Today’s message is important because it will show you what you need to do to go to heaven. Who doesn’t want to know that? The problem is that in today’s world, even among people who call themselves Christians, there are many different ideas about what this means. I probably would make my own answer to the question even more complicated than what Jesus teaches in His parable.
For some people, access to heaven means saying a special prayer one time with just the right words: “Come into my heart.” For others, it’s “Love how Jesus loves” – but of course that is governed by our own ideas, and so it becomes just a lot of do-good-ism.
People who don’t know what the Bible says at all have a picture of cosmic scales on which God will one day weigh your efforts – the good on one side and the bad on the other. Hopefully you did more good than bad!
Finally, I think many people have been taught what the Bible teaches, but they often wonder if it’s enough. These people may hear this introduction and think I’m going to bring one more secret they’ve never heard. Spoiler: I’m not. How we can know we have a home in heaven is clearly stated over and over in the Bible, and it’s so simple it seems almost too good to be true.
Today we will look at Luke chapter 18 and study a parable in which Jesus teaches a simple and straightforward prayer of salvation.
Prayers of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
Luke 18:9-10 – 9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. 10”Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”
The Setup: a Pharisee vs. a Tax Collector. Pharisees knew how to honor God. Tax collectors were despised and crooked. However, anyone reading Luke’s book has seen by this point in the book that he has already shown a pattern: Jesus regularly flipped the status quo and elevated the despised over the seemingly favored one. This parable will be no different.
Luke makes it clear who Jesus is trying to challenge: those who were confident in their own righteousness. In Bible times it was the Pharisees who knew the law of Moses the best and devoted their lives to following it perfectly. In fact, they often went far above the law’s requirements to show how good they were.
In churches across America today, there are people who were raised in the church and know all the right things to do and say. They have been appointed to leadership positions on boards, and they probably feel very secure that they are going to heaven. After all, look how important they are in their churches! It was people like this whom Jesus was trying to shake from their false sense of spiritual superiority.
I don’t think any of you who know anything about what the Bible says would ever count yourself worthy to stand before God on your own righteousness! But I do think it’s easy to forget what a mess you used to be and to begin looking down on others. Too often I’ve seen well-meaning church folks expect everyone who comes into our building to conform to our expectations – dressing appropriately, speaking appropriately, and behaving properly. When they don’t, it’s easy for the church people to get upset and look down on “those people.”
The purpose of today’s message is to remind all of us not to become like the Pharisee we are about to read about.
Luke 18:11-12 – 11The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
Note that the Pharisee separates himself to pray. He doesn’t mix with the common people. He’s above that.
The Pharisee plays the Comparison Game. “Thank you that I’m not like other people.” WOW! We hear this and think we would never be like this, but what if Jesus were teaching this parable today? The prayer might be one that would convict us even a bit more: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – alcoholics and druggies, lazy young people who can’t hold jobs, single moms who sleep with everyone in town, or those gay and trans people trying to shove their politics down our throats.”
Be honest. You might never pray that prayer, but do you ever find yourself feeling superior to people on the “outside” – those who are so different from you and your Christian values?
This is exactly the attitude we must root out of our lives anytime it begins to appear. You must never become so callous about people on the fringes of life that you begin denigrating them in your thinking! Remember, it was Jesus who taught:
Luke 5:31-32 – 31“It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The Pharisee was self-righteous. After putting others down, he puffs himself up: “God, look how stellar I am! Look at all I do for you.”
And he’s not wrong. He does a wonderful job of following the law with his actions. However, as Jesus challenges the Pharisees in Matthew 23 in His famous “Woe Passage,” they might clean the cup on the outside, but the inside – the heart – is filled with sin.
The Pharisee doesn’t actually ask for anything.This is the most surprising part of this prayer. Because he is so satisfied with his own life, this Pharisee has nothing to ask of God! No need for God’s work in his life; he has it all taken care of.
To be clear, this is NOT the profound prayer I want you to model your prayer life after! This is a warning from the lips of Jesus of what the world will try to draw us toward. Satan wants you to look at others’ mistakes and feel pride for how well you are doing for God. He wants you to stop leaning into God’s grace and instead arrogantly lean on your own achievements. He wants this because he knows how many people he has caused to stumble in MAJOR ways when they stopped relying on God and started believing they had it all figured out.
Luke 18:13 – But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
The tax collector also separates himself, but in the other direction from the Pharisee. While the Pharisee feels better than the rest, the tax collector feels far worse.
