A Humble and Contrite Heart

The scripture reading this morning is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

And I will be reading the scripture passage nine through fourteen.

Some of you most of you probably were here last week and you're thinking to yourself, wait a second, isn't that what Pastor Scott preached?

It is.

And as I was talking to some of the other pastors, they said, you know, that'd be great because if you say the exact same thing as Scott did, that means they really needed to hear it.

And if you say something totally different, that means they really need to study the passage and figure it out.

But uh I intentionally did not listen to his sermon online yet.

I was going to wait till today.

Um so just see you all, most of you have been here, were here last week, um, as he delved into this passage, and so um trust that that will lay a good foundation for what we're going to look at today.

You can find the passage on page 877, by the way, in a Pew Bible.

And uh, as we mentioned, each week, if you don't own a Bible, please take that Bible home with you and uh bring it back each week.

We'll study it together and read it on your own.

Uh it is the word of life.

Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 9.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

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, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus.

I fast twice a week, 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 beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

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.

This is God's word.

Larry Osborne, a pastor in the free church out in California, writes in his book Accidental Pharisees.

He says, This a few years ago I had the opportunity to speak at a friend's church.

I started by telling everyone how happy I was to be there.

I then shared how their pastor had told me that his church was full of Pharisees.

I told them that after spending a few days with the staff and key leaders, that I definitely agree.

They were quite possibly the most pharisaical church I had ever been to.

The room grew strangely quiet.

The awkward silence that comes when you don't know whether to be angry with the idiot who just said something offensive or to feel sorry for the poor slob.

The room grew even quieter when I asked if something was wrong.

Finally, there were a couple of stifled laughs and a few nods.

Eventually, the rest of the room began to figure out what I had done.

I hadn't misspoken.

I was simply having some fun at their expense.

I was just messing with them.

He said, so I asked another question.

How many of you considered my introduction to be an insult instead of a compliment?

Nearly every hand was raised.

He said, I went on to explain that calling somebody a Pharisee wasn't always considered a social faux pas.

In fact, in Jesus' day, it would have been a great way to start a sermon.

I was just a couple thousand years too late.

Today, when most of us hear the word Pharisee, we conjure up images of hypocritical, narrow-minded, puffed-up spiritual losers.

But in Jesus' day, being called a Pharisee was a badge of honor.

It was a compliment, not a slam.

Osborne writes, that's because first century Pharisees excelled in everything we admire spiritually.

They were zealous for God, completely committed to their faith, they were theologically astute, masters of the biblical text, they were fastidiously obeyed every, even the most obscure commands.

They even made up actual rules just in case they were missing anything.

Their embrace of spiritual disciplines was second to none.

He said, yes, they could be a bit harsh and arrogant at times, but most of their contemporaries took it in stride.

Jesus, in fact, when he was talking about righteousness, if you remember in Matthew chapter 5, he says that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will in no way see the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

The Pharisees externally were righteous.

They were the holy ones, the pious ones, the upright ones.

And yet Jesus points out here that they trusted in themselves and treated others with contempt.

And the question that I wonder, and the question that Osborne posed in his book, is, could we be accidental Pharisees?

Now we wouldn't do it intentionally, we wouldn't try to go down this road, but is it possible that we fall into some of the same traps as the Pharisees did in Jesus' day?

Who are some of the people that are often treated with contempt, even among the Christian community?

Oftentimes those who have been divorced or the sexually struggling, or the theologically other or the less gifted, or the less passionate or the less fortunate, or the culturally other or the spiritually immature, or the non-academic or the non or the uneducated.

Ironically, we often tend to look down most on those we consider Pharisees.

Well, the text here says two men went up to pray.

Jesus here is telling us that he is giving this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

This passage is familiar to us, and it better be because Scott just preached on it.

But it talks about two men that go up to pray.

When we read this passage, we read it twenty plus centuries removed from when Jesus gave it.

In our mind, as we read this, we see the Pharisee, and he's the villain of the story.

We know that from the get-go.

We read this and we see the Pharisee immediately when we read that word, we think villain.

And when we see the tax collector knowing this story and knowing how Jesus is so gracious to work in the least desirable, we hold him up as the unsung hero.

But the people hearing this parable would not have thought that at all.

