1. "Self-confidence is a poor substitute for self-knowledge."

2. "Pride is a problem that by its very nature is hidden to the proud. It's pretty good about hiding itself and hiding other truths as well."

3. "To treat someone who's made in God's image with contempt is to take the very image of the one that we claim to worship and to denigrate the God that we worship by denigrating the one made in His image."

4. "Friend, realizing you're broke doesn't put any money in your account. You can have a right diagnosis and you're not cured by it. It may help you get to a cure, but that's no cure."

5. "The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man."

6. "Christianity never presents a God who simply decides to ignore sin, but rather He makes a way for both His love and His justice, His mercy and His wrath to be expressed so that His manifold wisdom is displayed through the gospel of Jesus Christ."

7. "We don't confess our sins regularly merely to remind ourselves of how unworthy we are. It's more to remind ourselves of our unfathomable need and of the staggering wealth of God's provision for us in Christ."

8. "Jesus is the one person in the world who could rightly treat others with contempt. He actually could have done that, and it would have been correct. It would have been an accurate assessment. And yet he taught this as part of his showing mercy and as part of his making a way of salvation for sinners."

9. "Our virtues don't make up for our vices. Our only hope is that God will be merciful to sinners like us."

10. "Pry our fingers off of our assertions of our own righteousness. Help us to accept the gift of the superior and perfect righteousness of Christ."

Observation Questions

1. According to Luke 18:9, to whom did Jesus tell this parable, and what two characteristics described them?

2. In Luke 18:11-12, what specific things does the Pharisee mention in his prayer about himself, and how does he compare himself to others?

3. What physical posture and actions does the tax collector display in Luke 18:13, and what is the content of his prayer?

4. In Luke 18:14, what verdict does Jesus pronounce about the tax collector, and what happened to him compared to the Pharisee?

5. What principle does Jesus state in Luke 18:14b about those who exalt themselves versus those who humble themselves?

6. Looking at the contrast between the two men in verses 11-13, where does each man stand in the temple, and where does each man direct his gaze?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is the Pharisee's method of establishing his righteousness by comparing himself to other people fundamentally flawed when it comes to his standing before God?

2. The sermon emphasized that the Greek word translated "be merciful" in verse 13 is unique in the Gospels and carries the meaning of propitiation. What does this reveal about what the tax collector understood he needed from God?

3. How does the Pharisee's prayer reveal that his pride hid the truth about God, about others, and about himself, according to the sermon's teaching?

4. What is the significance of Jesus choosing a tax collector—someone despised and "canceled" by society—as the one who goes home justified rather than the respected religious teacher?

5. The sermon stated that "humility is necessary but insufficient" for salvation. How does this parable demonstrate both the necessity of humility and the need for something beyond humility?

Application Questions

1. The Pharisee created his own standards of righteousness and then exceeded them to feel good about himself. In what areas of your life are you tempted to create your own moral standards and compare yourself favorably to others rather than measuring yourself against God's character?

2. The sermon pointed out that treating others with contempt is connected to not understanding our own sinfulness before God. Is there a person or group of people you tend to look down on? How might a deeper awareness of your own need for mercy change how you view and treat them this week?

3. The tax collector's prayer was simple and honest: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." What prevents you from praying with this kind of raw honesty, and how might you incorporate this kind of confession into your regular prayer life?

4. The sermon asked whether there are assumptions about yourself and your standing with God that might be "not just wrong but dangerously wrong." What would it look like for you to genuinely investigate how you stand with God rather than assuming you are okay?

5. The preacher noted that the church should be a place for sinners who know they need mercy. How can you contribute to making your church or small group a place where people feel safe to be honest about their struggles rather than feeling pressure to appear righteous?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Romans 3:9-26 — This passage expands on the universal sinfulness of humanity and explains how God's righteousness comes through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, directly supporting the sermon's teaching on justification.

2. Philippians 3:1-11 — Paul recounts his former confidence as a Pharisee and his rejection of self-righteousness in favor of the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, illustrating the contrast between the Pharisee and tax collector.

