Lon Solomon Ministries
People Jesus Met Part 27
Hey, you know, the Bible, one of the key reasons that the Bible exists is to present God to us, to tell us who God is and what God is like. And in that regard, on the one hand, the Bible tells us that God is a God of mercy. Psalm 103 verse 8 says, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in mercy." Psalm 119 verse 64 says, "The earth is full of God's mercy." In Psalm 136, 26 times, "The refrain is repeated, for his mercy endures forever." And Ephesians 2,4 sums it up well by saying, "God, who is rich in mercy." Now on the other hand, the Bible also tells us that God is a God of judgment. In Psalm 9 verse 7 says, "God has prepared his throne for judgment." Isaiah 30 verse 18 says, "For the Lord is a God of judgment." And 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 7 in the New Testament says, "That when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, he will deal out judgment to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, all of this raises a critically important question, namely what makes the difference? In other words, what determines whether I experience the mercy of God or the judgment of God both in eternity and right here on earth in my everyday life? Well, this is what we want to talk about today, because remember, we're in a series of messages entitled People Jesus Met. And today Jesus meets a crowd of people and decides to answer this question for them and for us as well. So what we want to do is we want to go back 2,000 years in history and see what Jesus said to them and then we want to scroll all of that forward and say, "Okay, so what difference does that make to you and me today?" Our passage is Luke chapter 18 and here we go with verse 9. Then Jesus told this parable or story about people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and who viewed others with contempt. And it comes to this parable that Jesus is about to tell. The Bible tells us who the target audience is. They are a group of people, number one, the Bible says, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. The key word, of course, here is themselves. Their confidence was 100% in themselves. What they were, how they had lived, the righteous deeds that they had done. There's a fatal flaw in this approach to God because Romans 3.20 says, "Therefore, no one will ever be declared righteous in God's sight by means of human works." And in Titus chapter 3 verse 5, the Bible tells us that our salvation comes not by works of righteousness that we have done. There was another thing about this target audience that the Bible reveals and that is second of all that they viewed others with contempt. That is, they looked down on others who were not as outwardly pious or as outwardly religious as they were, but there's a problem with this too. Because the Bible says, James 4.12, there is only one law giver and judge, who are you to judge your fellow man? Now as we're going to see in a moment, Jesus chooses a Pharisee, a strict religious rabbi to be the personification of these two attitudes, but hey, we ought to say that there are people in our modern world, in fact our modern world is full of people who have these very same two attitudes, religious people and non-religious people, rich people and not so rich people. Important people and ordinary people, people who don't need God's help in their mind because they believe they can help themselves, people who don't need God's forgiveness because they believe that they can earn their way out of his judgment and people who don't believe they need God's mercy because they think they can take care of everything themselves. Now the question is, does God dispense his mercy to such people? And the answer is in the story we're about to read. So here we go, verse 10, "Two men," Jesus said, "went up to the temple to pray." The first was a Pharisee and the other one was a tax collector. Now these two men represented the two extremes in Jewish society at the time of Christ. On the one hand, there was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were like rabbis on steroids, you understand what I'm trying to say? They were members of the most strict Jewish order, the most strict Jewish party in ancient Israel. They had condensed the Bible and all of Jewish law down to 613 rules that they assiduously observed and their self-righteousness was beyond, beyond. I found this quote by a Pharisee from the time of Christ in the Mishnah, the collection of Jewish writings. Here's what this Pharisee said and I quote, he said, "If there are only two righteous men in the world, I and my son are these two. And if there is only one righteous man in the world, I am he." He went on to say, "My worthiness is so great that during my lifetime, no rainbow needs to shine to ensure immunity from another great flood." End of quote. You say, "Is he kidding? I mean, he's got to be joking." No. Friends, we chuckle, but these people were serious. They really believed this about themselves to mourn and grieve over their sinfulness before a holy God. This was a completely foreign concept to these people. You say, "How do you know that?" Well, I know it by the prayer that this guy goes into the temple and prays. Look. Verse 11, "The Pharisees stood, and he prayed to himself, 'Lord, let me pray unto you. I thank thee,' that I am not like other people, swindlers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector over there, I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes of all that I get." Now, would you please notice that the star of this man's prayer was me, myself and I. My goodness, my virtue, my righteousness, my piety, hey, the Pharisee did not come into the temple that day seeking mercy from God, because, to put it simply, he didn't believe, he needed any, and that takes us then to the other man in Jesus' story. The Bible says it was a tax collector. Now tax collectors were Jewish men who collected taxes from their fellow Jews for the