Summary
Pastor David Deutsch preaches out of Luke 18:9–14, exposing the deadly danger of self-righteousness and the subtle pride that can even hide in our humility. He calls us to abandon all trust in ourselves and instead look entirely to Christ, whose righteousness alone justifies sinners.
Transcript
- Good morning, Soli. - Good morning. - I have spent six years trying to outrun the contraption that's on my head right now. And this little thing, I feel like Britney Spears this morning, but I don't plan to conduct myself like her, so you can be safe there. Open your Bibles with me this morning to the Gospel of Luke and to the 18th chapter as we continue the story of Jesus. We will be in verses nine through 14 this morning. Luke 18 verses nine through 14. Hear the word of God. - Amen. - He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, a Pharisee and the other attacks collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed, thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and even like this tax collector, I fast twice a week and I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me, the sinner. I tell you, this man went 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. That's the word of the Lord. - Amen. - Go ahead and be seated and then we'll pray. Our Father in heaven, we come to this passage and it's a dangerous passage for us because of the familiarity with which we have with it. We think we see rightly already when we read a passage like this that we're not like the Pharisee. We want to be like the public in, but we don't want the public in sins. And so we're a little convoluted, Lord, when we come to this passage. And so I pray that you would clear things up for us, that you would bring us up to be those very people who leave this morning justified and humbled, humbled so that we might be exalted by you. And so we pray today that your spirit might be among us and that your spirit will be the one who brings the word to your people and that we would receive it in faith, trusting that this is truly the word of God. And so we throw all of our hope and all of our trust, everything onto you this morning and confess our need to hear from you. In Jesus' name we pray, and amen. It should be pretty easy for all of us to admit we are worn out. We are worn out people. And as David Zoll says in his recent book, The Big Relief, we are worn out because of the comparisons that we make in our lives with others. We're worn out from thinking we deserve things. We're worn out from our entitlements. We're worn out from regret of the past. We're worn out from rejection. We're worn out from trying to control everything. We're worn out because of guilt. We're worn out because of status anxiety. We're worn out trying to keep up. We're worn out because of the pressure to produce. And we're worn out because death is coming for all of us. As we carry these often self-imposed prisons and burdens, grace, God's grace, seems just too good to be true. For God to be gracious to us always just kind of seems like, well, maybe mercy is hoped for, but alas, maybe not. And love, what does that even mean? You see, there's one thing that's true of all of those things that we listed. It is that all of them come with the devil of comparison, comparing ourselves to others. And then comparison leads to pride because you can always find someone that's not as good as you are, someone that doesn't have as much as you do, someone that's not as gifted as you are. And so comparison can lead to pride. And the Bible says pride goes before destruction. And Jesus makes it very clear that this parable that we are studying this morning is about comparison. He tells us what the parable is about in verse nine. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. It's just that simple. Jesus is directing this parable to those who think themselves good and hold others who are not as good as they are in contempt, Jesus says. And then when he tells the parable in verse 11, the Pharisee says this, "I thank you that I am not like other men, especially this one." And he points to the tax collector in the temple with him. And so what's driving this, of course, is comparison. He's comparing himself to the tax collector. And so he feels very good about himself. And of course that leads then to a fall, according to Jesus in verse 14. Jesus says, "Whoever exalts himself, makes much of himself, thinks much of himself, and has contempt for others will be humbled." Self exaltation leads to divine humiliation. You see, that is not a path that you want to be on. And so the danger of comparison is vital for us to have that exterminated from our lives. And like the previous peril in Pastor John's wonderful sermon, "Last Lord's Day," we have a contrast between two people in our parable, a Pharisee and a tax collector. And part of the problem for us is that we live 2,000 years down the road from this particular passage. And so we are used to piling on the Pharisees. We are used to creating our own stereotypes of the Pharisees. And we're 18 chapters in the Luke, and Jesus has been eviscerating the Pharisees for 18 chapters. Well, we need to understand why Jesus would tell this parable to the people he's telling it to, that didn't have the same view of Pharisees that we're comfortable