3. Romans 4:1-8 — This passage explains how Abraham and David were justified by faith apart from works, reinforcing the sermon's emphasis that justification is a gift received through trust in God rather than earned through moral performance.

4. Isaiah 66:1-2 — God declares that He looks favorably on the humble and contrite in spirit who tremble at His word, providing Old Testament background for Jesus' teaching about God exalting the humble.

5. 1 John 1:5-10 — John teaches that claiming to be without sin is self-deception, but confessing our sins leads to God's faithful forgiveness and cleansing, connecting to the sermon's call for honest confession of our need for mercy.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Challenge of Accurate Self-Knowledge

II. A Wrong Righteousness (Luke 18:9-12)

III. A Right Wrongness (Luke 18:13)

IV. A Needed Mercy (Luke 18:13-14)

V. The Call to Humble Confession and Trust in Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I think I remember reading of a poll that said something like 96% of Americans thought that they watched TV less than most people.

Self-confidence is a poor substitute for self-knowledge.

But accurate self-knowledge seems to elude many of us too often, doesn't it?

We think of whether we're being surprised by something we're seeing on the scales or in the mirror or in our bank accounts. We know what it means to be off. And what we've thought about ourselves. When we hear what so-and-so thought we said or when we learn that something that we had done confidently for this purpose had in fact failed completely, we surprise ourselves. Events overtake us.

Circumstances try us.

I believe it was President Harding who 100 years ago said, I knew that this job would be too much for me. I'm not fit for this office. Should never have been here.

Our recent time spent with Job has certainly shown Job growing in self-knowledge and his friends as well.

The kind of bracing truth ends up having great significance in this life and the next. And that's what we want, or at least what we should want. But how can we know the truth, the real truth about ourselves and how we stand really related to God?

Friend, is there anything more important that you could be made certain of by this time together today.

Are there common assumptions that we are sharing even about ourselves that are not just wrong but that are dangerously wrong? You know, a common part of the human situation of our experiences is wondering this and trying to understand this. And that was part of the experience of Jesus' disciples too, back in the days of Jesus' earthly ministry. This morning we're beginning a new series of studies in the very carefully compiled gospel according to Luke. As Luke said at the beginning of his book, It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account.

Well, the gospel of Luke is an orderly account that the physician Luke, a Gentile, a long time co-worker with Paul, wrote after interviewing many of the principal figures in these stories. It's the longest book in the New Testament. We're only going to be looking at the end of the book this year, starting here in chapter 18. But let's just review for a moment. Open your Bibles, if you would, to the beginning of Luke and let's flip through it for just a few moments.

If you're using the Bibles provided, it begins on page 855. The large numbers, if you're not still getting a Bible, the large numbers are the chapter numbers and the smaller numbers are the verse numbers inside of each chapter. So if you look there in the early chapters of Luke, we learn of Jesus' family and of John the Baptist.

In chapters 4 to 9, we read of Jesus' ministry in His home area up in the northern part of Palestine called Galilee.

And then chapter 9 is really the hinge chapter in Luke's gospel because that's where Jesus is confessed as the long-promised Messiah. And as soon as that confession happens, it's like a bell goes off. And Jesus knows that the disciples' school days are coming to a close and they need to start moving toward Jerusalem. You can find sermons on all these earlier chapters and passages in Luke on our church's website, so feel free and go and listen to any of those. From chapter 9 in verse 51, then Jesus leads His disciples to Jerusalem, literally walking there, teaching them what it means to follow Him.

Along the way, they face increasing rejection of Jesus by Israel, even while Jesus pursues sinners. Chapter 15.

Is a beautiful chapter about that and deservedly famous. In chapter 17, a Samaritan leper, twice considered unclean, recognized Jesus as King even while the Jews' own religious leaders, Jesus' own people, were rejecting Him and seemed not to understand Him. And then we come on to our passage today, Luke chapter 18. Verses 9 to 14, these are some of the most treasured verses in Luke's gospel. Luke 18, beginning at verse 9, Jesus exposes the difference between self-confidence and self-knowledge.

