| Just As If I'd Never Sinned - Luke 18:9-14 Pharisee & the Publican Pastor Don Baron |
| Sermons |
Just As If I'd Never Sinned - Luke 18:9-14
Pharisee & the Publican
A pastor, a Boy Scout, and a computer expert were the only passengers in a
small plane.
The pilot turned to them and said, "This place is going down, and you need to
know that there are 3 parachutes for us 4 people.
Pilot: "I should have one - I have a wife and 3 small children."
The pilot put one on and jumped.
Computer whiz: "I should have one. I'm the smarted man in the world
and the world needs me."
And he jumped.
The pastor said to the boy Scout: "You are young and I have lived.
You take the remaining parachute and I'll go down with the plane."
The Boy Scout said, "Relax sir. We still have 2 parachutes.
"The smartest man in the world just jumped with my backpack,
thinking it was a parachute."
Moral: When a man thinks he's smart, the odds are he is not!
Likewise: When a person thinks he is righteous, the odds are he is not.
That brings us to today's story, told by Jesus: Luke 18:9-14.
Let's take a closer look at these 2 men.
v. 11 "stood up"
This was the OT position of prayer.
For the Pharisee, it was a position of pride.
He had swaggered into the temple, right up to the front, thinking how
pleased God would feel to be honored by his presence.
"Prayed about himself" - literally "prayed TO himself"
He hadn't really come to talk with God at all.
He had come so that he could feel good about himself.
He had come to congratulate himself.
Have you ever caught yourself praying -
and you became conscious of yourself praying.
"Hey, not bad! What zeal!
Wow, listen to those nice-sounding words!"
At that moment, were you praying to God or playing to the audience,
that is, to yourself?
"I am not like other men," the Pharisee boasted.
Then he picks what he considers the worst people -
robbers,
evildoers,
adulterers,
and, glancing around him, "or like wretched tax collectors."
V. 12 then he boasts of his achievements:
fasts twice a week - the law only required a person to fast once a year)
A tenth of all he gets (law required only a tenth of certain things)
Did you notice the most frequently used word in this prayer?
"I"
And so someone has said, "There are none so far from God as the self-
righteous."
v. 13 here we have the tax collector.
"stood at a distance" - because he felt distant from God.
Who was he to draw near to God?
He knew himself too well.
He didn't belong here in this temple that he had visited so seldom.
"Beat his breast"
The only other place this phrase is used in the Bible: at the cross.
The people there had seen the horrific things that had happened.
The wrenching pain.
the cry of Jesus as He died
They go away beating their breasts with
alarm
fear
the unmitigated tragedy of it all.
Here a man stands in the presence of God
alarmed at his own distance from God.
overcome by his own ruined, wasted life
fearful of the final outcome when he dies.
he has nothing to say in his own defense - not a word.
he is alone & naked before God.
"God have mercy on me, a sinner" is all he can say.
Our first reaction is: Of course, God will reject the Pharisee.
He's a repulsive prude.
Of course God will receive the humble tax collector.
But wait: we have not been fair to the Pharisee,
and we have let the tax collector off much too lightly.
Let's take a second look.
The Pharisee was a religious leader in the community,
looked up to and admired.
Pharisees were dead earnest about serving God.
They worked hard to maintain society's moral standards,
to defend family values, etc.
The Pharisee would be the first to say, "the family that prays together
stays together"
He would fight abortion and support law and order.
He's a good man!
The Tax collector would be a calloused guy.
He could care less about society.
He is a quisling; he has entered the service of the enemy occupying power.
He is fleecing his own people to fatten his own wallet.
He kicks his feet up in front of TV on the Sabbath.
He's never in church.
He doesn't feel welcome, and doesn't have time anyway for that stuff.
All in all, he's a corrupting influence on society - an undesirable.
V. 14 And the tax collector went home justified and the Pharisee didn't??
It's not at ALLl evident that Jesus should praise the tax collector and condemn
the Pharisee!
What kind of strange God is this who accepts renegades and rejects good
people?
Furthermore, we are too quick to say to ourselves, "Well, of course, I'm the
tax collector in this story."
"I know I'm a sinner.
"I thank You God, that I'm not so proud as this Pharisee"
And so,, if we're not careful, we end up being Pharisees in tax collectors'
clothing!
It's subtle, isn't it.
We must be especially careful of the devout moments in life.
No confession of sin safeguards against pride.
