The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

We would like you invite you to turn to our scripture reading for this morning, which is found in the New Testament in Luke's gospel.

Chapter eighteen.

And we'll be reading verses nine through fourteen.

Luke eighteen, beginning in verse nine.

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

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

The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I get.

But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner.

I tell you, says Jesus, 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.

Here ends the reading of God's word.

Well, I have the privilege this morning for standing in for uh for Pastor Dave, who has been fighting illness all week.

And uh I asked Dave if we could just continue in uh the series on Luke and um actually look at this passage this morning.

And um I'm thankful that Dave agreed to that.

And uh I'm actually going to only be looking at a very thin slice of this passage, and so I think we're going to have more than one um sermon on it.

But today I would like to just kind of, by way of introduction, just set the stage quickly.

I'm pretty sure that most of us in this room have heard this parable.

I'm pretty sure that most of us, uh, if you've been around church at all, um, you are familiar with the terms of this parable.

So what I really want to do is just take a few minutes and quickly just kind of set the stage for what's happening here.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.

That's the context of Luke.

He's going there for the very last time to be crucified for the sins of the world.

And he's been teaching all along the way.

The time is short, his messages are urgent.

At one point, he addresses a group of very religious Jews named Pharisees, and he told them a parable.

And I think, as we know, a parable is just a simple story that is designed to teach a spiritual truth.

And the parable that Jesus teaches here, that he issues, it may actually have been based on something real, something he saw, but very likely Jesus crafts this story to make a really vivid point to his audience.

There's three characters in this parable to pay attention to.

There is the Pharisee.

A Pharisee is just a really religious Jew at the time.

They were highly educated, they knew Scripture, they were very meticulous in their observation of the Jewish faith.

There's a tax collector in this story.

I think we all know, too, that tax collectors were regarded as traitors.

They were Jews who switched sides, who actually contracted their services to the Romans who occupied the land of Israel.

And they contracted their services to collect taxes from their own countrymen.

And what makes it even worse, why they were hated so much if that wasn't enough, is because apparently the Romans gave them the privilege that if they collected more than what was owed to Rome, it was profit for them.

Kind of like a personal commission.

And so these tax collectors were people who were in it for the money and probably made a great profit off the backs of their own people.

The final character in the story is God.

He's in the background here, but he's really in this parable.

Both of these men come to the temple to pray.

The temple is the place where God's presence dwelt.

And the whole temple was set up to point forward and unbeknownst to most of the Jews.

It was designed to point to a way that the human beings created by God could actually be reconciled with him.

There was a whole system set up where people could come and commune with the living God because God wanted to commune with his people.

And so God is here.

He's at the temple.

These men come to commune with him.

And in the background of this parable, God gives a judgment about each one of these men.

One other last point, just by way of setting the stage here.

This parable, like many of the parables of Jesus, it's a parable of contrasts.

There's a number of them here.

There's a contrast about the inner attitudes of these two men.

There's a contrast about the dynamic of their relationship with God.

But the contrast that we're going to focus on this morning is the contrast of their knowledge of self.

There is an amazing contrast in this passage between what the Pharisee understood about himself and what the tax collector came to understand about himself.

And so this morning we're going to take this really thin slice in this parable, and we're going to really leave it for Dave to deal with next week with some of the bigger issues in this parable.

But I want us to look at two big questions today.

How does our knowledge of self affect our relationship with God?

And secondly, what does it take to gain a knowledge of self that corresponds to reality?

So those are the questions we're going to give our attention to this morning.

We'll start with the first one.

How does our knowledge of self affect our relationship with God?

Now this is a complicated question.

Because when I say, how does the knowledge of self affect our relationship with God?

Because ever since the fall happened, we have a major problem on the inside.

We have a heart that has turned away from the Lord.

We have a fallen nature.

Our mind, our thinking, our emotions, our desires are all twisted and fallen.

And from the very earliest times as people, we began a process of kind of discovering how to make it in this world.

It begins at home with our parents, and we began to figure out how to manage our world in a way that's really to our advantage, to make life work for us, right?

Very small children learn how to make life work for themselves.

You can see it in something as simple as throwing a fit.

How to make life work for us.

And the way to do that is to begin to create a self.

