MK040 Sermons
Right with God (Audio)
And as you turn into Luke 18, let me just tell you about this parable that we're going to look at, this story. This is one of three stories in which Jesus tells us the point of the story before it happens. Most of these stories, he doesn't tell you what the point is. You're just listening long and you're listening long and you're like, "Oh, now I get it." But there's three of them, he says, "This is what this is about and this is one of them." This is one of those parables where there's two contrasting pictures. There's a few others that are like this. One would be the story of the prodigal son, where you have a son who is humble and broken. And you have an elder brother who is arrogant and proudful. At the very beginning of the summer, we looked at a story about a banquet and guests who were invited who refused to come. And then outcasts who were not invited but once invited were gladly willing to come. This story is also in the context of prayer and Jesus is teaching his followers how to pray and how to talk with him and how to participate in his kingdom. And so if you're there in your Bibles in Luke 18, beginning in verse 9, let's read what the purpose of this is. He says to some who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. So he starts off talking about to those who are confident of their own righteousness. What's righteousness mean? Righteousness simply means being right with God, being right with God. Now most of us understand what this means in our lives, don't we? I mean, you know when things are good between you and a sibling, you know, you know things when are good with you and your brother and you know when things are not good and you better stay in your own turf, you know? You know things when good with your spouse or with mom and dad or you know when you are kind of walking on eggshells because things are not very good. You know what things were good with your boss when, you know, there's smiles and there's a lot of warmth and there's a lot of, "Hey, great jobs." And you know when things are not good and you just hope he doesn't come down to your cube or your office or show up at your door. So we know when things are not good and we know when things are good and Jesus is telling a story to people and he says who were confident of their own rightness with God. These are individuals that had this sense of I know the things are good with me and God. I know that things are good with me and God. There are times in my relationship with my wife when I kind of come in the door wondering are things okay and then they're okay, you know, oh they're not so okay, you know? And these are people that they thought they had it figured out. They thought they had it figured out. He then goes on and as we think about that, they worked hard to make sure that they were right with God. And as I thought about that, I thought that's something that this community resonates with us because one of the things is true about people in Lancaster County and the surrounding areas is these are people that work hard. These are people that know what the right thing to do is and they often do what's right. And so they're not arrogant about it, but they just work hard and they do it. And that's what's true of these individuals that Jesus is speaking to. The second category, maybe not so much, it says and they look down on everyone else. I look down on everyone else. And I think if I was to pull this group or even think about this group, I don't think that would be generally true of this group who's here this morning. I don't think generally your people who look down at other people. But maybe as you go back to school this next week or if you're already in school and you're in one of your classes, you've noticed the kid that's acting up, causing trouble, not doing their assignments. And you kind of think, what's their deal, what's up with them? And you might not say this, but in your mind you think, I'm a little better than they are. Maybe you're out in the store with your kids and your kids that particular day happen to be behaving while you're in the store. And you see someone else whose kids are not particularly behaving when you're in the store. And you're thinking, what is wrong with them? And the parents are just letting the kids take stuff off the shelves and load it in the card and no control and you're like, I'm glad I'm not living in that household. And we think that we are better than they are. Or maybe you're in a small group and someone chairs real honestly about a struggle that they're having. Maybe it's a husband and wife kind of struggle. Maybe it's a personal struggle. And you're empathetic and you're praying for them as Craig said, but that's a little part of you that that's not your struggle and it's never been your struggle. And without thinking a lot about it, you kind of drift towards the thought of, well, I'm kind of glad I don't have that struggle. So I don't think this second reason that Jesus gives for this story is something very visible at all. I think it's something that is under the radar, something not often seen that he wants us to look real hard at this morning. So he tells the story. So let's take a quick look at the story. He says there in verse 10, he says, two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other, a tax collector. Prayer was something that was pretty common in that Jewish community. They would often pray at nine in the morning and at three in the afternoon. And even if they weren't able to go to the temple and pray because of work or be in a way, they would often stop where they were in pray. And we would recognize that as, you know, those who are the Muslim faith and they would stop five times a day and turn their face towards Mecca and pray. So for the Jews, they would stop at those two times. And when they were able to, they would go to the temple and it was a