A GOOD MAN LOST & A BAD MAN SAVED
SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS IS SELF-DECEPTION
(TWO PRAYERS)
33 LU. 18:9-14 (Prayer)
PROP: The attitude of a person’s heart or soul, not his or her actions determines one’s destiny.
INTRO:
1. Notice the make-up of the crowd to whom Jesus spoke. V. 9 makes clear the central theme of this story.
2. Joke: A S.S. teacher was teaching about the bad Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like the publican. She concluded by saying, “Now let’s all bow & thank God that we are not like the Pharisee.”
3. Devout Pharisees prayed at 9 am, noon, & 3 pm. Prayers at the Temple were thought to be more effective.
4. One coming to the Temple to pray at the time of the evening sacrifice (i.e. the 9th hour, 3 p.m.) would first see a priest slaughter & cut up the sacrificial lamb, & would then notice that a priest went to the Holy Place to burn incense. These acts were performed daily in the name of the people whom the priests represented in order to affirm daily Israel’s relationship to God. After this the priest pronounced a blessing with outstretched arms. Other elements of the liturgy were the clash of the cymbol, blasts of the trumpet, reading Psalms, & the singing of the Levite choir in a minor key. (Dalman, G. (1935). SACRED SITES AND WAYS, London: SPCK.)
5. Pharisee means separated, a name their adversaries gave them. They called themselves HABERIM meaning associate: one who associates himself with the law in order to observe it strictly.
The Jews had faced a brutal time during the interbiblical period under the rule of the Selucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The intertestamental books of Maccabees tell the story of the rise of Judas Maccabees & his followers who were willing to be martyred rather than capitulate to Greek idolatry. The HASADIM were those faithful Jews who fought against this opposition. They were the forerunners of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. (J. Ellsworth Kalas, PARABLES OF JESUS (1988), Nashville: Abingdon, p. 91).
They came from the ranks of the Scribes. They united themselves into an association during the interbiblical period, but became hostile to the Maccabeans because they lost interest in the law & became political. All acts of public worship, prayers, & sacrifices fell under the Pharisees’ authority. They believed in immortality, angels, divine providence, human freedom, & Israel’s election. They avoided as far as possible contact with non-Pharisees.
The Talmud lists 7 kinds of Pharisees.
1) SHECHEMITE, who kept the law for what he could profit thereby.
2) TUMBLING, who, to appear humble, always hung their heads down & thus often fell.
3)BLEEDING, who, to avoid seeing women, walked with closed eyes & were often wounded,
4) MORTAR, who wore a motar shaped cap covering his eyes to avoid seeing impurities or indecencies.
5) WHAT-AM-I-YET-TO-DO, who, not knowing the law, often asked “What is my duty?”
6) FEARFUL, who kept the law because of fear of future judgment.
7) LOVE, who obeyed the law because he loved the Lord with all his heart (UNGER’S BIBLE DICTIONARY (1957), Chicago: Moody, pp. 854, 855).
Remember, Paul the Apostle was a Pharisee.
I. A GOOD MAN LOST.
1. Confident: “I thank you that I am not liKe other people.”
1) He was singing “Amazing Grace” on his way to church.
2) He scrupulous, a really good moral man. He was one who helped pay the bills, teach the classes, visit the sick, feed the hungry. He was a better man than I am, & probably better than you. He was one of the best defenders of his nation’s religious heritage.
3) He frequented this Temple on Mt Moriah regularly. We Baptists think we have it bad to go to church 3 times weekly. Devout Catholics go to mass daily. This Pharisee went to the Temple for evening prayer daily.
4) He went to pray. The Pharisees introduced the standing position for prayer to be noticed. V. 11: literally, “prayed to himself.”
5) He was not an extortioner (stealer), an unjust person, or an adulterer. He confessed other people’s sin, not his own.
6) He tithed whatever he ate, sold, or bought.
7) He fasted on Mon. & Thurs. according to the Oral Law although Moses only required it once a year of the Day of Atonement, Lev. 23;27. Mon. & Thurs. were market days with a bigger audience to admire their piety (Foster, CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE (1998), p. 51). I invite you to fast with me on Good Friday each year.
8) Pharisees were not popular, but were highly respected. You could have bought with confidence a used camel from a Pharisee.
2. Confused: He closed his prayer abruptly.
1) His righteousness was outward, not inward.
a. He was smug, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, & pretentious.
b. He went to Temple for the wrong reason: to be seen.