His actions – His unwillingness to look up (as was common in prayer) and the beating of his breast demonstrate feelings of shame and remorse. There’s a recognition that he was not right with God. He knew he had done wrong. He didn’t need the Pharisee’s glare from across the room to tell him anything he didn’t already know about his shady behavior.
His Prayer – “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is a simple, compact prayer, but it is full of meaning and life-changing power.
Mercy – He understands that his actions deserve punishment, and he is seeking that the God of the universe would withhold the punishment he deserves. He seeks lenience even though he knows he is guilty. He asks to be forgiven, to be made right, to be covered by God’s atoning work.
A Sinner – He clearly understands his need for a savior. He is the polar opposite of the Pharisee who had no need of God and actually asked Him for nothing. Instead, this tax collector is asking for everything, and he knows he deserves none of it because he is a sinner far from God’s moral perfection. He is so ashamed of his actions that he knows he has no right to expect anything.
THIS is the Profound Prayer every single person needs to pray, but it also holds several beliefs many people are unwilling to admit. Nowadays everyone wants to feel like they get to determine right from wrong for themselves. They might believe many others are in the wrong on a host of issues, but there’s not a lot of guilt for sin in our world anymore. People justify their own behavior. They feel they have no need for a savior because they are not sinners. At least not such bad sinners. They’re not like . . . well, I need not go there again.
Before we leave this point, I encourage each of you to remember the first time you prayed some version of this prayer. Remember that there was a day you were an unsaved, totally lost sinner in need of God’s mercy. Remembering our own moment of spiritual breakthrough keeps us from getting up on our spiritual high horse.
So . . . those are the two prayers. One man a model citizen of the community, the other a despised outcast. One who lives his life seeking perfection, the other fully admitting his own sinfulness. From the outside, we know how the world usually judges between people like this, but Jesus is different.
Luke 18:14 – “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
The tax collector was justified. He stood before God “Not Guilty” – forgiven. More than that, the apostle Paul tells us that a person who is justified receives the righteousness of Jesus. That’s what God sees!
2 Corinthians 5:21 – God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is known as the “great exchange.” Through Jesus’s work on the cross, God takes your sin and gives you His status as righteous. This is why you are no longer a sinner, but a sinner saved by grace. Even better, you are a saint and a child of God. When Jesus died on the cross, it was for all your sins for all time.
When you do what the tax collector did and humbly seek God’s mercy, you receive that mercy from God. It doesn’t come and go based on each day and each new sin. God’s mercy covers it all. The exchange is made; and regardless of your mistakes, if you are justified, then you are deemed “righteous.”
If you have never prayed this prayer – if you have never had a moment when you clearly decided, “I’m a sinner and I need God’s mercy” – then I hope you will consider doing that today. I hope you will seek the assurance of God’s offer of eternal life in heaven. It’s not hard. It’s not complicated. But it is the start of a completely transformed life. I want that for you today. Jesus wants that for you today. Do you want that for you today?
Jesus’s Main Point – the Upside-Down Nature of God’s Kingdom. (“The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”) Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
This reversal of what is expected is the key theme in the Kingdom of God. How we see the world is backward from how God sees it. When we think we need to earn our forgiveness to gain entry into heaven, God reminds us that no amount of self-righteous work will get us anywhere. It’s all God’s mercy. It’s all a gift that comes to us only through faith. Yes, we are to seek to live holy lives as the Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out, but none of that changes our acceptance-to-heaven status.
Because we can’t do anything to improve our standing with God, we have no right to ever look down on anyone. No one is worse than us! If you begin to feel prideful or better than someone else, stop and pray, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” Remember where you came from – the same place everyone does, from a life of sin. Romans 3:23 tells us what we all know – we are all sinners and nobody is perfect.
Neither should we elevate anyone to an unhealthy standing, as that tempts them to pride and self-righteousness. I think we have enough examples of mega-church pastors who have allowed their elevated platforms to weaken their moral compass and have come crashing down. We need to stop setting pastors up for failure.
Conclusion
We all begin our lives as sinners and, hopefully, by God’s grace we all find the path to mercy and forgiveness.
However, not everyone has found that path yet. May we never become so proud or so far removed from our own moment of salvation that we, like this Pharisee, begin to look down on those who have not yet met their Savior.
Rather than dismissing them, may we pray for them. May we hope for better for them. And may God respond. While their sins may be many, His mercy is more.
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