Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Joshua Esquivel: Please join me in reading the Prayer of Illumination.
Joshua Esquivel: Heavenly Father, your word is truth.
Joshua Esquivel: By your Spirit, give us ears to hear and hearts to believe your word with joy through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Joshua Esquivel: Amen.
Joshua Esquivel: Our scripture today comes from Luke chapter 18, verses 9 through 14.
Joshua Esquivel: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
Joshua Esquivel: Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
Joshua Esquivel: 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.
Joshua Esquivel: I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.
Joshua Esquivel: 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.
Joshua Esquivel: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
Joshua Esquivel: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Joshua Esquivel: This is God's word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think Luke thinks we're getting lazy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So towards the end of the gospel, he just starts telling you straight up why the parable's told, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says in verse 9, Jesus told this parable because some people are trusting in themselves that they're righteous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we read that, we might go, yeah, there and then, ancient people, they were maybe a little bit too into all this whole rightness before God thing, but we are modern and sophisticated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We don't struggle or wrestle with the same things that they did.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, Jesus goes on and gives us a diagnostic.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He actually says, those people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I think that there's a diagnostic here that if you trust in yourself that you're righteous, if you if you have a trust in you, the outcome, the natural outcome of that will be that you treat others with contempt.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that word contempt sounds strong, but it's simple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In in Greek, it simply just means out of nothing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It means that you see other people as less than, as you're kind of got a little bit more of a superiority to them, and they are zero, maybe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So here's what I want to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want us to stand right here at the beginning.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want us to not literally stand.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want us to metaphorically stand before Dr.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus, the great physician, and I want him to run us through a quick diagnostic and see if the symptoms don't point to a deeper disease.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All right, so here's the first thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you have any self-made systems that you use to establish your own righteousness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me just give you some examples.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first one is what I like to call on-time righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is when uh people who are late make you irate.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, the irony here is I was late this morning and they applauded when I walked in because I was so late, but I don't have on-time righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I just stand rooted in the righteousness of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just kidding, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the second thing related is what I call wake up early righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The early gets the bird gets the worm and a little bit of superiority too, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or how about this eat healthy righteousness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Uh your friend rang the bell and rolled up with a cheesy gordita crunch and a Baja Blast, and they are an adult.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And your eat healthy righteousness gets stirred up in that moment as you look down at them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Justifiably so, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or how about political cause righteousness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Uh-oh, I heard an audible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know, people just don't care as much as you do about immigration or racial justice or the rights of the unborn or the theft of high taxes?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of us, it's parenting style righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see a baby melting down, and you're just like, are those parents raising an animal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is happening right now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if your three-year-old throws a tantrum, it's because they missed their nap, they lost their binky, and Orlando's really humid in May.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay, it's not your fault.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How about non-self-righteous righteousness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Does anybody else get easily triggered by self-righteous people?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your non-self-righteous self-righteousness is showing in that moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So here's a few more quick questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is there anyone that you feel subtly superior to?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anyone whose lifestyle you sneer at?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is there a type of person or behavior that your tongue so easily condescends to?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Are you deeply disappointed with anyone for their lack of follow-through?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe a child or spouse, a family member, a friend.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you ever meddle with others' minor minor failings but fail to deal with your more serious faults?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anyone in here have a hard time uh asking for forgiveness from others or extending forgiveness to others?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of us, um, you might feel prickly or touchy or defensive.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Are you easily offended?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I just go on record.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of the places I find myself like this is in TSA lines.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because a TSA line is where it like, no matter what, good upstanding citizens are treated like criminals.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm like, I'm not a criminal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But it's one of those places where sinners are treated like what they are sinners.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it offends us, it makes us touchy a little bit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Finally, do you have a historical righteousness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis called chronological snobbery.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One author put it like this: if we had lived in uh the south of Ohio in 1830, we would not have owned slaves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If we had lived on the frontier, we would not have killed Indians.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The probability is actually overwhelming that if we had belonged to the generations we deplore, we too would have behaved deplorably.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, to go further, the probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen, is there a slim chance after that diagnosis is over, is there a slim chance that you maybe trust in yourself a little bit, or that you have a subtle sense of superiority to anybody else?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is it possible that you silently justify yourself and have contempt for other people?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If so, Jesus has a parable for you and for me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if you have a Bible or device, get Luke 18 in front of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're gonna look at it starting in verse 10.