For our scripture reading today, I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles and join me by looking at Matthew chapter 12, verses 1 through 21. Matthew chapter 12, verses 1 through 21. We always remember that the Bible is God's word. It's his truth that he's given us to know him by. And so we depend upon it as both our inherent infallible word, incapable of error because it comes from God. So let's look together at this section of scripture, beginning Matthew, chapter 12, beginning at verse one. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry. And they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him. but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you something greater than the temple is here. And if you'd known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would have not condemned the guiltless for the son of man is the Lord of the Sabbath. And he went on from there and entered their synagogue. And there was a man there with a withered hand. And they asked him, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him? He said to them, Which one of you has a sheep? If it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep? So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And then he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And the man stretched it out and it was restored healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him about how they might accuse him. Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there and many followed him and he healed them all. And he ordered them not to make him known. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved one with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not quench until he brings justice to victory. And in his name, the Gentiles will hope. We're going to close right there at that 21st verse, but let's bow and pray together. Father, we've heard this section of scripture read and we pray that now your Holy Spirit would help us understand it, that your Holy Spirit would be our teacher and that he would lead us into all truth. We thank you for those applications that you're going to make to our hearts. And we ask that you do that in the mighty name of Jesus. And we pray together in his name. Amen. Before we study this passage of scripture together, I was I'm going to ask you to consider and look at Jesus' emphasis on mercy. What did Jesus say about mercy in this passage? What did he do that was merciful? And what does he teach us about justice and mercy? Let me remind you for a moment, if we just back up in our thinking a little bit, and think back to the way that God has used believers throughout the centuries, certainly in our country and in many others. In our history, it was the Christians who looked after the poor and the sick. In Charlotte, I remember when I was working in the Charlotte area after seminary, There were many hospitals there that were started by Christians. You remember Presbyterian and Mercy Hospital both started in Charlotte by believers who wanted to who wanted to witness and take care and show mercy to people who were there in Charlotte. In Asheville, we had two hospitals, Memorial Mission, but St. Joseph's was the other one run by the Roman Catholic Sisters, showed compassion. and grace to people who were ill and hurting in every major city. You can go to the downtown area and in that downtown area, you can see a rescue mission or you can see a soup kitchen or you can see a homeless shelter. And in each of those areas, we know that those most of them were started by Christian believers. I was reading this morning in my devotional book about the Pacific Garden Mission started in Chicago a hundred years ago or more. And you think about what's happened as they've treated for the last hundred years alcoholics, homeless people, people with drug addictions. They've worked and many, many thousands of lives have been touched and changed by believers who are working in the cities showing mercy. Christian missionaries have started orphanages. They've started places, leprosy sanitariums. They have started halfway houses, ministries to prisoners. I think about Chuck Colson, who started Prison Fellowship and how he started the Angel Tree, where the families of prisoners were helped. So you can go back and look and see how believers have exercised mercy. in behalf of other people throughout the centuries. And we know that this comes from God because God has been merciful to us. We show mercy because God is merciful and compassionate. And we show mercy to others because God commands us to be a merciful people. Now, if you take your Bibles and turn with me to look again at Matthew chapter 12, maybe your Bible is still open there, but I want us to look together at this passage this morning. In these first 21 verses, when you look, you see there are three basic pictures given to us here or events. Two of them, I guess, would be classified as events, and one of them would be an Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah. I wanted to look at these things together with you, these three sections today, and to see what God says to us about mercy. I want you to look with me again at verses one through seven of Matthew, chapter 12. We read it a few moments ago. Jesus and his disciples were going through the grain fields. They were hungry. They were on the way to the synagogue, and it was the Sabbath day. And as they were going on the Sabbath day, the Lord Jesus Christ was going to teach. And yet while they were on the way, the disciples were hungry. Now, you know, it was a day