Luke 18, beginning at verse 9.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

Two men went up to 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.

Friends, this story brings before us the question, am I okay with God? Am I okay with God? What does Jesus have to do with it? What's the truth? How can we be accepted by God?

How can you know if your confidence is accurate? I want to point out three simple aspects of this story that I pray as we note will be helpful as we consider this tax collector and this Pharisee. And I do this praying that as we consider these two characters that Jesus has sketched here for us, we, like the tax collector, today will go home justified. And that's my prayer for all of us gathered here today.

So, first, notice number one, a wrong righteousness, a wrong righteousness. This is really the beginning of the story. Let me start in verse 9 again. Listen carefully. 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, pray thus, 'God, I thank youk 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.' well, it's a good thing we're not like that Pharisee, huh?

I wonder if you can hear irony in a recording. In Luke's gospel, we see the religious leaders challenging Jesus again and again, questioning him. Here in this little story, Jesus really takes it to them. He's approaching Jerusalem and he paints this scene simple and realistic. At the highest point in Jerusalem was the temple of the Lord.

That's why you're always said verbally to go up to it and when you go home, you're going down from it. The temple was regularly used as a place of prayer, especially for the twice daily sacrifices at 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Though the Jews were under no command to present themselves there at the time of these sacrifices, they would often congregate for prayer at these times, even though there wouldn't be an organized service like this going on. Into this scene, Jesus presents two men engaged in public religious service. They've each come to pray.

The Pharisees were the popular Bible-believing preachers and teachers of the day. They were the nationalists, the defenders of Israel and its laws against the sellout Sadducees in Jerusalem who were cooperating with the Roman occupiers and oppressors. The Pharisees were the treasured and trusted local preachers of God's Word.

Remember Paul's pride that he recounts in Philippians 3 that he had as a Pharisee? Philippians 3 verse 5, he says, Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless. That's how he described himself. We should appreciate the goodness of the Pharisees' theology here, whether it's our giving or our self-discipline, our faithfulness or our justness, our fairness. What do we have that we shouldn't thank God for?

Isn't it right to thank the Lord as the Pharisee does here? In that sense we can appreciate the theology depicted. The Pharisee may seem like a caricature, but when you look around through Luke's Gospel, you find out that the interactions Jesus had with the Pharisees increasingly seemed to be kind of like this Pharisee. If you just look back a few chapters to chapter 15, look at the very first couple of verses there.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to Him. And when Luke writes that, it's It's an uncomfortable truth. These are not the people you want to come. You want to draw a crowd, yes, but you don't really want this crowd. It's the tax collectors and the sinners that are coming.

And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

Anyway, this Pharisee in Jesus' story does what a lot of people do when they first approach God. They think comparing themselves with another human favorably is helpful to their standing with the Lord. I'm better than this person. Well, I've never done that, at least not recently. But friends, the Pharisee here is making up his own standards of fasting and tithing that aren't in God's Word.

He's making them up and then he's exceeding his own man-made standards and then he's comparing himself with somebody who didn't do those things. And on the basis of that comparison, he's feeling good about himself. God, your Word only tells us to come to church regularly. I come twice a Sunday.

Pride is a problem that by its very nature is hidden to the proud.

It's pretty good about hiding itself and hiding other truths as well. So here, this Pharisee's pride hid from him a number of important truths. Hid from him the truth about God. God, in His prayer, He shrinks into a single mention, almost crowded out by the five I's. Eyes that we see in the prayer as the Pharisee is expansive in his praise of himself.

We might mistake the difference between God and us and so mistake the plight that we're in and think our spiritual needs are so slight that they're the kinds of things that we could take care of by ourselves. But none of this would be true. Religion which deceives you about God is dangerous religion.