with now. Because Jesus is telling this for shock value to those who are listening. And we need to have that shock value restored to us a little bit and be a lot less comfortable with this than we are. If you are the Pharisees in that day and you are not Jesus, okay, you were culturally a highly respected layman. The Pharisees were a lay group. They were not ordained men. They were not priests. They were not part of the priestly caste. They were laymen, a lay group that developed during the inter-testamental period between Malachi and Matthew in your Bible. And they were a lay movement of those who were earnestly committed to the kingdom of God coming and destroying the Roman Empire and establishing the supremacy of Jerusalem and Israel once again. And so everything that they were about was about Israel being clean. And they self-committed themselves to that. So when this brother goes up to the temple to pray, two men go into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and a tax collector, the Pharisee standing by himself, God, I thank you, this is an earnest man. He earnestly, whether or not we believe he's self-deceived, he's earnest. And what he believes, he's doing. You'll notice that he flees big time sin, okay? This is a guy who can say, I'm not guilty of the big sins. I flee those sins. He thanks God in his prayer, God, I thank you. He's calling the Old Testament forward in the way the Old Testament saints prayed. So he's saturated in the Bible and he's full of gratitude. And his heart is in it. Whether his heart's messed up or not, his heart is in it. And how do you know that? Well, guess what? If there's two places where your heart struggle, it's your belly and your pocketbook, right? Those are the two areas where we struggle the most oftentimes. And what does this guy say? I don't have any problem with my belly and I don't have any problem with my pocketbook. I fast twice a week. And look at what, I want you to see this. This brother, we think we've met Pharisee Tithers, right? If every one of you were this brother, we'd have a million dollar mountain bot for us, right? And we'd have a million dollar cathedral. I mean, I want you to be this way. But I'm just saying, watch what this brother tithes. He tithes of all that he gets. He gets a Christmas gift. He gives a 10th of his Christmas gifts. He gets a birthday gift. He gives a 10th of his birthday gifts. His grandma comes over and leaves him a $5 bill. He gives a 10th of his $5 bill. He goes to the grocery store and he buys groceries. He gives a 10th of his groceries. I mean, this brother is given a tithe of every single thing he gets. His pocketbook is open for everybody to see how much he gives away. So this is the kind of man people look to go, whoa. This brother's always tithing, always fasting. He's not guilty of the bigger sins. He's going to the temple to pray and he's earnest. And this was the man who in his culture was respected highly. And then there's the tax collector. Two men went up to the temple to pray a Pharisee and a tax collector. You couldn't get more polar opposites. The tax collector is a traitor. He's a fleecer. He's a collaborator with the Roman Empire. He makes himself rich off of overtaxing and thieving others. He is the first class rascal of the community in Israel. And so on the one hand, you have the highly committed layman. On the other hand, you have the first class trader rascal. And those two go up to pray. And the things that are said of them in our passage are true. These things are true of the Pharisee and these things are true of the tax collector. And this is where for us, 2,000 years later, we have to be a little sensitive. Because right now, despite the fact that I told you that this Pharisee was a respected man, you've been subjected to this parable enough to know that you're already starting to tell yourself, "God, I thank you that I'm not like this Pharisee." Who does that sound like? The Pharisee. And so I just want you to be aware this morning that a little devil danger going on here with this passage is that because you know this story, we can flip it by playing the tax collector before God and smuggling in the pride of the Pharisee. You can say, "Well, I'm like the tax collector. I'm humble for my sin and boast in your humility about not being the Pharisee." So there's a danger here for all of us so that you become proud about your sin. That's dumb, but that's what it could feel like for us. Lord, look at me, look at all. Do you really want to be proud about your sin? I don't think so. Do you want to be proud about your shame? I don't think so. Do you think that your humility is an accomplishment that God will draw God closer to you? Do you want to be aware of the danger of comparing yourself to this Pharisee? There was a pastor from World War II. It was there with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, a faithful pastor in Germany. And I'm just gonna tell you right now, okay? I used to call him Helmut Thickel. That's a cool name. Name your son Helmut. Thickel. And then my friend John Armstrong and he remembers John Armstrong. I heard him say his name once and I was like, his name is not Helmut Thickel. So I'm gonna say his name and it gets a little friendly for a moment. His name is Helmut Tiliki. All