supposed to come away with according to Jesus, according to the Lord Jesus himself?

Mercy.

Come away with a higher regard and a deeper understanding of the mercy that God has shown you. Because that law shows you all your sin. And it shows you the mercy of God in sending his son. In one of the Lord's best known parables, the Good Samaritan, the Levite and the priest obeyed the law in exhaustive detail.

The Samaritan stopped and helped. He showed mercy. His relation to the law is a different subject, but what does Jesus say to the scribes and the Pharisees and the lawyers when they finally said, the one who showed mercy seems to have been a neighbor.

Who's my neighbor? The one who showed mercy. What does Jesus say to them and to us? He says, you go and do likewise. Remember the parable of the unforgiving servant. Well, they're the master who stands for God.

He's enraged when the man who had just been relieved of an impossible debt was a 10 ,000 talents, billions and gazillions of dollars today. You can't pay it. It's impossible. That master who in the parable obviously stands for God.

He's enraged when the man he had just relieved of that impossible debt demands minor debts be paid to him immediately. Remember he chokes his fellow servants. So just jumping into the end of the parable.

Jesus says in the parable, and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

Wait.

Mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you. And then what does Jesus say? He'll say it when I get to the right chapter. So that's the end of the parable. And Jesus says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

What am I bringing up here? In the parable, the master standing in for God says, should you not have shown mercy? Lock that in. Show mercy. Should you not have shown mercy? How does Jesus apply it? The parable's over.

Now Jesus gives us the application. So will your heavenly father do to each one of you if you do not from the heart forgive your brother. The end of the Lord's prayer. For if you forgive men their trespasses, their sins against you, your heavenly father will forgive you.

But if you don't, he won't. To summarize that. Straight line from mercy to forgiveness. It's very like the end of the Lord's prayer as I just said. We need to be a forgiving people. It's very much like what Paul says in Ephesians 4 .32.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Micah 6 .8. He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, that is in accordance with the law, to love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord your God.

Straight line from justice to mercy to godly humility. This is what the reformed people meant with the third use of the law. This guide to what pleases God. What pleases God is that we who look to the law come away with a desire to follow it and a renewed wonder at the mercy that it reveals to us.

So where is the law? It's right where Pastor Owens put it this morning. It's good, it's holy, it's right. How do we enact the law? With the rigors of the jots and tittles, with one cumin seed for the Lord, nine for me.

No, without ignoring sin, being mercifully hard on sin and yet merciful in our response. We show mercy. We just show mercy. And remember, in some form, in some translations of the Lord's prayer, it's debts.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. When you have an offense against you and you're in a position where you need to and you should go and forgive a person and go through that transaction with them so that you come to forgiveness, confession and repentance and forgiveness.

Know this, you are now a debt holder. You have something over them. They owe you something. Just like in that parable I alluded to,.

We didn't read it all.

Now you are the one who can lord it over them. You have a debt. What do you do with that? What does Jesus say? The forgiveness that you confer when you go through the process of Matthew 18, 15 and other places, that forgiveness is an act of godly mercy.

And this is what the Lord would see in his people. This is what Jesus showed. This is why we're here. This is why we survived until our predetermined time to come to the Lord. And this is what we must, when we see the law and read the law rightly, come away with a renewed appreciation for the mercy that God in Christ has shown us.

Amen.