Sermons

Can I ask you all to open your Bibles, please, to Luke chapter 18? You know, there are certain passages in the Bible that if you had the opportunity to grow up in church, stand out. Now, if any of you were a pastor's kid—I was a pastor's kid—even more so, because here's the secret about pastors.

They have a few sermons to keep for the road, okay? So, a few sermons that they feel a little bit more confident in, they just feel like they know a little bit better. You know, if you kind of got them cold in an elevator and said, preach, like, this would come out of them because they know it so well.

Well, my father had a few of those sermons, and one of the ones that he would often have within him, and if he was ever asked without warning to preach, he would pull out this one and talk about two men, two prayers, and two outcomes, the Pharisee and the tax collector. So, this week was really hard because I studied the passage as I normally do and did everything else, and yet all I could hear was his voice, two men, two prayers, two outcomes. So, there you go, our outline is gonna be very simple this morning. Two men, two prayers, two outcomes.

But hopefully what was helpful to me growing up will be just as helpful to you, and especially not just be the structure of a man but help us to have insight into the very Word of God. So, would you stand with me, please, while we read the passage? Luke chapter 18, and reading from verse 9:

(Scripture reading) "He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt. Two men went up to 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 tithes of all that I get." But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but 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."

Let's pray.

[Prayer] Heavenly Father, we ask for Your help this morning. Lord, this parable reminds us of just how easy it is to slip into that self-deception where we think much of ourselves and it obscures our vision from being able to clearly see You and indeed our need of You. So, we ask that the text would do that hard work, the double-edged sword would pierce the hard heart and cause us instead to see our own emptiness, our own helplessness, our own sinfulness. That once more we may cry out to You for mercy, having hope rooted not in self or any act that we have done, but simply in the gracious character of the God that we come in desperation before. Minister to us, we pray. For it's in Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. [End]

Have a seat.

Well, this is our second parable on prayer. Earlier in the chapter, last week, verses 1 to 8, Jesus told a parable to his disciples. Do you remember verse 1?

That they ought always to pray and not lose heart. And now He comes a second time in verse 9 to speak this time to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. And He comes to tell them that God only responds to the prayer of the humble.

Again, if you remember, as we often highlight, the summary that Jesus gives of the commandments, the law of God, He says, when asked what is the greatest commandment, He says, “the greatest commandment is this, that you would love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it, that you would love your neighbor as yourself.” However, instead of love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, these individuals that he relates this parable to are those who trusted in themselves.

Their love and affection is inward rather than upward. Their attention is about who they are and what they have done. Their confidence—their confidence even as it comes to their acceptance before God, their acceptance by God—is rooted in themselves. And also, these very same individuals treat others with contempt.

If the second commandment Jesus says, the second summary commandment, is to love your neighbor as yourself, then one of the marks of the Pharisee, the one who would fall into this trap of folly, is a contempt, a dismissal, a sneering look towards other people. And so, we can see very quickly, even before we get into the guts of the text and the parable itself, we can see something so clearly about what Jesus is addressing. That spirit that would mark the religious, that would mark our attitude as we come, even this morning, before God to worship Him, that has some sense of, I'm meant to be here, because of who I am, because of my identity, because of what I have done.

I am a Christian. I prayed to Him. I know my Bible. I have confidence that my theology, unlike so many others, is correct theology. My actions are not watery. When it comes to church, I have a big God in mind, and I believe in big God worship. When it comes to how we do what we do at Trinity compared to other churches, we take God seriously.

And actually, the subtle thing behind it all that we sometimes fail to catch is the fact that we're talking all the time about we, or even more often, I. When actually, if we are truly to be shaped by the gospel and to be shaped by the claims of Scripture alone, we recognize immediately that we must talk about Christ alone. For we are saved by His grace alone, through faith alone. It's not ourselves, it's all of Him.

This story, when you put it beside the one that comes before, it reminds us positively of something as well. Verses one to eight remind us that God, as He speaks to His disciples, Jesus makes clear to them that God answers the prayers of the elect. Verses 9 to 14 give us real comfort this morning because it reminds us also that God answers, God hears the prayers of the sinner. And if this morning as you come to church, you identify yourself more with this sinner, there's a lot of comfort to be found in the text. Now, the story itself is somewhat clear, but sometimes in our particular world, in our particular familiarity with the Bible, we go into autopilot. As soon as you see the word Pharisee, what do you think?

Well, he must be the bad guy. He must be the notorious one, the one that we should be suspicious of. And when you hear tax collector, well, nobody smiles, but we kind of have in our own minds that, you know, the tax collector is respectable. You know, no one's glad to see the tax collector, but we respect the nature of the job. We admire something of the steadfastness of someone who would do any type of employment consistently.