right, so that's how you say his name, Helmut Tiliki. And he was a German pastor during World War II and he preached a sermon on this passage that we are looking at today. And I always, one of my practices of preparation for sermons is after my sermon's all done, I sit down with another sermon that someone did on the sermon that I'm about to preach and I let that person preach to me. So Tiliki was preaching to me this week and he had this notion that we've been talking about about smuggling in pride by being the tax collector. And I want you to listen to the prayer he wrote as if you were the tax collector but praying like the Pharisee, listen to this. I thank the God that I am not so proud as this Pharisee. I am an extortioner and unjust and I am an adulterer. I commit fornication twice a week. And at most I maybe do 10% of honest work. Well, that's the way human beings are and that's what I am but at least I admit it. Therefore I'm a little better than the rest of these breed. I am an honest man, oh God, because I do not kid myself or have illusions about myself. Let your angels sing a hallelujah over me, the sinner who is honest like I am, honest enough to admit that I am a dirty dog and not hide it beneath my robes like these lying Philistines, the Pharisees. Yeah, I almost had to just stop right there and have somebody else preach the sermon, right? I mean, that's how easy it is for us to get snookered into thinking that we're not the Pharisee, thinking that we are the publican and then be the publican Pharisee. So what's the better road? Well, the better road is to recognize that those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ cannot turn this around in pride and lift up our sin and shame before God and be proud of it. Paul says, how is it that we who have died to sin would still live in it? Romans 6. So this cannot be our attitude of trying to smuggle in fakery and that is the modern evangelical epidemic. We are living in a time with all the deconstruction that's going on around us where the evangelical church is all about. How great can the sin be that I commit that God would save me from it, right? I'm gonna run it out and we're gonna show God to be this merciful. But confession of sin is no safeguard against pride. Confessing sin can be turned into a vice as well if it flows from pride or some comparison with the self righteous. God does not want us to take from this passage that you should really want to be this tax collector so that you could compare yourself to the Pharisee. That's not what he wants. You may be like the tax collector and there will be mercy for you here, but you don't want to become like him so you can compare yourself to the Pharisee and then smuggle in pride the back way and wind up being just like the Pharisee. So what is it? Well, what's the deal here? Well, verse 10 says both men, they go up to the temple to pray. So both of these men want to stand before God. Both of these men want to do business with God. Both of these men enter the holy presence of God. Verse 10 says they go into the temple. That's probably into the temple precincts. Okay, the tax collector would have stayed out further in the court of the Gentiles. Probably the Pharisee would have gone in deeper. Both men approach God to pray. Two men go up to the temple to pray. So they're going up to seek the Lord, both of them are. And both men go up and in their praying, they confess an act of self-knowing. When they go up, they unload themselves before God and what comes out of their mouth reveals what they think of themselves, their self-knowing. Both are confessing something about themselves. The Pharisee, what he notes about himself, is that he thinks he can stand before God. The Pharisee thinks that he can stand before God. Look at verse 11. The Pharisee standing by himself, prayed thus, "God, I thank you." Now, I actually believe this is perfunctory. This is the way a Jew would start a prayer. It's the blessing of God for every prayer that Jewish people would make. So I don't think this brother's actually thanking God, like earnestly. He might be an earnest Pharisee, but I think this is more rote. I think this is more perfunctory because he goes from thanking God and immediately he moves to himself. I think it's his little formulaic for him because what he's thanking God for is that he himself is made of different stuff than everybody else. He says, "I thank you that I am not like, okay, "not like other men." And I'm certainly not like that rascal over there. I am not like other men in what I omit, and I'm not like other men in what I commit. I do the right things and I don't do the wrong things. I don't have those there, he says. And you will notice that he uses the word I five times in his prayer. Listen, I will highlight them for you. God, I thank you that I am not like other men. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. So it's pretty clear he's focused on himself. It's pretty clear that he believes that his standing before God is based on his actual righteousness. And then in a little exegetical note, which I think works both ways, if you look at verse 11, it says, "The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus." And so the first, the way that ESV has this translated is that the Pharisee makes sure that he's praying at a distance from everybody else, especially from the tax collector, because anything getting close to the tax collector or anybody else might render him unclean. So there's this pious distance stance that he takes because he's too good to mix with the riffraff and the sinners for fear of being unclean. But if you look at the footnote in your ESV Bible or your other translation might have this, this is what the footnote says. It says, "The Pharisee was standing there praying to himself." Praying to himself. Well, there you go. That's the way to pray, right? If you're over listening to this prayer, if you're leaning in on it, here's what you're hearing. I, I, I mean, brother's like having a conversation with himself as if God left the room. So either way, he's standing off and he's having a conversation and he's having a prayer by himself. And so the issue is simply this, this, this dude is bursting with self-righteousness. He is bursting with the fact he can stand before God based on the life that he himself is living. And Jesus just says it in verse nine. He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves. I mean, I want you guys to think about that. The reference for trust here is self. Trusted in themselves that they were righteous. Okay? What is your only hope in life and in death that I myself have a righteousness acceptable to God? Sand is a better foundation than that. You want to talk about flimsy. Do you guys understand that? Your only hope in life and in death can never be that you are trusting in yourself, that you have a righteousness before God that will be acceptable to God. It doesn't matter how many sins you don't commit. It doesn't matter how much righteousness you do commit. Doesn't matter how much good you do and how much wrong you don't do. You can never have your own self, your own performance, your own work as the object of your faith. You can never trust in anything about yourself as a ground for acceptance with God. It is not your faith that makes you acceptable to God. It is not your repentance that makes you acceptable to God. You cannot offer to God anything that will bring to you the status of the justified. You cannot give it up, let it go. And as a matter of fact, the righteousness by which you are justified before you are saved becomes the righteousness by which you are justified after you are saved. There's no righteous act that you do before you are saved that can be acceptable to God by which you become saved. And there's no righteousness you do after you're saved that you are acceptable to God that keeps you saved. Your righteousness has nothing to do with it. You can never trust in yourself that you have a righteousness that will ever be acceptable to God to bring you into a justified status ever, ever. And then it leads you to be contemptuous of other people who are less than you. Listen, out of the heart, the mouth speaks and this brother is speaking danger. Well, where is the hope then? Where is the hope if there's absolutely nothing that we can offer before or after to find a justifying sentence? And by the way, that justifying sentence, this is why this is so important. Do you realize that when God declares you justified, it is not a declaration of what is true of you today. It is a declaration of what is true of your entire life. Do you understand that? The declaration that God makes to you in time when he says you are justified doesn't simply cover your bad days, doesn't simply cover your off days, doesn't simply cover the days you get out of bed and your sideways, don't simply cover the days that you just have one of those days where you feel like all you can do is sin and all you can do is mess up. In my house, those are the days when I tell my wife, I don't trust myself today, please pray for me because I know somebody's gonna do something and I'm gonna step right in the do-do. My proclivity is to go right in. Do you realize that the declaration of justification is the declaration of what will be true of you for the whole covering of your life? You understand that? You can never have a good day in your life ever that adds one iota of righteousness to the righteousness that Jesus gives you that covers your whole life. And you can never have one terrible bad day that is the worst day you've ever had in your life where you found yourself doing unthinkable things that you never thought you could do that will ever take away one iota of the righteousness that Jesus covers in your life. You can't add to it and you can't take away from it because the righteousness that justifies you is not yours, will never be yours, so never trust in yourself that you are acceptable to God because of anything from you, in you, through you, or to you. Well, what's the answer? Let's look at the tax collector with verse 13. With the tax collector was standing far off. He recognizes that he has no place here. He doesn't come waltzing in, trusting in himself with anything to offer. He recognizes he has no place to stand here so he stands far off. He does not lift his eyes to heaven which would be the normal way you would pray. So lift your eyes to heaven. He doesn't do that. As a matter of fact, he does something that you need to understand this that is publicly humiliating. And