Many selves, in fact, over time.

And by the time we become adults, we've gone through those teenage years.

And when everybody knows, you know, he or she, they're just trying to find themselves, right?

That's what we say.

That's how we describe those high school years.

And I love to hear them, I have a couple of high schoolers, I just love to hear them dream about what they're going to do and what they want to be.

And it's just, I love that time of life.

It's full of a special life all of its own.

When like the whole world lies out before them.

But that's also a time when they are beginning to ramp up creating the person they really want to be.

And that's what we begin to do without even knowing it.

We begin to create images and personas and false selves that actually help us make life work on our own terms.

And so when we come to this question, how does our knowledge of self affect our relationship with God?

I'm really not so much talking about how our knowledge of what we think we know about ourself affect that.

I'm really asking the question: how does our knowledge of the real self, the real Scott Connolly, that the Lord Himself sees when he looks?

And his eyes, everywhere in Scripture, right, this is emphasized, his eyes penetrate to the very depths of our being, and he sees us naked as we really are.

And so, how does our knowledge of that self affect our relationship with our Creator, the living God?

Well, we're gonna have to just, for time's sake, we're gonna focus most of our attention on the Pharisee.

What does he really know about himself here?

He's not just a fictitious character.

Oh, he is, he is all too real, not only in Jesus' day, he's real in this room today.

He's real in my own heart today.

But I'd like us to look through this text and and look at what does this Pharisee believe about himself.

And I want to contrast that with what does God know about this man?

And I want us to look at that gap that's in between those two things.

Because everything hangs on that gap.

Well, let's look first at what at what he believes about himself.

You can learn a lot by just kind of just kind of soaking in this passage.

A lot of things are stated here that aren't stated explicitly.

You have to kind of catch it in the passage.

For example, the first thing I think we learn about this man is that he believes he's in good standing with God already.

And I believe if you were to have asked him, hey, are you alive to God, he would have said yes.

And I think you see that in his very posture.

There is a contrast in postures, just in the wording of the text.

The tax collector stands far off, eyes cast down.

The Pharisee, it's a little unusual.

I mean, how it's worded here, but I think the sense is that there's the boldness that he just stands with his eyes to heaven, and he just boldly prays to God.

Like one who was alive to God.

And if you were to ask him, what is that life with God based on, what would he say?

Well, it's right here in the passage.

And we'll come to that.

A second thing he believes about himself is that he's he's morally righteous.

And he's not like other men.

In fact, he believes he is above other men.

That's the point here.

He also believes, very carefully crafted statement here, that he is actually giving God the glory for the progress that he's made.

I thank you, Father, that I am not like other men.

He believes that he's not an extortioner.

An extortioner is someone who uses their authority for personal gain.

Hmm.

There was an extortioner in the room.

The tax collector, well known, they just shook people down.

You know, it's bad.

It's like going to, I don't know, 20 years ago, if you went to Eastern Europe as a westerner, try going through the airport.

You know, you're gonna pay.

You're they're gonna let you through, they're gonna shake you down.

And uh that's what those tax collectors did.

And and and this guy believes he's not like that.

It's kind of odd though, because Jesus had just said, not too much beforehand, then in chapter 16, that the Pharisees were lovers of money.

They were lot characteristically, they were lovers of money.

The Pharisees had great power because they were the leaders of the day.

They were noticed, they wanted to be noticed, they walked in society with various kinds of power.

Think of the power they would have exuded in the churches.

Think of the power they would have had in their in their cities.

These were church states, so you know the church leaders were civic leaders too, in many cases, or had power based on that.

Think of the power they had in his home with his wife and children.

But he's not an extortionary, he never uses his authority and his power for his own selfish ends.

He furthermore believes that he's not unjust.

He doesn't treat other people unfairly or impartially.

I mean, the living God is the God of justice, right?

And his people were called to be like him and to actually represent him to the world.

That was the mission of the Jews, at least in part.

But he's not like that.

He doesn't treat others unfairly.

Wow, really?

And he's not an adulterer, he believes.

He's never violated his vow of sexual loyalty to his wife.

Ever.

In any way, at any level.

And he believes he's not a lowly sinner.

Like this tax collector.