place of great meaning for them because they would start outside and they were going to Solomon's temple, the Solomon, the wealthiest man who ever created. And there were large steps going up to the entrance to this temple and there was a large altar at the top of this temple. And there would be a lamb that would have a perfect lamb who would have its next slit and then the blood poured out on that lamb to, to pay for the sins of those who were there worshiping. And there were loud trumpets and clanging of symbols and priests reading of Psalms and on offering incense and trimming candles and the priests would go back inside. And then all the worshippers would start their prayers. And so that's kind of the scene that's being set and what's taking place. Most of the people would be there at the steps and they would be walking up and they might be saying one of the Psalms of ascent, Psalm 122 to, in the Psalm 120s and 130s, they would just be reciting one of these Psalms, they would walk up these steps. There might be people off to the side and these individuals off the side would traditionally be known as people who are unclean. They say, what do you mean unclean, do they're plumbing not work for a few days and not take a shower? What's the point of unclean? Now that's not the point of unclean, it's a ceremonial uncleanness. You see in the Jewish culture, God had not only given the 10 commandments but he gave another 600 plus commandments for them to follow. And these are basically rules to live by. One of the rules, some of the rules to live by is that if you came in contact with certain things, i.e. a dead body, a dead animal, blood, something like that, you had to go through a process of being cleansed before you could re-enter the house of worship. Now some of those that they've discovered are just simply good medical practices that the Jewish people learn to participate in but some of them had very symbolic pictures to them about taking care of the things in our life, the things that are kind of dirty sin in our life before we enter into the presence of God. And so sometimes there would be individuals off to the side. And so Jesus describes two people coming to this temple to pray and he could not have described two more opposite people in that culture. It would be a little bit like saying that there would be a right wing conservant and a flaming liberal sitting together in the middle of a debate right in the front row. That's what it would be like. Or maybe an eagles fan and a cowboys fan sitting there together watching a game with their jerseys on. You know, you couldn't find two more opposite people, you know, or a central or a cocoa co-fan of games, you know, or something like that. Just the opposite ends of the spectrum and they come there together. And that's who Jesus picks. The first person he picks is a Pharisee. Pharisee was highly respected by the Jews. They were the religious leaders. They were considered righteous. They were right with God because of all of their efforts to do what God wanted them to do. They did everything right. They never messed up. They always followed the rules. You see, the Pharisees had made the rules very black and white. And as long as you stayed in the rules, you were okay. For those of you that like rules, that like structure, that like black and white, you would be in seventh heaven. You wouldn't want to be known as a Pharisee, but you would like their rules. And so that's the first group of individuals that were there. The opposite end of the spectrum were the tax collectors. The tax collectors were despised people in that culture. They were absolutely despised. What the tax collectors would do is they would bid for the right to collect taxes in a certain area. Rome was the ruling power in that day. And so Rome would require taxes for certain things that would have to be collected and sent to Rome. And what the tax collectors would do is they would add to the top of that. And so you might have to pay a tax for crossing over this piece of land. We kind of know it as tolls. You know, you might have to pay a tax on something you purchase, sales tax. You might have to pay a tax on inheriting things, inheritance tax. Very similar to things we experience. But the tax collector would add his cut and as much as he could get out of you, he would put on top of that. These were individuals who were Jews, meaning they were doing this to their fellow countrymen. That's what they were doing. They were literally stealing from them. They were often classified as murders and robbers. This was the last person you were ever imagined to be at the temple, the last person. Take a moment and ask yourself, who could you not imagine walking through those doors and sitting down next to you? Who could you not imagine? Because someone you know in the nature of their life, their choices, their values, what matter. You could never imagine that person walking through that door. I asked myself this question. I thought, who would be the most extreme situation that I could think of in our current culture that you could imagine putting together with a religious leader and this person? And the thing that came to my mind was a radical ISIS fighter. That's what it was like, that's what it was like. And I imagine for the Jews, when they heard Jesus telling this story and they heard him say and a tax collector, there was an internal inside. Just an internal wince like, oh, come on, Jesus, can you pick somebody else, anybody but him, anybody but them. And so what Jesus proceeds to do is he proceeds is to tell us the prayers of these two individuals. In verse 11, first he gives us the prayer of the Pharisee, the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I'm not like other people, robbers, evil doers, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all that I do, of all that I get, excuse me. Notice where he stands, he stands