So Samuel said: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). Through Jeremiah the Lord spoke in this way, “For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you’” (Jeremiah 7:22-23). But did not the same Lord speak to Samuel in this way, “Why do you kick at My sacrifice and My offering which I have commanded in My dwelling place, and honor your sons more than Me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel My people?” (1 Samuel 2:29). From the mouth of Hosea, God spoke, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).

Jesus spoke in this manor, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:13); and again, “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7). There is a very important message in the scriptures quotes here. God did command sacrifices and offerings, but He desired that we would have mercy and knowledge of Him more. God commanded the offerings and sacrifices, but would have preferred that mankind could have had knowledge of Him as having mercy. God wants us to obey His voice and when we fail He has mercy. He also desires for us to have mercy on others. “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful” (Luke 6:36). “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

It was Adam’s inability to see God as merciful that caused him to hide from God after the fall. It was then that God made mankind a covering of skin. Sin could not stand before God, but God was and is always merciful even in His wrath. God did not kill Adam, but Adam was dead in his own heart because he could not see God’s mercy. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16). God did not say, “… for in the day that you eat of it I will surely kill you,” He said, “… you will surely die.” God spoke to Ezekiel and said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).

When the elders of Israel refused to hear God, because they feared death and could not see God as merciful (see Deuteronomy 5:23-25), God gave them law on stone tablets; but His intent was to write them on their hearts. “Let not mercy and truth forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man” (Proverbs 3:3-4). Once mercy is written on the tablet of your heart, you can find favor with God. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jeremiah 31:33). The writing is not on a heart of stone, but on a heart of flesh that understands God as merciful (that knows the favor of God).

John wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God’s mercy walked out is grace. What is God writing on our hearts? The answer is truth (“My law”). Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Jesus came full of grace and truth. Jesus came walking out God’s mercy and with God’s law (truth). Jesus is God’s word and God’s word is merciful and truth. But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). “So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). “But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 7:23a).

© 2007 Tim D. Coulter Sr.