Luke 18:9-14 | Parables in Practice

Listen to this week’s sermon, Parables In Practice preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Luke 18:9-14.

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Welcome And Luke 18 Reading

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Joshua Esquivel 0:21

Please join me in reading the Prayer of Illumination. Heavenly Father, your word is truth. By your Spirit, give us ears to hear and hearts to believe your word with joy through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Our scripture today comes from Luke chapter 18, verses 9 through 14. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 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. I fast twice a week, I give 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 the one who humbles himself will be exalted. This is God's word.

A Diagnostic For Hidden Contempt

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 1:48

I think Luke thinks we're getting lazy. So towards the end of the gospel, he just starts telling you straight up why the parable's told, right? He says in verse 9, Jesus told this parable because some people are trusting in themselves that they're righteous. 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. We don't struggle or wrestle with the same things that they did. Well, Jesus goes on and gives us a diagnostic. He actually says, those people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. 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. And that word contempt sounds strong, but it's simple. In in Greek, it simply just means out of nothing. 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. So here's what I want to do. I want us to stand right here at the beginning. I want us to not literally stand. I want us to metaphorically stand before Dr. 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. All right, so here's the first thing. Do you have any self-made systems that you use to establish your own righteousness? Let me just give you some examples. The first one is what I like to call on-time righteousness. This is when uh people who are late make you irate. 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. I just stand rooted in the righteousness of Jesus. Just kidding, I'm getting ahead of myself. So the second thing related is what I call wake up early righteousness. The early gets the bird gets the worm and a little bit of superiority too, right? Or how about this eat healthy righteousness? Uh your friend rang the bell and rolled up with a cheesy gordita crunch and a Baja Blast, and they are an adult. And your eat healthy righteousness gets stirred up in that moment as you look down at them. Justifiably so, right? Or how about political cause righteousness? Uh-oh, I heard an audible. 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? Some of us, it's parenting style righteousness. You see a baby melting down, and you're just like, are those parents raising an animal? What is happening right now? 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. Okay, it's not your fault. How about non-self-righteous righteousness? Does anybody else get easily triggered by self-righteous people? Your non-self-righteous self-righteousness is showing in that moment. So here's a few more quick questions. Is there anyone that you feel subtly superior to? Anyone whose lifestyle you sneer at? Is there a type of person or behavior that your tongue so easily condescends to? Are you deeply disappointed with anyone for their lack of follow-through? Maybe a child or spouse, a family member, a friend. Do you ever meddle with others' minor minor failings but fail to deal with your more serious faults? Anyone in here have a hard time uh asking for forgiveness from others or extending forgiveness to others? Some of us, um, you might feel prickly or touchy or defensive. Are you easily offended? I just go on record. One of the places I find myself like this is in TSA lines. Because a TSA line is where it like, no matter what, good upstanding citizens are treated like criminals. And I'm like, I'm not a criminal. But it's one of those places where sinners are treated like what they are sinners. And it offends us, it makes us touchy a little bit. Finally, do you have a historical righteousness? What C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. One author put it like this: if we had lived in uh the south of Ohio in 1830, we would not have owned slaves. If we had lived on the frontier, we would not have killed Indians. The probability is actually overwhelming that if we had belonged to the generations we deplore, we too would have behaved deplorably. 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. 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? Is it possible that you silently justify yourself and have contempt for other people? If so, Jesus has a parable for you and for me. So

The Question Behind The Parable

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 7:03

if you have a Bible or device, get Luke 18 in front of you. We're gonna look at it starting in verse 10. I've got one question, which is what are you standing on before God? What are you standing on before God? Look at verse 10 with me. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. Now listen, like any good story, Jesus already starts. He's got a setting, characters, and a plot. The setting is they're going up to the temple. This is the place where people go to meet with their God. And many cultures have temples because we know one thing. If there is a God, there is a gap. There's a gap between that God and us humans. And so we need a place that mediates that gap. And so they're going up to the temple, and there's two characters here. One is a Pharisee, the other is a tax collector. One author puts it like this: the Pharisee is a truly good guy. 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. He's a good citizen at his best. The tax collector has sold out to the Roman government for money. 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. He doesn't so much disobey the law as use the law to line his own pockets. Every society has tax collectors and every society hates them. So these are our two characters. Now what are they doing? He just simply says that they're going up the temple to the temple to pray. To pray. It's worth recognizing that prayer is the place of revelation. 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. Who you are before God is who you are and nothing more than that. Not who you posture yourself before other people, anything like that. And so the place of prayer is the place of revelation. Now, what do we find out? What's revealed about these two? Look at verse 11.