That's why membership in a faithful church that can teach you the truth about God and really get to know you, to tell you if you have that religious cream cheese on your face or not, is a really useful kind of church. To be a part of. I love what Bobby said in his sermon last week. You can't make new old friends. If you want to have those kinds of relationships, you need to build those kinds of friendships to help you know the truth about yourself, that pride will want to hide from you.

Pride also hid from him the truth about others. Not just the truth about God, but the truth about others. I think it's fair to assume that Jesus would describe this Pharisee's attitude depicted as treating others with contempt. You see up in verse 9, He said He told this parable to those who treated others with contempt. But of course, friends, you and I never have the right to treat anyone made in God's image with contempt.

To treat someone who's made in God's image with contempt is to take the very image of the one that we claim to worship and to denigrate the God that we worship by denigrating the one made in His image. Sounds like John when he says in his first letter, those of you who claim to love the God that you haven't seen but you don't love the people that you have seen that are made in His image. You lie and the truth is not in you.

Friends, it's dangerous religion that would teach us we can love God and not love those made in His image.

They're much more valuable. Each person you'd be tempted to treat with contempt than anything that you own and treasure.

Can you imagine that we actually treasure things more than people?

And yet, friends, it's true of each one of us. There's ways in which we are like that.

Pride can hide all of this from you. So pride was hiding from the Pharisee the truth about God and the truth about others. Pride was also hiding from the Pharisee the truth about himself.

The sin that he thought was so widespread there in verse 11, you know, he sees it everywhere, other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, well it was widespread, he is right. But it was even more widespread than he seemed to understand. Sin engulfed his own heart, too. Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, you're not normally at church, I'm sorry you've picked an unusually crowded day to come to our church. We have about 150 pastors visiting with us from elsewhere.

So if you come back next week, much easier to find a seat. You know, keep coming through the study of Luke's gospel. But this is one thing you really want to hear this morning.

And think of. Don't assume that you are okay with God. It's not a good thing to assume. The topic is too important for you simply to dismiss with half a thought. How can you investigate how you really stand with God?

That's something that you want to figure out.

The Bible is very clear, Romans 3, none is righteous, no one is one, not one, no one understands, no one seeks God, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one.

Friends, this Pharisee's righteousness is wrong. It's not accurate. He's not understanding himself.

I know that leaves questions in the minds of many here. If you're not a Christian, I especially hope it leaves question in your mind about your own standing with God. How could God know you accurately if he is perfectly good and yet approve you? That's what you want to figure out. Now, you can find all kinds of religions around the world that will tell you that God doesn't care that much, or that you really aren't that bad.

But Christianity is unusually tough when it comes to religions, in that it teaches that God cares a lot, and that none of us have done right. And we're kind of left in a problem.

Which we'll come to the solution of a little bit later. But that's the accurate depiction of the problem that we have here. Friends, the Pharisee's perception of his own righteousness was wrong.

So there's a wrong righteousness. Second, notice also Jesus depicted a right wrongness, a right wrongness. See that in verse 13. 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.' Now this is a sinner's prayer, isn't it? 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner.' the prayer of one deeply convicted.

We see it echoed in different parts of what He does just physically, where He stood, far off, where He looked, down, what He did, beat His chest. All of these things are sort of physical confessions of sin before a holy God. For that matter, I think even the fact that he is there at the temple shows this man is feeling pretty desperate. I mean, if you're a tax collector and you go to the temple, that can't be a natural place for you to hang out. Something's going on in this man's soul.

The tax collector's awareness of his moral bankruptcy before God he is correct. He's right. When he calls himself a sinner, or even it may be tougher, we could read it, the sinner. He understands himself emphatically to be someone who's done what is wrong. And friends, you couldn't have presented a stronger contrast than there would be in the popular mind between a Pharisee and a tax collector.

Because the Pharisees were the obviously law-abiding, popular Bible teachers of the day. The tax collectors, on the other hand, These tax collectors are no IRS employees. We're not talking federal government here. You know, these tax collectors are part of the Roman occupation of Israel, of Judah. You see, the Jews had no choice about the government that they were under.

