Mercy, Not Sacrifice
“But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Matthew 9:13 KJV
“But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.” Matthew 12:7 KJV
It’s challenging for us to realize now what a radical statement Jesus made in telling the Jews of his time to “have mercy, not sacrifice.” The entire Jewish religion was about sacrifices to God. Jesus was bluntly stating that their entire way of worship, from generations of tradition and history, was not what God desired of them.These external acts were to demonstrate repentance for sins, but such practices did not change their hearts. Through the centuries, they had continually drifted far from God. Their hearts were hardened towards others, far from the mercy and compassion God desires.
Jesus’ new covenant set forth a new order of the heart for God-followers. His word is still calling to us to lay down traditions and history, habits of worship and praise, patterns of fellowship, and performance of rituals that have become hollow, lacking spiritual power. Though it may not be animal sacrifices, many today rely on external acts sacrificed to God, doing good works, following rules and laws, church traditions and expectations of their leaders, while losing sight of their relationship with the Lord, along with His promise to change Christians from within.
The word “mercy” comes from the Greek word “eleos,” meaning “active compassion and tenderness.” It appears many times in the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments. God’s essential mercy for us is shown in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, planned for our redemption from the foundation of the world. The gift of His son to the world is exemplary of what mercy is to accomplish: it is free, forgiven, absolving of guilt, blame and condemnation.
Because of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and restored to the Father. None of us get what we deserve because of our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for the world. Our Lord clearly states His desire, His preference for mercy over any outward acts of sacrifice. We deceive ourselves, if not others, when we continue with unexamined ways of serving God without meaning or power to change us within. You are missing out if your faith in God is not changing you! When Christians look back on the days since meeting the Lord, we should surely recognize how we have been changing!
God is in the business of changing us and He can do what we cannot do. He is able to create in us His heart of love, mercy and faith. The Lord Jesus Christ came so that His words and His ways can be written within, by the holy spirit. Paul spoke passionately and definitively about this:
“But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NASB
Of course, sacrifice to the Lord can be a part of our walk as God leads. Traditions can be meaningful when they come from the heart. The key is our purpose in doing so, in the motive and intent of our heart in carrying such acts out. There are those who sincerely sacrifice something they love during the Lent season, doing so as a worship to their Lord. There are others who do this as a rote law because it is expected or part of their tradition.
Paul warned Timothy about following a form without the power to change the heart:
“...But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without the love of good, traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these!” 2 Timothy 3:1-5 Berean
“…holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them.” 2 Timothy 3:5 Amplified
Paul lists many common conditions of the heart, then and now. He names many of the things we love instead of loving God and His ways. Paul was talking about those who claim to be godly but inside there is no power of change revealed as godly character. God will not settle for His people merely appearing good and religious. He wants our all, everything in us. That is how we gain the power to overcome as He did and obtain all of the promises to us. Paul was teaching Timothy that God changes us and that the change in believers should be visible to the world.
Yes, God leads us to spiritual acts such as fasting when we sacrifice the pleasure of food and drink for a period of time. He calls us to fast and pray on specific occasions of intercession for others or ourselves. God puts in our hearts a desire to temporarily sacrifice our usual life’s pleasures, including the most basic-–food and drink—to be separate, alone, consecrated to Him and seeking His face. If you’ve ever done a fast in the Lord, you realize it is a sacrifice.
But such a spiritual fast is not “will worship,” gritting our teeth for self-control. When God lays a fast on someone, He locks us into this purposeful sacrifice for intercession or answers. He causes our focus to be on Him, not our hunger. It is quite different from dieting, to be sure! The key here is what is in our hearts at such times as this. We recognize that all things are in Him:
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’” Acts 17:28 KJV
Because God is our Father, we are all His offspring and He is dedicated to raising us well. Though it takes a lifetime and beyond, we are learning how to live and move and have our being in Him. What if we submit ourselves to His hand in working true mercy – kindness, compassion, empathy, understanding – instead of outward religious busyness?
We learn to listen to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit, being led by Him. As we walk with Him, the disctinction and volume of His voice is more apparent. He works within us, creating a clean heart to be willing and to carry out His will and purpose from the heart:
“...for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13 NKJV
When we know God wants us to do something but our flesh is weak, even disinterested, we can “back up” our prayers to where we actually are in our hearts by asking God to create willingness in us. He is the changer of hearts. Why pretend with the all-seeing, all-knowing God of the universe that we are willing when we are not? He knows.
