Parables of Grace: The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

So Luke 18, verse 9, Luke sets it up for us, this passage, this parable Jesus is going to teach.

Luke 18:9

And Luke sets it up by saying, I know you'll want to trust in yourself.

He says, You'll want to be impressed with yourself.

You will.

You're going to be doing some good things in your life, and it'll be easy.

You got your life together, some parts of your life, you managed to get them together.

You grew up a little bit.

You got yourself in church, and it'll be easy because you gave a lamp to goodwill and you felt really good about that.

And it'll be it'll be easy to feel good about yourself.

It'll be easy.

It'll be easy that you'll want to trust in yourself.

You'll want to focus on your own righteousness.

You'll want to count it.

You'll want to measure it.

You'll want to feel bad because of it, or you'll want to feel really good because of it.

You'll want to compare it.

It'll be easy to do that.

But it's just a costume.

It's not your soul.

It's not your true self.

I do it.

I'll drive down the highway.

I'll see a pastor with his face plastered up on a billboard.

Maybe his wife's with him, maybe not.

And I'll think to myself, I would never do something like that.

I'll never put my face on a billboard.

In fact, I'll never even put my name on the sign, on the church sign out front.

I would never, I would never do that.

And you see how quick it happens, right?

It'll be easy.

All of a sudden, I'm proud of my humility.

It doesn't take long.

It's easy to trust in your own good.

That I am righteous and they are not.

It happens so quickly.

Inevitably, contempt follows.

I'm better than that pastor with his face plastered up on the billboard.

Or I'm better for who against whoever it is that I'm comparing myself.

I'm nothing like them.

Because why don't they get their act together?

Why don't they just make better decisions?

And the entire time you're the same.

So Jesus tells this story.

Two men come to the temple to pray.

First, a religious guy who, he's a good guy.

He's really a good guy.

He's faithful.

He's a good citizen.

He doesn't rob people.

He's not a cheat.

He doesn't cheat on his wife.

He's a member of the Lions Club, the PTA, he eats at Chick-fil-A.

He's everything we want him to be, right?

He's got a he even fasts.

Can you imagine it?

I know you can't, bunch of Americans in a room.

He fasts twice a week.

He gives money to the church.

This is legitimately a good guy.

But it all starts with thank you, God, that I'm not like other men.

Thank you that I'm not like the people who vote that way.

You know.

Just the way that you don't vote.

I'm not like the people who believe that way on that issue.

I don't speak that way.

I'm not like I'm not a parent who has no control over their kids.

I'm not like that parent, right?

Or God, thank you that I'm not like the young, angry black man.

Or I'm not like the racist cop who fired the gun.

Or I'm not like my friend who keeps making the same mistake over and over and over again.

I'm nothing like them.

Thank you, God.

I'm not like other men.

So the first man knows everything about his behaviors.

And he knows very little about his soul.

He's living from the flesh, which is the false self that uses costumes to feel righteous and to form an identity.

You know, your skin's a costume.

I'm very thankful for that because last week I was tucking my little girl into bed and she told me I had a really big nose.

And I thought, this is something I've known for a very long time in my life, and thank you for pointing it out repeatedly at bedtime.

And I'm thankful that it's just a costume.

Our skin's a costume, your escapes are costumes.

Your religion can very easily be a costume.

Religion's actually a wonderful costume because it makes you feel incredibly good about yourself.

Because the flesh is telling you that if you're actually known underneath that costume, underneath the good deeds or the practices, underneath all of that, the inside of you, the core, the soul, if you're actually known there, your flesh is saying you couldn't be loved there.

So you need a costume.

And it'll be easy.

So Luke's saying, it'll be easy to trust in your costume.

And then the second guy shows up, a real bozo.

I mean, this guy's a real bozo.

We look at his, oh goodness, this guy shows up and he's a cheat.

He robs people as a career.

He has this deal set up with the Roman government.

So the deal is he collects taxes from all the people in his area.

And he gives a set percentage to the Romans, but anything extra he gets to keep.

So he can just keep raising taxes or put pressure on people and keep just getting more and more money.

Gives the same amount to the Romans, but he gets to keep the extra.

So he's getting, he's getting richer and richer off of the people who live all around him.

He has no friends.

And this guy does something unexpected.

He calls out his costume.

He calls out the flesh in confession to God.

Right?

Listen to it.

Luke 18, verse 13.

Luke 18:13

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.

Doesn't that feel scandalous?