But the world that we have to enter in to get the story was an altogether different one. And the people that Jesus tells the story to, especially when you remember that qualification in verse nine, those who trust it in themselves, that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt, those particular individuals, when they heard the word Pharisee, they thought hero. When they heard the phrase tax collector, they thought, enemy. I want you to imagine, and please grant me grace as I try to do this, a retelling of the story that on a given Sunday morning, the people of Trinity Bible Church turn up, enter into the building, and take their seats.

And everybody looks, and there sitting at the front is that individual. The one who's always there, always sitting in the seat. The only time they're not in the seat is when they're singing in the choir. And when it comes to singing, everybody else looks to the screen to see the words, but this individual never looks to the screen. They're playing the songs all the time on Spotify. They know them off by heart. They could be looking all around them, and yet they sing with gusto, and they sing with harmony. We're all very impressed by the way they sing.

When it comes to their Bible, their Bible, the back is broken on it. They have read it every year for the last 35 years. They know what it says. They can anticipate what the preacher will say. They can tell when it's a theologically rich preacher and whenever it's a wonky-donky type of preacher. They have that ability, that familiarity. If anybody was to ask them what book would they recommend, immediately they have a list of John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and everything else that's there to hand out.

They know the good stuff that's out there. And they look sharp. They look good. And everybody is excited to see them. After church, the kids run to that individual because they know that individual always has candy in their pocket and is so generous. And the mums, they love seeing the children going to the likes of him. What an example. What a good man. Or a good woman, could be a good woman.

Meanwhile, somebody else slips in. In fact, maybe they don't even come through the glass doors. They kind of just sit in that overflow area. They're hanging their head. Nobody can quite see exactly who it is. But there's something, whether it's a smell, whether it's the way they carry themselves. The security team are antsy.

The mums pull the children close to them and say, after church today, I don't want you running around. You need to stay with me. Because maybe somebody does start to recognize who this individual is, and rumors have circulated. There's things, things that he is associated with. They would make mums vomit. Nobody likes the fact he's here. The story continues.

Both men, in those few moments before the service commences, pray. The guy at the front, he prays something akin to, Lord, I thank you. That I know my stuff, and I'm not like the other individuals in Dallas at seeker-sensitive churches or at no church.

I thank you that I'm not marked by adultery, by criminality, and I'm not covered in suspicion and rumors like that guy over there. I've been able to give to help the missionaries in Argentina this week. I've helped three old ladies across the road. I helped serve in the Sunday school class, and I'm looking forward to doing it again in a few moments. Amen. Meanwhile, the other individual, he's never prayed. He doesn't even know, what do you do? Like, how do you start? How do you finish? What goes in here? In fact, he doesn't know if he can even get words out. And he feels so out of place.

And he feels so, presumptuous even to have turned up at church this Sunday, and his head is low, and his fists in desperation are clenched, and he simply fumbles out, God help me, for I am a sinner. And Jesus responds by shocking the religious group that listened to him by saying, I tell you, this man, he went down to his house right with God rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. but the one who humbles himself shall be exalted.

This is a story of contrast, and I want to highlight the obvious in the text so that we can try and soak in the lesson long enough to be exposed to the challenge that it presents. So, first of all, I want you to notice this is a story about two men, two men. Look at verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. They both go up to the temple to pray.

That was a normal thing. Every day at 9 a.m. and at 3 p.m. there would be sacrifices offered at the altar. There would have been incense that would have been burnt. And during that time, people gathered and people participated in the worship through prayer. It was a normal time. This is a very public moment. This is a public worship event. And the two men come in that moment to worship, yet the text focuses on the difference between the two as they went to that same place. Both go to the temple to worship. Both seek to engage in prayer.

Both leave feeling that they talked to God, yet only one went home right with God, while the other was rejected. And the shock was that the one who was accepted was the unlikely. While the crowd would assume one had God's ear, one was in God's good books, yet when he prayed God didn't engage with him at all.

So, the first of these two men is the Pharisee. Again, today we have a tendency as soon as we see the word Pharisee to dismiss, but in that day the Pharisees were the pious. The ones who took the Bible seriously. In fact, the Pharisees as a grouping started in that intertestamental period.

The Old Testament, if you're familiar with the Old Testament, is a history of the people of Israel and a history of every mess that they make. Every time God brings them back, they run away. Every time God corrects, they waver once more. Every time God brings a deliverer, they need an enemy to come in and to wake them up again. The history of the Old Testament is one of moral failure and moral drift in the part of the people of Israel. They continually go after other gods.