I think I one more, I think it was kind of sum up the whole deal here.

He actually believes that he's successfully managing the requirements of God.

A couple of the things he lists, tithing and fasting.

I wonder if he picked these because they're hard.

I wonder if he picked them because he took special pride in how hard he worked to manage those areas of his life.

David Benner has written, um, he's written a wonderful book, by the way, called The Gift of Being Yourself.

There's a lot in this book that speaks to what's going on in this passage.

It's very profound in a lot of ways.

He makes this statement.

He says, in all of creation, identity is a challenge only for humans.

A tulip knows exactly what it is, it's never tempted by false ways of being.

Have you ever thought about that?

I watched a video this week of uh of a lost dog, of an abandoned dog that apparently was abused.

It was a little short video, and this dog was um just scared and was uh people were trying to come up to it and help it, and this dog was just fiercely barking back, and it was just quivering.

And one of the things that struck me about this dog is that this dog was being true to itself.

And and I and I was struck by how contrasting people are to this dog.

Because when people are abused and and and are scared, many times we We move in different directions to cover that up.

Years ago, when I got out of high school, I joined the military.

And I had a number of reasons for wanting to do that.

But later in life, I figured out, looking back, probably the central reason why I did that.

And I would love to tell you, it's because I wanted to serve my country.

I'm sure that was in there somewhere.

Please, Lord, it had to be there somewhere.

But probably the central feature of why I did that, it was an identity issue.

Because I didn't just join the military, I joined the Marine Corps.

And I did it very purposely because at that time I lived in fear of a lot of things.

I'd grown up in a rough city, and I had a lot of fear growing up.

And I was sick and tired of being afraid, and I was going to conquer fear.

I was going to be a new self who had a handle on fear.

And so I joined the Marine Corps, the infantry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got on the bus.

First night, gathering all around the country, all these guys, probably just like me, get on this bus.

And I was scared to death.

I couldn't believe it.

I have never seen a group of tougher looking guys.

I mean, we we we we didn't, you know, the the um you know the bus uh gathered from from Los Angeles.

And so these inner city guys, these long hair, just rough looking dudes.

I thought, holy smokes, man, you know, I'm gonna get mutilated in this place, you know.

And um, but the amazing thing is, is all these tough guys, once they shaved their heads, gave them a goofy-looking uniform, unironed and all wrinkled up, and started the mental breakdown process.

All these guys are just like me.

Just a bunch of scared young guys trying to be tough.

We do that in our life.

This Pharisee does that in his religious life with God.

What does God know about this man?

God knows that this man is arrogant, he's presumptive, he's standing before him like he's right with God and alive to him, and yet he's not.

God said he goes home not acquitted.

The word justified means acquitted.

It's a courtroom term.

And the opposite of acquitted is condemned.

This man is exalting himself.

God knows he's not morally righteous.

God knows the whole law hangs on two commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

God knows that if you keep the whole law but fail at just one point, you're guilty of breaking it all.

God knows that this man was proud about his own efforts to work hard to make himself look better than others.

He's not really giving God the glory here.

God knows that Pharisees loved money.

He knew they were prone to abuse power.

Jesus spoke about it all the time.

Woe to you, Pharisees and scribes.

God knows all too well because he has deeply grieved it in his heart that people like this man are so unjust in how they treat others with contempt.

Oh, they wouldn't call it that.

This Pharisee is blind to his contempt for this tax collector, but God knows it in his heart, because the tax collector is an image bearer of his, whom he cares about.

God knows that he is every bit the lowly sinner of this tax collector, and that his attempts to manage his moral life is but an evasion of the real sin in his heart, and an attempt to feel better about himself.

How can we account for this gap?

There is an amazing gap between what this man knew of himself and what God sees of himself.

I think there's a lot that we could say about this.

We don't have a lot of time this morning, but one of the things that accounts for this gap, and as Christians, we we fall into this, is we ignore that Christianity or a relationship with God is primarily concerned with the heart and not with the outward activity.

God is concerned with who we are in the hidden recesses of our mind and will and emotions.

Deep down, that's who we really are at the core of ourself.

The Pharisees, by nature, wanted to keep the focus on the outside.