Even humbleness is something the devil can exploit,
because it's so easy to be proud of our humbleness.
Yes, when a person thinks he is righteous, the odds are he is not.
Pharisee & the Publican
A pastor, a Boy Scout, and a computer expert were the only passengers in a
small plane.
The pilot turned to them and said, "This place is going down, and you need to
know that there are 3 parachutes for us 4 people.
Pilot: "I should have one - I have a wife and 3 small children."
The pilot put one on and jumped.
Computer whiz: "I should have one. I'm the smarted man in the world
and the world needs me."
And he jumped.
The pastor said to the boy Scout: "You are young and I have lived.
You take the remaining parachute and I'll go down with the plane."
The Boy Scout said, "Relax sir. We still have 2 parachutes.
"The smartest man in the world just jumped with my backpack,
thinking it was a parachute."
Moral: When a man thinks he's smart, the odds are he is not!
Likewise: When a person thinks he is righteous, the odds are he is not.
That brings us to today's story, told by Jesus: Luke 18:9-14.
Let's take a closer look at these 2 men.
v. 11 "stood up"
This was the OT position of prayer.
For the Pharisee, it was a position of pride.
He had swaggered into the temple, right up to the front, thinking how
pleased God would feel to be honored by his presence.
"Prayed about himself" - literally "prayed TO himself"
He hadn't really come to talk with God at all.
He had come so that he could feel good about himself.
He had come to congratulate himself.
Have you ever caught yourself praying -
and you became conscious of yourself praying.
"Hey, not bad! What zeal!
Wow, listen to those nice-sounding words!"
At that moment, were you praying to God or playing to the audience,
that is, to yourself?
"I am not like other men," the Pharisee boasted.
Then he picks what he considers the worst people -
robbers,
evildoers,
adulterers,
and, glancing around him, "or like wretched tax collectors."
V. 12 then he boasts of his achievements:
fasts twice a week - the law only required a person to fast once a year)
A tenth of all he gets (law required only a tenth of certain things)
Did you notice the most frequently used word in this prayer?
"I"
And so someone has said, "There are none so far from God as the self-
righteous."
v. 13 here we have the tax collector.
"stood at a distance" - because he felt distant from God.
Who was he to draw near to God?
He knew himself too well.
He didn't belong here in this temple that he had visited so seldom.
"Beat his breast"
The only other place this phrase is used in the Bible: at the cross.
The people there had seen the horrific things that had happened.
The wrenching pain.
the cry of Jesus as He died
They go away beating their breasts with
alarm
fear
the unmitigated tragedy of it all.
Here a man stands in the presence of God
alarmed at his own distance from God.
overcome by his own ruined, wasted life
fearful of the final outcome when he dies.
he has nothing to say in his own defense - not a word.
he is alone & naked before God.
"God have mercy on me, a sinner" is all he can say.
Our first reaction is: Of course, God will reject the Pharisee.
He's a repulsive prude.
Of course God will receive the humble tax collector.
But wait: we have not been fair to the Pharisee,
and we have let the tax collector off much too lightly.
Let's take a second look.
The Pharisee was a religious leader in the community,
looked up to and admired.
Pharisees were dead earnest about serving God.
They worked hard to maintain society's moral standards,
to defend family values, etc.
The Pharisee would be the first to say, "the family that prays together
stays together"
He would fight abortion and support law and order.
He's a good man!
The Tax collector would be a calloused guy.
He could care less about society.
He is a quisling; he has entered the service of the enemy occupying power.
He is fleecing his own people to fatten his own wallet.
He kicks his feet up in front of TV on the Sabbath.
He's never in church.
He doesn't feel welcome, and doesn't have time anyway for that stuff.
All in all, he's a corrupting influence on society - an undesirable.
V. 14 And the tax collector went home justified and the Pharisee didn't??
It's not at ALLl evident that Jesus should praise the tax collector and condemn
the Pharisee!
What kind of strange God is this who accepts renegades and rejects good
people?
Furthermore, we are too quick to say to ourselves, "Well, of course, I'm the
tax collector in this story."
"I know I'm a sinner.
"I thank You God, that I'm not so proud as this Pharisee"
And so,, if we're not careful, we end up being Pharisees in tax collectors'
clothing!
It's subtle, isn't it.
We must be especially careful of the devout moments in life.
No confession of sin safeguards against pride.