The Pharisee’s Self-Focused Prayer

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 9:16

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. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. 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. The Pharisees are not cartoon villains. Like, this guy didn't walk around with a dark hood and a sunken face like Emperor Palpatine. That's not that's not the picture in your mind's eye when you think of a Pharisee. The Pharisees were deeply moral, devout, and admirable people. It's important. Like, just look at this, what we see here. He's moral. This man would have made a decent neighbor. You want a neighbor who is not an extortioner. In other words, they don't they earn their money, they've got integrity in business, they don't steal. You want a neighbor who is not unjust. In other words, he gives to each what each is due. You want a neighbor who's not an adulterer. This man is faithful to his wife. But not only is he moral, he's actually devout too. Look at this, he practices the common rhythm. He fasts twice a week. It's only once a week here for us. Not only that, he's generous. He gives 10% of quote all that I get. That's gross, not net. I'm just gonna assume that. He's not tipping God after taxes. This guy is devoted in his generosity. In Matthew 6 and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that his disciples will give, pray, and fast. And this Pharisee does all three in an exemplary way. But most importantly, don't miss this, he actually believes that his righteousness is because of God. Look at the text. God, I thank you. Who gets the credit here? God gets the credit. He trusts in God produced righteousness that's in his life, but he's giving God the due for this. So he doesn't think that he's produced this righteousness on his own. That's a really significant thing. So what's the big deal? Well, let's look a little more closely. Verse 11, it says, The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus. Here's where the question, what are you standing on before God, comes from? What are you standing on before God? One translation words it like this The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself. Another way to say that is the content of his prayer is self-focused. Like you notice here, the prayer begins with God, but every other sentence centers on I. Count the I statements. I fast, I tithe, I'm not like. The Pharisee uses God as an audience for self-admiration. His prayer is functionally a spiritual resume, if you will. And so the issue is not that the Pharisee's practices are fake. They're impressive, they're disciplined. The Pharisee is actually a good example of the highest example of what man can do in his own strength. That's what a Pharisee is. But the problem is, is he uses this God-wrought righteousness in him as the ground that he's standing on before God. And the danger there is whenever we build ourselves up by our moral performance, we need someone beneath us to stand on. So look at verse 11. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, or even like this tax collector. Like if I'm the tax collector and I hear that, I'm like, bro, step off. Like, I'm just trying to pray, mind your own business. You don't have to throw shade. But here's the thing: sinners are useful to Pharisees because sinners remind Pharisees that they're okay. In this case, it's kind of haunting because the Pharisee's not lying. In fact, he's he's not consciously self-righteous, he's just blind. He's blind to it. He can't see his pride, his lack of love, or his contempt. There's some research in a book called Mistakes Were Made, subtitle, but not by me. And in that, this research, uh, they they researched, they asked wives, they said, Hey, what percentage of the housework do you do? And they said, Are you kidding? I do almost everything, at least 90%. And when they ask the husbands the same question, the men say, I do a lot. It's actually about 40%. Now, listen, the specific numbers vary, they differ between couples, but the total always exceeds 100% of the work done around the house. So, what do we see in this? It's not that either one of them's lying. They're both speaking what they believe to be true, and yet they are wrong. That's the story of the Pharisee here. Because when you build your sense of self on your own rightness, you are highly susceptible to self-deception. Because your sense of self can't tolerate you being wrong. 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. 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? 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. I, you know, something good that you do that other people don't do. And you begin to see that there's something of this in each of us. And the real problem in this is that the better we think we are, the less we can love others. Let's look at that other as we transition in the text to verse 13. But