of rest and worship. That's what the Sabbath was all about. And that's what they often thought about. But they often thought about what they could do and couldn't do on the Sabbath. But evidently, Jesus had been teaching about this. So when his disciples walked through the grain fields and they were hungry, they could walk into the grain fields and they took those. They popped off ahead of grain. They took them in. They took them in their hands. They did this with the grain of with the grains to almost thresh them, if we would say, and just kind of a personal way. They blew away the chaff, blew the chaff away, kept the grain and ate it. Now you know that people were following Jesus all the time. They were following Jesus and his disciples. And so as the disciples walked through the grain fields and did this, the Pharisees were on the outside of the crowd and they were watching everything that Jesus and the disciples did. And as they watched, they saw them do what they considered to be work. Because for them to pick the grain, for them to rub the grain in their hands, for them to blow away the chaff, they considered that threshing and winnowing. Picking, threshing, and winnowing. And so they considered that to be work. So they immediately speak to Jesus, and they say to Jesus, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. In other words, they're doing work. You see, these guys had hoped that Jesus or the disciples would do something wrong because they were trying to find means to accuse him. They wanted to use anything against Jesus to get rid of him because, you see, he was gathering too much of a following and they considered him a threat, a danger to their standing. Now on that Sabbath day, when Jesus and his disciples took the heads of grain and ate them, these people thought that Jesus was what they thought about Jesus was that Jesus was condoning work on the Sabbath and thus violating the law, the Ten Commandments. And so they said, look what your disciples are doing. They're picking this grain. They're working. They're violating the Sabbath. Why do you let your disciples break the Sabbath day? Now, when you ask Jesus a question, they didn't expect his answer, you know, They never do, do they? When Jesus comes back to answer them, He answers them thoroughly. And you'll see that His answer has four basic parts to it when He answers them. And I wanted to look at these things with you this morning. He said, first of all, He said to them, the first thing He says is, don't you remember what David did when David went to Ahimelech when he was on the run from Saul? This is in the 21st chapter of 1 Samuel. Don't you remember what David did? David went and he went and asked the priest for bread. And the priest, Ahimelech, didn't have any regular bread to give him. So he gave him the bread that was the bread of the presence, the show bread, the bread that came right off the table that was to be presented to God and was to show that the bread of life and was to indicate that this was only for the priest and for the priest's family. And yet, The priest gave it to David and David ate and so did his men when they were in need. That's the first thing Jesus quotes to him. What about David and what he did? The second thing that Jesus says to him is in verse 5. And Jesus says, have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath day the priest and the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? He said, don't you remember what Jesus did? Don't you remember what the priests do? Don't you remember what the priests do when they work on the Sabbath? The priests work on the Sabbath, and yet they profane it, is actually what the text says. They break the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath day, but they're innocent. Don't you remember the case of the priests? The Pharisees have asked, who are you to let your disciples violate the Sabbath? And Jesus is giving them reasoned answers. But notice what he says to them in verse eight. In verse eight, he says, For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. They were asking him, who are you to let your disciples break the Sabbath, work on the Sabbath day? And he says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. In fact, a few verses back, he says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. I'm the ones greater than the temple is here in your presence. And basically they didn't even realize it. The Messiah was there. The Lord of the Sabbath was there. But Jesus wasn't finished with them. Because the last thing he said to them, he said in verse 7, he says, you don't even remember what it says in Hosea 6.6. Because in Hosea 6.6, God says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. What was the point that Jesus was making to these men? He was saying to them, you guys don't even care. You've got all this list of legal things that you think that you keep. But you don't have a heart of mercy. You don't understand what Hosea was talking about when he was talking about showing mercy to one another. Why do you have no pity on these men who are hungry? Why is it that you turn your back on them on their hunger and all you care about is for a way to accuse them of being Sabbath breakers? Jesus said the problem that you have is with your heart because you don't even understand what God says when he says I don't want sacrifice. I want compassion and mercy. I don't want that. I want compassion and mercy. You don't have any mercy for your fellow man because you've got a faith that's just a set of rules. And in the past, They