It’s easy to look across the room and thank God we’re not like that person—the failure, the compromiser, the obvious sinner. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable to confront such self-righteousness in us.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon emphasizes that “apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). How does this principle challenge the way we typically think about personal achievement and spiritual growth? What does it mean practically to live in dependence on Christ rather than self-reliance?
The Pharisee’s prayer focuses on external works—fasting twice a week, giving tithes—while the tax collector simply cries for mercy. What is the difference between performing religious duties out of pride versus performing them out of humility and grace? How can we discern our own motives?
The sermon states that “when you live in the light, you see the darkness inside yourself.” What does this mean, and how does increased awareness of our own brokenness actually lead to greater spiritual freedom rather than despair?
The sermon defines grace as “the presence and power of God in the people of God to do the will of God.” How does this understanding of grace free us from both legalism and fear, while empowering us for holy living?
The preacher notes that God’s unchanging nature as love means His love never stops—even amid discussions of wrath or judgment. How can this truth help us trust God more fully when we struggle with sin or feel unworthy of His mercy?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
As I said, we have here my dear friend Jason. If you haven’t gotten to meet him in previous visits here, Jason has just been such an incredible encouragement to me over the years. I always find it such a treat to hear him preach God’s word because I feel like I’m just sitting down by some rabbi a few million years ago and just hearing him expound God’s word. I don’t need to say a lot more on that because you’re going to hear it, but Jason, I’m just so thankful you’re here, and I’m looking forward to what God has placed on your heart today. Let’s give him another round of applause and welcome.
Well, let’s begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this word that stands as strong and stronger than the rocks and stronger than the worlds you have made. Heaven and earth will pass away, but your truth will never pass away. It will return to you, not empty, but accomplishing the purpose for which you sent it. So we praise you and thank you that your love in this world calls us back together and calls us to hear of your goodness again. We pray you would open my mouth and open these ears to hear what you have for these people and these people around the world that happen to be listening. Thank you for all that you have done. Thank you for Trinity Sunday that we can praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as is appropriate. Thank you for all your good gifts and for your mercy that leads us even now. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
As we get into God’s word here, let’s take a look at our text from Luke. We’re going to start in verse nine, and I may go back and hit some things that Tim said last week, if everybody was still awake for that sermon. But let’s read this here:
“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes, 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 he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Man, that is a heavy word just to listen to it and start us off.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the passage. He tells us right away, “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.” That’s our key word right there: trusted in themselves. Because our Lord Jesus, in another passage in scripture in another gospel, says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” He doesn’t say, “Apart from me, you can do everything.” He says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” He doesn’t say, “Let’s be bolder.” He doesn’t say, “I’ll do this part, and then you do this part.” He even says to the apostles when they are worried about the persecution that’s coming, “Don’t worry about what you will say, because when they bring you before the authorities to be flogged and everything else, I and the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say.” They don’t even speak with their own words.
Today, I don’t speak with my own words. We have the word of God; we have the Holy Spirit taking from what belongs to Jesus and declaring it to us. We don’t even, people in churches, we don’t come up with our own stuff. I am the most uninvented preacher that I have ever seen. I just repeat what’s right there in God’s word. Anybody that’s trying to be interesting or clever is missing the point because Jesus is the one who invaded this world. He invaded this broken world as a world that he himself made. And he came as a man to this world that he made to try to set it right again.
So by his death on the cross and his resurrection and his glorification, he is, like we said before, with us; he’s not standing far off. So everything that we do to be reconciled to God is in the shadow of his cross. That’s why he tells us these people: this Pharisee coming to justify himself, and then another version says seeking to justify himself, prayed this way.
Notice how the Pharisee in that first verse, he’s looking around at what other people are doing. I don’t know if you’ve met someone really holy; they don’t sit around and look at what everyone else is doing. They sit around and say, “Lord Jesus, even though I’m a total failure, here you are with me again, and you still want to use me. How could you use me as a failure as I am?” Because when you live in the light—let’s talk about the light and the darkness—I’m going to John’s gospel again, just kind of go off. But John’s gospel, when you live in the light, the light shines on you. You see nothing but the light; you’re going to see the darkness inside yourself.
Even if, by the world’s standards and even by Christian standards, everyone looks at you and says, “Wow, that person’s really holy, that person’s really good,” you know the difference because the light of perfection is shining in you and through you. So on the one hand, we can say, “Jesus loves me this, I know, for the Bible tells me so,” but we can also be made aware by the light of the Holy Spirit that we have a long way to go.
