Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 18:9-17
You can pull your outline out that's in the bulletin if you'd like to follow along on the outline. Our passage this morning is Luke 18, verse 9 to 17. We're going to talk about the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to pray at the temple. We're going to talk just sort of impasse about this second story, verse 15, 16 and 17, about Jesus and the disciples and children. We're actually going to read those verses next week also. I just couldn't decide should we read them and include them in this week or should we cut it off and do it next week? So we're going to do both and we're going to talk about them just a little bit this week and a little bit next week. So our passage is Luke 18, we're going to begin in verse 9. We're getting really close to Luke 19, 10. There's been a long time that we've been studying the Gospel of Luke, we're a couple of weeks away from that. If you've been here recently, you know that in Luke 9, 51, which was a while back, there's a turning point in the story and the turning point is at that moment, Luke 9, 51, Jesus is no longer just walking around teaching, healing, casting out demons, but He's being very intentional in that I'm going to Jerusalem. Luke tells us that he set his face to go to Jerusalem and he knows that when he gets to Jerusalem, he's going to die. That's where he will seek and save the lost by dying on a cross for sinners. And so he's traveling to Jerusalem. It's not a straight line journey, it's sort of a meandering trip. And in this section of Luke, there's an interesting back and forth with Jesus and in two different groups of people. On the one hand, you have disciples who are following Jesus. You have the twelve apostles, you have a group of women that we've read about. You have some other people who are sort of tagging along. These people believe Jesus is who He said He is and they're listening to Jesus. And most of what Jesus has to say to these disciples who are walking with Him involves discipleship, meaning what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? He's explaining that to the disciples. But you've also got the Pharisees and the scribes and the religious leaders and you've got this other group of people who are sort of tagging along, they sort of pop in and out of the story. And at this point, they've made up their mind about Jesus. They've pushed their chips all into the middle of the table. We don't like this guy, he's got to die, we're going to be the ones to get rid of him. They've made that decision. So when they pop into the story, it's usually to criticize Jesus, to question Jesus, to ask Him some sort of question where they want to trap Him and then use His own words against Him. And you've got this back and forth. And so it's the disciples who bring the children and Jesus says no, I don't want you to take the kids away, let them come and the disciples are involved in that and there's a lesson for them. But our main focus this morning is going to be what Jesus has to say to the Pharisees. And it begins in Luke 18 verse 9. We're going to read it in a minute, but let me give you the big idea. It's talking to the Pharisees and the big idea is this, justification comes for those who humbly ask for mercy. Justification is a big, long word, it's a Bible word, it's a theology word, and it's a word we don't use a whole lot in everyday life, but it's a very important word in the Scriptures in describing the salvation that God gives us through Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about sinners being justified and the big idea in this passage is very simple. Meditation comes for those who humbly ask for mercy. The question is, what does it mean to be justified? The word comes from the legal realm, from a courtroom scene, and what it literally means is to be declared righteous. When you are justified, you are declared to be righteous. It doesn't make you righteous. It doesn't change anything about you or what you've done in the past, but it's a declaration from one who has authority, this person is righteous. Now, that's an abstract thought, and so let me make it concrete for you. Tyler mentioned earlier that it rained this week. It rained a lot, Wednesday night. I had a bucket on my back porch, and I promise you, it had six inches in it, Thursday morning. It had a lot of water in it, and so as I looked at that bucket Thursday morning, I thought to myself, Corey Spear woke up with a real dilemma in his life. And here's the dilemma. It rained in Odessa, Corey, and he has trained Tyler to do this. You can thank Corey for this. He likes to drive through all the low spots in town, where there's water, and he doesn't like to drive slow. He likes to gun it. You see this red truck coming in a puddle. You better back up because it's Corey, and he likes to splash. Now Corey would say, "Oh, I only do that to people who have their windows rolled up." But for Corey, that's the dilemma, Thursday morning. He wakes up. He thinks there's a lot of water out there. It's not going to be there very long. It's awful cozy in bed, but I could get up, I could go splash people, could drive through the low spots, and I could soak them. I'm not telling you that that did happen, and I'm not telling you that didn't happen. I'm just telling you Corey woke up, and that was on his mind. It was on his heart. He didn't have a quiet time that morning, because all he could think about was, "What do I do? What do I do?" It was a spiritual battle. Just imagine, hypothetically, imagine Thursday afternoon, we're sitting in the office, and here comes the OPD walking in. We're looking for Mr. Corey Spear. He's right there. We just duck and run. We throw him under the bus. He's right there. They say, "We need to take you into custody. You've been charged with assault." Assault for what? We're splashing a poor widow who had her window down Thursday morning. Corey says, "I didn't do that. I was having my quiet time this morning." They say, "Well, we've got to take you in." They take him in, and Corey gets his day in court. Corey stands before the judge, and he presents his side of the story. He says, "I didn't do it. I'm innocent of doing it. I promise it didn't happen." He makes his argument, and then there's this poor soaking wet widow, and she gives her sob story to the judge, and it's so sad and pitiful. The judge listens to all of that, all the evidence, and the judge says, at the end of the proceeding, "You didn't do it. You're free to go, Mr. Spear. You can leave." Now listen, that declaration from the judge, it changes nothing as to whether or not Corey did it or not. Correct? Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't, but he was able to present enough evidence to the judge to be convincing enough in his argument that the judge "justified" him. It doesn't matter if he did it or didn't do it. The point of justification is not whether you're guilty or not guilty. The point is that a declaration is made by the judge that you're righteous, that you're innocent. Okay? So that's a hypothetical example. Here's a real world example that you all know about. Remember OJ? Okay. He's in jail now for something else, but you remember this picture. I was in Miss Green's seventh grade science class when they read the verdict. They put it on the TVs, we stopped school, the bell rang for classes to change, nobody moved and we sat there and we watched the verdict. And what was the verdict? The verdict was not guilty. And everybody heard that and said, "Oh, come on. Are you kidding me? The evidence is overwhelming. Forget the little glove thing and he couldn't get the ... It was overwhelming. We know that he did it, but in the biblical sense, he was justified. And this declaration came down and the declaration said, "You're free to go." And at that point, it doesn't matter if he did it or didn't do it. The declaration from the authority has been made. You're innocent. You're righteous. You're free to leave. You understand when the Bible talks about justification, it's not an issue of, "Are you good enough? Are you bad enough?" We're all bad. We're all sinners. We're all guilty. And justification is a declaration that you are righteous. And in this story, Jesus says if you put the details together in this little parable and you tack on what he has to say about the humility of children at the end, what he's saying is justification comes for those who humbly ask for mercy. And so with that being said, look at the text with me, Luke 18 beginning in verse 9. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. And these people treated others with contempt. Two men went into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give ties of all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beat his breast saying, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. They were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them that Jesus called them to him saying, "Let the children come to me and do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God." Truly, I say to you, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." This is the word of God, let's pray. Father, this morning we simply ask that you would make this familiar story plain that we can understand it, that we can comprehend what Jesus is saying to us, that it would pierce our hearts, that you would send your spirit to use your word to divide us between bone and marrow, that we would be laid bare before your word, that we would submit to its authority, and that we would leave changed. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Two quick details before we jump into the characters, these are both on your outline. First of all, Jesus told the parable to those who trusted in their own righteousness and who treated others with contempt, yet a specific audience in mind when he told this story. He was telling it to those who thought, "I don't need God to justify me. I'm righteous all by myself." You understand? Justification. You're declared righteous. Well, there was a group of people, the Pharisees, following Jesus who said, "Justification, who needs it? I'm righteous. I don't need to be declared righteous. I already am righteous." And because of that belief that they had, they looked on other people and they looked on them with contempt and disgust and disdain. And those are the people that Jesus is telling this story to. Second, understand this. Everyone listening to the story in their mind, before they heard the story, all of them thought Pharisees equal good guys, tax collectors equal bad guys. That's what everyone assumed. We read the story and you've heard it in Sunday school and you've heard sermons preached and you know Pharisees are the worst. No one wants to be like a Pharisee. But you've got to put yourself in the shoes of those who heard it for the first time. In their world, the Pharisees were the best of the best. The people they looked up to, morally, civically, religiously, all of it. They were highly respected. Tax collectors were the scum of the earth. And Jesus in this story takes those roles and he flips them upside down on their head. Let's talk about the Pharisee. Several things I want you to see about this Pharisee. Number one, he was proud and even more fundamentally he was self-absorbed. And I tell you that being self-absorbed is more basic than being proud because you understand you can think of yourself not in terms of arrogance but in terms of disgust for yourself and still be self-absorbed, right? People who throw a pity party all day long every day because their life is so miserable nobody likes them. They're still self-absorbed. This