Rome and occupation government in Israel at the time. The way it worked is that the Romans gave each tax collector an amount that he was responsible to collect and turn into them, but then whatever they collected more, whatever taxes they got more than the amount they had to turn in, they were free to keep for themselves. And so in essence, tax collectors got rich by gouging their fellow Jews with exorbitant taxes, and there was nothing the Jews could do about it, because these tax collectors were backed up by the Roman army itself. As a result, the Jewish people of Jesus' day absolutely hated these tax collectors with a biblical hatred. They regarded them as the worst traders known to man. Synagogues were not allowed to accept tithes from tax collectors, nor were they even allowed to let tax collectors in the door. Their testimony, that testimony of a tax collector was not admissible in Jewish court. Jewish people were not required by law to keep their word to whatever they promised a tax collector, but you know, here's the exciting thing about this tax collector. Not only was he the polar opposite of the Pharisee when it came to his standing in society. That's true, but friends, he was also the Pharisee's polar opposite when it came to his inner attitude of heart towards God, watch, verse 13. But the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes towards heaven. He beat on his breast and he kept saying, "God, please be merciful to me, a sinner." Now here's a man who was gripped by his sinfulness before an all holy God. Here was a man who was gripped by his shortcomings and his corruption before an all holy God. And he was so ashamed of his sin, the Bible says, that he wouldn't even look up to heaven. He stood at a distance because of his utter sense of unworthiness before God and he beat on his breast as a sign of inner grief and inner anguish over his sin. The only thing he did is plead for undeserved mercy. What a great way to approach God. With humility of heart and with brokenness over sin and with helplessness in himself and with total reliance on God, what a great way to approach God. And would you just look at the result? Verse 14, Jesus said, "I tell you, this man, that is the tax collector, went home justified before God." This word means to be acquitted. It's a legal word. It means to be declared not guilty. It means to be pronounced righteous in the sight of God. Let's go back to the verse. This man, the tax collector, went home justified before God and not the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted. The point is that God flat out rejected the prayer of the Pharisee. He blew the thing right back in the Pharisee's face, but the mercy that the tax collector was looking for from God, hey, he found it. So let's summarize and say that in Jesus' story, God responded to each man in this story differently based on. This is the key, don't miss it, based on how each man approached God. The tax collector came to God humble and needy and broken and seeking God's mercy, and he got it. The Pharisee came to God arrogant and self-sufficient and seeking no mercy from God, and that is precisely what he got. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our passage because it's time now to ask our most important question of the day. So are you ready? Okay, here we go. One, two, three. Oh, I love you guys. Okay, you say, Lon, so what? Say what difference does this make to me? I mean, I don't know any Pharisees or any tax collectors, so I don't get it. How does this relate to my life at all? Well, let's talk about that. You know, when I was going through the passage this week and studying it, it occurred to me that Jesus' story here teaches us five awesome truths about the mercy of God. Number one, it teaches us that God's mercy is free. It didn't cost the tax collector anything. Number two, it teaches us that God's mercy is full. Hey, the tax collector didn't leave the temple that day halfway acquitted or three quarters right with God. He walked away a hundred percent justified, a hundred percent forgiven, a hundred percent reconciled with God. Number three, the story teaches us that God's mercy is for everybody. I mean, look, if this tax collector wasn't ineligible for God's mercy, what it means is that there's nobody too bad, too vile, or too far gone to qualify for the mercy of God. Number four, the story teaches us that God's mercy is unbegrudging. God didn't make the tax collector grovel and beg and crawl to get his mercy. The simple cry of the tax collector for mercy. God, be merciful to me a sinner, open the floodgates of heaven of mercy for this guy. And finally, the story teaches us that God's mercy is unlimited. This certainly wasn't the first time that the tax collector had ever asked God for mercy. And it certainly was not the first time that he had ever received mercy from God. The point is that God's mercy is endless. It is limitless. It is unceasing. It is inexhaustible. Every time you and I come to God, the way the tax collector came, you and I will walk away. We will leave exactly the way the tax collector left. And it's this last sentence that I want us to focus on for the rest of our time today. Let me repeat it. Every time you and I come to God, the way the tax collector came, we will leave. The way the tax collector left. Namely, we will leave with the mercy of God flooding our lives. We will leave with the kindness and the benevolence and the forgiveness and the grace of God being given to us without measure. And that takes us back to our original question of the day, which was what differentiates those who receive God's mercy from those who don't. And the answer that Jesus gives us in this story is that it's all about the way we come to God. In other words, there is one way to come to God and unlock His mercy. And there are lots of ways to come to God and fail to unlock His mercy. And friends, this is true whether we are believers or whether we're not believers. Hey, when we're non-believers, we must come to God the way the Bible tells us if we're going to unlock and receive God's mercy and salvation. But friends, even after we've done that, even as a believer, we've got to come to God this same way if we're going to unlock and receive God's mercy daily in our Christian experience. So it doesn't matter today whether you're a believer or a non-believer, hey friends, every one of us needs to know how to come to God the way the tax collector came. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how we can come to God and unlock His mercy for our lives. Well before we talk about how we do it, can we talk about how we don't do it? In other words, can we talk about the ways that won't work first? Number one, it will not work. We will not unlock God's mercy for our life by coming to Him on the basis of our own human good works. I mean, this Pharisee had human good works coming out of his ears, didn't he, friends? Did any of those good works win Him God's mercy? No. Second of all, we won't unlock God's mercy for our life by coming to Him on the basis of human status or position in life, I mean, the Pharisees were the elite of the elite. They were the mukka of the mukka, you understand what I'm saying? And yet did any of that status win God's mercy for this guy? No. Finally, we will not unlock God's mercy for our life by coming to Him on the basis of religious activity. This Pharisee was a religious professional. He kept the 613 rabbi rules punctiliously. He gave to the temple 10% of everything he had. He fasted twice a week. You know, I figured out a long time ago that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who eat to live and there are people who live to eat. Now I'm in the second category. Yes, I am. As soon as I finish lunch, I'm thinking about dinner. And as soon as I finish dinner, I go to bed at night planning breakfast. This is it. You know, friends, I may miss a meal, but I never forget a meal. No, no. And you know, I fasted a while back for a day and I have to tell you that by the time I got to 9 p.m., I was hallucinating. Really, this guy fasted twice a week for goodness sake, twice a week. But did any of that religious activity, religious performance win him the mercy of God? No. You say, well, long. So if you can't unlock the mercy of God by means of human good work, so you can't do it by means of your position in society. And you can't even do it by means of your religious activity. How do we do it? Well we do it, friends. What did we say a minute earlier? We do it very simply by coming to God the way the tax collector came. And how did he come? Well, he came three ways. There were three ingredients to how he came. Here they are. Number one, the tax collector, first of all, came to God humble. He came mourning and grieving over his sinfulness. He came mourning and grieving and under deep conviction about his shortcomings and his failures before God. That's why he stood at a distance. That's why he held his head down. That's why he beat on his breast. Now folks, over and over in the Bible, God declares that this is the kind of heart he's looking for. This is the kind of heart that will get mercy and forgiveness and compassion from Almighty God. Isaiah 57 verse 15 says, "For thus says the high and lofty one, the one who inhabits eternity, whose very name is holy." Here's what he says, "I dwell in a high and holy place." Okay, watch and also with him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and the heart of the contrite. Psalm 51 verse 17 says, "The sacrifice God wants," here's what he's looking for, "is a broken spirit, a broken and humble heart, oh God, you will not despise." He didn't Jesus say that right here in our story. What did he say? Luke 18, 14, "The person who exalts themselves will be humbled, but the person who humbles themselves will be exalted." You know folks, every great man and woman of God to ever live has had this deep sense of humility before God that comes from a deep sense of their own corruption before a holy and awesome God. Peter said, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." David said, "I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." Isaiah said, "Whoa, am I, for I am a man of unclean lips." St. Francis of Assisi said, "Nowhere is there a more wretched, more miserable creature before God than I, and the Apostle Paul said, 'I am the foremost of sinners.'" You say, "A lot, wait a minute, wait a minute." You know, it seems to me that this kind of self-outlook would result in the worst kind of depression. Oh no, friends, not by the time the mercy of God is through with us, it doesn't. You see my friends, God pours out his mercy on people who have this kind of a heart. God floods his mercy onto people who see themselves this way in the presence of Almighty God, and after the mercy of God is done with us, friends, we don't feel depressed at all. We feel cleansed, and we feel loved, and we feel forgiven, and we feel restored, and we feel valued, and we feel clean. Praise God for that. Number two, well, you can clap. That works. All right, there you go. Number two, the tax collector came to God second of all helpless. Hey, when he came into God's presence there at the temple, he offered God nothing. He didn't offer God good works. He didn't offer God his standing in society. He didn't offer God his religious activity. He simply cast himself on the mercy of God. Just like the thief on the cross did. I love what the old hymn Rock of Ages says. It says, "Nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling." And this is how God wants us coming to us, folks, with nothing of our own to convince him to give us his mercy, but simply casting ourselves helplessly on him and saying, "Lord, please be merciful to me, a sinner." Hey, I think of Asa in the Old Testament, King Asa. The Bible tells us that God loves to pour mercy on people who come to him like this. King Asa came to him like this. Second Chronicles chapter 14, the city of Jerusalem, was