There’s another passage where it says, “When we have done all that we have been asked to do, we shall say, ‘We are unworthy servants. We have only done what we were required to do.’” That’s the mystery. At the same time that we find the joy of living in Christ, by that humility, that reality of our brokenness, that reality of our feebleness, lifted up by God, empowered by God to walk in the works which he prepared beforehand for us to do (Ephesians 2). Even as we walk in that strength, in that grace to do that, we know even so that we are nothing. We have everything, and yet we are nothing. Both things are true.
Why are they true? Because we have been made children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of the kingdom and heirs of God.
Let’s look at some more of tonight’s text. Maybe verse 2: “Men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee,” we talked about him, “a tax collector.” Let’s focus in on the tax collector.
The tax collector is somebody that was despised in society because they’re not like your friendly neighborhood IRS agent that we would meet today. It was worse. Because in Israel at the time, the tax collectors were expected that they would take a little extra off the top, and that’s how they would live. Some of those guys were living real high on the hog, so taking not only what was required by law by the Romans but taking a little extra for themselves too.
Nobody in society had any respect for them in Israel at the time because they were seen as compromisers with the occupying government. So if you were a tax collector, the point of this parable to the Jewish audience is that that’s going to be the worst person that they can think of. So you have a Pharisee who knows the law, Moses, who at this point in time is in charge of proclaiming the law, proclaiming the rules of God as they understood them to the people of this time. So if anybody’s going to look like a well-put-together religious person, it’s going to be the Pharisee. If anybody is going to look like just a hot mess, as they say, it’s going to be this tax collector because they got nobody. They have no respect in society, might as well be a prostitute. It could be even worse than a prostitute.
So Jesus, in telling us this parable, wants to draw these lines as sharply as he can. But notice how the Pharisee is pointing out everybody else’s sins, and look how broken everybody else is. “Oh, that’s so sad, and so wicked that that person’s doing that over there.” And boy, I’m glad I’m not like that. But what are you like, Mr. Pharisee? You’re a guy that looks around and instead of looking inside and letting the grace of God show you who you are inside, you’re telling everybody else that they’re the problem.
A great pop star has once recently said, “Hi, I’m the problem.” And the Christian’s answer to who the problem is: “It’s me. I’m the problem. I’m the one who sent Jesus to the cross even if I’m not the only one.” I know that’s true, but even if I were the only one, even if I were the only sinner, that’s enough. Jesus said, “That’s enough. I will die for him. I’ll die for her.” It’s personal.
Christ, who loved himself and gave himself for me. That is when it becomes personal, when the cross is not something far off, not something intellectual or theological, when you see Jesus on that cross in your mind’s eye when you read the crucifixion passages of Jesus’ death and you can see him suffering on that cross for you, then you’ve started to realize the mystery of mysteries; that when I am weak, I am strong. When I have nothing, that’s when I have everything. Because when I have nothing, my hands are open to receive what God is already trying to give.
There’s nothing to chase. There’s nothing to do. What there is to do is to see that Jesus in his cross and resurrection is pouring out his grace. We are drowning in his grace at every moment. And the mystery and the glory is, God grant me the grace to open myself up to receive what you have and to miss less opportunities to receive what you have and to share it, and to share it.
It tells us in the book of Romans, for example, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, that you may test what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Now, I don’t know about you, or if you have contemplated a sacrifice in a while. But typically, those sacrificial victims die. Sacrifice doesn’t usually end well for the sacrificial victim. But remember, this one holy, perfect and unblemished sacrifice of Jesus is one that ends victoriously when he—and we’re going to see him do it—when he reenacts his death on the cross and his resurrection is proclaimed, it’s a mocking of our enemy. It’s a mocking of the devil because he’s alive never to die again. That’s the thing.
When we come to the table a little bit later, he’s not going to die again. He’s victorious in his resurrection. He is victorious.
So Jesus is giving us the story because it anticipates the victory that he will win on the cross. It anticipates that victory. That’s why he’s teaching us ahead of time. He wants us to know this is what it’s going to be like in my kingdom. You will not save yourself because I will save you myself. You will not see yourself as so great and so wonderful. You will see yourself as a poor beggar, a poor sinner that has nothing, and at the same time, you will be empowered to do and to love others in a way that you haven’t before.
This is Trinity Sunday, as Tim mentioned, which means let’s make it real basic. The Father has sent the Son, and the Son came in the world to teach the way of the kingdom and then go to the cross and to be resurrected. And then, as my pastor says it in a little humorous way, Jesus pretending not to know what’s going on, “Oh no, Father, if I go away, what about the people? They’ll be left all alone.” And the Father says, “Don’t worry, my Son. I will send another.” And that’s the Holy Spirit. He takes from what belongs to Christ. This is also in John’s gospel. He takes what belongs to Christ and declares it to us.
