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Ritual has always played a role in religion, but sometimes the ritual literally takes over the religion and becomes its purpose, definition, and goal. When that happens, the heart of religion has been broken by externals, and shallowness and corruption are the result. It is not that the rituals are necessarily wrong, but that, over time, they can be allowed to obscure the spirit of faith sufficiently that they replace any motivation toward the truer exercise of the teaching of Christ, which goes deeper and far beyond ritual. What we must do, then, is learn what Jesus means by desiring mercy ahead of sacrifice.

I. Mercy, Not Sacrifice

A. Eating With Sinners

1. when Jesus became a popular teacher and a favorite of the people, he began to trespass upon the fiercely protected turf of the sect of the Pharisees, a laymen’s fellowship of Hebrew authorities who adhered to an extensive system of extrabiblical traditions and denominational traditions, which they rigorously obeyed and demanded as a necessary means of applying the Law of Moses to everyday life

a. along with the lawyerly scribes, the Pharisees sat in Moses’ seat as experts on the Law, but Jesus exposed them almost daily for hypocrisy, crime, and selfishness (Matthew 23:1-5a)

b. their myopic affection for traditional interpretation and application rendered them blind to the spirit of the Law of Moses, as well as their own shortcomings (Mark 7:1-9)

2. Jesus never yearned to be the kind of Ivory Tower intellectual that the Pharisees could respect, and he never extended to them any kind of professional courtesy that would make them want to accept him into their ranks; rather than look down at the common, uneducated sinners, he embraced them and elevated them to the point that they could understand the essence of the Law better than any Pharisee, whose magnifying glass was trained on tithing roots and stems and the faults of others (Matthew 23:23-24)

3. Jesus saw someone worth saving when he looked at the sinners of Jerusalem, even enlisting a tax collector to be one of his apostles (Matthew 9:9-13)

a. the Pharisees were condescending, judgmental, arrogant, and aloof – all because of their religion and all without any justification; Jesus was approachable, merciful, and humble – all because of his religion and despite his divine status as Creator and authority

b. the Pharisees considered themselves to be the essence of spiritual health, but only because they created their own standards of success; in fact, they were sick with self-delusion, obscuring the weightier principles of faith in favor of rituals and private interpretations

c. Jesus likened them to physicians with a phobia for sick people, when they were really the sickest of all

4. it is quite the provocative challenge when one tells the teacher he needs to go to learn something; either the teacher will humbly confront his own ignorance or retreat into arrogance and indignation

a. the Pharisees were experts in ritual and opinion, but fumbling fools when it came to something as elemental as mercy, translated here from the Hebrew hesed, indicating “steadfast love,” the kind of thing lacking when there is no willingness to reach out to the sinner with grace, reserving it instead for people who really see little personal need for it, due to their false sense of superiority

b. the Pharisees’ steadfast love was interrupted when they walked away from the mirror and did not extend to people unlike themselves

5. Jesus was quoting from the prophet, Hosea, who centuries before had assaulted the same ritualistic, heartless attitude in Israel (Hosea 6:1-6)

a. the attitude that prevailed then was a complacency about the spirit of God’s covenant, hoping and assuming that going through the motions of religion would satisfy a God who might then overlook things like idolatry, greed, and lust

1. the Pharisees were just as corrupt, idolizing money, popularity, and respect

2. the faith of both generations was as misleading as the morning dew or clouds, which evaporate by noon

b. again, it is not that the rituals of worship are unwarranted, but that the assumption they can substitute for a daily exercise of faith is a fatal error

c. the Israelites’ worship was corrupted and polluted by hypocrisy, illustrated by the futility of a sacred assembly, called only to appease God that they might more quickly return to indulge themselves (Amos 5:21-24)

B. The Call

1. as Jesus sat before the rapt attention of the sinners and tax collectors, deftly deflecting the canards of the Pharisees, he asserted an ambition to reach the lost and sick, inviting, not the self-righteous whose pride would ensure they remained diseased, but the meek and mourner whose consciences were raw and hearts were fertile

2. it is a reminder to every Christian, to every member of the church of Christ who takes a stand against both base immorality and religious error – if Christ could channel his genuine superiority into a meek invitation, surely we will not allow a sense of religious or moral superiority to foster such arrogance in us that we treat the lost as the Pharisees did or make our faith into a shabby system of empty rituals and hard-hearted resistance to weightier principles

3. the Pharisees destroyed the spirit of the Sabbath with their extrabiblical interpretations and regulations, turning it into an unpleasant day for ascetic self-harm (Matthew 12:1-8)

4. their discomfort with the Lord’s habit of healing people on the Sabbath, violating no part of the Law of Moses, but disregarding the traditional interpretation of the elders, happily extended someone’s misery another day for no good reason (Matthew 12:9-14)

5. their rituals appear sound and their interpretations were rigorously enforced, but the cancerous spirit of their selfishness, greed, and envy was eating away at true faith

C. Steadfast Love

1. without condemning the rituals of religion, Jesus consistently taught their balance with principles and attitudes of compassion, mercy, and steadfast love for others who seem to be falling short or are in need of some kind of help (Mark 12:28-34)