Doesn't it feel scandalous that the guy who actually had the record went home empty-handed?

And the guy who came with nothing except the courage to confess, he goes home justified.

That's what a scandal is.

It's not what you thought it should be, right?

That's a scandal.

It should be this way, but it's not that way.

Years ago, I was working at an organization and probably probably about 40 employees or so, and one day around lunchtime, everybody receives an email.

The entire organization receives the email that says, emergency.

And you think, oh goodness, what's going on?

Something serious is going on.

Click it to open it.

There was a prepared sandwich in the break room fridge of the boss's wife.

And somebody ate it.

Emergency.

Scandal.

Playfully, a friend of mine replies all that he's pretty sure he saw someone eating it in the north stairwell in the shadows, but he could not make out the face of the culprit.

That didn't go over well, so there were more emails.

And then there was a meeting.

This is what you do in an organization.

We had a meeting about the scandal, the sandwich scandal.

What rules should govern the fridge in the break room?

This is how you should spend your time.

And we know the rules, but this was a sandwich scandal.

How could this happen, right?

The bozo is getting away scot-free with this sandwich.

He did not earn, he didn't deserve it, he didn't have the position for it.

And the break room fridge is governed by a law.

You know the law if you've worked anywhere.

You don't eat other people's food.

There's really two laws.

The second one would be when your food's super old, throw it away.

There's only two laws.

And we all know the rule.

And some bozo shows up and eats a sandwich marked for the boss's wife.

It's a scandal.

It's not what it should be, right?

The bozo goes home full.

And the one who actually had the record doesn't get it.

The religious man goes home empty-handed.

What a scandalous passage.

And the guy with no record, he doesn't deserve it, yet he's courageous enough to confess his sinfulness.

That costume he's been dressed up as.

He gets the meal.

Point number one was this.

The grace of God is scandalous to a world that loves all sorts of costumes.

The grace of God is scandalous to us who we love all sorts of costumes.

Right?

A worldly man who's cheating and getting money, he's greedy, that's a costume, or the religious man with all his good deeds, his costume, either one.

And the grace of God is scandalous to all of it.

That says, no, no, no, like underneath, underneath all the costumes, underneath your soul, what's going on there?

Will you confess your sin?

Will you be honest to who you are, that you're beautifully created and yet you're broken in your sin and you need the grace of God?

We do that, we live there, we live from that place.

The grace of God is scandalous to a world that loves merit.

Point number two is this in Jesus, you can drop the performance costume and you can be you.

In Jesus, you can drop the performance costume and you can be you.

The first man creates a lot of questions for us.

Do you spend your quiet moments counting up and measuring how good you are, trying to build a case?

Are you anxious when it comes to where you stand with God?

Like on a day-to-day basis.

Are you anxious about that?

Do you find yourself sliding comments and conversations with other people to make yourself look better?

Do you look down upon the hurting and the poor and the addicted?

Like, man, they they should have made better decisions.

Are you capable of loving people, or do you just use them for approval that you would feel loved?

And then the second man for me, at least this week, has created one question in my heart.

Are you using Christian faith as another costume?

Or is God Himself finding the real you under all the costumes?

Are you using your Christian faith just as another costume in front of people in front of God?

Or is God Himself actually finding the you underneath all the costumes?

Because I can feel it in the morning when I get quiet before the Lord.

I can feel that fork in the road where I have the option of the option to be before Him, just me, apart from position or fathering or pastoring or preaching?

Will I exist there or will I exist with a bit of a costume on?

Because I'm still unsure if the grace of God could be that sufficient.

Listen, God is already proud of you.

He's already proud of you.

There's no need to move from one costume to the next.

It's so easy, this passage is so profound, so easy to go from the second man to the first man.

Just change costumes.

But not to live as the second man in that kind of confession.

And God already loves you.

He already loves you, not because you're perfect, but because Jesus was perfect for you, right?

Hidden in Christ, we have victory.

The costume can begin to come off.

Your sin is put upon him who knew no sin, that our righteousness comes from him, put on us, that we might be the beloved of God.

It means you don't have to show up in front of God with your righteousness report like this man did.

It means you don't have to pity yourself in some sort of poverty and self-pity.

It just means you can say, like, here's who I am.

Thank you for the grace of God.

Thank you, God, for that grace.

Thank you for the gift of Jesus.

I don't have to keep putting on costumes.

Then you will know the grace of God that brings freedom and also brings growth, transformation.

See, I think the question in here, a lot of this, the question is, is what's underneath the costume?

