King & Kingdom Come: Have Mercy on Me

Welcome to an audio teaching from Windsor Park Baptist Church in Auckland, New Zealand.

If you would like to look at the message notes or see some questions for reflection that take the lead from today's teaching, head to our website, windsapark.org.nz and head to the online tab where you'll see services and series, and you can download different resources from there.

Thanks for joining us, and we hope you're encouraged by today's teaching.

If we haven't met before, my name is Michaela and I'm the Youth Ministry Coordinator here at Windsor.

One thing most people pretty quickly learn about me is that I'm an avid reader.

I'm the type of person who celebrates the end of semester and all those compulsory readings by finding a really chunky novel to dive into rather than taking a break from reading altogether.

I've read many books over the years, both novels and nonfiction ones that have shaped me.

But one of the books that has haunted me the most is The Screwtape Letters by C.S.

Lewis, which if you haven't read is a fantastic book to get into.

If you haven't read it, the premise probably does sound a little strange.

It's written from the perspective of a head demon who is writing letters to a demon in training on how to tempt and corrupt the human he has been assigned to.

It's a rather confronting read, and there are various passages that often still come through my mind.

And today, before we get to Luke, I want to share one of those passages with you in which the head demon tells his trainee demon, the most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he's making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion.

No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue I gather, not even the expectation of an endowment of grace for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation.

In this section, the head demon expresses his displeasure that this human they are trying to tempt no longer sees God or God's provision as complex philosophical concepts, but as a daily reality to revel in.

There are no big proclamations or bold statements of intent, but a quiet willingness to rely hour by hour, minute by minute, on the grace provided by Jesus.

I first read this as a 20-year-old who spent a lot of time making big promises to God, so it struck me deeply.

To think that one of the greatest markers of spiritual maturity isn't becoming more confident in ourselves, but becoming more aware of how deeply we need Jesus really challenged me the first time I read this.

And as we read through what Luke has to say to us this week, I hope these words might challenge us together all over again.

So let's leave Lewis behind for a moment and turn to Luke 18, starting with verse 10.

He, Jesus, also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus.

Thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week.

I give a tenth of all my income.

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.

For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.

By this point in Luke's gospel, stories like this have become familiar.

There's a wealthy, self-important person who thinks they've got it all together, and they're upstaged by the humble, unexpected person who truly understands the kingdom of God.

By now, we're well aware of Luke's tendency to tell stories that overturn social expectations and highlight those on the margins.

So what makes a story different?

One of the unique features of this parable is that it's a story about approach.

This isn't Jesus reaching out to someone.

There isn't an invitation to dinner.

These people are coming to God.

Luke is no longer looking at who is invited, but how we approach the open invitation to Jesus.

The Pharisee comes and Luke tells us that he is standing by himself, praying.

Or as some translations suggest, he is literally praying to himself.

He lists everything he's done, every reason he believes he's better than everyone else, and he's so confident in his own righteousness that he walks right past the tax collector and into the inner courts, the holiest part of the temple.

The Pharisee comes to the temple, supposedly to worship God, but everything about his words and actions reveals that he never really turns towards God at all.

Instead, he turns inward.

He looks to himself.

God doesn't need to be part of the equation at all.

And then we meet the tax collector.

He remains at a distance, outside the temple courts, beating his chest, a sign of anguish, and simply cries, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

And Jesus says that it is this man who goes home justified.

The cries of this tax collector seem to me to echo the cries of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, when he says, Woe is me, I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

Yet my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.

Both Isaiah and the tax collector come into the presence of holiness and respond in the same way, Woe is me.

They both shout, Here I am, standing before the dwelling place of the Lord, but I am unclean.

I cannot stand in this holy place.

Both Isaiah and the tax collector see God and his full majesty, and in seeing God rightly, they see themselves rightly.

Not as despicable or with self-hatred, but they are aware of how much they lack and how little they have to offer in front of their holy, perfect Creator God.

The tax collector isn't commended in this parable because he hates himself.