They would have heard the word Pharisee and immediately conjured up role models of people who were the most spiritual, the most holy, the most knowledgeable.

And they would have heard tax collector and thought the most vile, disgusting, the consummate other, the scum of the earth, the dredge of society, the reject, the reviled sinner, abandoned by God.

He would have been the outcast and the unwanted.

He was worse, he was a vile, disgusting traitor.

The tax collector was one who had betrayed his own countrymen and had sold himself out to the occupying Roman Empire to collect taxes from his fellow Jews.

And he could collect extra taxes on top of that and keep it for himself.

One man had in his commentary said, you know, a modern parable might be the pastor and the politician.

In their minds, the tax collector was one of the lowest of the low.

Think of those people who in your mind, or maybe in the minds of the culture, who are viewed as the most disgusting.

Perhaps drug dealers who push uh their drugs on others and corrupt the young.

Perhaps people who beat up women or prostitutes and pimps and practicing homosexuals.

Who do you think in your heart of hearts is outside the reach of God's grace?

That was the attitude that the people in Jesus' day had towards the tax collectors.

One commentator said that in hearing this story, the Pharisee would have been the one that you would have wanted as your neighbor.

And the tax collector would have been the one that you would have not wanted anywhere around you.

And it says they went up to the temple to pray.

This would have been a common practice for the Pharisee.

He would have been well known for his religious life, for his devotion to God for going to the temple to pray, for praying during certain prescribed times of the day.

Not so the tax collector.

It would have been shocking in Jesus' day to hear that the tax collector had gone up to the temple and prayed.

Well, look at the Pharisees' prayer.

It was a self-referential prayer.

Notice what it says here in verse 11.

It says, The Pharisee standing by himself prayed.

Now it could be, there's two ways that this passage can be translated.

As it's here in the ESV, the Pharisee standing by himself prayed that perhaps he viewed himself as so much superior, cut above everyone else, that he went to the front of the line, as it were.

He went as close as he could, as he was allowed to, to go and pray.

He didn't mingle with the commoners, he didn't mingle with the sinners, those who were who were holding back, that he was too good for others.

And perhaps he stood by himself, separating himself because he was a cut above everyone else.

But if you notice in the footnote of the ESV, there's a second way that this can be translated.

It can be translated that standing, he prayed to himself.

It could be translated that the Pharisees standing prayed to himself.

And I really think that Jesus was intentionally using these words to convey that reality.

Perhaps he was standing alone, but when he was praying, notice his prayer.

He talks momentarily to God, but then everything else was a recitation of how great he is.

He prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men.

And then he goes on to list it.

He begins to give himself a pat on the back.

He begins to read his list of accomplishments, of how great he was.

In fact, uh one other author said that he was so good, maybe he was trying to recruit God as his assistant.

And notice what he says here.

This is what he views himself.

He says, I thank you that I am not like other men.

He viewed himself as superior over sinners.

He lists some here extortioners, unjust, adulterers.

He compared himself to other people.

He compared himself to all of these others that were around.

And he said, I thank you that I'm not like them.

That I don't, uh I don't uh when I compare myself to them, I'm so much better than them.

And then he says, and even this tax collector.

And again, perhaps he glanced over his shoulder to the tax collector that was standing behind him.

Perhaps he said it loud enough so that others could hear.

Maybe he even said it loud enough for the tax collector to hear so that everyone would know how much superior he was.

He excelled in external righteousness.

Notice what he says here.

He says, I fast twice a week.

The Old Testament only prescribed one fast a year.

There was only one time in the year that people were required to fast, and this man he fasted twice a week.

He fasted a hundred times more than was required by the Old Testament.

And then he says that he gives a tenth of all that he has.

So he gives a tithe, a 10% of all that he had.

That was the requirement.

But the requirement in the Old Testament applied to certain produce, but not other forms of income.

By tithing everything, the Pharisees said that proved to himself that he was a devout man.

Like Jesus said in Luke chapter 11, verse 42, that uh some of them were so fastidious in their giving that they even tithed a tenth of their kitchen spices.

Luke 11:42

This man expected himself to be saved by his good works.

He he thought he was righteous before God because of his good works, because of the things that he had done, because of the life that he had lived, because of his righteousness externally, because he didn't commit the flagrant sins of others, he thought that he was righteous before God.

