Sermon: Pick the Sinner Out of the Lineup

Julius: The Holy Gospel according to Luke chapter 18, beginning at verse 9, and this will serve as the sermon text this morning. Jesus told this parable to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on others. Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this. God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all my income. However, the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but was beating his chest and saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other. Because every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise be to you, O Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord our rock and our redeemer. Amen. I'm gonna give you a lineup of people today, and I want you to pick the sinner out of the lineup, if you had to pick one. Let's start with the first guy. How about Daniel? We heard about him in the Old Testament reading. We didn't hear there about the most famous story involving Daniel, Daniel in the lion's den. Here's the kind of guy who will pray three times a day, even if it gets him thrown into prison and thrown to his death. Of course, he didn't die. And the emperor came to him the next day and called down to him and said, Daniel, servant of the most high God, was your God, whom you serve continually, able to save you. Well, that's a pretty good title. Daniel, servant of the most high God, whom he serves continually. Daniel's a guy in the book of Ezekiel who is in a list of people who are called righteous. We got Noah, we've got Daniel. So what do you think? If you had to pick. Out of a lineup of people, a sinner, would you pick him? Probably not, but we got other options. Let's move on to Paul, the Apostle Paul. We heard about him in our second reading. And he said, He worked harder than all the apostles. And it was true. He was the greatest missionary of all time. He wrote half the New Testament. If we had to pick a sinner out of the lineup, would we pick him? Hmm. Probably not. Let's move on to someone we found in our gospel reading. The Pharisee. And take away all your background knowledge of the parable and just judge this one outwardly. The Lord looks at the heart, but we sometimes can only see what's on the outside. And what do you see on the outside when it comes to the Pharisee? This is a guy who's in church, he's in the temple, and it says he's in the front. He's in the front pew. Well, we know if you're in the front pew, you're more sanctified. Good job, good job. It doesn't say what he was wearing, but you assume he's wearing his Sunday best. And what is he doing in church? He's praying. Well, that's good. Not only that, but he mentions some of the good things he does. He says that he fasts twice a week. That is above and beyond what was required in the Old Testament. He tithes everything he gets. That too, above and beyond what was required in the Old Testament. And not only is he doing good things, but he's not doing bad things. Nobody can look at him and say, there he is, there's the robber, the adulterer, the evildoer, the traitor, the tax collector. And so outwardly speaking, would you look at someone like this, an upstanding member of society and the church, and think, there he is, that's the sinner? Probably not. Especially when he's lined up to someone who is the perfect candidate. And that's who we saw next in our gospel reading the tax collector. The traitor. That everybody already looked down upon. And don't just think about what he looks like, think about what Luke, the gospel writer, says about him. However, the tax collector stood at a distance. Ephesians chapter two says, All of us who are by nature sinful are by nature far from God, separated from God. Well, here he is, he's showing it physically. He came to church, he came to the temple, but he's as far away from God's holiness as possible. Looks like a sinner to me. And what else? He would not even lift his eyes up to heaven. Like the person who knows he's done something wrong against you and so can't look you in the eyes. The tax collector's not looking around at other people. He's thinking about God, but he can't even look up at him because he's so ashamed at how far short he falls compared to God's glory. It says he's beating his chest. Beating his chest. Kind of like the monk in the cell who's hitting himself because he knows he deserves punishment for his sins. The tax collector here is giving God a head start. He says, I know, I know, I'll take care of it. He's beating his chest. And finally, what does he say? He outs himself in his last phrase. He says, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Well, there it is. If you had to pick someone out of the lineup, this guy's basically volunteering, and it is more strong than this. Sometimes you can pick out too much out of little grammatical details, but in the original language, it is less like he's saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner, and more like he's saying, God be merciful to me, the sinner. In other words, he's saying, if you had to pick one. Who's worse than everybody else? Who's more like a sinner than you are? Pick me. God be merciful to me, the sinner. Well, there we go. Problem solved, we took care of it. We found the sinner, so we can put him over there, and we can stand over here with the Pharisee and Daniel and Paul and everybody else who might not be perfect, but we're definitely better than that guy. That's how the Pharisee felt. We read about his perspective. The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. He looked at him and he said, Look, I'm giving God the credit. God, I thank you. There but for the grace of God go I, thank goodness, that I'm not like that. The only problem with joining the Pharisee and the group on this side away from the tax collector is that in this parable the tax collector isn't standing all by himself. The way the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to record this parable from Jesus makes clear that the tax collector is meant to make us think of someone else. Someone else that we definitely can't look down upon, and someone we don't want to be separated from. The tax collector makes us think of Jesus. He's not the only one who looks like he's off to the side and downcast and humble and sinful. Let's think about what the Pharisee's doing again. Does the Pharisee make you think of Jesus? Does the way he behave, the way maybe he's dressed, the way he's talking make you think of Jesus, really? Here's a guy in the temple, and he's completely ignoring what's happening there. All the sacrifices, all the things God is doing, God's righteous acts, instead, he's in the temple saying, I don't need that. Let me talk about all the good