We are not alone because everything that Jesus is and taught and taught us to follow, he gave to the Holy Spirit to give to us. When we are sealed in the Holy Spirit in baptism, then the Spirit indwells us never to leave us again. And it is by the Holy Spirit that we declare—He declares—that we are children of God. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:16). And by him we cry, Abba, Father.
You’re not just on the winning team of some cosmic battle, although you are; you are a son and daughter of God in Christ. This is who Christ is.
Let’s look at some more of the passage. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” Let’s keep going. “I fast twice a week. I give tithes to all that I get.”
Who keeps track of that? That’s the thing. Like, even if you know, you could build a theological system where you could say, “Oh, here’s merit for doing this, and here’s merit for doing that.” But as we established before, everything that we give to God has already been given to us.
That’s from a C.S. Lewis story, and it’s also a great band, Sixpence None the Richer. Basically, the kids come to their dad and say, “Dad, give us some money so we can buy you a gift.” And the dad’s thinking, “Well, that’s ridiculous. If I give them the money to buy the gift, it’s like me buying the gift.” And exactly, that’s the point.
We don’t have anything to give to God that he doesn’t already have. So what’s the point of doing good? What’s the point of all those things? The point is to stand in the grace of God and to let it grow in us and grow in others. We don’t live by our own power; we live by grace. As I’ve said before many times, grace is the presence and power of God in the people of God to do the will of God. The presence and power of God in the people of God to do the will of God—that is grace.
It’s everything that we need to live now as Christians, not in fear. He did not give us the spirit of fear to fall back into slavery. He gave us the spirit to live in freedom.
The fruit of the Spirit, in other places in the scripture, it just flat out says, “Against such things there is no law.” You don’t need a law against love—true love—that binds and empowers and brings people together and changes lives and changes the world. You don’t need a law against that. You don’t need anything to regulate that.
A great theologian once said, and this isn’t from the word, but this is a thought of how true goodness that comes from God works. He said, “The good is diffusive of itself.” That means as we do goodness in the power of the Holy Spirit, it spreads, and people can benefit from it, even if they’re not directly aware of what’s going on.
If we live holy lives and we create communities of holiness and purity and love and peace and forgiveness, then our world will be better than it is now. We don’t have to be sitting around lamenting all the time because in the power of God, we’re creating the kind of lives that we’re meant to live.
Have you ever noticed? It’s like I almost never stop talking. I’m sorry. Have you ever noticed that?
Jesus died and rose again and promises to return. But when he does that, when he says all that in the scripture, he keeps his human nature; he doesn’t throw it away. Why does he do that? One, he did that so he could die for us. But another thing that he did, he said, “That nature’s good. Humanity is good.”
It’s what humanity has chosen to do with their freedom, with their ability, with their gifts, that makes them bad, which makes them have a need for forgiveness and mercy and grace. But we’re not meant to be bad. We’re not meant to be despised. We don’t hate the things of the world, but we don’t want to live like the world. As we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, we live in a power that we do not possess by ourselves.
Let’s look at some more of this passage.
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.” The main ingredient to come into the kingdom of God and enjoy its blessings is humility: humility.
I don’t have anything of myself that I wasn’t given. You don’t have anything of yourself that you weren’t given. That means if you see somebody else struggling a little bit, that means they need some grace. They need to experience God’s presence in their midst and maybe change a few things. But it was never the disapproval of someone else. I don’t think they caused another person to change. It’s that light of grace that says, “Hey, why don’t you let go of this thing over here?” The Holy Spirit is saying, “Let go of this thing over here. Maybe you don’t have to play that violent game on your phone. Maybe if you play that violent game on your phone, use such foul words all the time; maybe it’s not the best.”
That was oddly specific, but, you know, if something is causing you to live less well, even if it’s a small thing like coarse language coming out of your mouth, you know, let it go. If something leads you into sin of some type, if something on the internet leads you to those types of sins, those sins of the flesh, let it go. If you got to put up a barrier, put up a barrier, help yourself out so that your enemy, who is not God, who is not Jesus, who is not the Holy Spirit, but your enemy, the devil, cannot use it to torment you.
“Oh, I’ve fallen into this again. Maybe God doesn’t love me.” Bull, bull. Why? Because God’s love never stops, never stops. It’s us who sometimes fail to receive his grace and his love. It’s relentless. That’s the beauty of knowing that God cannot change. So when God says, “God is love,” that’s all God could ever be. He can’t change.
That’s one of the great theological points in the history of the world. If God doesn’t change and God is love, then God is always loving. He can’t do anything else.
So when we look at the scripture and what is—when we see wrath being poured out—that’s a little bit of a struggle, what about wrath? Well, I can’t answer all those mysteries for you, but I can tell you that whatever is unholy, whatever is unworthy will be burnt up in the love of God. Someone who is ready and willing to receive the love of God just becomes a bigger vessel for the love of God.
