Mercy, and Not Sacrifice

I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.

This text I wrote on my arm as I prepared to work.  I wanted to carry it with me, to meditate on it as I cleaned and served.  It drove into my mind like a wedge into a log, laying me bare and split open.  I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.

Laid bare is the Pharisee’s heart.  Our Lord quotes Hosea 6, one of my favorite sections of the Old Testament.  It has been for several years now.  It speaks of a wayward Israel, to whom Hosea offers a call to repentance.  Come, let us return to the Lord.  It speaks of a knowledge of the Lord and yet an absence of it.  Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.  And it speaks of Immanuel, God with us.  He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

Then Hosea laments the hardness of Judah’s heart, i’s fickle nature, its proclivity to wander and dissipate like the dew in the morning of a summer day in Charleston.  And God, through Hosea, rebukes Judah.  He says, I desire steadfast love, or mercy, and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

From this quotes Jesus, the Lord, to the leaders of His people.

The Christ discards religion.  He sets aside all pretense and lifeless routine.  He fells any tower of hypocrisy; any spirit of hierarchy and division he tears in two, from top to bottom.  He, the Lord, desires mercy, not sacrifice.

I often seek to serve the Lord by sacrifice.  And this, I believe, is often valid worship.  The woman who gives her two pennies, Mary and the bottle of perfume, the disciples and their very lives.  There is no faith, no love, no worship without sacrifice.

And yet the Lord of our hearts desires not the offering of things only, but love.  He desires not the discipline of duty, but the joyful obedience of true worship.  He desires relationship, far and away higher than moral impeccability.

This is a dreadful and at once a wonderful truth.  For it removes any bid for an earned salvation.  It rejects any attempt at self-achievement or religious attainment, even the offering of our very lives is not enough.  The Lord does not desire our sacrifices, but mercy, a mercy, a heart transformed by mercy that He pours out on us.  Many translations say ‘steadfast love’, in place of ‘mercy’ in Hosea 6:6, which holds even more true!  Our love is so often like Judah’s, so often like Ephraim’s, quick to be distracted, quick to fade away.  Yet the Lord still desires love.  And still the Lord comes to us as the rains, as we return to Him.

I remember a time exploring islands with my childhood best friend.  We heard the thunder beginning to roll in the distance.  First we dismissed it as a train, or a plane, but as it grew closer we hurried to the aluminum boat.  As we shoved off into the creek, we could see the storm front pressing towards us, the sheets of rain blurring the marsh just half a mile away.  We raced to his dock, afraid but exhilarated, and full of life.  We pulled the boat onto it’s platform and raced into his garage just as the rain washed over his yard.  The spring rains came, strong, convicting, sovereign.  So comes the Lord, in a moment, when the Spirit breathes new life into a man.

I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.

So often I calculate the position of my relationship with the Lord by the completion of my devotions.  Have I done all that I must do, read all that I must read, prayed all that I must pray, listened for a significant portion of time, worshipped, written all that I must write?  The greater the amount of disciplines achieved, the greater I deem my relationship with the Lord.

And these are all things I am called to do by the Lord.  Obedience to them is part of a measure of my love (if you love me, you will obey my commands).  Yet their foundation cannot be duty, a forced march of ‘should’s and ‘ought to’s.  We pursue the Lord out of love, because He binds us up, because he comes to us, because he desires that we live before Him.  Setting our hearts firmly here before entering into the disciplines allows us to meet with the God of grace, instead of fall short before an idol of achievement.  We cannot sacrifice enough to merit our adoption; such a sacrifice has already been offered.  We must remind ourselves of it, meditate on it, abide in it, be transformed by it, and so be brought from a system of sacrificial debt to merciful abundance in grace.

Go and learn what this means:  ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’