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I've got one question, which is what are you standing on before God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What are you standing on before God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 10 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, like any good story, Jesus already starts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's got a setting, characters, and a plot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The setting is they're going up to the temple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the place where people go to meet with their God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And many cultures have temples because we know one thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If there is a God, there is a gap.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a gap between that God and us humans.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we need a place that mediates that gap.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so they're going up to the temple, and there's two characters here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One is a Pharisee, the other is a tax collector.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One author puts it like this: the Pharisee is a truly good guy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He recycles his trash, pays his bills, mows his lawn, gives money to charities, coaches baseball, doesn't beat his wife, doesn't chase other women.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's a good citizen at his best.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The tax collector has sold out to the Roman government for money.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's the developer who puts in strip malls while ignoring the environment, the logger who clear cuts timber without receding, the stockbroker who advises you to sell just to make a commission.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He doesn't so much disobey the law as use the law to line his own pockets.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every society has tax collectors and every society hates them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So these are our two characters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now what are they doing?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He just simply says that they're going up the temple to the temple to pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's worth recognizing that prayer is the place of revelation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Prayer is the place where we find out who they really are, because who you are before God is who you are and nothing more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who you are before God is who you are and nothing more than that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not who you posture yourself before other people, anything like that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the place of prayer is the place of revelation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, what do we find out?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's revealed about these two?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 11.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, you those of you who're familiar with the Bible, you have to you have to kind of take something off of your lenses here, real quick.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisees are not cartoon villains.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, this guy didn't walk around with a dark hood and a sunken face like Emperor Palpatine.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not that's not the picture in your mind's eye when you think of a Pharisee.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisees were deeply moral, devout, and admirable people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, just look at this, what we see here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's moral.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This man would have made a decent neighbor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You want a neighbor who is not an extortioner.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In other words, they don't they earn their money, they've got integrity in business, they don't steal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You want a neighbor who is not unjust.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In other words, he gives to each what each is due.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You want a neighbor who's not an adulterer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This man is faithful to his wife.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But not only is he moral, he's actually devout too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at this, he practices the common rhythm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He fasts twice a week.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's only once a week here for us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not only that, he's generous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He gives 10% of quote all that I get.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's gross, not net.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm just gonna assume that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's not tipping God after taxes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This guy is devoted in his generosity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In Matthew 6 and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that his disciples will give, pray, and fast.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this Pharisee does all three in an exemplary way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But most importantly, don't miss this, he actually believes that his righteousness is because of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at the text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God, I thank you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who gets the credit here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God gets the credit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He trusts in God produced righteousness that's in his life, but he's giving God the due for this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So he doesn't think that he's produced this righteousness on his own.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's a really significant thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what's the big deal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, let's look a little more closely.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 11, it says, The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's where the question, what are you standing on before God, comes from?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What are you standing on before God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One translation words it like this The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Another way to say that is the content of his prayer is self-focused.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like you notice here, the prayer begins with God, but every other sentence centers on I.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Count the I statements.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I fast, I tithe, I'm not like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee uses God as an audience for self-admiration.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His prayer is functionally a spiritual resume, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the issue is not that the Pharisee's practices are fake.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're impressive, they're disciplined.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee is actually a good example of the highest example of what man can do in his own strength.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what a Pharisee is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the problem is, is he uses this God-wrought righteousness in him as the ground that he's standing on before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the danger there is whenever we build ourselves up by our moral performance, we need someone beneath us to stand on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So look at verse 11.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God, I thank you that I am not like other men, or even like this tax collector.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like if I'm the tax collector and I hear that, I'm like, bro, step off.