This can be a particular battle when God is whispering to us about leaving something or even someone we love, to forgive when we are angry and hurt, or a myriad of other trials He allows to come our way. It is challenging when we sense God telling us to do something that our flesh really does not want to do. God will not be pleased by a show of obedience, doing these things for outward appearance, an appearance of godliness, to become worthy enough or to persuade God to do things our way.
Only God knows what is in the heart. He does not delight in outward acts, such as the Jews’ animal sacrifices, having no power to cleanse the inner man. Here is the future hope of what He is able to do:
“Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalms 37:4 NASB
Untold numbers of children and adults have used this phrase, “If you loved me, you would…” This is guile, the speaker's selfish manipulation to get what they want. Love requires no such proof and makes no demands. God could make us different in a moment, but He gave us free will to choose to serve Him and learn of His ways. He is not interested in robot Christians! Thus, we do not manipulate God into giving us our hearts’ desires.
Certainly love in the heart should parallel love in thought, word, and deed, no matter how far away we seem from this ideal. When we seek mercy, we are seeking God Who is mercy. He desires us to delight in Him, doing everything to please our God and making melody to Him in our hearts. We need much more understanding of His Love because it is far beyond our human ability to love.
It’s easy to love those who is lovable. It takes God to love the unlovable, including the unlovable aspects of others we love, to have His perfect balance of mercy and justice. God’s loving ways are hard to comprehend with so much wrong around us—let alone when He reveals what is within us. One of our faith challenges is resolving how a loving God can allow such pain of loss, sadness and suffering for those He loves when He could so easily fix it.
Some resolve this good vs. evil dilemma by believing God is a benign force who cannot act upon our life here. But, frankly, what is the point of believing in a God that can’t do more than we can do? We all need to seek God to resolve this in our walk of faith. We continue to ask, seek, and knock for the answers to the deep things of God. We do so until He places His desires in our hearts so they are our desires, too.
God leads us from within, by His Spirit, beyond the expectations and confusion of our human condition. God is able to cause unnecessary as well as ungodly desires to die. Our Lord replaces our will, thoughts, and emotions— all of our soul realm—with His thoughts, emotions, and will. Thus we become more and more like our Master, just as He directed us. God is a passionate God! He’s not against emotions, He created them:
“‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will imprint my laws upon their heart, and on their minds I will inscribe them [producing an inward change],” Hebrews 10:16 Amplified
This is the new covenant brought forth by Jesus Christ our Lord. Since before the Fall in the Garden, God has always known that we humans cannot serve Him in our flesh. There’s no good lasting thing in our flesh. The scriptures clearly state it is impossible to please God in our flesh! We all require the mercy of which Jesus Christ speaks and represents. We are promised He can give us His mercy, writing it in our hearts and minds.
This is the way to rest, to be delivered from working at it and brought into His rest. We are His workmanship, not our own self-improvement project. As He does this inner work, we move past acting as if we have love in our hearts to being filled with His love for others and His creation, including the most unlovable of His people! This inner change results in good works from the character and mind of Christ within.
“For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us].” Ephesians 2:10 Amplified
Of course, this is a very difficult transition! Wouldn’t it be easier if God just gave us a “to-do” list to follow? Or “zap” us into change as He did with changing Saul into Paul? Well, the Bible puts many things on our “to-do” list but God knows we cannot do it in our flesh. When we love the Lord, we really do try to do it ourselves, to bring this flesh under submission to Him. It doesn’t work, have you noticed? He knew it in the garden with Adam and Eve and had already prepared before the foundation of the world for the sacrifice of Jesus to make the way.
Without our Lord’s coming within, all we have is outward acts. When you are raised to have a strong work ethic, you have been taught to try harder, do better, certainly a key aspect of success in the world. It can also become an unnecessary spiritual burden leading to constant busyness “for God.” Some of us even get in the habit of routinely assessing our own progress on our spiritual “to-do” list, whether it be self-improvement in health and relationships or our walk in the Lord. This continual review of our spiritual status is not His rest!
When we constantly measure ourselves against ourselves, it leads to discouragement and fatigue. We are to delight in the Lord, and He will bring it to pass. There is only one measurement, to which Paul speaks after the list of ministries given by God for the edification of the Body of Christ:
“…until we all reach oneness in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, [growing spiritually] to become a mature believer, reaching to the measure of the fullness of Christ [manifesting His spiritual completeness and exercising our spiritual gifts in unity].” Ephesians 4:13 Amplified
It is so easy for us humans to want to do something to please the Lord, including changing ourselves. But how do we do mercy? God has no interest in an outward show of being a good and merciful Christian. Doing acts of mercy that do not stem from the heart are difficult to sustain. With the measure of the fullness of the Christ within, we all fall short, but nonetheless, this is what we are reaching for, why we pursue Him above all. We cannot even successfully measure ourselves, it takes God to do it.