And so in the intertestamental period, after the biggest demonstration of their folly, the greatest punishment to come, when God decimated the nation and sent the people into exile, after their restoration, after 70 years, when the Lord caused the Captive Psalm 128 to be back in Zion once more, The people, as they rebuilt the temple and saw Jewish worship reestablished in Jerusalem once more, and a nation once more existing, the people worried that they would make the same mistake they had made every season before.

And so, a group emerged called the Pharisees. They were there to stop the rot, the moral majority to keep the rest of the nation in check, the whole high standard they believed came from the Word of God, that others would not go in the direction of the generations before them. And so, they tried to put parameters, guardrails to stop people wandering.

So, if the law said, do this, they made a, put what they thought was a safety net. Well, we'll do that to make sure that we don't break the law. If the law said, give 10% of your income to, in the Old Testament, the tithe to the temple, they said, well, we'll do that, and we'll give 10% of everything we get, just in case maybe the farmer didn't tithe, or the merchant didn't tithe. The tradesperson that I got this good from didn't hide. I'm going to make up where they may have lacked so that society will stay on the straight and narrow.

These people memorized Scripture. Most of the Pharisees could quote to you the whole of the Torah by memory. It's the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. It's at least 25% of your Bible. And they could just quote it. They knew it verbatim. They knew it inside out. They weren't lazy individuals. They were very pious, very zealous. They would have been considered in their day by the rest of society as an example of full commitment, as an example of holiness.

The second individual is this tax collector. Now, again, most of us today, we don't mind. We're never enthusiastic, but we don't mind the tax collector. We respect the position. But in the New Testament world, this was an extremely wicked man. There was no other way of understanding the likes of him. Here is one who wouldn't have been accepted at the temple. People would have been suspicious of him. In fact, in the Jewish temple court system, the testimony of a tax collector was discounted. They weren't allowed to represent, to speak as a witness in court, because they were generally accepted as untrustworthy. And they were thought that way because they were crooks.

The Romans, in order to, you know, kind of avoid conflict and to make their lives easier, they farmed out the duty of collecting taxes to the lowest bidder. So, whoever would, you know, do it for the cheapest salary, that was the person that got the job. And so, individuals would go in and they would put in these low bids, and they would get to be the tax collector.

But obviously they did okay out of it, otherwise they wouldn't have wanted to do it in the first place. And they did okay out of it because they lined their pockets with excess. They would go to the individual, and if the Romans wanted $2 from them, they would ask for five. And they would scoop off the top whatever was left over and keep it for themselves. And the Romans knew it; the Romans accepted it. because their job was getting done. And so, these individuals were profiting by exploiting their fellow man, in fact, their fellow citizens, their fellow Jews. And they were lining their own pockets by collaborating with the occupying enemy. So, the people hated them. The people, when they saw it them, wanted to spit on them, and if they could have got away with it, would have lynched them.

There was a deep hostility in the hearts of people when they heard the phrase tax collector. Think of Benedict Arnold switching sides in the Revolutionary War, the anger that was felt towards him. Think of those French politicians in World War II that secured and kept their position by snuggling up to the Nazis. The average French citizen wanted to spit on them, couldn't stand them, because they had betrayed the nation. That's the tax collector in the time of Jesus. So, two very different men. Secondly, notice two prayers. Two prayers. Both men pray. Well, at least they think they do.

It's a reminder, isn't it, even that very simple point that they both go home. The Pharisee, as far as we're aware, goes home feeling everything's gone right. It's a great reminder, isn't it, your feelings aren't what counts. You can come to church and go home and feel great. You can come to church and go home feeling awful. Your feelings are not a barometer of reality.

You have to come to the Word that is consistent to find a true verdict on what is real. But look at the Pharisee's self-focused prayer. Look at his self-focused prayer. Notice, first of all, how he focuses on his own value. He's focused on value, his value. Look at how the prayer begins there in verse 11.

God, I thank you that I, if that's how you start your prayer, you need to stop. If word number six, is I, there is a problem. And that problem is clear because of how Jesus has introduced the story to us. Verse 9, the Pharisees' prayer reflects some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. And now six words into the prayer, God, I thank you that I, there's the issue. Before we even get into the details of the prayer, that's the issue.

He's thankful for I, for me. There's a self-righteous spirit. There's a sense of self-value. There's a sense of security to come before the throne of God based on who he was. His prayer wasn't a prayer to worship God. It was a prayer that worships self. When you boil down what he's thankful for, he's thankful for himself and his own performance. He really thought he was something before the Lord God Almighty. J.C. Ryle says, we are all naturally self-righteous. It's a family disease that goes back all the way to Adam. Maybe some of you think you're not. That's probably a sign that you are.