off by himself. You know why he stood off by himself? Because he didn't want to brush up against someone that might be unclean and that he would be considered unclean and so he isolated himself and he goes on to talk in this prayer and normal prayer in those days included these three things, confession of sin, thankfulness to God for all that he had provided and then request of prayer for yourself or for others. Can we go back to verse 11? Let's go back to verse 11. Do you see any of that? In verse 11? Do you see any of that? I don't see any of it. He refers to them as other people specifically referring to people who did not keep the rules as he kept the rules. You see what this guy did is he did instead of comparing himself to God, instead of comparing himself to God's love and God's mercy and God's compassion and God's grace and God's holiness, he compared himself to everybody else and he said, compared to everybody else? "I'm a cut above, I'm a cut above." How many of you when you are driving on the highway and you see a police officer, you glance at your dashboard initially and then you look around and see how fast everybody else is doing? Let me see your hands or in church your number. Because we want to make sure that we're doing as good as everybody or maybe just a little below. There's that guy, we kind of do this all the time without realizing it, we kind of compare ourselves to other people and it's important for us to look at this in faces because it can be real easy to look at this guy that is described as fairness and say, "Ah, that's not me. I'm not like him. I'm not like him." And Jesus is talking to a whole group of people. And instead of comparing himself to God, he compared himself to everybody, so he said, "Well, at least I'm not a thief, at least I don't do evil." I'm not sleeping around and then he said, "I'm not even like that guy." You can almost see him pointing at it, couldn't you? And what he relied on is he was relying on all the things that he did. See, he thought he was right with God. He thought things were good with him and God. He thought he had done enough to make sure he was okay with God. What had he done? Well, look at the next part of his prayer. He makes sure God knows about it in case God forgot. He says that he said, "I fast twice a week." And before we look at what he did, let me explain to you a little bit about the law because in the law, there was the law that God had given his people to live by and let's kind of envision that as a flower garden. So the law is the flower garden, the 10 commandments and all those extra, this is how you live. That's the flower garden. Now, what the Pharisees did is they built a fence around the flower garden, okay? So nobody would trample. So they wouldn't accidentally step on the flower garden. They built a fence around the flower garden and they added more and more rules that people had to follow. Good Jews would follow. Okay? So you have that picture in your mind? All right. So the first thing is he talked about fasting. The law, the flower garden for the Jews is that they had to fast one time a year and that was on the day of atonement one time a year. And what the good Jews, what the Pharisees said you should do if you are a good Jew is you would fast three times a year at the annual feast and then two days before and two days afterwards. So if you have three and then two before and two after, how many is that Jeremy? Okay. I asked the accountant and he got it wrong. 15, 15, three feast, feast day, two days before, two days after, so 15. Okay? So you got the law is one, the fence is 15. And what, how often does this guy fast? Twice a week? Now how many is that? For a whole year? 104, yep, 104, like man, I can't even, that's like not even twice, three times, four times. So I don't know how many times that, you know, six, seven times the average person. Yeah, if there's anybody that was trying to think he had to be a cut a, a cut above, this guy was like three, four, five cuts above everybody. That's where he was. He then goes on to talk about the idea of tithing and tithing simply means a tenth. Tithing is a tenth. And so what the Old Testament law, what the guard, what the flower garden in the Old Testament was, there was, there was three things that you had to tie the one. You had to give, you had to tithe on your grain, your oil and your wine. You had to take a tenth of that and give it back to God. So if you're harvesting your tomatoes, you got this big basket of tomatoes, you count how many you have, 10% of those would be what you would give back to God. Now the fence around that, that the, that the Pharisees had constructed was everything that you grew. So all of your crops, so it would include your figs and include your grapes and it might include your watermelon or pineapple or whatever you were growing in that season. A tenth of all of that, everything you grew. The garden is 10% of three things. The Pharisees was 10% of everything you grew. What did this guy tithe on? What does it say? 10% of everything he got, anything he got, anything he gave a tenth back to God. You know, you kind of find yourself as you read this thinking, man, anybody got it figured out, this guy probably did, didn't he? I mean, he kind of knew what the rules are and he went above and beyond, above and beyond. But it's not so much what he did as why he did it, why he did it, why did he do more than everyone else, why? Because he wanted to show everyone else up. He wanted to show everyone else up. What do we call that? Call him a brown noser, right? Why do they do extra? Why do they do it when the boss is only looking? Why do they do it in front of them? Because they want to show you up. That was his motivation. That was his heart. That's what was going on in this guy's life. Pretty impressive resume if you ask me. I mean, if you saw this person today, you would say, you would say, this