Even humbleness is something the devil can exploit,
because it's so easy to be proud of our humbleness.
Yes, when a person thinks he is righteous, the odds are he is not.
Matter of fact, these two men in Jesus' story are quite similar in some ways:
Both are in temple.
Both want to stand before God and seek His fellowship.
Both are thankful
- the Pharisee that God has enabled him to live an upright life.
- the tax collector that there is mercy with God.
What is it, then, that makes one an unforgiven man and the other a justified
man?
Here's the crucial difference:
1. The Pharisee looked downward to measure himself.
He finally landed on a repulsive social outcast as his standard.
Of course, he came out smelling like a rose.
2. But the tax collector looked upward to measure himself.
You see, a truly burdened conscience doesn't think of others at all.
He is alone with God.
And God stoops down to commune with such.
You are sitting here this morning feeling very inferior
You feel that if the rest of us knew what goes on in your head during
a worship service…
If we knew something in your past…
If we knew how far you really feel from God,
Or how much a failure you really are,
well, you wouldn't be welcome here.
I want to assure you that all those pious-looking people around you are feeling
exactly as you do!
But if you think WE wouldn't welcome you, then you must feel all the more that
way about God.
This story is for you!
Who went home justified?
The successful,. pious churchman? No!
The man who went home justified was the man in the temple that day who
felt like you feel today.
It's a tragedy that the church so easily forgets this story.
By the Middle Ages, the message that sinners go home justified was lost
in a merit badge system at least as bad as the religion of the Pharisee.
There was a hierarchy based on merit:
1. There were the saints who were considered to have so many brownie
points that they had extra to give away.
2. There were the clergy - that's what you became if you wanted to be sure
that you'd make it to heaven.
3. Then there were the laity - so hopelessly entangled in this dark world that
they would surely spend thousands of years suffering in purgatory
after they died.
That was to pay for their sins before going to heaven.
but who, if they said enough Our Fathers, and prayed before the bones
of the saints
…could earn enough leftover merits from the saints to shorten their
agony in purgatory.
A monk by the name of Brother Martin suffered under that system.
He wanted desperately to be able to stand tall before God and say,
"God, I thank you that, finally, after great effort, I am not like others."
The more he tried, the more he knew how awfully far short he fell of God's
standards.
While others looked down to measure themselves, He looked up.
He was alone before a holy God, and despaired.
To make things worse, he found that he couldn't love that kind of God.
Driven in his despair to the Scriptures, Martin Luther came to see that,
apart from the priceless name of Jesus itself…
…the most liberating, comforting, exciting, explosive word in the Bible is
the word spoken of the tax collector in v. 14: Justified.
What does it mean?
It's a legal term.
Imagine you're in a courtroom and you're accused of a serious crime.
The jury comes in; you stand.
"Have you reached a verdict?" the judge asks.
"Yes we have, your honor. We find the accused - guilty."
The tax collector was guilty.
You and I are guilty before the court of God's justice.
But then God does something no human legal system would allow.
God, who established the moral Law in the first place…
He whose holiness reacts to sin as blazing fire reacts to a drop of water…
He steps down from the judge's bench, stands beside you, and receives
the very death sentence that He Himself has pronounced.
The record shows that His sentence has been carried out on a Roman
cross outside Jerusalem.
Then He who died arises from the dead, and returns to His judge's seat,
where He finds no record against you in His books.
He declares you justified.
In His eyes, it's "just as if I'd never sinned" - justified.
V. 14 says the tax collector "went home"
What did he do there?
I know 3 things he didn't do:
1. He didn't say, "Now that I know that God justifies rascals, I can pick up my
old life and go on swindling people."
No, he'll find it unthinkable to be so ungrateful as to deliberately go on
giving pain to his Father God.
2. He no longer maintained his former distance from God.
He came into His presence often, daily, with a grateful heart.
He worshipped with the exhilleration of a man who had a new lease
on life.
- a man who knew where to take his guilt whenever he fell.
Would he ever again beat his breast and cry, "God have mercy"?
Yes, many times.
But he knew he had a Father who hears sinners' prayers.
3. He didn't keep quiet about what had happened.
He told his wife
He wrote a friend
He taught his children
His passion in life was that people around him might know the release and
the peace of being justified by a loving God.
Dr. D. T. Niles of Sri Lanka:
"Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread."
Come, beggars.
Come, tax collectors
Eat the bread - and pass it on.
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