surrounded by an enormous army that Asa had no hope of beating. He came and he said, "Lord, there is no one besides you to help the powerless against us strong. Help us, O Lord, for we rely on you." Man, there's casting yourself on God and read the chapter. See what God did for him, the miraculous victory God gave. Jehoshaphat, a king right after him, did the very same thing. Second Chronicles chapter 20, again, an army surrounding Jerusalem. He prayed, "We are powerless," Jehoshaphat did, "against this great army attacking us, neither know we, what to do." Listen, but our eyes are punty. Man, you read what God did for him. You read how God swept in and gave him an incredible victory. Why? Because he came to God like the tax collector did. Friends, this is why Job observed Job 26, too, how God loves to help the helpless. Finally, number three, the tax collector not only came to God humble, and he not only came to God helpless, but third and finally, the tax collector came to God. You say, "Well, what does that mean?" Well, what I mean, friends, is, "Hey, lots of people in our world feel helpless from time to time, and lots of people in our world feel humbled from time to time by their failures and mistakes and shortcomings, but this doesn't mean automatically that they receive the mercy of God." Hey, look, there's a third and crucial ingredient, and that is that a person has to actively seek mercy from God. Psalm 86, verse 5 says, "For you, O Lord, are plentiful in mercy," look, "to all who call upon you, not to all who call upon Buddha, or to all who call upon Confucius or Mohammed." Friends, if you and I want mercy from the living Christ of the universe, then we have got to come to the living Christ of the universe, and we've got to seek it. You see why Jesus said, John 637, "He said, 'The person who comes to me, I will never turn away, but we've got to come to him.'" And this is what brought God's mercy down on King Asa. Hey, King Asa consciously, deliberately, purposely, and intentionally came to God and asked for mercy and help. So did Jehoshaphat, and folks, we need to be careful that we don't leave out this vital step, that we're not like the people in James 4, too, where the Bible says, "You have not, because you ask not. We need to deliberately come to God and ask for mercy. We need to deliberately and intentionally come to God and ask for forgiveness when we sin, and for strength when we're weak, and for wisdom when we're perplexed, and for power when we feel powerless, and for hope when we're discouraged, and as followers of Christ, we need to make this attitude of heart the way we live every moment, of every day, of every year of our entire life. We need to be constantly going to God and seeking mercy. And I love what Psalm 9 verse 10 says. It says, "For you, O Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you." And you know, I love to remind God of that verse. I love to go to God and say, "Here I am again, yep, it's me. I know I was just here a few minutes ago, but I'm back. And Lord, I just want to remind you what you said as though you needed it, but it helps me to do this, Lord, you said you have never forsaken those who seek you. So here I am seeking you again, and Lord, I have your promise. You won't forsake me." What a great promise, huh? And there's no limit on it, doesn't say, but when you come for the 51st time in the same day, that's it. No, no, no. This is unlimited. Well, let's conclude. You know, it seems to me there are certain skills in life that we need to know how to do in order to live a functional, successful life. I mean, we need to know how to balance a checkbook and live within a budget. We need to know how to treat people kindly and respectfully and gently. We need to know how to be a good and faithful employee, but of all the skills that we need to know how to do in order to live a healthy, successful life, none of them are more important than knowing how to activate and how to unlock the mercy of God for our lives every day. And how do we do it? Well, we do it by coming to God the way the tax collector came. Number one, by coming to him humble, by coming to him deeply aware of our corruption and our unworthiness before a holy God and not coming to him too big for our britches like the Pharisee did. Number two, we do it by coming to God helpless, by casting ourselves on him for mercy and putting no confidence in the flesh. And number three, we do it by coming to God deliberately and intentionally seeking mercy from him. Folks, this is how the tax collector came and what did God do? God showered him with excessive, undeserved, super abundant mercy. So remember what we said, every time you and I come to God the way the tax collector came, even if we do it a hundred times a day, it doesn't matter. Every time we come like he came, we will leave like he left. My friends, this is how we need to come to God. This is how we need to do it every day. This is how we need to relate to God. And if we do, we will find ourselves to be recipients of unbelievable kindness and mercy. May God help us do it. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I don't think there's anything more important than for us to know how to unlock your mercy for our lives. And we thank you that you've told us how to do that today. It's so simple, it's so straightforward that even a little child can do it. Thank you that your mercy is free, that it's full, that it's for everybody, that Lord, it's unbegrudging and best of all, it is without limit. May we develop the habit, each one of us, of coming to you every moment of every day like the tax collector did, that we too may be the recipients of your super abundant mercy just as he was. Lord, change our lives because we were here, change the very way we relate to you because we sat under the teaching of the Word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, and what do God's people say? What'd you say? Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]