that is that he beat his breast. Well, you say, why would that be publicly humiliating? Because in the Jewish world, the only people that beat their breasts were women. You have the occasional one-off like David when Absalom dies, but mostly it's women who beat their breasts. Whether like a child dies or something like that, they're known for their guttural, beating their breast kind of thing. This brother doesn't care what it looks like. He doesn't care how people see him. Notice the difference between how the Pharisee is curating so that people see him a certain way and this brother, this tax collector, he just does not care. It is only God whose presence he's in. You see the difference? The tax collector carries with him, I mean, the Pharisee carries with him the presence of everybody to be justified. The tax collector carries with him no audience at all, but God to be justified in. He beat his breast. It's just an unbelievable move there. And then he says this, I wanna make sure we get this this morning. This is where I don't understand the Bible translators sometimes. I'll never understand why you just don't translate the word the way it's supposed to be translated. And I hate to do this because then it makes it, you feel like I can't get, you can't trust your Bible and then you have to trust me. You can all go look it up later today in an inner linear if you want. But this is so important. The tax collector after beating his breast, not looking up to heaven, standing far off, he addresses guys, he says, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." That's what your ESV says. The Greek says this, "God be propitiated for me, the sinner." This is not the Greek word for mercy, which is from the Elio words. This is the Greek word for propitiation, which is from the Halaskan words in Greek. This tax collector knows that his sin deserves the wrath of God. It deserves judgment. It does, his sin deserves condemnation. And so you don't want to know what he asks, I want you to see this. By asking for himself to be propitiated, he is asking for God to actually pour out his wrath on the sin, the wrath that the sin deserves. So he's not saying to God, "Let's just bypass judgment. Let's just sweep my sin under the rug and say it's okay." No, what he's saying is, "I know my sins deserve judgment, and I want you to judge them, and I want you to pour out your wrath on them, 'cause that's the right thing to do. But will you do it in a substitute and not me?" You say, "Will you be propitiated towards me?" And guess what? The times at which this brother would be going to pray, right, nine a.m. in the morning, three p.m. in the afternoon, those are the two times in which the sacrifices for sin would be taking place. So there would be a sacrifice taking place when he's praying this prayer. So notice that instead of looking into himself like the Pharisee is, this man's looking outside of himself. He's looking away from himself to, yes, God's mercy, but God's mercy in a sacrifice that actually answers God's wrath against his actual sins, but not in the sinner, but in the substitute for the sin. So the sinner can be set free from the sin because it's judged in a substitute, you see. That's what he's saying here. Judge it, God, but judge it in another, you see. And some of the commentators think there's a veiled reference to the fact of him standing off like he is, like he's almost pulling away from the temple because what's happening right now, the propitiatory sacrifices are moving from the temple to who? Jesus, right? That's happening right now. And so I want you guys to see this. This man gets it, that his sins are worthy of judgment. And he's not trying to let that escape. He's just saying, God, do the thing that you do with sin, but will you do it in another? And will you free me? And then, I don't know why the indefinite article is there. A, the Greek is the definite article. I am the sinner, he says. In other words, he is before God alone, asking for a propitiation for his sin. And he knows of no other sinner in the world but himself. God is you and me. And that's it. Other men, other situations, their own missions, their commissions, they're not here. It's I'm the sinner. I'm the one. Doesn't matter if I'm better than others and not than others. I'm the only one. I'm the sinner, you see. And by opening himself up to that, by recognizing that he alone is the sinner, he turns to God with his burdened conscience. And he doesn't think of other people at all. He's utterly alone with God. There's no blame shifting here. He doesn't shift the blame onto, well, if you knew my parents, right? If you just knew my dad or my mom or my this or that my situation or the school I went, no, no, no, there's no blame shifting here. If you knew my brothers or sisters, if you knew the, no. I don't need any help here, he's saying. I'm the sinner, right? He measures himself not against other people. Like the Pharisee, he measures himself against God. And when he measures himself against God, he is suddenly aware of how far removed he is. And that's when God moves in. God moves in when we are aware of how much we need from him. God moves in to give us a new day. And that's verse 14, it's incredible, look at it. I tell you, this man, this man, the sinner, the tax