is a person that, you know, they read in their Bible regularly and they're posting Bible verses and quotes online and, you know, they're serving and they give generously and they're helping people whenever they have an opportunity and they're always involved in lots of things where they're making a difference in trying to serve and do all kinds of things. And if you have an interaction with them, you kind of hear all the stuff that they're always doing. That's kind of what you hear. You're like, wow, you ever talk to somebody like that? Kind of hear the list and you're like, wow, they make me look bad, you know? That's what this guy looks like. And now there's the prayer of the tax collector in verse 13. It says, "The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to the heavens, but he beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, the sinner." I mean, the tax collector stood off to the side. Not because he was afraid of being unclean, but he knew, he knew he didn't deserve to be there with everybody else. Said he wouldn't even look up, kept his eyes down. People look down and they don't look up. It's usually a sense of shame, a sense of guilt. Can you ask your kids, did you do this and they know, yeah, no they don't, they look down, right? They look down. This guy knew what his life had been about. This guy knew about the choices he had made. This guy knew the people that he had stolen money from and his job as a tax collector. This guy knew it. It says that he beat his chest a little bit later in the Gospel of Luke when they're telling the story of Jesus being on the cross and right after Jesus died, said there was great weeping and the people just beat their chest in anguish like this. This guy wasn't telling anybody about his life. He knew what his life was all about and he goes on to make this statement in the next, in the end of the verse he says, "Lord, for God, have mercy on me, a sinner, have mercy on me a sinner." This guy's not just begging for help. This word is used a little bit later when someone's just saying, "Hey, can you help me?" It's more than that. It's more than that. It's recognizing, "I can't do anything to help myself. I can't do anything at all to help myself." A couple weeks ago my wife and my son were on their way to the doctor's appointment and they were pulling off the turnpike there in Morgantown and there was a car right in front of them and the car they happened to be driving, the car I normally drive it doesn't have air conditions, they have to have the windows down in the summer so it was kind of loud and they didn't hear that the engine died until my wife went to the gas and there was nothing and then she cranked it and there was nothing, there was a car right in front of them. They were stuck. My son called me, I tried to give him some advice and direction, do this, do this, try to get the car off to the side but my wife wasn't comfortable with that and so there was nothing they could do at that moment in time. You got the easy-paced pass lines, there's cars flying past you like this, they actually had the toll booth operator, had to shut the toll booth down, come with the windows help kind of push you and then they didn't push you off to the shoulder, they pushed you right between the two toll booths on the other side, that's where they put it, right there, so now she's stuck on the other side and fortunately the doctor actually was close by, came over and helped and because it's on the turnpike they had tow truck drivers close by to be able to help but she was stuck, there was nothing she could do to get out of that situation. This guy said he said, "God have mercy on me but it's more than just being stuck because the word mercy means when you don't get something you deserve." That's what the word mercy means. The word mercy means when you know that you messed up with mom and dad and you are waiting for the hammer to come down and they say, "I'm going to give you a pass this time, do your best not to let it happen again" and you're like, "That's mercy. That only happens occasionally, that's a good thing but what it does be grateful for it." Mercy is when you made a promise to someone, to be somewhere, to do something, to provide something and you can't come through on your promise and they say to you, "Not a problem." Take care of it next time. That's mercy, that's mercy. And this guy says, "God, I know what I've done. I know all my sin and there's no way I can pay this back. I don't know what to do. Would you have mercy on me?" Nobody had mercy on tax collectors. Luke 19, the very next chapter, Jesus tells the story, a real story about a tax collector name Zacchaeus that everybody hated and Jesus gave them a glimpse of what it looked like to have mercy on an individual. This guy says, "God, can you have mercy on me?" What did this guy see in his relationship with God? He saw something very different than the Pharisee. See the Pharisee, he had a resume that was better than anybody else's resume. He had it all done. The tax collector realized he had pwn it. He had messed up and there was nothing he could do to fix it. He needed someone to do something on his behalf. He couldn't fix it himself. When the Bible talks about the mercy of God, us not getting what we deserve, that's what the picture is of God doing something for us that I cannot do for myself, that you cannot do for yourself and someone takes care of it for us. Back to the car story, we got the car to the garage, our favorite Subaru mechanic and he's like, "John, I don't have some good news for you. There's this thing that kind of came loose in the engine called a gear and it smashed these things called valves and it's going to need a valve and a head job." We debated, "Do we fix it? Do we not fix it?" We got some advice from a few friends and what do we do? I said, "Okay, go ahead." He told me it was done and I was prepared