He's commended because he sees God clearly enough to recognize his own need for God's mercy.

And I wonder if this feels uncomfortable to some of us.

I think there's been a push in recent years to see God is primarily friendly and approachable.

And I'm not saying this isn't true, but I do think it might not be the whole picture.

Because it's very hard to come to God beating our chests and crying out for mercy, aware of how little we have and can offer, when the only concept we have of God is that he is our friend.

I wonder if we forget that he is also holy and wonderful, the Alpha and the Omega.

It's very easy to become self-important before God when we forget he is not only the one who touches lepers, but also the one who sets every star in the sky.

When we forget he is not only the God who eats and drinks and laughs, but also the God from whom all life comes, who gives every creature its breath.

And before anyone starts to complain about this picture of God maybe being a bit too separate or distant, Luke doesn't leave us here, and neither will I.

This isn't the only picture of approaching God we get.

It's one tile and a much larger mosaic.

And the very next story gives us one of the best-known images of Jesus in the Gospels.

It says, people were bringing even infants to him so that he might touch them.

And when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it.

But Jesus called for them and said, Let the little children come to me and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

This is probably a scene we've heard so many times that we each have our own picture in our minds as we hear it.

Maybe it's a smiling Jesus holding a smiling child on his lap, or if you've actually had children, you might have the more realistic image of Jesus taking them and promptly being used as a climbing gym.

Just as we imagine the scene differently, we also draw different meanings from it.

Some of us see Jesus' gentleness, others see his welcome, others might hear a lesson about children themselves.

And it's one of the beauties of a scene like this.

It does speak to us in many ways.

But for a moment, I want us to set aside our favorite picture and ask what the scene would have meant to the disciples standing there watching this all unfold.

Because when we think of children, we probably think of words like cute, innocent, precious, and maybe chaotic come to mind.

But for first century Jewish men living under Roman culture, children represented something quite different.

They were dependent, they were unable to contribute, they had little social status and no protection.

Jesus isn't simply inviting the disciples to admire this picture.

He's inviting them to learn from it, to look at it and see what it means to receive the kingdom of God like a child.

And I do think it's really important that Jesus uses that word receive.

It's not build, not earn, not even enter, receive.

It's a remarkably passive word.

Watching Jesus holding these children almost evokes the image of an inheritance.

A child doesn't earn an inheritance or prove they're worthy of it.

They simply receive what is freely given.

A child can represent many things, but here I think Jesus is drawing our attention to one in particular: dependence, coming to Jesus in need, coming with open hands, coming with nothing to offer except ourselves, because that is how the kingdom is received, as grace, as mercy, as something we only need to open our empty hands and receive.

The story of the tax collector and the Pharisee and the small children are both poignant in their own right.

But when Luke brings them together and sits them alongside each other, he shows us something important about the kingdom of Jesus.

The kingdom isn't received by those who have the most to offer.

It's received by those who know they have nothing to offer.

When we have nothing, that is when we are most willing to come before God open to receiving.

A child might grow up and no longer need their mother's milk or a father's hand in theirs as they cross the road.

We might grow into our gifts and talents and be able to bring them into the kingdom, but we will never outgrow needing Jesus.

We will never outgrow our approach to him primarily being one of dependence.

No matter how hard we work, we can never work ourselves out of that need.

We can never go grow greater than that need.

And now we come to the third story in this chapter.

This time, instead of a child, Luke introduces us to a young ruler.

A certain ruler asks Jesus, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good but God alone.

You know the commandments, and Jesus proceeds to list all the commandments.

And then the young ruler replies, I have kept all of these since my youth.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, There is still one thing lacking.

Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come, follow me.

But when he heard this, the young man became sad because he was very rich.

Jesus looked at him and said, How hard is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God?

Indeed, it is easier for a camel to to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Those who heard it said, said, Then who can be saved?

And Jesus replied, What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.

When we hear this story, it's often preached as a call to try harder, to slim down our desires and our wants and our possessions, so that we might somehow make ourselves small enough to squeeze through the eye of the needle.