It's a plague that continually in sinful hearts blossoms so quickly. And you know the way after the winter, probably your garden, your flower beds look, well, dirt. They're just full of dirt, nothing else. But as soon, last week, when it got just a little bit warmer, Immediately, there's those first weeds that start to appear. Like, there'll be many more to follow, but the ones that just quickly appear, well, the first weed that tends to appear in the sinful heart is this one, the weed of self-righteousness.

It blossoms so quickly. We naturally want to exalt ourselves. We naturally want to dwell on what we have done right and push down, dismiss our failures. And that has made all the more difficult in our particular generation that has tried to fly the flag of self-value. of self-esteem, of self-worth. Friends, let me be really candid and blunt. You don't have self-worth. You fall short of the glory of God. You're broken. You're an enemy of God. You're chained. You work under the prince of the power of this air. You are a sinner. And yet that weed of self-righteousness grows so quickly.

It covers the gaze so that we can't honestly see the condition that we suffer from. This prayer is focused on his personal value, but it's also focused on comparison. Here's another sign of the Pharisee's prayer. And notice in verse 9, Jesus has already indicated that broken response will also be marked by treating others with contempt. And now in verse 11, the man prays, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. If a righteous heart loves their neighbor, a cold heart comforts itself by despising its neighbor.

This individual is focused, you notice, on external sins. I haven't been seen to extort other people's money. I haven't been seen to commit adultery. I haven't been seen like this tax collector to collaborate with the enemy. It's a list of externals. Externals that compares you to others but ignores the fact that you fall short of the glory of God. That's what we're to be compared to.

He doesn't deal with anything in the heart, does he? He doesn't see how prideful he is, how arrogant he is. He doesn't consider the lust that sits within. He hides how poor he has performed. It's such a sign of a shipwrecked faith. We're obsessed with comparing our performance with other people. That's a sign that the heart is misplaced. That hides the reality that you fall short of God's standard, of God's expectation, of the target that God sets.

I think today, many of us, we know these types of stories, and we like to think, before we even begin, of how not...we don't pray, Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, adulterers, or even like this tax collector, but maybe in your head you are thinking, Lord, I thank you that I am not like that Pharisee.

And actually, we've committed the same crime. We comfort ourselves in thinking that I don't talk about myself. Oh, I would never do that. I'm above that folly, that mistake. And actually, we've fallen into exactly the same trap. The same spirit of self-flattering, that ultimately makes the same mistake because it hides the fact that you need Christ. And this man was confident as he compared himself to others, but it stopped him from seeking Christ. This self-focused prayer is focused on its value, focused on comparison, and focused on activity. Look at verse 12.

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. He's focused on his stomach. He does fast. And he's focused on his wallet. He does tithe. And here's the point. He is doing real work. He is doing things the law talks about. The guy really was hungry. Twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays were the days that the Pharisees tended to fast. So on Monday and Thursday, he was hungry. He did set aside his income, his wealth.

In fact, he went over and above. He tells us that he gave a tenth of everything he got. He went over and above. So, there is sacrifice here. This guy is doing, he's restricting, he's purging or stopping the enjoyment and self, and he is sacrificing his wealth. But it's all a spirit of box ticking. It's all focused on external success. It's not necessarily for show before people. There may be a bit of spirit of that in it. But primarily his issue is it's about show before self.

It makes him feel good. He's happy to not eat. He's happy to set aside income because he believes it makes him better. He thinks he's going over and above. Maybe he thinks he's making up for some bad in the past, or more likely he thinks he's getting some credit, some good favor. But he's not actually doing what the law required. The law called for fasting once a year on the Day of Atonement. So, he went and said, oh, well, I can do more than that. I'll go twice a week. The law asked for a tithe of the income. Well, he went over and above. I'll tithe everything. Do you notice he never asks for anything in this prayer? He never asked for anything because, well, he never felt his need of anything.

He thinks so much of himself and his work, his Christian service, that he's marked by a confidence in his self-performance. Have you fallen into that trap? You're trusting in how you're doing. The actions, the things you're involved with, the way your time is spent, that's not where our confidence should ever sit.

This man, like every man and every woman, needed forgiveness, yet he missed it. Because verse 9, he thought he was righteous, and he treated others with contempt. Or the second prayer, the tax collector's prayer, is a self-aware prayer. It has some focuses as well. First of all, it's focused on disqualification. Notice how we read in verse 13, but the tax collector standing far off.

