The Coming Of The Kingdom: Who will enter? Luke 18:9-14
Notes
Transcript
Text - Luke 18:9-
Subject -
Theme -
Thesis -
Principle -
Intro
We come this morning to another passage that is often familiar to us if we have been Christians for any length of time.
The difficulty with parable such as this is that we often gloss over them saying to ourselves - Oh, I know that story.
But we forget this parable is also for us.
We can find it difficult to really relate to the story because none of us go to a temple to pray.
None of us know anyone who works for the Roman authorities and cheats everyone on the side.
Thesis Statement:
Thesis Statement:
True righteousness comes not from trusting in our own good works but from humbly depending on God's mercy through Jesus Christ.
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 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. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 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!’ 14 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.” 15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.
As we pick up again we must remember that this passage is still within the context of Luke 17:20 and the question the Pharisees asked about the Kingdom of God.
Jesus taught about the harsh realities of the coming kingdom, taught that because we have a good loving father, who unlike the unrighteous judge wants to hear us we can pray and not lose heart.
This parable is connected with the parable in Luke 18:1-8 in which Jesus calls for prayer at all times and in this parable describes how we ought to pray.
However, the emphasis is not on prayer but on true versus false righteousness.
It is about who will get into the Kingdom of God and who will not get into the Kingdom of God.
Jesus tells this parable to some who trusted in themselves.
The word is a little more intense than trust, we often believe trust to be a passive thing.
Something that is built or earned.
These people though had convinced themselves that they were righteous.
They convinced themselves they were right with God.
This is a dangerous trap to fall into.
Self righteousness was a plague during Jesus day and still continues in the church today.
Think about this question for a moment -
If you were to die and stand before God and He asked, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?
What would your answer be?
Sadly the most frequent answer is “I am a basically good person.”
Or, “I’ve always tried to do the best that I can.”
Or, “I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone.”
Most people, including those who would call themselves “Christian,” think that the right way to approach God is to present their good works at the gate of heaven.
I hear this question and my mind runs to an Alistair Begg sermon from a number of years ago where he is talking about the thief on the cross.
The thief on the cross gets to the pearly gates and is asked how did you get here?
The thief looks at the man asking the questions and says I don’t know?
All I know is the man on the middle cross said I could come!
If your answer is anything but that.
Anything but Jesus paid the price so that I could get in to heaven, you are trusting in your own righteousness.
You are convincing yourself that you are good enough.
And that is a problem.
The good works we do, do not get us into heaven, but rather flow out from the love and thanks that we give to God for His mercy.
The love and thanks that we give to Jesus for His ultimate sacrifice.
It is true that as James says that faith without works is dead.
That is true because as Paul tells us in Eph 2.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The trouble with self righteousness, which is part of the reason Jesus is speaking here is that -
Self righteousness never stays with the self - as we see in our text, these people also treated others with contempt.
That might not be even a strong enough word either.
They despised others they considered lower than themselves.
The people they considered lower than themselves had no merit or worth within their eyes.
This parable is a call to consider ourselves, to consider our own relationships with the Lord and with others.
In the story that Jesus tells here, we see 3 sets of two.
Two men.
Two prayers.
Two results.
Two Men
Two Men
The Pharisee represents all who try to come to God on the basis of their own good deeds.
Keep in mind that in our day, the word Pharisee has a negative connotation, but in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were those who had devoted themselves to God.
When everyone first heard this story, And Jesus introduced these two men, the Pharisee would have been fully expected to be the hero of the story.
They were the upright moral men that others looked up to.
This man in his prayer is thankful to God, he doesn’t steal, he doesn’t run with a bad crowd, he is faithful to his wife.
He is what we would expect from an elder in the church today.
But Jesus uses this Pharisee as an example of those who try to come to God through their good works.
He is contrast against this tax collector.
This man was a sellout to his own people.
He stole their money and gave it to the enemy, keeping some for himself as well.
In fact these men did not even generally go to the temple, if they did it was not likely to pray.
The closest equivalent today might be drug dealers or other people preying on society making money off of others bodies and outright stealing.
Two Prayers
Two Prayers
When we examine the two men’s prayers we see a stark contrast as well.
The Pharisee first standing by himself.
The temple was separated by class of devotion.
The Pharisees of course got the best seat, closest to the presence of the Lord.
The only people closer were the priests.
Standing, he makes a show, looking as reverent as possible.
The goal was to be seen and enjoy the admiration of the people who saw him.