Like, what's the sin under the sin?

Like for this first man, for this second man, the second man lived in the costume a long time, finally he confesses it, he figures it out.

The first man has this costume, this persona, but what's going on, what's underneath that?

What's the sin under the sin?

Or maybe what's the wound under the behaviors?

Like, why am I doing this?

Why am I putting this out there?

Why do I have this shield?

Why do I have this mask on?

Before God or before people?

My youngest daughter, she's five years old, and last year at preschool, she took an art class.

And so she comes home one day and she has this construction paper and it's all like wrapped up and taped and sticking up in the air, kind of funky, and she says, Dad, it's a Chahuli.

She learned about Chahuli.

So if you don't know what Chahuli is, he's real eccentric.

He's a glass sculpture guy, and he wears a patch, his hair is crazy.

And she just loves Chahuli.

She learned about Chahuli.

She gave us random facts about Chahuli.

And so this summer we were visiting some family in Seattle and we were downtown and we're walking along and we see these sculptures sticking high up in the air, and she says, Dad, that's a Chahuli.

That's a Chahuli.

Like she knows it.

And she we walk over there and it's his museum because he lives in Seattle.

Whole museum, huge, full of his work.

So I walk over and get the prices.

We have about an hour to kill.

I get the prices,$25 a person.

I go, uh, times five, uh, hour.

I don't know.

I come back and say, hey, Christy, I'm gonna take her in the gift shop and act like that's the museum.

Let's see how that goes.

So I take her in the gift shop.

This is the Chihuli Museum, you know, and walk around, and there's like a few pieces for sale out there, so we act like those are the works.

There's pictures of his words, walk around, I think I've won it, I think this is good.

And we we walk back outside of the uh gift shop, right outside, and she looks to the left.

I wish she had not looked to the left.

She looks to the left, just behind the bushes, a hedge, they made sure the hedge was just low enough that you could see this huge glass building back behind the hedge, massive, like a gymnasium, and hanging from this gymnasium these huge Chihuli sculptures, and she sees it and she says, I want to go in there.

Like very clearly, that that ain't the gift shop.

Like, there's there was something else going on.

So$50 later, me and her in the first room, and it was designed room by room.

You went from one room to the next, and each room got more and more amazing.

The first room we're in, the ceiling was glass, the walls were glass, all his sculptures are pressed up against it.

So you're in this room, you're kind of just surrounded by it, it's all backlit, and it's just amazing.

And she stands there perfectly content.

Just smiling, amazed.

She's looking at all of it, she's taking it in, she's almost overwhelmed.

She didn't even talk.

She's just looking.

And we'd walk into the next room, and I would just let her walk in each room by herself.

I'd walk right behind her, I'm taking pictures, being a dad.

And the next room is a huge, long, 30, 40-yard room, and in the middle, it's set up like a massive garden of his sculptures, just going everywhere.

It's unbelievable.

And room by room, every room, I would let her walk in first, and she would just walk in and be amazed.

She wouldn't talk.

She would just get hit by sort of the majesty of it.

She didn't talk.

She didn't talk about her artwork.

She didn't talk about her the facts she knew.

She just took it in.

She had nothing to bring to it except herself.

We got out of the museum, she runs up to Christy and right away.

She's shown every picture.

Look at this, and this was this, and this was this.

She's showing all the pictures.

Because she had she had been in front of something so beautiful it overwhelmed her.

Something so good she had nothing to bring before it except herself.

I mean, how silly to come into a room full of Chihuli sculpture and to talk about your work.

Or to analyze it to death.

No, you don't.

You come before it and you just you're in awe of it.

Or if you say anything, you say something like, Woe is me.

A sinner.

You see, this is what Jesus is talking about.

Humble yourself that you might be exalted.

Your victory is not in your word, it is in his word.

You are hidden in Christ.

My brothers and sisters, in the Holy Spirit of God, may you be empowered to have great courage to live in confession and enjoy your justification in Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for the great and the good news that you hear the confessions of the weak.

And in our weakness we are made strong because in our weakness we come to you.

And you are sufficient.

You are enough.

Forgive us for the ways that we promote ourselves, our work, our achievement, our successes, even our Christian faith, before you and before others.

Help us to see how deep our need is of you for our sin and our wounds, and how sufficient you are, that your grace is always deeper and always enough.

That Jesus is always enough for us.

Would you help us to know in greater ways the great wealth of our belovedness and Jesus, your son?

Amen.