One author wrote, My struggle with inward silent sins is less troubling when I remember the drunkenness and sexual immorality of my neighbor.

You see, one of the things that's a reality, we we read this in scripture, but if you've been a Christian very long and you have started this journey of moving into who you really are, what we discover is the real horrors of sin are in the human heart.

They're in my heart, and they're in your heart.

That is where the real horrors of sin are.

Kinds of sins.

Sins like, I've been unfaithful, Lord.

Lord, I've been angry.

Lord, I've been so impatient.

Please forgive me.

And on and on.

I wonder if we're in the habit, though, of beginning to see ourselves as God sees us, looking into those windows that the Lord gives us into our heart and beginning to move into those windows and explore them to actually see the cesspool that lives in our old nature.

Yes, even as Christians, we have a new heart, but we have the flesh as well.

And the new life that we have begins, it's so small, and it grows slowly.

When was the last time you confessed, Lord, I am an adulterer in my heart?

Lord, I have a murderous heart.

I wanted to make her pay.

I really did.

She crossed me.

I feel so entitled to her love, and she crossed me.

When was the last time we began to enter into the real horrors of what's on the inside?

See, we have a bent to be blind, even as believers, to our sin.

And we're committed all our lives to creating a false self, even as Christians.

And I would say, especially as Christians, because when we become Christians, we're forgiven, right?

And we come into the church.

And suddenly we're in a whole culture where there's this comparison going on, right?

And they're spiritual and unspiritual.

And we begin this game of uh it's below the consciousness.

We don't even know it's happening most of the time.

And we're comparing and we're putting out there and we're beginning to act like we should act, like we know God wants us to act.

But it's not the real us.

It's not the real us.

How well did this Pharisee know God?

That's the this is where this is going.

The gap in there.

The Pharisee did not know God.

He didn't know himself, but you can't miss this.

He didn't know God because he didn't know himself.

This doesn't change when we become a Christian.

What does it take to gain a knowledge of self that corresponds to reality?

Well, you know, you see that this is a this is a lifetime journey that it's going to take.

The tax collector gives us the starting point.

Here is a man who is beginning his journey with the Lord.

He's actually opening his heart.

He's giving in.

He's surrendering.

He's just owning what he sees is there.

And the Lord says he goes home acquitted.

And don't you know this man has great joy when he goes home, right?

He's acquitted with God.

But how is he going to know the Lord's love for him?

You know, he knows it there in a big way.

But you know what?

That's going to wear.

It's going to go away a while.

He's going to cultivate it by reading scripture.

He's going to cultivate it by being in community.

But after a while, that's going to fade.

And if he doesn't begin to push into who he really is with the Lord, he's never going to taste how much the Lord loves him.

He's never really going to taste what the Lord actually took for him right there on the cross.

You don't know what God took for you when you begin the Christian life.

You don't know it until 30, 40, 50 years into the Christian life.

And that's when you begin to know what the Lord actually carried for you.

If you are willing to open yourself.

It's an opening.

Open yourself humbly to the Lord to see who you really are.

He's given you windows, he'll give you windows all your life, little flashes.

And you can choose to ignore them.

I love ignoring those windows at one level.

Or you can choose to enter them in his presence and in community.

One of the amazing things about the journey that's needed here is you can't do this in the private solace of your own mind.

You've got to take this journey before the Lord and before some trusted confidants, friends, community.

Confess your sins one to another and help each other learn to realize, wow, knowledge of self is vital to knowing God.

And I would dare say that without a growing, living knowledge of self, there is no growth or very little in the Christian life.

We're just spinning our wheels.

This isn't a knowledge of self that's an end in itself.

This is a knowledge of self that's based in our identity in Christ.

And it's one that leads to knowing the love that the Savior has for us.

That He paid it all.

That we can come to Him just as we are.

Father.

Oh Father, we know we're meant to see ourselves.

Let us hear the warning of this passage that all who exalt self will be humbled.

But let us hear the invitation as well, Father.

You gave this parable to Pharisees.

Lord, let us come.

Let us come and humble ourselves before you and open ourselves up to be forgiven.

And to know what it is to be acquitted.

Because of what you've done on our behalf.

We ask it in Christ's name.

Amen.