Somebody who is standing against God and refusing to bend the knee and refusing to be humble, well, maybe that same love burns like something else, and that’s where we get wrath, that’s where we get the place of punishment. That’s hell and all that stuff.
Think about—I may have mentioned before—the parable of the talents. We find it in several places:
“For it will be as a man going on a journey, entrusted his servants and entrusted to them his property. He gave five talents to one, two, and to another one to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who received the five talents went at once and traded with them and made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.
He who received the five talents came saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here I have made five talents more.’ The master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful over a little; I will set you over much and enter into the joy of your master.’
He who had the two talents came forward saying, ‘Master, you delivered me two talents. Here I have made two talents more.’ His master said, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
He also who received the one talent came forward saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not winnow. So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not winnow. Why didn’t you even give it to the bankers and at least earn interest on my money?’”
What was the problem with the wicked servant? He didn’t see the Father for who the Father really is.
A little bit earlier in this gospel of Luke, Luke 15, we have the parable of the prodigal son, and the key part of the older son—the key problem with the older son—is that he doesn’t see the love that the Father has for his children.
“You’ve been with me,” the Father says to him when he’s grumpy because he didn’t get a calf to hang out with his friends. And the Father says back to him, “You have always been with me this entire time, and all that I have is yours.” But you’re going to get grumpy because your younger son, who would have wasted his living, has come back.
We need to believe in a God who brings people back, not in a God who is keeping a meticulous score on a clipboard and is going to whack us with the clipboard when we mess up.
It’s a key point of receiving God with humility to recognize that He’s someone that we can submit to without being hurt. He’s someone we can trust. When you can bring your guard down and know that you’ll be okay and know that you’ll be loved and even blessed and even elevated to be a prince or princess in His kingdom, that’s when you know you’ve understood Him rightly.
But if you view God as someone who is hard, who is just so demanding that He can never be pleased, on the one hand, that’s true because if we had simply the commandments and here’s go do the commandments; here are the Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus, go do them, how do you guys do it with the Ten Commandments? Everybody feeling good about that? Everybody feel like they measure up all the time? No.
But in the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting in Christ, we can start to do those things. This is why He says, “Your righteousness had better surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees.”
How could He even say that to us? Well, the reason is because we are not orphans. He said, “I will not leave you as orphans, but I will give you the Holy Spirit, and He will guide you.”
We know—I mean, I’ve heard the whisper of the Spirit, and sometimes I’m like, “Lord, I don’t want to do that.” That seems crazy to do that. But His plan is better than our plan. His plan is definitely better than my plan, and we can trust Him.
We know that it leads back to the cross to being in the family of God because of what Jesus did on the cross. It all comes back there. That’s how we know that we can turn around. We can go turn around. That’s what repentance means—to turn around.
We can turn around, go in another direction, go toward God, go toward His holiness, and not be afraid because He’s already taken care of us. All we’re going to do is head right back to the cross, and we’ve been there before.
Let me say this one more time. Somebody, I went to a pastor and I confessed my sins and everything, and he said to me, “The blood of Christ is still fresh for you. It’s still fresh for you.”
If you don’t think of it as something that happened far away, think of it as if you need to go there right now and lay down a burden. He’s right there to receive it. He knew about it before you even were.
Don’t be like this Pharisee that thinks he’s got it all together. This Pharisee, what does he know?
St. Paul, when he’s talking about the old law, he even says, “We who are Jews and not Gentile sinners know that men cannot be justified by works of the law.”
So even there in contrasting the old law and the new law, Paul says, “We knew we were hopeless.” That’s why the day of atonement for the people in the Old Testament came around every year. Why did they have to do it every year? Because it’s incomplete. They didn’t have anything to take away those sins forever, but it was dropping a hit. That’s something as an Easter egg, if you will, as an Easter egg that says that the Supper has celebrated.
We’re doing it in the shadow of the victorious cross. When we receive Him, we receive the victorious Jesus, not the defeated Jesus, victorious Jesus. That’s the greatness of what we’ve been brought into.
So if you’ve got a burden, lay it down. Lay it down, ‘cause Jesus is right here, and He’s with you, and He’s not afraid of it, and He doesn’t want you to be afraid anymore either.
That’s a lot, that’s a lot. Let’s pray.
Lord, everything you’ve written in your word is too much for us, it’s too much, but it boils down to how much you love us and how you went to the cross for us. And we revel in that, we rejoice in that, and we ask your blood cover us again. Cover us again and make us white as snow so that we can meet you and be unashamed. We ask all this through Christ our Lord, amen.
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