Mercy That Requires A Sacrifice

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 15:07

the tax collector standing far off. You notice this, both men are described as standing in verse 11 and verse 13. This is why I asked the question: what are you standing on before God? The Pharisee stands by himself or on his own, the tax collector stands far off. If this posture is theological, then the distance is actually metaphorical. It's telling us something. If righteousness is right standing before God, then you learn something about the tax collector here. In Psalm 130, verse 3, it says this, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities. In other words, if you just kept track of the things we do wrong, O Lord, who could stand? So listen, what are you standing on before God? The tax collector feels unworthy to even approach. 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. If you notice, both the Pharisee and the tax collector begin their prayer in the exact same way. God. And that's the end of the comparison. This is a contrast with the Pharisee's prayer. The Pharisee's prayer contains no confession, no petition, no dependence, only self-reference. The tax collector asks for nothing but mercy. God be merciful to me. Now there's something technical happening here which I think is important. This is not the normal word for mercy. In Luke 16 and in Luke 18, we find the word mercy used. It's a different word than what we find here. You see, in Luke 18, 38, there's a man that says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Here, the tax collector is not asking for compassion or pity or kindness. Instead, the word mercy that he uses here only shows up two times in the New Testament. Just twice. Once is here. Be merciful to me through sacrifice. The word here is actually related to an Old Testament concept for called the mercy seat. Remember the setting. In verse 10, Jesus tells us that they've gone up into the temple, right? 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. And inside that box were two tablets. On the tablets were written the commands of God, the Ten Commandments. And the reason why that's important is because that is God's standard of righteousness, his law communicated very clearly. And the tax collector knows this. And then above the law, this is important because mercy triumphs over judgment. 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. 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. 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. He's appealing to something outside of himself as the basis of God's mercy for himself. So he's not saying, God, be lenient. God have sympathy, but God deal with my sin through mercy that satisfies justice. And so while the Pharisee appeals to his resume for acceptance, the tax collector appeals to sacrifice for sin.

Justified By Verdict Not Performance

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 19:22

Look again, verse 13, God be merciful to me, a sinner. The Pharisee is able to compare himself to those around him, and that gives him a sense of standing before God. The tax collector compares himself only to God, and he simply owns his identity as a sinner with no standing before God. No comparison, no mitigation, no spin put on this. Just here I am, Lord, a sinner. Would you be merciful to me? And look at the result, verse 14. I tell you, this tax collector went down to his house justified. That word justified is the whole point of the parable. Everything hinges on that word. You see, Jesus told this parable in verse 9 to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. And now he talks about how this man goes down justified. How is this man justified? Here it is, simple. Jesus declared it so. Full stop. I tell you, justified. That's how it happened. 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. Now, the the church has had terminology around some of these things. Um, and and one of the ways that people will talk about justified, being justified is just as if I'd never sinned. That's good. That's the truth. It's just half of a truth. 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. You're still zero in your bank account. In a similar way, to have it be just as if I'd never sinned is like you are morally zero. But that's not God's standard. The standard that God has for us is not only that we would be sinless, but also that we would have lawfulness. 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. 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. To be right in God's sight, you must be both acquitted and righteous. Nothing less will suffice. So, how does this happen? Well, I skipped the four most unsettling words in this entire text. Look with me again at verse 14. I tell you, this man, that is the tax collector, went down to his house justified. Here they are, rather than the other. Rather than the other. Jesus could have stopped after justified. We'd all be happy. But he wanted to make something really clear. He's contrasting the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee had a righteous life, but he received a non-righteous verdict. The tax collector had a sinful life, but he received a righteous verdict. How can this be? Well, listen, this is the point of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, right here. This is how it started. It was fundamentally about this question. How are we justified? How are we made right in God's sight? 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. He pours his love into your heart, and then you become a more loving person over time, and then he goes, righteous. Sounds good, right? The reformer said, absolutely not. No way. There's no way that this is the source of our righteousness, God working in us. You remember the Pharisee said, I thank you, God, for my righteousness. The reformer said that we will not tolerate that. That's not what it means to be justified in God's sight. Because our righteousness before God is not found inside of us in our transformed life, it is found outside of us in Jesus Christ. No other way. Now, the reformers use the Latin phrase, bear with me here. The Latin phrase was extra nos. Somebody say extra nos. Great, well done. Extra nos means outside of ourselves versus intranos. Somebody say intranos. Awesome. This is for my classical students in here who know Latin. I don't, I just make it up. Um intranos means inside of ourselves. And this was their dividing line right here. Where is your righteous acceptance before God located? Intranos inside yourself, extraneous outside yourself. It is outside of you in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. 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. Wow, this is high stakes. This is a big deal. You see, how is the tax collector justified? By a total looking away from himself to God for mercy. And Jesus declared him justified. Justification comes before transformation, before moral repair, before you get your act together, before spiritual achievement. The verdict precedes the performance. The Pharisee stands on his performance, the tax collector stands on mercy and mercy alone. You see,