He most likely is in the court of the Gentiles. He can't bring himself to go any closer. In the temple, the Holy of Holies is right at the center. That's where God was said to dwell in a special way. And so, the idea is he feels completely disqualified. He feels he has no right to come any closer to God than he has already dared to come in desperation. We're told as well that he would not even lift up his eyes to heaven.

Well, for us, that seems weird because we bow our heads to pray, but in Jesus' day, that was the posture. They would lift up their face towards heaven as they prayed. This man isn't doing the normal things. It would be the equivalent of going to a prayer meeting and feeling so unqualified that you couldn't even bow your head. We're told he beat his breast.

That's not a normal thing in the Jewish world either. In fact, especially for men, that was so rare. Sometimes you read about in situations of grief, women hitting their chest, but very, very rarely are men seen to do something like this. Like an exception might be Josephus talked about David after the death of Absalom continually beating his breast, but again, the reason that stands out is because of how rare it is.

This isn't a normal action. It's a desperate action. It's a broken action. It's an action that speaks of his own sense of disqualification, and that's all reinforced by what he says. How does he identify himself? Well, he says in verse 13, God be merciful to me, a sinner. The definite article is there. You could translate that. Maybe you should translate that. The sinner.

He's not focusing on anybody else. He's only got his eyes on himself in the right sense of the word, because he sees his whole disqualification. He's aware that he is the absolute failure, that he personally falls short the reality is you need to know that you are a sinner before you can know that there is a Savior. So, he's focused on his disqualification. Then he's focused on God.

Look at the direction of his prayer. God is the first word. God, be merciful. The verb is tied to God. The Pharisee, all his verbs are tied to his own action. I think. I tithe. It's all I do, but this man is desperately appealing to God to do, for God to act. Again, that's so revealing.

You want to know the disposition of your heart when it comes to prayer. Do you pray about yourself, or do you pray in desperation to God? One came trusting himself for his qualification. The other comes crying to God that God would show mercy because he is disqualified. So, he's focused on his disqualification, he's focused on God, and he's focused on atonement.

The ESV says, God be merciful to me, a sinner. There's an old word, an old English word that gets to the idea of what is being declared there even better. The word propitious, God be propitious to me, a sinner, or as the Holman Christian Standard Bible translates it, God turn your wrath from me. It's a sacrificial word.

It speaks of that wrath, that punishment, that judgment that should fall upon the disqualified, should fall upon the guilty being redirected upon that of the sacrifice. And that's the idea here. Maybe this particular prayer, most likely this particular prayer is given at the time of offering, the time of sacrifice. And as the tax collector looks and sees the lamb upon the altar, it makes that picture of Old Testament sacrifice, makes him so aware of his own disqualification and his own helpless need for propitiation. For the wrath that should fall on his guilty head to be redirected to fall upon another.

And the reality is that those who, like this individual, cry in desperation to God, though they are guilty, to be spared, to be shown mercy. God, through the sending of His Son, the perfect Lamb of God, who was sacrificed to take away the sin of the world, is the means by which that forgiveness is realized.

Two men, two prayers, and two outcomes. The Pharisee left with confidence. But he left unheard. He may as well have prayed to the wall. And according to the text, if we had to extrapolate what happened next, well, if Jesus says the one who exalts himself will be humbled, we can assume it didn't end well for this Pharisee. Prayed to himself. His prayers praised Himself, and in the end, He ended up with Himself.

And then there's the tax collector. Verse 14, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. He went home right with God, accepted by God, not just forgiven, but credited with righteousness. Why? Because he was humble. He realized his disqualification, and so he cried to the merciful God for action. How does it work this way?

One commentator says, position in the temple means nothing. The position of the heart means everything. One heart thought all of self, and it ended up with just self. One heart was self-aware of its own brokenness and ended up with God caring, saving, and showing mercy. We must approach God humbly, acknowledging our feelings and depending on His great work of atonement.

You can only come this way. It's not enough to come to church. It's not enough to know your Bible. It's not enough to serve. In fact, those things damn by themselves. We can only come appealing to God for mercy. One went home condemned, thinking much of himself, while the other went home justified. Friends, how are you going home today?

Let's pray.

[Prayer] Heavenly Father, we thank You for Jesus Christ. We thank You, Lord, for the one who knows the heart, speaking so clearly to the need that we have. We ask, Lord, that You would help us to call to You for mercy. And we thank You, Lord, that those who genuinely seek Your work of forgiveness will know it, for You are a God rich in mercy. Help us, we pray and help us as we continue now to remember. For it's in His name we ask it. Amen. [End]

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