thought that they could buy God's acceptance by following strictly a set of religious rules. But they didn't have the heart that followed the king. He could have asked them, they would have asked, he could have asked them, did you fast this week? Did you tithe? Did you keep the Sabbath? Did you avoid every kind of work? And they can say yes, but he says, do you have a heart of mercy? Do you even care about these men who are hungry? Do you care about justice and mercy? Or do you just care about going through the motions? Now maybe we should ask ourselves that this week. Maybe we should ask if we care about mercy. If we have checked our own hearts, If we've looked at ourselves and have we called a sick friend? Have we checked on somebody who's hurting? Have we checked with somebody that's been in the hospital and out? Somebody whose marriage is in trouble? Somebody whose child is straying? Somebody who's out of work? There are many occasions upon which this week we could have shown mercy. Did we? When we look at this section where Jesus asked them, do you even know what mercy is? Do you have a heart of compassion? We have to ask ourselves the same question. Do we have a heart of compassion for others? I wonder if sometime we make the same mistake in that we see Christianity as a set of regulations to follow, but not a heart of mercy. They probably thought they'd done pretty good and had a high score. But Jesus looked at them and said, Do you even know what this saying means? I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Jesus had been on his way to the synagogue. He'd walked through the grain fields. His disciples had picked the grain, but now he walks into the temple. And one of the first things that he sees and those people that are around him see is a man with a shriveled hand. A man with a shriveled hand, did he have a stroke? Had he been in an accident? Did he have some physical disease, polio, something like that? We don't know. But the man had a shriveled hand, and he looked at that man, and they looked, the crowd looked at him, and the crowd asked the question this time. The Pharisees looked at him and said, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Same crowd, same idea. Try to catch Jesus in some saying that he would say that would be wrong, something that he would do that they could point to and say, you can't follow him. Look at how he behaves. We know what was in their mind. And so they would think healing is a work and therefore you should not heal on the Sabbath. Now that's what they thought with their minds. But the first thing that Jesus says to them is, you don't really believe that in your hearts. Let me give you an example. Jesus said to them, what man is among you is there who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not take hold of that sheep and pull it out of that pit, even though it's on the Sabbath day? Jesus knew that every single one of them would. He says, aren't you being hypocrites? You'll lift out a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath day, but you'll deny me the right to heal a man on the Sabbath day. Isn't a man more valuable than a sheep? And Jesus knew that in their minds, they didn't condemn themselves for being merciful. They didn't condemn themselves when they did work, when they pulled that sheep out of the pit. So he says, why then do you condemn me for being merciful on the Sabbath? You're being hypocrites. Their problem was that they had hardened their hearts. They had taught themselves that law obedience trumped mercy to their fellow man. Law obedience, they thought, trumps mercy. But Jesus is saying the opposite. He's saying that mercy trumps outward obedience. They were conflicted, though, in their hearts. Now, more than anything else, don't we want God to be merciful? More than anything else today, don't we want God to be merciful to us? More than anything else, we want God to be merciful to us. We want God to forgive our sins. We want God to care about us. When we get in the hospital, when we get in a car wreck, when we're hurting, we cry out to God and we say, God, be merciful to me. Please help me, God, in my need. You know, deep inside, we know that we're sinful. We don't deserve mercy. Deep inside, we know that we've broken God's law. We know that we've been hypocrites, just like the people in this chapter. We know that we've lied and we've gossiped and we've stolen other people's reputations. We've criticized other people when we could have kept our mouths shut. We haven't spoken up for God's truth when we could have. We've been quiet when we should have said something. Elders from my church in North Carolina, I remember when I went to see him when he was sick before he died, he said, Calvin, oh, I wish I had been more open and shared my faith with more people. Oh, how I wish I'd told people more of my hope in Christ. We know when we haven't spoken up when we should have. We haven't spoken up for the truth of God. We haven't defended Christ in His name. We've done all kinds of things that we knew were wrong or we neglected to do the very good things that we know that we should. So more than anything else, we want mercy. We want mercy today. We know that no amount of good works can make up for the mercy of God. No amount of good works can erase what we've done. The other day, Susan and I were watching a film, and we watched where one of the main characters had been a man who was in World War II. And while he was in World War II, he had been tempted to help the Nazis. In fact, he did help the Nazis get rid of the Jews