We are told to work off all our baggage so we can fit in where others cannot.

But if that's all we hear, I think we make the same mistake as the rich ruler himself, and we overlook Jesus' final words.

Those who heard it said, then who can be saved?

He replied, What is impossible for mortals is possible with God.

The rich ruler hears Jesus' invitation and immediately evaluates it in terms of his own ability.

Can I do this?

Can I give enough?

Can I become the sort of person Jesus wants?

Everything is measured by his own strength.

Maybe you're wondering about your journey of following Jesus and asking yourself if you have enough willpower to stay at it because it currently feels so hard with everything else life is throwing at you.

Maybe you're sitting there wondering if you can sacrifice what Jesus is asking you to, or if you can become that forgiving, kind, generous, and loving person you know you are called to be.

But what Jesus is saying here is that this young man's own strength is irrelevant.

No one's strength is enough.

It is not striving that Jesus is suggesting to this young man.

He's inviting him to receive the grace that makes obedience possible in the first place.

Jesus is not asking us to work harder so we become strong enough to do these things, but to recognize that even our obedience, our ability to follow God isn't something we achieve through our own strength.

From beginning to end, it is sustained by grace.

We are not tasked with learning how to thread ourselves through the eye of a needle.

We are tasked with releasing this journey with Jesus, being able to come with him, walk with him, live with him, follow him, which can only be done through what we receive from our Creator.

The rich young ruler walks away disappointed because he comes to Jesus wanting a trick, a hack, a technique to master, just as he has mastered all the commandments.

He wants Jesus to give him the missing piece of the puzzle so he can complete it himself.

But Jesus isn't just another good teacher offering better advice.

He is the good God offering himself.

And at this point we see that even this posture of dependence and of need isn't something we're left to discover on our own.

Because Luke now makes a seemingly surprising turn, and he interrupts these encounters with Jesus' clearest prediction yet of his coming death.

We read in Luke that he then took the twelve aside and said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished, for he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon.

After they have fogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.

But they all understood nothing about these things.

In fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

If this feels like an odd place for Luke to mention Jesus' death, you're not alone.

Even the disciples don't understand what's happening.

On the surface, the section feels disconnected, but I think their confusion is exactly the point.

Currently in Luke, Jesus is approaching Jerusalem, and he is almost at the city gates.

The crowds are about to welcome him like a king, laying down palm leaves and clothes as he enters.

It seems like he is walking towards triumph and victory, but Jesus knows he's walking towards a cross.

Jesus speaks to his disciples about suffering, about loss, about being brought low.

The dissonance in this moment is tangible and it is intentional, because grace generally looks weaker than we expect.

The disciples are still expecting strength and are still looking for power, but Jesus is trying to show them again that the kingdom comes through humil through humility, through the giving of oneself and embracing dependence.

Jesus does not want us to come to him on our knees for the sake of it, but because Jesus humbles himself before he ever asks us to.

Jesus calls us to come to him in dependence because he has also walked that path.

In all his godly power, he chose to walk the path of dependence himself when he became human and submitted himself to death on a cross.

And with that in mind, Luke introduces the final encounter in this chapter of a man who finally understood stands what all these stories have been teaching.

As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.

When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening.

They told him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

Then he shouted, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Those who were in front ordered him to be quiet, but he shouted even more loudly, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him, and when he came near, he asked him, What do you want me to do for you?

He said, Lord, let me see again.

Jesus said to him, Receive your sight, your faith has saved you.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.

The blind man in this story experiences a miracle, but he is also a role model of discipleship.

It's not because he's mastered some sort of technique, it is because this blind man is acutely aware of his position as he approaches Jesus.

He is aware of his dependence, he is aware of his need for God's great mercy, and he is fully aware that he desperately needs the grace of Jesus and he cries out for it.

This final section in Luke is not here to remind us that we are small and must act like it in front of God.

It is here to remind us that we are small, yet we are given so much, so freely.