Most prayer in this context was prayer that happened out loud.
It was not a silent prayer as we often pray today.
The only prohibition the rabbis gave is that you are to pray audibly but not to yell.
This man would have been yelling if he could have.
His prayer is first one of negatives - Thank you go I am not.
Not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
Next he recites the things he does. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
This prayer has "no confession and no petition,—no acknowledgment of guilt and emptiness,—no supplication for mercy and grace.
It is a mere boasting recital of fancied merits, accompanied by an uncharitable reflection on a brother sinner.
Prayer can be difficult because we have to go to the Lord with the right heart and the right motives.
"It is entirely possible to address your words to God, but actually be praying to yourself, because your focus is on yourself, not on God.
Your passion is for your agenda, not God’s.
Your attitude is my will be done and not Thy will be done.
This man was full of praise, but he rejoiced “not for who God was but rather for who he was!”
Notice that his prayer has no elements of confession.
He does not ask forgiveness for his sins, perhaps because he believes he has nothing to confess.
Nor is there any word of praise or thanksgiving to God. His prayer is all about him.
Even the thanks he does offer is designed to exalt himself and place himself above others whom he treats with disdain.
Going to the temple to pray with the condition of his heart as it was, he might as well have stayed home.
I would argue that this is not even a prayer at all.
Contrast that with the tax collector.
13 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!’
Look first at his posture - one of humility.
Standing far off.
His posture shows his unworthiness before God.
He considered his lowly estate such that he was not even willing to lift his eyes up to heaven.
The burden of his guilt and shame weighed heavily upon him, and the load he carried had become unbearable.
He beats his breast in sorrow and repentance as he prays “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
If we look a little deeper into this prayer this tax collector says
God - propitiate me.
Eliminate the the things within me that impede my relationship with you.
Let your anger be aroused against me no more!
In terms of judgment, this is a pardon for crimes committed.
A Biblical and Theological Dictionary Propitiation
To propitiate is to appease, to atone, to turn away the wrath of an offended person. In the case before us, the wrath turned away is the wrath of God; the person making the propitiation is Christ; the propitiating offering or sacrifice is his blood.
This is a prayer that God hears because it comes from a place of humility.
You know, the beautiful irony here is that the one telling the story will be the One who is that sacrifice.
He is there in the flesh for that very purpose, to be the means of propitiating or turning away the wrath of God from broken and repentant sinners.
At that very moment as He’s telling this story, Jesus is living the perfectly righteous life,
obeying the Father at every second, faithfully fulfilling the law, and with every single breath that he breathes,
He is completing the perfect life He’ll soon offer up to God as a substitute for the unrighteous.
It’s amazing.
The very means by which God would pardon the unrighteous is the man telling the story to these self-righteous folks.
The only other place we find the exact word used by the tax collector here in the Bible is in the book of Hebrews.
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
This verse is referring to Jesus – and there’s that word, to make propitiation for the sins of His people.
Jesus, propitiation for the people.
Two Results
Two Results
Jesus makes the results quite clear for each of these two men.
14 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.”
The scoundrel is saved.
The religious person is not.
A complete reversal of what Jesus listeners expected to here.
One man spends his whole life trying to perfect a religious record and then leaves just as far from God and condemned in His sight as any other sinner out there.
The other man spends his life serving himself at the cost of those around him, flagrantly breaking God’s laws,
and leaves right in God’s sight and even commended with a future in heaven secure because of one moment, because of one prayer, because of one broken plea?
It did not depend on what those men had done, but in who they were trusting.
Two men.
Two prayers.
Two results.
Where do you stand?
Where do you stand?
So I ask this morning, where do you stand?
How are you doing?
How are you approaching the Lord?
Kenneth E. Bailey wrote in his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels
The more familiar a parable, the more it cries out to be rescued from the barnacles that have attached themselves to it over the centuries.
In the popular mind, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is a simple story about prayer.
One man prays an arrogant prayer and is blamed for his attitudes.
The other prays humbly and is praised for so doing.
Too often the unconscious response becomes, Thank God, we’re not like that Pharisee!
But such a reaction demonstrates that we are indeed like him!
How can this parable best be understood?
Is it strictly about styles of prayer?
No doubt humility in prayer is at the heart of the story, but in his introduction Luke tells his readers that the main focus of the parable is righteousness and those who believe they can reach that pious goal by means of their own efforts."
(Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels Kenneth E. Bailey)
The ultimate difficulty that any human being will encounter is this:
How can an unjust person stand in the presence of a just God at the last judgment?
The only way we can stand is to be justified, to be declared just.
Knowing God First Steps
Do we desire such knowledge of God?
Then two things follow.
First, we must recognise how much we lack knowledge of God.
We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.
Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.
Second, we must seek the Saviour.
When he was on earth, he invited men to company with him; thus they came to know him, and in knowing him to know his Father.
The irony of distance with God is that as we acknowledge just how unlike Him we are,
as we confess our sins and don’t hide them from Him,
this is actually what draws us near to God and what actually draws Him near to us.
It’s not that we need to go around with sad faces all the time or constantly needing to be going around just talking about how wretched we are,
that itself can become a kind of self-preoccupation.
But it’s simply to say that we cannot come near to God apart from a spirit of humility,
apart from a recognition of our deep and constant need for His grace for us in Jesus,
apart from a turning from boasting in ourselves.
Not just when we first become a Christian, but through our entire journey.
There is not a single one of us here today that does not have every reason to humble ourselves before God.
The only way any of us will ever stand before a just and holy God is as one clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
We add nothing to it.
If we are truly broken-hearted over our sin, we can be assured of God’s boundless love and forgiveness in Christ.
He has promised in His word to accept us, love us, and make us alive again through His Son (Colossians 2:13).
No amount of good works, church attendance, tithes, community service, loving our neighbor or anything else we do is sufficient to take away the blot of sin and enable us to stand before a holy God on our own.
That is why God sent Jesus to die on the cross.
His death is the only “work” that is able to cleanse us and make us acceptable to God.
In addition, we must not make the mistake of comparing ourselves with others and gaining confidence from what we see in that comparison.
In fact, Jesus specifically warns us against this attitude at the beginning of the parable.
When we try to justify ourselves by comparing ourselves to others, we naturally end up despising them.
Our standard for comparison is God Himself, and we all fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23).
As we close today, I want to retell this story for us in a way closer to what we might understand.
Two men came in to church one Sunday to worship.
One, we’ll call Fred, was a good family man.
Every Sunday, Fred sat in his usual pew at Grace Community Church.
He never missed a service, not even when he was sick—he believed in showing up.
He attended Wednesday night Bible study, led a men’s discipleship group, and was even being considered to be an elder in the church.
He gave generously—ten percent off the top, just like the Bible said.
One Sunday, after a sermon on prayer, Fred stood up at the front, bowed his head, and began to pray.
“God, I thank You that I am not like those people who only come to church on Easter and Christmas. I tithe faithfully, I serve in ministry, and I stay away from the mess this world is drowning in. I’m especially grateful I’m not like that crook, Vince.”
Vince owned a small contracting business in town.
Everyone knew he cut corners.
He overcharged for jobs, used cheap materials while billing for high-end ones, and always had a new loophole to avoid paying his workers fairly.
He had made a good life for himself, but at the cost of others.
That same Sunday, Vince found himself sitting in the back of the church, barely able to lift his eyes.
He hadn’t been to church in years, but something had drawn him in that morning.
His stomach was in knots.
He knew what he was.
He had cheated people, hurt families, and lived only for himself.
But now, all he could do was sit there, head down, heart pounding.
When the service ended, he sat quietly, unable to move.
He couldn’t even raise his head, but he whispered, “God… I’ve made a mess of my life. I don’t deserve Your mercy. But if You’d have me… please forgive me.”
I tell the story this way to perhaps bring it a little closer to home for us.
Jesus said it was Vince, not John, who went home justified before God.
Because the one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Whose shoes do you find yourself in this morning?
Those of Fred, or of Vince?
Are you living with a constant understanding of the need for God’s mercy and grace in your life?
Have you humbled yourself?
Will you humble yourself before God, acknowledging your sin, and trust in His mercy alone for salvation rather than your own righteousness.
You may be a good person, a faithful churchgoer, and a decent citizen of this community.
But God knows the many sins of your heart. (He surely knows mine!)
All the good deeds in the world cannot pay for the many times you have broken His holy law.
If you come into God’s court on judgment day and present your good works, you will be condemned.
But if you come as an unworthy sinner who has pleaded for mercy on the basis of Jesus Christ who shed His blood to pay the penalty you deserve,
God will declare, “Not guilty!”
Make sure first that you understand and apply this personally;
then, share with others the wrong and the right way to come to God.
Nothing less than yours and their eternal destiny is at stake!