things I've done. Here's someone who comes into the temple and doesn't care about anybody else there. He only cares about himself. He prays for himself, not for anybody else. Does that make you think of Jesus? Meanwhile, we have the tax collector. And there's one specific thing the tax collector is doing here that really should make us think of Jesus. The Holy Spirit wants us to think about this when we see what he's saying. When he says, God be merciful to me, a sinner. God be merciful to me. And that word there is not the usual word used in the Bible for mercy. That word is saying, God, be pleased with me because of a sacrifice. It's saying, God, look at all the things that are happening in this temple. Don't look at me. Look at what you're doing, so that you can be merciful to me. And that's something that only Jesus does in the rest of the New Testament. Hebrews two, verse fourteen says it He had to become like his brothers in every way in order that he would be a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God, so that he could pay for the sins of the people. So that he could pay for the sins of the people. That's the word. What do we find Jesus doing that the tax collector is doing? The tax collector's in the temple, and what is he doing? He's pleading for mercy based on the sacrifices there. And who's the only other person who does this in the New Testament? Not just a high priest, but the high priest, Jesus, who comes into the temple as that merciful and faithful high priest, becomes just like his brothers in every way, and pays for the sins of the people. In other words, he says, God be merciful to them because of my sacrifice. And so when you look closely at the tax collector and the Pharisee, what do you see? Well, you see someone who looks a lot like Jesus. Or put better, when you look at Jesus, you see someone who's made himself to look a lot like the tax collector, the sinner. When you look back through, what do you see? Yes, the tax collector is far from heaven. He's at a distance. Well, what did Jesus do? Jesus, who is in heaven, the only person who rightly could look down on everybody else and stay separated from them, he comes down, he leaves heaven to come down to us. The tax collector beats himself. And Luke, just a couple chapters after this, uses the same word to talk about how Jesus is beat. beaten for us because of our sins. The tax collector doesn't come saying, I'm so good. No, he trusts in God. And Jesus to the very last moment, he looks up to his heavenly father and he trusts in him. The tax collector comes pleading for mercy. And Jesus comes to the cross as the high priest and as the sacrifice and doesn't look down on everybody else. Instead, he pleads for mercy. Based on his sacrifice, he says, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Jesus looks like the tax collector. In other words, if you had to pick out a sinner, Jesus is saying, pick me. And what does this mean for us? Second Corinthians explains it further. God made him who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. When the tax collector comes forward, when any person comes forward and says, I'm the sinner, Jesus says, put your hand down, it's me. God made me the sinner. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. And what does that mean for us? So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And notice what it says there. It doesn't say he, it doesn't say I, it says we. In other words, the tax collector is not by himself, he's in a group. A group of people who receive the righteousness of God. And who's that group of people? Well, Jesus says it's everyone, everyone who trusts in me. He concludes his parable by saying, Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Well now we get to recategorize the people in this story and the people in our list. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everybody who humbles himself will be exalted. Well let's look back at Daniel. Yes, you can look at Daniel and say comparatively, he was a righteous, wonderful man. But what does Daniel say about himself? Well, you heard about it in the Old Testament reading. Daniel says, We have sinned, we have acted wickedly, yours is the righteousness, and ours is the shame. In other words, if Daniel had to pick a sinner out of the lineup, he comes forward and says, It's me. And Jesus says, Aha! Everyone who humbles himself will be exalted. And he shows up in the same line of sinners as Daniel and says, Put your hands down, it's me. And you get to be righteous. What about Paul? Paul, the hardest working missionary, wrote half the New Testament, a wonderful man, but what does he say about himself? We heard it in our second reading. He says, I am less than the least of all the apostles. In another place, he says, I am the chief of sinners. In other words, if he had to pick a sinner out of the lineup, he would raise his hand and say, It's me. And Jesus says, Ooh, there's another one. Who humbles himself and trusts in me, and he puts Paul's hands down and he says, No, I'm the sinner. You are righteous. The tax collector. He comes into that temple, he stands far away, and he says, God be merciful to me, the sinner. And Jesus says, No, I'm the sinner. You go home exalted. The great twist of the parable. When humans would look at the lineup of humanity here and pick out the tax collector as the sinner, Jesus says, this man, this man goes home justified rather than the other. So Pick the center out of the lineup. Is this how you want to go through life? Looking around at people, seeing who's better, who's worse, line them up. No. When you trust in Jesus as your righteousness, you don't pick the sinner out of the lineup. You join the lineup of sinners. Because you find in the lineup of sinners that Jesus has joined you there. And you get to practice this when you come up to communion and you line up with a lineup of Sinners, and you don't look to the left and right and say, I'm better than you, I'm worse than you. No, you all line up and say, I'm the sinner, and Jesus says, No, no, no, come here. Come near to God's holiness, brought near by the blood of Christ. Come to me, because you can come a sinner. But when you come into the lineup of sinners, and you're lined up next to Jesus, you don't go home that way. When you come as the sinner, Jesus sends you home justified. How you go through life? Joining that line. Saying, there, because of the grace of God am I, in the lineup of sinners upon whom Jesus has had mercy. There, because of the grace of God, go I. The lineup of people who don't trust in myself, but who trust in Jesus. So come, yes, come the sinner. But trusting in Jesus, know how you go home. Go home justified. Amen.

Luke 18 · chapter mention