He expected to be saved, to have a relationship with God and to get into heaven by his good works.

Charles Spurgeon quipped that this man thought he was too good to be saved.

He was too good to need salvation.

This man thought that he wasn't like other men.

He thought he wasn't a sinner.

He thought in his heart of hearts that he was not a sinner in need of God's grace.

Now, somebody asked me this week as I as we were talking about this passage, I was talking with some others about it and said, Well, how is this any different from what we say, there but for the grace of God go I?

Isn't that what this man is praying?

That he just says, he looks around and he says, Thank you, that I'm not like other men, I'm not like the extortioners, the unjust, the adulterers, or like this tax collector?

Maybe he was just saying, There but for the grace of God go I.

This is absolutely not what he was saying.

Because to say, there but for the grace of God go I is saying this.

You look at others and you realize that you are as fallen, as broken, as sinful, as prone and liable to sin as every other human being.

And the only thing that keeps you from moving in that direction isn't your righteousness or your goodness.

It is God's grace alone.

And so to say there, but for the grace of God go I is to recognize your propensity towards sin and temptation and wandering and straying.

It's a realization that only God's grace keeps you from being that vile sinner that you very well could be if it wasn't for God.

But that wasn't the attitude of this man.

This man looked at himself and he thought within himself he had righteousness and goodness, and that that was going to save him on the last day.

His problem, you know, we read this, and the first thing that comes to mind is we think about the Pharisees and we think about legalists.

We think about those people who think that by keeping rules or keeping the law or making up new rules that they can be righteous before God.

But I would submit to you that this man didn't focus on the law too much, he didn't focus on the law enough, he didn't focus on the law enough, he focused on the law too little.

Now, how how can I think that?

This man was externally righteous, but this man did not focus on the law enough.

And here's why I say that.

God's moral law, the moral law that is a reflection of God's character, of his nature.

If we were to focus on the reality of who God is, on his holiness, on his purity, on his call to us, Jesus said, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

That God's standard is absolute righteousness in our thoughts, in our attitudes, in our actions, in our behaviors.

We could pick any sin that we could think of, lying, stealing, cheating, lust.

And if we began to evaluate it in light of God's holiness, in light of his character, very quickly we would begin to see how much we fall short of God's standard.

You see, the problem with this man, the only reason he could think that he was righteous was because he didn't look at God's holiness and righteousness enough.

He compared himself to everybody else.

And so he thought he was righteous.

His problem wasn't that he looked at the law too much, the problem was he looked at the law too little and didn't realize that he couldn't keep it by himself.

But then we have the second man, the tax collector.

And this is the prayer of a broken man.

We saw the prayer of a proud man, but here's the prayer of a broken man.

It says, this 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.

In Luke's gospel, he has a fascinating way of using spatial distance to communicate spiritual truth.

If you remember in the story of the prodigal son, the prodigal son, you had two sons, one son who had gone off to a far country, and the other son who had stayed close to home.

But if you remember what happened in that story when the other son was still a far way off, when he was long in the distance, the father saw him and ran to him and embraced him, and that one who was far off was brought near.

And then you saw the the other son who was there the whole time.

But by the end of the parable, that one son who was close was on the outside of the party, far away from the heart of his father.

We see that same spatial reality here.

Here was the Pharisee who was standing in his mind close to God, but we find in the final analysis he was far off the mark.

And here, this other man who is standing far off, and yet he goes away justified before God.

He's standing far off.

Here we have a man who is standing far away, but he he prays to God, and it's a prayer that brings salvation.

He understands, we find from his words here that he understands what the other man doesn't.

He understands God's holiness and his sinfulness.

He prays, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

His very posture expresses the attitude of his heart.

He beat his breast, not in an attempt at self-punishment or penance to earn God's favor, but as a genuine expression of the depths of repentance and sorrow in his heart over sin.

Look at the word he says here.

He says, Be merciful to me.

The word here that's translated merciful is a very rich word in the original language.

It's a word that could be translated and elsewhere is translated by the word propitiation.

And propitiation is a very technical term, but it's a word that is worth knowing and understanding.

The word propitiation is the word that he uses here.

What he really says here is be propitious to me.

Well, what does this word mean?

What does this word propitiation mean?

What it means is this the word is used to describe the turning aside of God's wrath.