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, I'm just trying to pray, mind your own business.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You don't have to throw shade.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the thing: sinners are useful to Pharisees because sinners remind Pharisees that they're okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In this case, it's kind of haunting because the Pharisee's not lying.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, he's he's not consciously self-righteous, he's just blind.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's blind to it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He can't see his pride, his lack of love, or his contempt.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's some research in a book called Mistakes Were Made, subtitle, but not by me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in that, this research, uh, they they researched, they asked wives, they said, Hey, what percentage of the housework do you do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And they said, Are you kidding?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I do almost everything, at least 90%.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when they ask the husbands the same question, the men say, I do a lot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's actually about 40%.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, listen, the specific numbers vary, they differ between couples, but the total always exceeds 100% of the work done around the house.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, what do we see in this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not that either one of them's lying.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're both speaking what they believe to be true, and yet they are wrong.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the story of the Pharisee here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because when you build your sense of self on your own rightness, you are highly susceptible to self-deception.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because your sense of self can't tolerate you being wrong.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so you begin to build walls of self-protection and self-promotion around you to protect you, because that's the only way that your sense of self will avoid crumbling.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, here's a little test, fill in the blanks here, using the Pharisee's prayer, if you want to get in touch with your inner Pharisee, okay?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God, I thank you that I am not like fill in the names of a group of people that maybe that drives you crazy, or even like maybe one particular person who drives you crazy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I, you know, something good that you do that other people don't do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you begin to see that there's something of this in each of us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the real problem in this is that the better we think we are, the less we can love others.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's look at that other as we transition in the text to verse 13.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the tax collector standing far off.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You notice this, both men are described as standing in verse 11 and verse 13.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is why I asked the question: what are you standing on before God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee stands by himself or on his own, the tax collector stands far off.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If this posture is theological, then the distance is actually metaphorical.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's telling us something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If righteousness is right standing before God, then you learn something about the tax collector here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In Psalm 130, verse 3, it says this, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In other words, if you just kept track of the things we do wrong, O Lord, who could stand?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen, what are you standing on before God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The tax collector feels unworthy to even approach.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why in verse 13 it says, 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.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you notice, both the Pharisee and the tax collector begin their prayer in the exact same way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's the end of the comparison.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a contrast with the Pharisee's prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee's prayer contains no confession, no petition, no dependence, only self-reference.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The tax collector asks for nothing but mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God be merciful to me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now there's something technical happening here which I think is important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is not the normal word for mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In Luke 16 and in Luke 18, we find the word mercy used.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a different word than what we find here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in Luke 18, 38, there's a man that says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here, the tax collector is not asking for compassion or pity or kindness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, the word mercy that he uses here only shows up two times in the New Testament.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just twice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Once is here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Be merciful to me through sacrifice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The word here is actually related to an Old Testament concept for called the mercy seat.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Remember the setting.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In verse 10, Jesus tells us that they've gone up into the temple, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, something you gotta know about the temple in the Old Testament is that there was deep inside in the innermost sanctuary, there was this box, a golden box called the Ark of the Covenant.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And inside that box were two tablets.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: On the tablets were written the commands of God, the Ten Commandments.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why that's important is because that is God's standard of righteousness, his law communicated very clearly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the tax collector knows this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then above the law, this is important because mercy triumphs over judgment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Above the law is the mercy seat, the very throne of God where God is seated, enthroned over the universe, from this seat in the temple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that mercy seat is the place where once a year blood would be sprinkled from a sacrificial animal in order to atone at one between God and sinners.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why I spend time on all of that is because when the tax collector says, God, let there be mercy for a sinner like me, he's appealing to that sacrifice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's appealing to something outside of himself as the basis of God's mercy for himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So he's not saying, God, be lenient.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God have sympathy, but God deal with my sin through mercy that satisfies justice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so while the Pharisee appeals to his resume for acceptance, the tax collector appeals to sacrifice for sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look again, verse 13, God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee is able to compare himself to those around him, and that gives him a sense of standing before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The tax collector compares himself only to God, and he simply owns his identity as a sinner with no standing before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No comparison, no mitigation, no spin put on this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just here I am, Lord, a sinner.