2. to love God and one’s neighbor, Jesus agreed, is more excellent than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices that a person could offer in life, even if he did nothing else but stand at the bier

3. our challenge is what to do when we suspect there is a conflict somewhere between the two – ritual and compassion; the only conflict is imaginary and convenient when we are looking for an excuse for stinginess, lassitude, and pride

4. kingdom proximity is more than just memorizing catchy slogans and even being right about a series of doctrinal controversies; it is about adopting and breathing and becoming a spirit of fairness, kindness and steadfast love (Micah 6:6-8)

II. Some Applications

A. Judge Righteously

1. life requires us to make judgments, even about moral and doctrinal matters, deciding what is consistent with the will of God and what is a violation of it; the key is in making only righteous judgments where God has spoken and not pharisaically elevating our opinions and interpretations to a level equal to or even more authoritative than Scripture

a. Jesus pointed out that even the Pharisees circumcised baby boys if their eighth day of life happened to fall inconveniently on a Sabbath

b. they did not fault themselves in this, but would fault others where there was nothing in it for them, judging two conditions with vastly different standards; “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24 ESV).

2. there are things that simply appear wrong because they are not consistent with entrenched tradition or personal opinion, but that alone does not make anything sinful

a. judge your own behavior according to Scripture and try to understand why others might have arrived at a different conclusion, especially if they claim their religion is involved

b. check again to make sure that it is not really just your hedge around the law that you are defending, rather than depending upon Scripture alone for guidance

3. the Pharisees’ hand washing tradition was so entrenched that they could no longer see where the Law of Moses stopped and their private application began

B. Judge Mercifully

1. the Pharisees exemplified that very human desire to feel better about oneself by demeaning others, comparing oneself to others for no other reason than condescension

2. when we are confronted with moral or doctrinal error and feel an obligation to rebuke it, begin with self-examination and a sincere desire to persuade, convict, and convert, not vilify and obliterate the one God yearned to save (Matthew 7:1-5)

3. we cannot afford the Pharisaical habit of minimizing our shortcomings and magnifying others’ just to feel superior and secure (James 2:8-13)

4. hypercriticism was the habit of the Pharisees who could not encourage anyone, but saw their office as finding fault, even where there was none; few things are as harmful to the faith of the novice and the feeble-hearted than willful discouragement by ones whose flaws are less tangible

C. Worship in Spirit and Truth

1. Judea in the Lord’s day was about as factional as most places today are, and for many of the same cultural reasons; the Jew Jesus could not even talk to a Samaritan woman without attracting critics and gasps

2. both he and the woman recognized they labored under very different religious ideas, but Jesus amazed her when he defied her assumptions about his

3. worship that pleases God is both spiritual and doctrinal, but geography, tradition, and personal preference are more likely to interfere with unity than promote it (John 4:20-24)

4. some worshipers overflow with emotion, but subscribe to methods that are outside of the authority of Christ – instruments, clapping, stomping, humming; other worshipers excel at performing the ritual, but with all the emotion of someone who is asleep or dead – neither is better or acceptable to God!

5. worship that is in both spirit and truth is consistent on Sunday with the way one lived on Thursday, and joyfully marries emotion to method – singing, praying, and communing with both mental understanding and the participation of the heart (see First Corinthians 15:14)

6. remember that the passages we emphasize as proof for a capella music also extol the virtue of being filled with the Spirit (see Ephesians 5:18-19)

D. Have Pity

1. most people feel right about their religion, and although many tolerate the beliefs of others, continue to hold that their faith is superior in some way

2. there are twin dangers here, of course

a. drifting into such an ecumenical spirit that denominationalism and even conflicting doctrines are accepted as equally right

b. or, on the other side, becoming so haughty about one’s beliefs that outsiders are treated with such contempt and derision that they are turned away as intellectually or morally incapable of truth

3. learning what Jesus meant about mercy exceeding ritual will permit us to be confident about our convictions without becoming conceited in them

a. conceit turns away people who might have been interested in our teaching, but who are instead repelled by its fulsome arrogance that treats them as idiots

b. likewise, there are times when doctrine can be used as an excuse for not approaching, embracing, or assisting people who are truly in need

4. there is nothing virtuous about adopting a stoic insensitivity to sinners in need (Luke 15:1-7)

a. to visit widows and orphans in the place and midst of their distress is half of pure religion; the other half is keeping your hands unsoiled with sin, but no part of pure religion is an aloofness about dealing with sinners, the sick, the poor, or the ostracized (see James 1:27)

b. how would Jesus have treated the potential angels that we reject (Luke 14:12-14)?

Conclusion

Desiring mercy, not sacrifice, is not an invitation to religious anarchy or even a loose system of faith based more on feelings than truth. It is a reminder that both spirit and doctrine are intimately involved in any genuine religion, and that neither can be sacrificed without destroying the whole. The Israelites declined because they sought to replace holistic faith with mere ritual, but we are intent on exercising our faith in a way that is consistent and selfless.

Questions for Review

Who might be like sinners and tax collectors for you?
When is it all right to entertain “bad company”?
What does it mean to learn mercy, not sacrifice?
What does it not mean?
When is it all right to break the will of God to do good?
Why is it hard to see when traditions interfere with the gospel?
What are the twin dangers of living among religious division?