Pride, Despair, And Gospel Gratitude

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 25:14

the Pharisee still has a case to make, the tax collector abandons his defense. That's the doorway to being justified, right in God's sight. It's not moral success, it's the total collapse of your self-justification. And when that happens, the greatest barrier to being made right in God's sight is being right in your own sight. You see, in the Christian life, we must give up first our unrighteousness, but then also our self-righteousness. Because unrighteousness and self-righteousness are two sides of the same coin called self-reliance. A commitment to you determining your own way in the world. And Jesus is trying to cut the nerve of our self-reliance. But listen, when you start talking like I am, people raise a legitimate concern. They think, listen, if you start justifying sinners, what if they keep behaving like sinners? Well, look at verse 14 again. It says, This man went down to his house justified. What does he mean by this? Down to his house. Well, the house was the place of family, but also the place of business, the place of where the rest of life occurred. And in the rest of life, justification ought to make a difference. It ought to begin to shape the kind of person you are in your family, your work, your friendships, your neighboring. 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? We're going to show up into our house. 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. So let me just make that plain. 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. Let me put up an image behind me here. This slide, I think, just boils this down super well. Okay. This is how this works. This is your life. You come to know Jesus at that little fork in the road where it says conversion, okay? 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. And Jesus declares you, God declares you right in his sight because of Jesus Christ. But here's the thing, Christian. 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. And the only way we can do that is either by minimizing God's holiness or minimizing our sinfulness. 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. 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. That's called pride. It's the pride of self-justification. 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. That's the despair of self-justification. You see, but if you look outside of yourself to Christ, then your life will increasingly be characterized by a radical gratitude. It will be characterized by a sense of awe of all that God is for you in Jesus Christ. And when that happens, nothing else can free us up to be gentle with other people and their failures. 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. Nothing else can sever the nerve of our self-promotion. That's exactly where Jesus ends. Look at verse

The Sweet Exchange Of The Gospel

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 29:27

14. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. It's important. Humility here is not worm theology. It's not walking around like a dirty, rotten sinner everywhere you go. That's not what he's talking about. What he means by humbling yourself here is renouncing your own righteousness as you're standing before God. That's what he means by humbling yourself. Notice these are reflexive verbs. You can actively exalt yourself, like the Pharisee, but you will be passively humbled by God. Or you can actively humble yourself and then you will be passively exalted by God. I want to close with a story to kind of help make this plain. Martin Luther used this illustration of a king marrying a prostitute. And he says, You imagine a woman whose life has been marked by shame and regret and debt and sin. And then one day a king sets his love on her and marries her. 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. And what does she have to give? Shame, debt, guilt, poverty, sin. But the king stands and looks at her and says, All that I am and all that I have, I give to you. What does he have to give? Riches, status, honor, inheritance, a kingdom? You see, in that instant, everything changes about her status. She's no longer poor, she is royalty. The king's riches become hers. His name becomes her name. His home becomes her home. His future becomes her future. All that I have and all that I am, I give to you. That is what some theologians have called the sweet exchange of the gospel. The sweet exchange of the gospel. Jesus Christ takes our sin and gives us his righteousness. He takes our guilt and he gives us his acceptance. He takes our judgment and we receive his justification. And with those simple words of faith, I am yours and you are mine. That and that alone is how we stand before God. Let's

Closing Prayer And Sending

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 31:49

pray. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. We dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. Yes, Jesus. Would you draw us outside of ourselves to look to you now? Give us the faith, the confidence in you. An alien righteousness, a righteousness that is not our own, as the ground of our standing before you, God. And then let that change the way we operate in our house, in our work, in our neighborhood, in our communities. 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. It's in your name we pray, Jesus. Amen.