Mt. 6:5: “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand & pray in the synagogues & at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”
c. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Be sure that thou tootest thine own horn lest it not be tooted.
d. His prayer was not really a prayer. It did not contain ACTS. It was more like a Shakespearean sililoquy of self-confidence, a declaration of self-congratulation.
e. Verily, verily I say unto you, he that tooteth his own horn should take care lest he run his battery down. f. He did steal himself from God by keeping the letter of the Law but not the spirit. He felt superior to others & intolerant of those less serious about religion.
g. He had crossed the line from the grammer of gratitude to the grammer of elitism. We almost never notice when we cross it. He had measured himself against a Publican & was pleased with the difference. Our capacity for smugness is astonishing. We quietly think, “Thank God I’m not like the fundamentalists or charasmatics or liberals.” If we compare ourself to Jesus, we find no reason to boast.
h. He was unjust in his dealings with God by expecting salvation without making spiritual preparation.
2) He had not been born again.
a. To Nicodemas, a Pharisee, Jesus said, Jn. 3:3
b. Rom. 10:3: “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness & going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.”
3. Condemned: He, too, was a sinner.
1) Since he confessed no sin, God had nothing to forgive. The deadliest quality of the Pharisee’s prayer was its meanness of spirit.
2) He would have knon the following scriptures:
a.1 Sam. 16:7: “For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
b. Jer. 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, & desperately wicked: who can know it?
c. Ecc. 7:20: “Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning.” Read again the 2nd time.
II. A BAD MAN SAVED
1. Confession.
1) He prayed, “Oh God, let the sacrificial atonement be for me, the sinner. The definite article “the” is in the Greek text in v. 13.
2) He did not go to the Temple regularly or at all. No one invited him or would have welcomed him.
3) He was not in the habit of prayer, nor did he know how to pray.
4) He did not tithe or fast.
5) He made his living by unjust extortion, collecting taxes for the hated Roman government. This is not a comparison to workers in the IRS. Ray, a tax investigator, was one of the Godilest men I have known.
6) PUBLICAN, a collector of Roman revenue. Capitalists who collected & paid large sums into the Roman treasury called PUBLICUM & so received the name Publican. They were commonly natives of the providence in which they were stationed & thus known by the populace who watched them grow up. They were regarded as traitors & apostates who were religiously defiled by their frequent interaction with the heathen Roman oppressors (UNGER’S BIBLE DICTIONARY (1957), Chicago: Moody, p. 899).
6) But he prayed the sinner’s “model prayer.”
2. Call.
1) Notice his humility, v. 13: “beating his breast.”
2) He prayed only for mercy & grace.
3) Pharisee depended on his works: Titus 3:5.
4) Publican depended on God’s mercy: Eph. 2:8,9.
3. Contentment.
1) Lu. 5:32: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentence.”
2) Heb. 7:25 Jesus saved from the uttermost to the guttermost.
3) V. 14: “justified,” just as if he had not sinned.
CONCL:
1. Read v. 14: a sharp warning!
2. If you will recognize yourself as only a sinner & trust God’s grace, He will exalt you. God’s grace is for nice people too.
3. POEM by Crashaw
Two went to pray; or rather say,
One went to brag, the other to pray;
One stands up close, and treads on high,
Where the other dare not send his eye.
One nearer the altar trod,
The other to the altar’s God.
4. This story is set in a fine little frame: “Two men went up (v. 10). . . two men went down (v. 14).” But the humble Publican has a great homecoming. It is the grand old gospel reversal again: God undoing our expected order of things, exalting those of low degree in a great surprize of mercy.
5. If you feel sinful, rejected, unwanted, pray the sinner’s model prayer. (Lead such people in praying it.)
6. The more pious we are, the more likely we need this message. When we become impressed with our own goodness, we lose the very righteousness we seek. Most church members are more in danger of committing the sins of the Pharisee than those of the Publican.
7. PRAYER: Gracious God:
Thanks for accepting us as we are. When we approach you as Publicans, burdoned with the sense of our sins, you receive us with mercy & forgiveness. When we come to you like Pharisees with boasting, you wait with patience for us to better insight into our own shortcomings. Help us to all partake of your gracious spirit so that we may accept all others with patience, love, & compassioni. And may we all grow into the likeness of our Sav.ior