It's a word that's used to describe making atonement for sin and turning away the righteous wrath of God.

What this man is acknowledging is that God is holy and that he is a sinner, and that he is not asking for justice, he is asking for mercy.

He is asking for God to turn aside his wrath that he rightly deserves, that is for him, and to turn it aside for another.

And Jesus saying this is it knows that this is exactly what Jesus is going to do.

This is why he came.

Jesus Christ came to bore the wrath of the bear the wrath of God that we deserve.

That uh he's asking that God's wrath would be turned aside.

And Jesus said, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Literally, what this man prays, he says, Be propitious to me the sinner.

Again, in the original language, there's a definite article here.

As he's describing himself, uh, he says, Uh, God, I am praying, Father, turn aside your wrath that I deserve.

You are holy and righteous, and I am a sinner.

I deserve justice, I deserve punishment, I deserve to pay the penalty for my sin, but I am praying for mercy that you will turn aside your wrath from me to another, for I am the sinner.

And he recognizes the depth of the reality of his sin, that he was a sinner.

That he was very much like the apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost.

1 Timothy 1:15

He doesn't compare himself to anybody else.

He doesn't look to other people, he doesn't evaluate his righteousness by finding somebody that's worse than him.

He looks at himself and he looks at God and he recognizes that he needs mercy, that he needs grace, that he needs forgiveness, that he is a sinner and he needs salvation.

And Jesus tells us that this is a prayer that was answered.

Notice what he says in verse 14.

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

Now, that doesn't shock us like it should.

That doesn't grip us like it should.

Imagine if the story was uh the the preacher and the drug pusher.

Uh imagine uh if this story uh was the what was the was the pastor and the prostitute or the pimp.

Uh the the reality, the shock that Jesus hearers would have gathered from this is hard for us to understand when we read this story.

He says that the Pharisee, the separated one, the holy one, the fastidious one, the knowledgeable one, he went away still in his sins.

He went away unjustified, unforgiven, still under the judgment of God.

And the tax collector, the consummate other, the despised one.

He went to his house justified.

And Jesus says, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

This is a salvation message.

This is a message about salvation.

Well, let me address some some closing thoughts, some closing considerations.

And uh Scott and I did talk for about two minutes on this passage uh on Tuesday as we were passing in the hallway, uh, literally for about two minutes, and uh, you know, one of the things he said was, Well, I talked about how this applies and how it doesn't apply uh to us, and those were along the same lines of what I was thinking of.

Um this man, should the tax collector's response be our response before God?

And let me answer this unequivocally: yes, no, and yes.

So that's my response.

Yes, no, and yes.

Should this man's response, should the tax collector's response, be our response before God?

Well, my first yes is this.

If you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, if you don't know that you have been forgiven, if you do not know that you are going to go to be with God in heaven when you die, then yes, this is the posture and the attitude that we ought to have before God in recognizing our sin and in turning to Him in faith and coming to Christ.

It's not a matter, as one author said, of personal responsibility, but it is a personal response.

Convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit, we need to see that our sin for what it is: offensive and odious to a holy God.

But we must also see the grace of God and the cross of Christ, that Jesus died in our place and took the full penalty for our sin.

It is Christ's death alone that pays the penalty for all of our sin.

And so for the person who does not have a relationship with Christ, yes, this is the hard attitude that one ought to have in coming to God, in realizing that God is holy and just, we don't deserve forgiveness, but that Jesus Christ took the penalty for our sins.

But then, secondly, my answer is no.

That the attitude of this man shouldn't be our attitude in this way.

If you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, if you have asked him to forgive you of your sins because you've put your trust in his death alone for eternal life, then you need to know that you have been forgiven and accepted in the beloved.

That we need to realize that we are children of God, that God is our heavenly Father and that He delights in us.

That we have been accepted, that we never have to cower in fear and shame before our Heavenly Father who loves us.

We've been forgiven and we're clothed with the righteousness of Christ, that we stand before God, standing on grace, not because of our righteousness, but because of the righteousness that has been given to us through Christ's righteous life and his death on the cross.

That we have been forgiven, that we are the apple of God's eye.

And any view of God as angry and distant and disappointed and distracted or wrathful towards you as a believer is wrong.