They were conquered by Rome, and Rome required certain amounts of money every year in order to pay for the defense of Judah, militarily.

And whoever they could get it from had their full authority. There were no limits on how much those who volunteered to get this money out of their fellow Jews could charge. They could extort to their heart's content. So when the Pharisee says in verse 11 that he's not an extortioner, he may have even had the tax collector already in mind. These collectors just had to get the money in the amounts that Rome agreed to, and whatever they could get more than that, well, that was just for themselves.

That was just for their trouble. And that made these Jews who took these jobs not merely collaborators, it made them traitors. And not just traitors, it made them blood-sucking, self-serving powerful traitors. They were despised. When Jesus said in verse 9, He told this to those who treated others with contempt, these were the people it was thought you could rightly treat with contempt.

So isn't it interesting that the very ones that everyone felt and knew they could treat with contempt, I mean, who can you look down on? You can certainly look down on that guy. That that's the one. Who in this contrast comes to the Lord in prayer and he speaks what he does about himself. You see, when Jesus tells this story, this tax collector is not a character that any first century Jew hearing the story would be expected to sympathize with.

If you're writing a story, the protagonist should not be a tax collector. Not in that place. That's just not the right one. It would be socially jarring to say the least. It's not even clear that the tax collector had any right to go into the temple precincts.

Many have suggested that he was not only universally despised, but ceremonially unclean and therefore unfit to join with them in prayer in the temple area. As ceremonially unclean as he may have been, this tax collector, though, somehow had a better understanding of the doctrine of human sinfulness particularly as it applied to himself than the teacher of God's Word had. He somehow knew it. And he knew enough to know not only was he sinful, but there was something about this perfectly holy God that told him that he as the sinner could approach this God?

How much theology did that tax collector know about himself and about God that he would approach Him like this?

A wrong self-confidence, self-righteousness is cured by accurate self-knowledge. But that accurate self-knowledge comes not by comparing ourselves with each other, but by comparing ourselves with God. That's how we get our true moral and spiritual coordinates. That's what Jesus commands or commends this tax collector here for doing. He picks the right key, the right standard, the right guide, the right map, God Himself.

But the tax collector standing far off would not not lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. It's God that fills his view and his prayer, not even a list of his sins that he could have done. A great eloquent prayer of confession, but simply a blunt statement of need to God.

Friends, this is not a complicated story. One of the challenges of preaching on this is that it is so simple and clear and direct. It's not an allegory. The point is simply the contrast between these two characters, the self-exalted and the self-humbled. The Pharisee saw the differences between him and the tax collector, perhaps accurately.

But he ignored the much larger, more significant factor. The profound similarity between him and the tax collector compared to God.

You know, I'm standing here, somebody else stands there, wow, I'm a lot higher up. Meanwhile, you get up on top of the roof and you look down and like, we're both just two folks down here.

It's that kind of thing. God, is of an infinitely perfect moral character. And He's made us in His image to be perfectly good. And this Pharisee, blinded by his own pride, did not see the profound similarity there was between him and this tax collector.

Friend, what's so blinded you that you don't make this your very prayer today?

Why do you not take this prayer right now and pray to God, oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner? Just like this tax collector, when we pray this prayer, we are telling the truth. We are saying that we are bankrupt, that we need his Mercy. Kids, teenagers, do you notice that every week here we have a prayer of confession? Do you wonder why we do that?

I mean, doesn't once work? I mean, if you've asked, God, doesn't he forgive you in Jesus, and aren't you kind of done with it then? It's a good question. Your parents would love to explain that to you over lunch. So just pressed them on it.

Mom, Dad, why do we have a prayer of confession? Or if like me, you didn't grow up in a home where mom or dad could do a very good job explaining that, Mark Feather would love to talk to you about it.

Kids, you want to figure out what it means for you to trust in this God. What does it mean for you as an eight-year-old, as a 12-year-old, to trust in this God. You know, we're sort of well known among churches for only baptizing you when you get older. But don't misunderstand it, that doesn't mean that we don't think if you're six or eight or 10 or 14 that you can't know the Lord. You can know the Lord and you can live life not knowing him.

