The Posture of the Altar

Title: The Posture of the Altar

Subtitle: Why Pride Keeps You Standing When God Is Calling You to Kneel

Scripture: Luke 18:9-17

Speaker: Bill Sizemore | Reliant Ministries | General Adult The Romans Road Series | A Living Sacrifice, Week Two | Living Example: The Tax Collector | September 13, 2026

Big Idea: God isn't moved by the posture you perform for people. He's moved by the posture you finally stop faking in front of Him.

Phrase of the Day: Come needy, or don't come at all.

Introduction: A House of Prayer

Picture a Sunday morning that goes exactly the way it's supposed to. The music is good. The message lands. You nod at the right parts, maybe even take a note. You shake a few hands on the way out, and by lunch you've mostly forgotten what was said. Nothing was wrong with that morning. But nothing happened in it either. You gathered, and you left the same person who walked in.

Here's the question worth sitting in before we open to Luke 18: what if the problem isn't the music, or the message, or the length of the service? What if the problem is the posture we walk in with?

When Jesus cleared the temple, He didn't rebuke it for having bad theology. He rebuked it for what it had become instead of a house of prayer.

Matthew 21:13 ESV

13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

A house of prayer. Not a house of information. Not a house of good music and better coffee. A house where people come to actually talk to God, and mean it. I think we've quietly drifted from that without ever deciding to. We come for wisdom, for knowledge, for understanding, and all three of those are good. But somewhere along the way we stopped expecting to come in need, cry out, and be changed.

We come to learn things about God more than we come to do business with Him.

Jesus tells the parable in front of us this morning for a specific audience.

Luke 18:9 ESV

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

That's not a description of people outside the church. That's a description of people who were already in it, already confident, already sure they were fine. If you've ever wondered whether this parable is for you, that's the test. It's for anyone who has stopped expecting to need anything when they walk through these doors.

Here's our road map this morning, three postures Luke 18 puts in front of us:

The Posture of Pride.

The Posture of Penitence.

The Posture of a Child.

📌 The Posture of Pride

Luke 18:9-12

Pride Prays to itself

Luke 18:10–12 ESV

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.’

Look at where his eyes go. Not up. Sideways, at the tax collector, and then inward, at his own resume. He opens with God's name and never actually asks Him for anything.

The King James catches it even better: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.”

He wasn't talking to God. He was performing in front of God, and the whole prayer is a list of comparisons and accomplishments:

fasting twice a week, when the law only required it once a year on the Day of Atonement;

tithing everything, beyond what was required.

On paper, this man was the model member. In posture, he never once knelt.

Pride Grades on a Curve

The Pharisee's whole prayer only works if he's grading on a curve.

Next to the tax collector, he looks great.

Next to the actual holiness of God, the comparison collapses, but he never once looks that direction.

That's what pride does. It survives by choosing its own measuring stick.

📷 In 1974, a man named Chuck Colson was one of the most feared operators in Washington. As special counsel to President Nixon, he had a reputation so ruthless that a line about him, that he'd walk over his own grandmother if it helped the president, became a fixture of how people described him. He helped build Nixon's enemies list. Facing indictment in the Watergate scandal, a friend named Thomas Phillips handed him a copy of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. In it, Lewis writes the line that has diagnosed proud men and women for eighty years:

"Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." And: "A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you." (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin")

Colson read that book and it broke something open in him. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice that June and served seven months in federal prison, the very book that named his pride became the means God used to humble him. A man whose entire career was built on never looking up finally did.

If you can walk into this building, sing the songs, hear the message, and walk out unmoved almost every single week, it might not be because none of this is true. It might be because pride has convinced you that you don't personally need any of it to be true.

Pride doesn't always look like arrogance. Sometimes it looks like protection.

I don’t want to be vulnerable around people. I don’t want to be made fun of.

So, I will suppress and hide my true self and the anxiety it causes.

If I come needy then I will look weak.

So, we say I’m fine. Instead of letting the only person that can heal you do a work in you. That is what it means to be a living sacrifice.

Your pride produces fear in others. Your vulnerability produces vulnerability in others.

📌 The Posture of Penitence

Luke 18:13-14

Penitence Stands at a Distance

Luke 18:13 ESV

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!’

Three physical details, and none of them are accidental.

He stands far off, distancing himself from the holy place.

He won't lift his eyes, unable to look toward heaven the way the Pharisee so confidently could.

He beats his own chest, the ancient posture of grief and guilt.

His whole body prays before his mouth ever opens. And when it does open, there's no defense, no comparison, no resume. Seven words. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Penitence Leaves Justified

Luke 18:14 ESV

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.”

Not the man with the better record.

The man with the honest posture.

This is the tax collector's entire theology in one sentence: I have nothing to offer, and I need mercy I cannot earn. That is, word for word, the posture the altar has always required.