It is a misunderstanding and a mistake of the person of God the Father towards you, his child.

God knows you fully and he loves you completely.

In fact, the Bible says that God rejoices over you.

In Zephaniah chapter 3, verse 17, it says, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will reason who will save.

Zephaniah 3:17

He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing.

In Isaiah 62, 5 it says, For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you.

And as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

That we need to recognize that Jesus Christ came to reveal the heart of the Father.

So all of the love, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, mercy that we see in the person of Jesus Christ is a reflection of your heavenly Father's love towards you.

And so, as a model for the Christian, the posture of this man is not the posture that we have.

We come to Christ this way.

But once we are in Christ, we need to recognize that God accepts you, and he doesn't love you any more when you are doing the right things, and he doesn't love you any less when you are doing the wrong things, because his love for you is perfect in Christ.

And so God the Father's disposition towards you never changes when you are in Christ.

And so we never come cowering and fearful before God because he is our loving Father.

But then, thirdly, in one sense, I would say yes, again.

We don't come cowering to God, but we rejoice because we're accepted.

But we always remember that we're accepted by grace, not because that we are so good.

In other words, we come with joyful humility at our sin and God's amazing grace.

I love the quotes by Jack Miller and his discipleship manual called Sonship.

The first two lines of it, the first two bullet points are this.

It says, Cheer up.

The gospel is far greater than you imagine.

And then the second one says, Cheer up, you're worse than you think you are.

I love that.

Cheer up, you're worse than you think you are.

But cheer up, the gospel is far greater than you imagine.

This is the heart of humility.

Broken, recognizing our sinfulness, that we're worse than we think we are, that we have no grounds or basis for pride.

We embrace our brokenness so that we can be embraced by the love of our Heavenly Father just the way we are.

C.S.

Lewis, in his uh collection of essays, Letters to Malcolm, writes this.

He says, the true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.

Let me read that again.

The true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.

One blogger and author writes this This means that as Christians, we must constantly be aware of our own sin.

The constant stink of our own sin reminds us that we are constantly needing a savior, and that kind of reality check produces a humility that makes being judgmental about others' sin much more difficult.

You know, there are sins that, and I'll say it personally, there are sins that I've struggled with my whole life.

And God has not seen fit to deliver me from those struggles and temptations, but rather to give me the strength day by day to honor him and to glorify him.

And God has used this to keep me before him in a needy, dependent state, so that I never trust in myself, but I always trust in him.

But let me tell you something.

You're in that exact same place.

As soon as you find a measure of victory over one area of your life, God, in his mercy, who's been patiently waiting, opens your eyes to show you a whole nother area of your life that God needs to work on.

And this isn't defeat, it's humility.

It's the Christian life.

You know, I think the reason why we're not honest about our sins and struggles to others is because we forget that the people around us are as messed up and as struggling as we are, but we sit there and we look at everyone else as external and we think to ourselves, we must be the only one that's struggling and doesn't have it all together.

And so I just need to fake it until I make it.

But the fact is, is we're all broken people and we need God's grace.

And we need it just as much now, today, as the day that we came to Christ.

And we're people who need mercy.

And we are people who most ought to give mercy.

It's been my experience that the ones who are the most merciful and gracious are the ones who realize most how much they need mercy and grace.

We're sinners saved by grace.

We're no more deserving of God's grace than the prostitutes and the pimps of the tax collectors and the politicians.

We need God's grace just as much as they do.

And we need to recognize we need God's grace just as much today as the day we first believed.

Cheer up.

You're worse than you think you are.

But cheer up.

The gospel is far greater than you can imagine.

Let's pray.

Father God, help us to be honest with ourselves and honest with you.

Lord, we so often pretend to others that we have it all together, that we have this Christian life figured out, that we have a handle on our sin and our struggle, and that we're um working things out pretty well.

But Lord, when we get in that place, we we don't rely on grace.

We become self-righteous and forgetful.

And so, Father, I pray for us, help us to know that even when we're at our messiest, that you love us in Christ, and that you are at work in us to conform us to the image of Christ.

But Lord, I pray for us that we will be honest with ourselves and honest with you, that we need grace just as much today as the day we first believed.

And Lord, may we, because we have experienced grace and mercy, may we be the most gracious and merciful people that we can.

By God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Christ's name we pray.