collector, right? Who couldn't even look up to heaven, who asked to have his sins condemned in a substitute. This man went down to his house, justified. The sinner justified, the ungodly man justified. He went home in the right. In the court of heaven, God's declaration to this man is that you are forever in my sight, as righteous as my son is. Beautiful freedom, the liberty to never have to worry again about your status before God, because your status before God is as secure as Jesus is Jesus. You see, it's amazing. But I want you to notice how this passage dehumanizes the Pharisee. Okay, look at the way the language goes. This man, we know this man is, went to his house justified rather than he's just the other. He's just the other, that's all he is. He's just the other. He fades from existence in the passage because he trusted in himself that he was righteous and he did not go to Christ. He did not find his all in Christ, you see. He is the other, why? Because the Pharisee measures himself by looking down word at others to get his status before God. He finds the worst cat that he can, a tax collector, and he compares himself to him. Listen, you can always find someone who is less righteous than you and say to God, "God, will you answer my prayers?" Because you know I'm a little bit more righteous than so and so and you just answered their prayers. Hockey pucks. I mean, come on now. But we do that kind of stuff with God all the time. We think that we can somehow offer to God something that will shift him our way, leverage him our way, move him our way. No, it is not that at all. Even though there is a real difference between these two men, the Pharisee had what he had, the tax collector had what he had. But one trusts himself and what the self has to offer and the other trusts in Christ and what Christ alone can give to him. And so the answer for everybody in this room, not to quote a Chicago song, but there's been a lot of Chicago music in our house lately as we've been moving stuff, look away man, look away baby, look away, right? Look away to Christ. That is the only answer for every one look. Robert Murray McShane said, "For every one look at yourself, look 10 times to Christ." 10 to Christ, one to self. 10 to Christ, one to self. That's the balance we need. Because if we look at self, we're gonna find one or two things. A lot to discourage us or a lot that we feel like we have to fudge before God to make him like us. But if you look to Christ, what you find is everything is there in him and everything's thrown in. You don't need to look anywhere else. It's all there. Does God love you? Look to Jesus. He gave his son for you. Does God like you? Look to Jesus. He made you in the image of Jesus. Of course he likes you. Is God gonna take care of you? Look to Jesus. Jesus is your daily bread, right? Look to Jesus at every point in time with every need you have. We look out of ourselves and we look to Jesus and there we find Jesus as the answer. Whether it's Jesus as prophet, we need a word from him, as priest when we need him to represent us or as king when we need him to rule over all things for us. Like in our family right now, as we're praying for Jeff a job, we're trusting in Christ as king for us. The king's gonna provide him a job. No human being's gonna provide Jeff with a job. We're trusting the king to do that. And when I go to Christ with my sins, I'm trusting him as a priest to represent me and take care of me. When I need a word, I go to him as prophet. He speaks to me through his word, you see. And so when we look away to Christ, we find everything. We find relief from our deserving, our regrets, our rejections, our control, our guilt, our status, our anxiety, our keeping up, our productivity, our meritocracy and even having to face death, we don't have to worry about any of it. Because it's all been answered in the justification that comes to us in Jesus. And you say, but Pastor David, my faith is weak. Jesus is great, but my faith is fogged. I believe that what you say is true, but help my unbelief that it's true for me. I believe it's true, but sometimes it's hard to believe it's true for me. Because I know me and I know how undeserving I am and how deserving I try to be. I got good news for you. Today, we're gonna take the gospel from hearing and we're gonna put it in your hands and we're gonna put it in your mouth and you're gonna eat it and you're gonna drink it. But more than that, we're gonna take the gospel and we're gonna water with it today too. And we're gonna see the gospel and act as three young boys get baptized today as well. So if you're struggling with whether or not you belong to the Lord, renew your baptismal covenant as you look to see these boys get baptized. And if you're still struggling after that, then take and eat and take and drink and know that as sure as you can taste that bread and taste that wine, God loves you in Christ and you are justified by looking to him no matter how strong the faith is. It's not in the strength of the faith. It's in the strength of the one that you are trusting. Amen. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, I pray that you seal to us today your word. Lead us to Jesus. I pray Jesus for everything. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.