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you be merciful to me?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And look at the result, verse 14.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I tell you, this tax collector went down to his house justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That word justified is the whole point of the parable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Everything hinges on that word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Jesus told this parable in verse 9 to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And now he talks about how this man goes down justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How is this man justified?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here it is, simple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus declared it so.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Full stop.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I tell you, justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's how it happened.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is significant because it means that to be justified or to have righteousness before God, to have a standing before God is simply to be declared right in God's sight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, the the church has had terminology around some of these things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, and and one of the ways that people will talk about justified, being justified is just as if I'd never sinned.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the truth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's just half of a truth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because that's a good thing, but it's like if you owed a million dollars of debt and somebody paid your debt, awesome, amazing day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're still zero in your bank account.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In a similar way, to have it be just as if I'd never sinned is like you are morally zero.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But that's not God's standard.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The standard that God has for us is not only that we would be sinless, but also that we would have lawfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, it's not just a life with no evil, you avoid bad things, it's actually a life where you do great good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not just a life that's emptied of hate, but a life that's full of love, flowing over to God and neighbor and enemies.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To be right in God's sight, you must be both acquitted and righteous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing less will suffice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, how does this happen?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, I skipped the four most unsettling words in this entire text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me again at verse 14.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I tell you, this man, that is the tax collector, went down to his house justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here they are, rather than the other.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Rather than the other.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus could have stopped after justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We'd all be happy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But he wanted to make something really clear.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's contrasting the Pharisee and the tax collector.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee had a righteous life, but he received a non-righteous verdict.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The tax collector had a sinful life, but he received a righteous verdict.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How can this be?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, listen, this is the point of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is how it started.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was fundamentally about this question.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How are we justified?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How are we made right in God's sight?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And over time in the church's history, many Christians began to think that justification or or being right in God's sight meant that God makes you righteous from the inside out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He pours his love into your heart, and then you become a more loving person over time, and then he goes, righteous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Sounds good, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The reformer said, absolutely not.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's no way that this is the source of our righteousness, God working in us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You remember the Pharisee said, I thank you, God, for my righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The reformer said that we will not tolerate that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not what it means to be justified in God's sight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because our righteousness before God is not found inside of us in our transformed life, it is found outside of us in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No other way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, the reformers use the Latin phrase, bear with me here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Latin phrase was extra nos.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Somebody say extra nos.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Great, well done.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Extra nos means outside of ourselves versus intranos.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Somebody say intranos.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Awesome.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is for my classical students in here who know Latin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't, I just make it up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um intranos means inside of ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this was their dividing line right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where is your righteous acceptance before God located?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Intranos inside yourself, extraneous outside yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is outside of you in Jesus Christ and nowhere else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, if you trust for the righteousness that's inside of you, intranos, you will have the words rather than the other spoken over you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Wow, this is high stakes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a big deal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, how is the tax collector justified?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: By a total looking away from himself to God for mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus declared him justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Justification comes before transformation, before moral repair, before you get your act together, before spiritual achievement.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The verdict precedes the performance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Pharisee stands on his performance, the tax collector stands on mercy and mercy alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the Pharisee still has a case to make, the tax collector abandons his defense.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the doorway to being justified, right in God's sight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not moral success, it's the total collapse of your self-justification.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when that happens, the greatest barrier to being made right in God's sight is being right in your own sight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in the Christian life, we must give up first our unrighteousness, but then also our self-righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because unrighteousness and self-righteousness are two sides of the same coin called self-reliance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A commitment to you determining your own way in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus is trying to cut the nerve of our self-reliance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, when you start talking like I am, people raise a legitimate concern.