Pharisee didn't have that problem but he is proud and he is most certainly self-absorbed. He really believes that he's gone over and above God's requirements. And in a sense, can I be honest with you? He has. When you read the Old Testament, there was one day prescribed in the Old Testament where God's people were supposed to fast and eat nothing and that was the day of atonement. One day, out of the whole year, how many days does this man fast, 104, one to 104. And in his mind, that deserves 103 pats on the back. I have really gone over and above what's expected of me. You can read in the Old Testament, there are laws commanding a tithe on crops when you're a farmer and you live in this agricultural community or you raise livestock, you're supposed to give a tithe of your produce, a tithe of your herds. This man says, I tithe everything, everything that I have. I'm going over and above. I'm really exceeding expectations here. And beyond just this arrogance and thinking that he's exceeded what God wants of him, he's totally self-absorbed. And when you look at his prayer, there's 29 words in his prayer. Five of them are the word I. Be careful when you pray. Don't use that pronoun too much. It's okay to use it, but when it's one sixth of your prayer, that's too much on you and not enough about God. Over and over, I, I, I, he's totally self-absorbed and he's certainly arrogant. Secondly, he found security in comparison. And it's important that the comparison that gave him the security was comparison to other people, not comparison to God. And if you look at his 29 word prayer, where five of the words are I, can I tell you something else? It's all true. Everything he said in the prayer is true. He says in the prayer how often he fasts, that was true. The Pharisees fasted twice a week. And he talks in there about how much he tied, they did that, not lying. And he looks around and he says, I'm not like certain people, I'm not like extortioners, he wasn't. I'm not like the unjust, he wasn't. I'm not like adulterers or even the tax collector. He wasn't like any of those people. Everything he said was perfectly true, but the problem is his comparison is horizontal. And when he makes that comparison, he feels very comfortable and he finds, he feels very secure. The third thing you need to see is that he looks on others with disgust. He looks on the, on the tax collector, he has no compassion for this man. He talks about these other quote unquote sinners, he has no compassion on these people. Here's the deal. You know this story, you've heard it, you've read it, you're familiar with it. So you know how it ends and you know that the outcome slants in the favor of the tax collector and against the Pharisee. And so when you read it, you have this tendency to say, man, you should not look on other people with disgust like he did. He looked on people with contempt, it's not right. I bet I could sit down with every person in this room, including myself looking in a mirror. And I could push the right buttons and I could find people that you think are disgusting. I could do it and it wouldn't take very long, and you know it wouldn't take very long. Maybe you look down on them because of the political party that they vote for. For a lot of you, that would be it, contempt. For a lot of you, it would be someone because of the certain lifestyle that they live or the type of lifestyle that they live. That was the issue for the Pharisee and the tax collector. He looked at his life decisions and his lifestyle and he said, it's just disgusting. He looked down on this man with contempt. For some of you, maybe it would be someone who has the ability to work who refuses to work. And I could describe that person to you and you'd say, that's terrible, that's terrible. Who would do that? And I could push the right buttons and we could find the person. And all I'm saying to you is this, it's one thing to call a spade a spade and to be honest about sin. I'm not telling you not to do that. I'm just telling you, that's a very fine line that you and I have to be careful about when you cross over into contempt and disgust with other people. And this man makes the mistake. Not only is he willing to call a spade a spade, not only is he willing to recognize sin as sin, but then he turns and he looks on other people and when he looks on them he has disgust. Another thing I want you to see is that he ignores the holiness of God. He starts to pray and while I said that everything that came out of his mouth was true, I'll then turn around and say nothing that came out of his mouth was an actual prayer. He was talking and maybe his eyes were closed or maybe he was peaking to see the text collector over there and what he was doing, but it was not a prayer in any way, shape or form. Look how he begins. "God, I thank you." That was the Jewish, the Hebrew formula for beginning a psalm of thanksgiving. And so if you're standing there you think, well maybe he's about to quote one of the psalms. There's some psalms that begin with that or that have that phrase in there. He's going to give this Hebrew psalm of thanksgiving. And then he turns and he doesn't say anything about God or anything to God. He's just talking about himself for other people to hear. Everything he says in this rambling is an actual prayer. And you contrast that with somebody like Isaiah, Isaiah 6. He's confronted with the holiness of God and what does he do? He says, "I'm in huge trouble. I'm worthless. I'm lousy. I'm pitiful and God is great and he's high and lifted up and he's awesome." All he can talk about is how great God is and how pitiful he is. This Pharisee is the exact opposite. He has nothing to say about God. Nothing he has to say is about himself. In no way has he been gripped by the holiness of God. To summarize it, this Pharisee is