Mercy, and Not Sacrifice

Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church, Pinetop, Arizona

Rev. Michael “Mick” Mathews

The Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 7, 2026

Sermon: “Mercy, and Not Sacrifice”     Matthew 9:9–13

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the men that Jesus called to follow Him was a man named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. Now I don’t think that many people in our country have especially warm feelings toward those who work for the IRS, but the Jews of Jesus’ time hated the tax collectors – for two main reasons. First of all, they were considered to be traitors to their own people. They were collecting taxes for the Romans who had forced their way in and taken over. So the tax collectors were collaborators with the foreign oppressors. And the second reason the tax collectors were hated was that they were notorious for overcharging people. The way the system worked was that the Romans set a quota that the tax collectors had to turn over to them, but the tax collectors could keep anything additional that they collected. So the people hated the tax collectors for working with the enemy and for lining their own pockets at the expense of their fellow Jews.

Since the tax collectors were shunned by the rest of Jewish society, the only people they could hang out with were others that were shunned by society – people who were called “sinners” because they didn’t follow the Laws of Moses – people who were robbers, thieves, or sexually immoral.

Where most of Jewish society stayed away from the tax collectors and sinners, Jesus did not. He called the tax collector Matthew to be one of His closest followers. And He shared meals with tax collectors and sinners. That greatly upset the Pharisees, the group who saw themselves as the keepers of public morals. The Pharisees especially concerned themselves with remaining ritually pure – and they saw being in close contact with sinful people as a surefire way to break ritual purity. Their thinking was that sinners made themselves unclean before God by their sinful actions, so if you were in contact with them, their uncleanness would transfer to you and affect your own standing before God. It would be bad enough to come into contact with sinful people in the marketplace, but to actually sit down and eat with them was unthinkable. There was no way to avoid close contact when you are sharing a meal together.

So the Pharisees complained – not to Jesus directly, but to His disciples. They complained that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. And Jesus gave the perfect response: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus was basically saying, “Would you complain that a doctor spends too much time with sick people? Isn’t that the doctor’s job? People who are well don’t need the knowledge and skill of a doctor in the way that sick people do.” Jesus came to heal the sick. Jesus healed all kinds of sickness and diseases of the body by performing miracles of healing. But Jesus also came to heal the sickness of people’s souls. He came to call them to repent of their sins and to receive forgiveness from God.

It was especially that part about forgiveness from God that the Pharisees didn’t understand. They thought that a person’s standing before God depended on how a person lived. So Jesus told them to reconsider what God had said through the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6). The Pharisees were thinking that what God wanted was sacrifice: People should work hard to follow God’s rules as a way of giving themselves to Him and then God would be pleased with them. The problem is that it’s impossible for us to please God. Any sin that we do displeases Him, and there’s nothing that we can do to make up for it. God’s standard is perfection, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Even if we later turn from sin and do what is right, we’re only doing what we should have been doing in the first place – not doing something extra that would pay for past sins.

But what God wants is mercy, not sacrifice. Not that w

e show mercy, but that He shows mercy to us. Our standing with God does not depend on our goodness, but on God’s goodness. His love toward us is a steadfast love that never fails, never goes away, even when we don’t deserve it. Matthew and the other tax collectors and the sinners didn’t deserve God’s mercy. He gave it to them anyway. They were so happy to hear this good news that they wanted to hear more. They wanted to spend time with Jesus, listening to Him and sharing mealtime with Him. They wanted to hear more about God’s love and forgiveness for them.

Jesus is the source of God’s mercy. He provided the sacrifice that makes God’s mercy possible. God’s sense of justice demands that our sin be paid for, and Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world by dying on the cross for us. The sinless Son of God became the sacrifice that purchased mercy for all sinners.

God has always desired mercy, not sacrifice. Paul tells us in Romans that even Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, did not gain a right standing before God by what he did. Instead, Abraham believed God’s promises, and his faith was counted to him by God as righteousness (Romans 4:22). Abraham trusted God when God promised to give him a son when he and his wife Sarah were well past the age of childbearing. He was fully convinced that God would keep His promise and give him a son – and that through that son God would make him the father of many nations – and that one of his descendants would be the blessing of all the earth, the Savior, Jesus – the one “who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). To those who believe in Jesus, God gives righteousness to those who have none of their own, because God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).

God is now at work in us to bring us the perfect healing of body and soul that He has promised us in Jesus. But the path to that perfect healing is not a direct one. The doctor who wishes to bring healing to a patient must sometimes cause additional pain before the healing can happen. A doctor may have to cause pain in order to set a broken bone or restore a displaced joint. A doctor may have to cut away infected tissue or cut out a cancerous growth before healing can begin. And God may have to deal with us in the same way. As the prophet Hosea says:

Hosea 6:1   “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.

God allows us to go through difficulties and challenges in life, but His ultimate goal is not to tear us down but to build us up. His goal is to drive out our unbelief so that we trust in Him alone. Again the prophet Hosea says:

2        After two days he will revive us;

                   on the third day he will raise us up,

                   that we may live before him.

That mention of “the third day” should remind us of Jesus’ resurrection “on the third day.” That’s the bedrock of our faith. We can be fully convinced that God will keep His promise to raise us up at the last day because He has already kept His promise to raise Jesus up from death. Perfect healing of body and soul is waiting for us when Jesus comes again.

So listen to Jesus when He says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13). If you are not a sinner, then Jesus is not for you. But if you are a sinner – as we all truly are – then you are in the right place here today. Jesus came for sinners, to show them God’s mercy. So listen to the words of forgiveness and life that Jesus speaks to you. And come share in the meal that Jesus has prepared for you. Eat of His body and drink of His blood along with the bread and wine in Holy Communion. Be fully convinced that Jesus will give you what He has promised: the forgiveness of your sins. Because He desires to give you mercy, the fruit of His sacrifice.

And the peace of God which passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Hosea 5:15            I will return again to my place,

                  until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,

                  and in their distress earnestly seek me.

Hosea 6:1  “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.

2    After two days he will revive us;

                  on the third day he will raise us up,

                  that we may live before him.

3    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 the showers,

                  as the spring rains that water the earth.”

Hosea 6:4  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.

5    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.

6    For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

                  the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Romans 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

Romans 4:16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18 In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

Matthew 9:10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”