How hard it can be to rest in His work, with patient endurance, until He creates more depth in our love and mercy for self and others! It helps to remembering that Jesus did not help everyone around Him. He dealt with who and what the Father brought and showed Him to do. If Jesus only did what the Father showed Him to do, then we are not required to minister and assist everyone with needs around us. This truth frees us from self-condemnation and frustration, as we remember we are His workmanship.
His workmanship, not our own, with all the glory going to Him! God has been about the business of teaching and changing us throughout our lives. Some desires we thought were our own, even bringing them to God for His final decision, were His planting in our hearts to begin with! Oh, how carefully He guides His own! Reflecting back, we can all see how God planted His desires in our hearts from the beginning, even when we were not serving Him!
God is in charge of changing Christians desiring to serve the Lord. He has prepared our paths and will enable us to walk in them. He is mercy, He is love, and He is the beginning and end of all things within and without, as we are taught of Him. His intent, even the disciplines of adversity and loss, is always redemptive, for our good:
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13 Berean
It’s about the heart! Only God knows when we search for Him with our entire hearts. He sees any hidden areas within that are not in accord with His plans for us. He provides a future and hope for us, making us know that all things are possible in Him. There’s a higher purpose of God’s mercy seen in redemptive justice. Mercy makes a way when there is no way. Mercy considers the root, the heart of the matter, not just the act or behavior.
God cannot help but be merciful:
“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Your works shall praise You, O Lord, and Your saints shall bless You.
They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power, to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and Your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord upholds all who fall and raises all bowed down.” Psalms 145:8-14 NKJV
Mercy is revealed here with its specific qualities. David says that our Lord is “gracious,” from the Hebrew word “channan”, meaning “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior; to favor; show mercy; show pity.”God surely is gracious to all of us, as David notes in another of his psalms:
“He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” Psalms 103:9-14 KJV
It’s wonderful to remember that He knows His creation. He is not surprised at our human lack and failure. Thankfully, He does not deal with us after our sinful nature, which Jesus dealt with on the cross. Yes, that work is done, but we are now learning to walk in all He accomplished. Do you want a guarantee in life? Here it is. How very gracious and compassionate is our heavenly Father! It is very comforting to remember He knows what we are made of and considers that in His mercy.
Mercy is the source of the Lord’s great compassion:
“The Lord’s acts of mercy indeed do not end, for His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23 NASB
Our compassions fail but God’s compassions never fail or come to an end. They are always available to us and others, freely given, never earned. Isn’t that what grace is, His unmerited favor? Why, then, would we think that others need to earn what we have been freely given, to shape up before they come to God for salvation? Why would we expect sinners to behave as we are taught before they know Him? We do know Him and we can’t get it right!
When we wake each morning, we can rest in knowing the faithfulness of our God. His compassion renews each morning, regardless of what the day brings. He definitely allows “do-overs” in His growth plan! Going back to Psalms 145, David states God is “slow to anger and great in mercy”. We know our all-powerful God could take us out of this earth any time He chose to do so, but He is slow to anger.
This is a different nature than the one some preachers talk about that creates fear and dread of an all-powerful and wrathful God who condemns the faithless to an eternal hell, ready to inflict His anger in an instant for any wrongdoing. Actually, God’s wrath is His passion, meaning that He feels strongly about the world! He loved the world so much, and yet it is difficult for us to love people, particularly when we see the ugliness and evil in the hearts of many.
If God so desired, He could be angry day in and day out because of what we humans have wrought upon this earth. But He is not. He is slow to anger…think about it! Here “slow to anger” means “long-suffering, patient.” We rejoice along with David that this is our Lord and King! He is good to all, whether they know it or not. He raises us up when we fall and lifts our spirits when we are low, just like He faithfully did for David, over and over again. God hates sin but the sinner…well, He loves us!
And there is a special promise for being merciful, for allowing God to grow and nurture this aspect of His nature in us, His called, chosen, and faithful ones. It is clearly stated in the Beatitudes:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7 NASB
When we sow mercy, we receive it back from God. What a deal! The chorus of a favorite song encourages us this way:
Sow Mercy
“Sow mercy. Sow grace.
Sow kindness. Sow faith.
Words are like water, sprinkled with love.
You will harvest all your heart's been dreaming of.
Sow mercy.”
(D. & R. McGuire)