self-righteous. You go back to the beginning of the passage. He told the parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. He's the polar opposite, not only of the tax collector but of the children who come to Jesus at the end of our passage. They don't come to Jesus thinking they've earned their way with him. They just want to be with him. This man says, "Well, I've earned my way with God. I've earned this righteousness. I'm good enough. I'm moral enough. I'm spiritual enough. I'm religious enough that now God owes me." When it's all said and done, I'm going to have way more on the good side of the scale than I will on the bad side. I've earned this righteousness. Can I tell you something about self-righteous people? Not always, but most of the time you find them in religious places doing religious things. Not always. I don't want to pretend like all of the self-righteous people come to church on Sunday morning, but when you find them a truly self-righteous person, odds are they'll go to religious places and they'll do religious things. These people have a fundamental problem in that they really think that sin and righteousness is a matter of their actions, when really it's a matter of our heart. They think externally, if I can just do the right things, if I can check the right boxes, if I can be in the right places with the right people, I'll earn it. What they don't realize is that sin is not first a problem of what comes out of your mouth or what you do with your life, but it's a problem of the condition of your heart. That's why Isaiah says, "Woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips. Where do your words come from?" Jesus says, "They come from your heart." He says, "My heart is wicked, and overflows in my mouth, and my words are wicked. I'm in trouble." This man doesn't see that, and he thinks that he's earned his righteousness. Just compare the two men. Look at this comparison. The Pharisee, five words used to describe his posture, 29 words used for his prayer, the tax collector, 19 words used to describe his posture, and only six in his prayer. There's a lesson in there for you about prayer. The position of your heart is often reflected in your physical posture, and that's more important than all of the loquacious verbiage that comes out of your mouth when you start talking to God. This is why Ecclesiastes 5 says, "Look, when you go to pray, your words need to be few. Your words need to be few. Don't just start running off the mouth. Drop it. Guard your mouth when you go to speak to God." You see that in these two men. Here's what you see about the tax collector. First of all, he was focused on God. First word is God, and the rest of what he says is directed to God in a petition to God. Unlike the Pharisee who begins thanking God and then doesn't say anything else to God, this man, his focus is on God. Secondly, he acknowledges his sin. In most English translations, his prayer reads like this, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." When you look at it in the original language, there's a definite article before the word sinner, and what he literally says is, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." In other words, as he's praying, what he's saying is, "I feel like I'm the biggest scumbag on the whole earth." I'm not just a sinner, I'm the sinner. So he acknowledges his sin. Third, he doesn't make excuses. No excuses. And this is not something he said. This is just something he didn't say that I want you to notice. He doesn't try to explain why he did this, why he said that. He doesn't try to shift the blame to somebody else. Our culture has swallowed the secular worldview hook, line, and sinker. And the result is, people in our society have a very hard time calling sin, sin, and evil evil. Just watch the news and listen for what's evil. About the only thing you're going to hear called evil on the news anymore is mass murderers and people who hurt children. That's about it. We're not willing to label anything else as evil because we say, "Well, he's a product of his environment." Well, it's just a disorder. Well, it's just some kind of imbalance. Well, it's just a, it's not his fault, it's someone else's fault. They can't help it. That's just who they are. This man doesn't make excuses for his sin. I think he understood Isaiah 64, Isaiah 64, 6 says this, "We have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." That's a description of Isaiah. That's a description of the people who lived when he lived. It's a description of your pastor and it's a description of you. You can make excuses for it or you can just admit it. This man just admits it. I'm the sinner. Number four, he begs for mercy. He begs for mercy. In the actual word he uses here, mercy, I think is a reference to the mercy seat above the ark of the covenant in the temple. You remember, that's where he's praying, he's at the temple. As a tax collector, he wouldn't be allowed to go into the place where maybe this Pharisee was allowed to go pray, but he's at a distance and he can see the holy of holies, he can see the building, and he knows that in that building, the ark of the covenant is there, and on the lid was these two angels tipped their wings. This is called the mercy seat, it's where the high priest would come and sprinkle this blood. What I'm really asking God to do when he says, "Have mercy on me," is he's asking, "In light of the sacrifice made on this mercy seat, in light of the sacrifice, remove my sin and wash me clean." You got to understand that because as you just read the story about these two guys, Pharisee and the tax collector, there's a dilemma in the passage. There's something that shouldn't sit right with you. Here's the unresolved tension in the parable. On what basis did God justify the tax collector? I'm not looking for the Sunday school