It is telling us that every time we think we've got somewhere in our own strength, by our own hands, we need to look again.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell was once giving a lecture about the creation of the world when an elderly woman interrupted him.

She insisted that the world wasn't suspended in space, like he said, but instead rested on the back of a giant turtle.

Russell asked, Well, what's that turtle standing on?

Another turtle, she replied.

And beneath that, another turtle.

Eventually he asked, So what's at the very bottom?

She smiled and said to him, My dear, it's turtles all the way down.

Now this probably seems like a weird story to tell you, but I actually think it ties in beautifully.

Because we often approach God looking for the point where God's welcome to us, his invitation to us, starts relying on what we can do.

Many of us spend our Christian lives looking for the point where grace runs out and our performance takes over.

We keep wondering when God will finally say, right now it's your turn.

Most of us might not identify with the Pharisee bragging in front of God, but I suspect many of us identify with the rich young ruler.

We quietly assume that yes, Jesus has saved us by grace, but now the rest is up to us.

Now I've got to become the sort of Christian who deserves to stay here.

But it isn't just grace at the beginning.

It isn't grace sitting on top of all of our achievements.

It is grace all the way down.

Mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace.

You can dig as deeply as you like beneath the Christian life, and you'll never find anything holding it up except the grace of God.

The only question left is whether we're willing to come with empty hands, knowing that we need that mercy and are willing.

Simply to receive it.

The blind man doesn't just demonstrate our way to approach Jesus.

His story is the most visible reminder to us that grace doesn't leave people where they are.

The tax collector goes home justified.

The children receive the kingdom.

The blind man follows Jesus, glorifying God.

Dependence itself isn't the goal.

Union with Jesus is dependence, it is simply the doorway that leads us to receive that grace.

As we grow into Christ, we don't outgrow dependence.

We become more aware of it.

Maturity isn't making those lavish promises of perpetual virtue, but learning to receive the daily and hourly pittance of grace.

In that sense, spiritual maturity is not increasing self-confidence before God, but increasing confidence in God's grace and mercy one moment at a time.

As we finish this morning, I'd love for you to join me in breath prayer.

It's a form of prayer that the church has been doing for a long time.

Breathing in and out while repeating a piece of scripture in our hits.

One of the most famous breath prayers is actually the cry of the blind man and the tax collector in this passage.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

As we breathe in and out with this verse, it's a reminder for us that we are reliant on God's mercy too, on Jesus' grace, minute by minute, with each breath, asking us to trust that God will fill our lungs with the next.

You might like to start by stilling yourselves and then slowly breathing in and out.

In and out.

And as you breathe in, thinking Lord Jesus Christ and out, have mercy on me.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Lord Jesus Christ.

Have mercy on me.

You might like to take this moment to continue this breath prayer.

Or to offer your own prayer to Jesus.

Consider maybe what you've been trying to hold with your own weight and it's making you grow weary.

Or maybe where you've been thinking you have to earn what God really gives.

Where you've been trying to be strong, but Jesus is inviting you to come weak.

Take this moment and this next song that we go into to spend some time bringing yourself before Jesus.

Not hiding or denying your need, but embracing it.

Knowing it is there that Jesus longs to meet you.

Oh your mercy never fails me.

All my days I've been held in your hands from the moment that I wake up until I lay my head.

I will see how the goodness of God.

You have let me see the fire.

You look close like no other.

I'm gonna you as a father.

I'm gonna you let's fit a happy in the life in happy face in happy soul, so good with a big breath that I was too of a goodness of God Your goodness is running after, it's running after me Your goodness is running after, it's running after me With my life without surrender Your goodness that's running up, it's one up to me You're good, it's one of that, it's running up to me Your goodness that's running up It's running up to me With my life let me down I surrender I give you a play Your goodness is running after It's running after me And all my life you have been faithful And all my life you have been so so good with every breath that I am made I will see of the goodness of God I will see of the goodness of God.

Thanks for joining us at Windsor Online this week.

I hope you got something out of today's uh service.

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God bless.