to, "How much gold do I need to pay for this thing?" He says, "Well, I said, 'We'll help you out a little bit and we'll reduce it a little bit here.'" Thank you, that's very generous of you. When I got to the shop, he said, "Well, someone took care of a little bit more of it for you and, in this case, we had to pay a little bit, but providentially it was the exact amount we had in our car bucket, but a whole bunch of that was wiped away. We didn't do anything to do that. He didn't say, "John, I need you to scrub the floors here in the garage for a couple of weeks. I'll help out with this. I need you to come stand here and be my grease monkey for a week and he didn't ask me to do any of that. It was just, I didn't do anything to deserve it. Mercy's a little stronger because in mercy, I did something that I deserve and I still got the slate wiped clean. That's what mercy is." Jesus closes the story by analyzing the situation for us and look what he says in verse 14. He says, "I tell you that this man, referring to the tax collector, rather than the other, referring to the Pharisee, went home justified before God." Notice that the Pharisee, he lost his title. He's just the other in the story, kind of a little subtle humor on Jesus' part. He thought he came in at the top of the class, at the top of the heap. Jesus said, "The other, nothing, nothing." The tax collector, he went away with everything. The word justified simply means you've been declared righteous, so your slate is wiped clean, or God has done exactly what you wanted him to do. It's the bills paid off. There's nothing else to pay, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and not because you worked for it, you earned it, you made it happen yourself, someone did it for you. And then he says, "For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." This statement is used a couple different times in the Bible. One place when a form of it is used is in the book of Philippians, Paul, when he's writing this letter to the church in Philippi, listen to what he says, he says, "Don't do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others," he said. And by the way, that's what Jesus did. But I thought about that phrase, valuing others above yourself, valuing others above yourself. Being that kid in the class that nobody talks through that's kind of a loan or a troublemaker, more than yourself, valuing a person who takes advantage of other people more than yourself, valuing someone who's self-absorbed more than yourself. How would you fill in this blank, I am no better than, I am no better than, we all put people in categories, don't we, and we put them in categories and we want to be just a little bit better than they are. But Jesus says this morning, "Are you willing to see yourself like that tax collector?" Is no better than anyone else. No better than another student, than another parent, than another co-worker, than another friend, and another person in your neighborhood, than another person at CCC, than another extended family member. You see, that's what humility is. Humility is recognizing that apart from the grace and mercy of God, I would not be in the situation I am in right now. You talk with people who work with the poor, people who work with people who are struggling, and one of the things they begin to understand is that I am only two steps away from being in a situation just like they are. And we forget that, we forget that, because you are hard working, and you take initiative, and you do things, and you get things done, and you accomplish things, and you try to be the person that God wants you to be. But apart from the mercy and grace of God, me or you would not be there. Jesus told this story, so that those who thought they were would realize they are not. So how do you see yourself, humble or proud, broken or all put together, a fellow-struggler, or an arrogantly confident guide? You say, "John, what do I do about this? How do I look at this? How do I think about this?" The truth is, you probably can't decide this about yourself. You can't decide if you're humble or proud. I want you to think about that one for a little bit. You're going to have to ask someone else. You're going to have to say to a couple people that know you well, "What do you see in me? What do you see in me?" I want to challenge you to do that this week. I want to challenge you to do something else. I want to challenge you to listen to your conversations that you have. How much of your conversations are you running down your list and talking about yourself, and how much of your conversations are you listening and curious and engaging in other people's lives and their worlds? Proud people talk about themselves all the time, and you're like, "Oh, there they go. They're running on again, right?" How many people don't? How many people don't? So as you walk away this week, I want you to ask yourself this question, "Are you a self-focused doer or someone who relies on a need of help as a follower of Jesus?" I want to give you a moment just in prayer for you to talk to God about what you've heard this morning. There's some things he's challenged or convicted you about. I want you to be able to confess those to him, and then we'll close in a song in just a moment. Now our heads in prayer for just a moment. God, this is kind of a tough thing to figure out. And I know for me it was reading this parable, it's really to say, "I'm not like that religious guy at Pharisee, but I have to look at my heart. I have to look at my actions. God, I pray that you would help us this morning to be able to see clearly who we are, see clearly the things that matter in our lives, see clearly our motivation, not just to beat ourselves up in Sam Worthless, but say, "God, apart from you and without you, I can't do anything." God, I ask that you would make that our prayer in the prayer of our hearts, in your name, you know.