📷 The most effective recovery movement of the last century didn't begin with a self-improvement plan. It began with a confession. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935, and when Bill Wilson and the early fellowship wrote down the Twelve Steps in the 1939 Big Book, Step One wasn't a strategy. It was a surrender:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable."

No one moves to step two without first saying that sentence and meaning it. Nearly a century of recovery, in rooms all over the world, has been built on the same shape as the tax collector's prayer: I cannot fix this myself, and pretending otherwise is what's been killing me. Brennan Manning, who spent years both preaching grace and living the wreckage of his own addiction, put it this way:

"I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness." (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, 1990)

The altar was never designed for people who have it together. It's designed for people who finally admit, out loud and not just in their own head, that they don't. That admission is not weakness. It's the only posture Jesus ever called justified.

📌 The Posture of a Child

Luke 18:15-17

Children Bring Empty Hands

Luke 18:15 ESV

15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.

Luke places this scene immediately after the parable on purpose.

An infant cannot fast twice a week.

An infant cannot tithe.

An infant cannot even ask correctly.

It can only be carried, and be held.

And notice who tries to manage access to Jesus here: the disciples, doing exactly what the Pharisee's posture always does, deciding who's polished enough to belong near God.

Children Are Carried In

Luke 18:16–17 ESV

16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

The kingdom doesn't belong to the most capable people in the room. It belongs to the most dependent. Not because children are innocent in some sentimental sense, but because they bring nothing and simply receive everything. That is the posture Jesus says is required, not admired from a distance, but actually adopted.

📷 On June 30, 1859, a French tightrope walker named Jean Francois Gravelet, known by his stage name Charles Blondin, crossed the Niagara Gorge on a rope strung above the falls. Over the following months he crossed it again and again, blindfolded, on stilts, pushing a wheelbarrow, and pausing mid-rope to cook and eat an omelet. On one crossing, he carried a passenger the entire way: his own manager, Harry Colcord, riding on Blondin's back over the gorge. Thousands of people stood on the riverbank that summer and believed Blondin could do it. Only one man actually got on his back.

That's the difference between admiring a truth and receiving it like a child. The disciples in Luke 18 wanted to manage the crowd around Jesus the way a spectator manages a safe distance from the rope. The infants being carried into His arms weren't spectating anything. They were entirely dependent on someone else's strength to get them across.

Most of us have spent years standing on the riverbank of our own faith, believing the right things about Jesus, admiring what He's capable of, without ever actually getting on His back. Childlike faith isn't believing He could carry you. It's the posture of actually letting Him.

Conclusion

Three postures, one temple, one gospel.

The Pharisee stood tall and left unchanged.

The tax collector stood far off, beat his chest, and went home justified.

The infants offered nothing and were carried into the arms of Jesus Himself.

Every one of us walks into this room in one of those three postures, whether we've ever named it or not.

Here's why that matters for you long after you leave this building today. If the altar is still open, then the only real barrier left standing between you and it is pride, the quiet decision that you're fine, that you don't need to kneel, that admitting need is somehow beneath you, or the fear of what others will say. It never was beneath the tax collector, and Jesus called his posture the one that leaves justified. It's not beneath you either.

The house of the Lord was always meant to be a house of prayer.

The only question left is whether you'll come in ready to pray, or just ready to listen.

I encouragement to you today is, “Come needy, or don't come at all.”

Next Steps

Are you honest enough to name the place in your life where you've been standing like the Pharisee, measuring yourself against people instead of against God's holiness? First step: name that one comparison out loud, to yourself and to God, this week.

Have you stopped actually praying, even while you keep showing up? First step: set aside five minutes this week to pray the tax collector's prayer for yourself, word for word: God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Don't dress it up. Say it plainly.

Is there someone you love who needs you to carry them to God in prayer this week? First step: name that person out loud to someone else, and tell them you're praying for them by name, not just thinking about it.

At the response time this morning, there will be a specific, physical way to bring your first step to the altar. Don't just think it. Walk it forward.

Altar Call: Gospel Invitation

Two invitations this morning, because there are two kinds of people in this room.

If you have never trusted Christ, this parable was written for you too. You may have spent your whole life assuming God grades on a curve, that as long as you're better than someone else, you're fine. That was the Pharisee's mistake, and it cost him. The tax collector brought nothing but his need, and Jesus called him justified. You can bring exactly that today: nothing to offer, and everything to need. Confess Jesus as Lord. Believe God raised Him from the dead. Come the way the tax collector came, and the way the infants were carried, empty-handed and received anyway.

If you already belong to Him, ask yourself honestly which posture you walked in with this morning. Have you been standing at a comfortable distance, admiring what Jesus can do without ever letting Him actually carry you? Has church become a place you visit for information rather than an altar you kneel at for transformation? Bring that honestly to Him right now, right where you're sitting, or right where you're standing at the altar in a few minutes.

Come needy, or don't come at all.

The tax collector went down to his house justified. The infants were carried into the arms of Jesus. The only posture the altar has ever required is the one that finally stops standing at a distance.