Mercy, Not Sacrifice (Part 2)

The second time that Christ quotes Hosea 6:6 (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) is found in Matthew 12:1-8 (a contextual discussion of this verse can be found in What Does God Want?, and also see Part 1 of this snack). Here we have the disciples picking grain from a field on the Sabbath. This prompts the Pharisees to point out to Jesus that they are breaking the Sabbath.

Matthew 12:3-7

He answered, “[David] entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread – which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.” 

Some people look at these circumstances and say that Christ was changing how the Sabbath was to be observed. While he did take issues with how the Pharisees observed the Sabbath, he was not changing how God originally commanded us to keep the Sabbath. The Pharisees had built a strict system of traditions in addition to God’s law in order to make sure that people wouldn’t be breaking the law. For example, the Pharisees had rules about how much you were allowed to carry on the Sabbath, thinking “if you can’t carry anything, then you can’t do any work that might involve carrying something.” Strict rules such as these were not given by God, and that’s why Jesus refers to them as “commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9) – and that’s exactly what Jesus took issue with here.

In His response, Jesus first cites the time when David and his men were fed with bread from the temple, found in 1 Samuel 21. The point that He is making with this reference is that God’s law of love can, in special circumstances, supersede the physical observances required by the law, such as if a person or animal falls into a hole on the Sabbath, you're allowed to pull them out (Luke 14:5). What David and his men did was worse than what the disciples were doing because God specifically made a law that only the priests could eat that bread, and yet David is not condemned for it. On the other hand, what the priests did in the temple was required by the law, and their Sabbath day duties easily violated the Pharisees so-called “law” (i.e. the “commandments of men”). Jesus then pulls out Hosea 6:6 to drive home the point that God’s law is not just about physical observances, but about love. God didn’t mind if we gather food to eat on the Sabbath (as long as we are doing it to feed ourselves and not for profit); therefore, the Pharisees “condemned the innocent.” Finally, Jesus asserts His authority, telling them “the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.” Jesus owns the Sabbath – It’s His! Therefore, He knows what’s allowed and what’s not.

It should be clear then that Jesus was in no way trying to change the Sabbath (or any of God’s law, for that matter) in justifying what His disciples did. Instead, He rebuked the Pharisees for unrightfully making the Sabbath a burden with extraneous requirements rather than observing it with their hearts, and it’s all about the heart.