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They think, listen, if you start justifying sinners, what if they keep behaving like sinners?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, look at verse 14 again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, This man went down to his house justified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does he mean by this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Down to his house.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, the house was the place of family, but also the place of business, the place of where the rest of life occurred.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in the rest of life, justification ought to make a difference.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It ought to begin to shape the kind of person you are in your family, your work, your friendships, your neighboring.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so if the righteousness by which we are justified is not inherent, not native, not even produced within us by God's grace, but rather it's Christ's righteousness outside of us, credited to us by faith alone, then who are we to look down on those around us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're going to show up into our house.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're going to go down to our house in a different way than if we had to depend on ourselves for our standing before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So let me just make that plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How you are in your house is probably the best way to discern whether or not you stand on God's righteousness given to you as a free gift in Jesus Christ or on your own righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me put up an image behind me here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This slide, I think, just boils this down super well.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is how this works.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is your life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You come to know Jesus at that little fork in the road where it says conversion, okay?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what happens is when you, when God opens your eyes to see his holiness and your sinfulness, you have no response other than to say, God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus declares you, God declares you right in his sight because of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the thing, Christian.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many of us, starting on that foundation, standing as right before God in his sight, on Jesus Christ alone, we begin to slip over time into standing on our own sense of righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the only way we can do that is either by minimizing God's holiness or minimizing our sinfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what happens when we do that is we begin to become the kind of people who have a low grade impulse of adding just a little contribution to our standing before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if we do that and we succeed, we end up with a low grade irritation because the people around us just are not getting their act together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's called pride.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the pride of self-justification.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or let's say you do this, but you start failing a lot, and then you end up with a sense of a low mood because you are constantly unacceptable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the despair of self-justification.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, but if you look outside of yourself to Christ, then your life will increasingly be characterized by a radical gratitude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It will be characterized by a sense of awe of all that God is for you in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when that happens, nothing else can free us up to be gentle with other people and their failures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing else can give us a sense of deep security with God that results in compassion, not contempt, towards people who can't get it together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing else can sever the nerve of our self-promotion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's exactly where Jesus ends.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 14.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Humility here is not worm theology.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not walking around like a dirty, rotten sinner everywhere you go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not what he's talking about.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What he means by humbling yourself here is renouncing your own righteousness as you're standing before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what he means by humbling yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Notice these are reflexive verbs.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can actively exalt yourself, like the Pharisee, but you will be passively humbled by God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or you can actively humble yourself and then you will be passively exalted by God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to close with a story to kind of help make this plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Martin Luther used this illustration of a king marrying a prostitute.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he says, You imagine a woman whose life has been marked by shame and regret and debt and sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then one day a king sets his love on her and marries her.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And on that wedding day, when they exchange their vow, she says to him, All that I am and all that I have, I give to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what does she have to give?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Shame, debt, guilt, poverty, sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the king stands and looks at her and says, All that I am and all that I have, I give to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does he have to give?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Riches, status, honor, inheritance, a kingdom?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in that instant, everything changes about her status.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: She's no longer poor, she is royalty.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The king's riches become hers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His name becomes her name.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His home becomes her home.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His future becomes her future.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All that I have and all that I am, I give to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That is what some theologians have called the sweet exchange of the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The sweet exchange of the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus Christ takes our sin and gives us his righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He takes our guilt and he gives us his acceptance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He takes our judgment and we receive his justification.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And with those simple words of faith, I am yours and you are mine.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That and that alone is how we stand before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yes, Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you draw us outside of ourselves to look to you now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Give us the faith, the confidence in you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: An alien righteousness, a righteousness that is not our own, as the ground of our standing before you, God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then let that change the way we operate in our house, in our work, in our neighborhood, in our communities.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord, we want to be those who repudiate our own sense of righteousness and receive all of the righteousness of God in Christ for us by faith alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's in your name we pray, Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.