answer where you just blurred out Jesus. I just want you to think about the story here. On what basis does he justify this tax collector? Let's just talk facts. The tax collector was a jerk. There's a reason the Pharisees and everybody else in that society looked down on him. He earned it. He was a traitor. He was a liar. He was a cheater. He was a thief. He was greedy. He manipulated people. He oppressed people, especially those who are helpless and defenseless. He was a scumbag. And you're telling me all it takes is one little prayer. You just come before God and you say, "God, please have mercy on me." And you go home justified? If you tell me that's how it works, here's what I want to know. What kind of judge in real life would do that? What kind of judge would have somebody in their courtroom who was clearly guilty of a capital offense and then look at it and say, "You want mercy? Sure. Why not?" No judge would do that. Here's a real life example from about 20 years ago. You remember this guy? Tim McVay? This was the deadliest domestic terror incident before September 11th. It's in Oklahoma City, downtown. We used to drive by it all the time when we'd go to the city. This is the Murra Building, federal building. He pulled a truck bomb right outside, detonated it as he left to get away and killed 168 people, over 600 people injured. It was horrific. They caught him. They put him on trial. They convicted him. They executed him. But just imagine, he never showed remorse, but just imagine during the trial if Tim McVay would have stood up and said, "Caught me, I did it. I wish I hadn't done it, and would you please give me mercy? Please give me mercy." Would anyone in their right mind expect a good judge to look at the facts and to hear that confession and then to say, "Okay, you can go." That's not a good judge, is it? That's not justice, is it? And you understand that when the Bible describes God, it describes Him as the judge of the universe, the creator of everything. The buck stops there and it describes Him as righteous and it describes Him as just and it describes Him as true, as always doing the right thing. And you read in this story this unresolved tension where you say, "How can somebody who's truly guilty stand before the best judge, the only good judge in the universe, and then just get off free?" Because he asks for mercy. Here's the full big idea of the passage as you put it in the context of Luke. The justification comes for those who humbly ask for mercy, trusting, trusting, believing, having faith in the finished work of the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost. You've got to read this story like every other story in light of Luke 19-10. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Luke 951, He's marching to Jerusalem and He knows that when He gets there, He's going to die. For whose sins? Not His. He has none. He's dying for your sins and my sins. He's taking the place of the guilty and taking their punishment so that justice can be executed and God can justify those who are ungodly. Understand this, when you come humbly to God asking for mercy, yes, you need to confess your sin. Yes, you need to admit your sin, but don't think for a second God's just going to take it, lift up the edge of the rug, sweep it underneath and forget about it. That's not how it works. That's not how justice works on a divine level or a human level. What the judge says when you humbly come asking for mercy is the Son of Man came to seek you and save you. And the only way you cannot get what you deserve is because He did not get what He deserved. He took your punishment. He took your sin. He took your crimes. He took all of it. And justice has been served at the cross because the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Now you can go free. I am declaring you righteous. He took your sin, you take His righteousness. When you look at this story, when you think about the issues of justice and justification and punishment, and you think about the Pharisee and you think about the tax collector, the greatest danger is that you would leave today saying, "God, thank you, I am not like that Pharisee." God, thank you that I am not self-righteous and self-absorbed and proud. Thank you that I am not like Him. If you leave like that, you are Him. The challenge for you is to leave saying, "God, I am the sinner and I deserve nothing good from you. But I am asking for mercy. Not asking you just to pretend like it didn't happen. I am asking for you to count my sin as paid for at the cross where Jesus took my place. I am asking you to justify me, not because I am righteous in myself, I am not, but because of what Jesus Christ did for me in His life." Let me pray for you. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We believe it. We see this morning how applicable it is to our life and to our relationship with You. Father, guard us from the temptation to look down on others thanking You that we are not as bad as them, whether they are tax collectors or whether they are Pharisees. Father, help us just to see ourselves this morning as sinners, plain and simple, no excuses. Father, we thank You that Jesus came to seek us and to save us. Apart from His life and His death and His resurrection, we have no hope. And Father, we see the gospel, we see the good news so clear in this passage and I pray for those in the room this morning that they would see it. And maybe some of them for the very first time, Father, that we this morning would give up any false notion of coming to You with a laundry list of our good deeds or our spiritual accomplishments and that we would simply come trusting in Your Son. Father, be honored as we continue to worship as we respond to Your Word, singing and lifting our voices together, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.