and steal things from them, valuable things, valuable items. He was hurt about that because he knew it was wrong. So the rest of his life, what he did with his wealth that he accumulated, the beginnings of the wealth that he accumulated from the Nazis as they stole it from others, he took that wealth and used it to try to help other people. And he thought of himself as trying to make atonement for what he had done when he was doing, when he'd used blood money to enrich himself. He spent his whole life trying to do good to other people to make up for the evil that he had done during the war. But you know, the truth is we can never erase our sins, can we? I can't erase my sins and you can't erase yours. If they're going to be erased, the only one that can get rid of them is the Lord Jesus Christ. The only one that can get rid of Him is the Lord Jesus Christ, where His blood is poured out on our guilty hearts, and He cleanses us with His blood and makes us righteous. By dying in our place, by setting Himself on the cross for us, He is the only way that we can be forgiven and be at peace. Above all else, we want God to be merciful to us, and God is merciful to us. When you look at verses 18 through 21, this last section that we're looking at this morning, notice what it says. This is a quote from Isaiah. This is to fulfill what Isaiah the prophet said, Behold, my servant whom I have chosen. My beloved one in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A battered reed he will not break off and a smoldering wick he will not put out until he leads justice to victory. And in his name, the Gentiles will hope. God the Father sent God the Son, His servant, His chosen one, to come for us. He is the one who came into this world for us. He was the Father's well-beloved one. He was the one with whom the Father was well-pleased. He is the one that had the Holy Spirit in His fullness. He is the one that came for us. And notice in verse 18 it says, "...and He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles." When I was looking at this, literally it says, He will throw out judgment to victory. He will throw out judgment to victory. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ came along to remove the judgment that was on us and to give us His victory. He was the one that gave us His victory in Christ, His work of redemption for us. He threw out the judgment that was hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. He's the one that said that He would be the one to take the judgment that was due to us, and not to give us justice, but to give us grace, to give us mercy. And He threw out that judgment and brought us to victory. You know what Christ did for you if you're a believer, don't you? He took your judgment. He took it on the cross and he threw out that judgment so that you could live now and forever. And we notice also in verse 21, it says, in his name, the Gentiles will hope. In the Greek language, the word for Gentiles and nations are the same. They're translated either way. And it was because the Gentiles, the nations, were the ones that were outside of the people of Israel. And those people on the outside were considered foreigners, like the Greeks would say, they're the Greeks and they're the barbarians. There's us and there's them. And so in this passage, what he's quoting from this Old Testament passage, but when you think about it this way, he's saying, in his name, the outsiders will hope. In his name, the Gentiles, the foreigners, the outside people, the people that don't have the covenants, the people that don't have the promises, the people that are aliens and strangers to the covenants. In His name, all the outsiders, the sinful people, the people that don't deserve anything, in His name, they will hope. And you see, that's what we do today. Because we are the outsiders. We're the sinful people. We're the lost people. We're the people that needed to be redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in the name of Jesus that we hope. In the name of Jesus, we hope. He died for us that we might have mercy. He died for us that we might experience the mercy of God. We are called to be a people who are a people of mercy. To showing mercy to others. To show the love of the Lord Jesus Christ to others. Because we've been shown so much mercy, we need to show the same kind of mercy to others. Do we feel like it? Doesn't matter. Do we want to do it? Doesn't matter. Because God has said he's called us to do it. To show mercy to others just like he's shown mercy to us. Our calling as believers. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that there is mercy for those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that it says in Romans, whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved. We're thankful, Father, for your promise of salvation to us as we call and trust. And Father, as we experience this mercy that you've given to us, may we turn around and show others that they can find mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ too. And we thank Father of the mercy that we can show to others this week and we pray that you would give us hearts and minds and a focus on being a merciful people. When someone harms us, when someone says something ugly to us, when our temptation is to strike back, to be ugly back to them, may we show them the mercy that you've shown to us. Forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness and renew a right spirit in us. For we make our prayers in the name of the one who loved us and gave himself for us, even Jesus. Amen.