You should choose to know him. You should learn from this tax collector to pray for God to be merciful to you, because even you as a child, you're a sinner.

Your own goodness and obedience to your parents will never make you right with God.

You understand yourself to be a sinner and what that means for you. That's a crucial part of having an accurate self-knowledge. So this tax collector's sense of being a sinner was right. His was a right wrongness. In that, unlike the Pharisee, he rightly understood that he, before God, was wrong.

So a wrong rightness, a wrong righteousness, a right wrongness. Finally, third, notice, a needed mercy. A needed mercy. We see this in verses 13 and 14. 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. Four brief sub-points here, lest you think this sermon was about to be shorter than it is. Four brief sub-points here. Number one, first, humility is necessary.

Consider all the ways that we saw the Pharisees' pride hiding the truth from Him. So, the tax collector's humility cleared that clutter out of his sight and gave him a piercing accuracy even when it came to knowing the truth about himself and about God and the difference. This is how we are helped to have accurate self-knowledge, humility. It clarifies things so that we can see the truth.

Second, humility is necessary. That's the first point. Second, humility is insufficient. And you must grasp this one. There are all kinds of more theologically liberal churches around the city today where this passage is preached as one of their favorite parts of the Bible.

And they do not understand a word of what they're saying. And one of the reasons they don't understand it is because they think that this is teaching that humility is sufficient and it is not. Humility is absolutely necessary, that's true. But humility is not sufficient. It is insufficient.

Some have tried to read this as a kind of salvation through confession. But that's not what we see here. Friends, realizing you're broke doesn't put any money in your account.

You can have a right diagnosis and you're not cured by it. It may help you get to a cure, but that's no cure. Friend, we've got to understand what's going on here. Not participating in the Pharisees' sins that we can see so clearly doesn't mean he didn't have his own. He did have his own, and that's why he felt so miserable as he did, that he wouldn't even look up to God and he wouldn't stand anywhere near the other people and he just beat his chest because he knew the truth about himself spiritually.

Third point, God's mercy is needed. Humility is necessary, humility is insufficient. Third sub point here, God's mercy. Is needed. It is a necessary ingredient for the salvation of someone who is compromised by sin.

Our sin has broken our fellowship with God and even called for His justice to condemn us forever.

Fourth, the tax collector's own sins needed to be dealt with and paid for. He needed mercy and a very particular mercy. And this is what makes this passage pop. Look down at verse 38.

Chapter 18, Luke's gospel, verse 38.

It's a story that will come to, Lord willing, next week.

And here, this blind beggar, as Jesus is getting closer to Jerusalem, he's near Jericho, cries out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And now here's what you need to know that your English translation won't tell you. The word that blind beggar uses for mercy is the word that's used for mercy almost always in the gospel. Allo, it just means mercy, means have mercy. It means what you and I mean by mercy.

In our story that Jesus told, the word the tax collector uses for mercy, and it was fine that ESV translated it this way, but the word that he used for mercy is not that word. It's a word actually that's only used here in the gospels. Only here in Luke chapter 18, in this very verse, in verse 13, when he says, God be merciful. This mercy that he's talking about here is a very specific mercy which takes the form of God satisfying or propitiating himself through the provision of a wrath-bearing, substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of His people. All of that is implied in this word that's translated mercy.

Some older translations have be propitiated. And that is a better translation except for the fact that we don't really use that word in English much. So in that sense, that's a poor translation. You know, if we're asked to translate it into English words that we never use, it's very close to not translating it. So I understand why they've chosen mercy.

It's not a bad choice, but it's just there is more here that we need to understand. This is praying that God would be propitiated toward me. It's a word which has in view God providing the basis for his own mercy. And that's where Christ's substitutionary sacrifice on the cross come in. This tax collector maybe entering into the story inspired by the sacrifices he was seeing there at the temple.

He was asking, May your right wrath against me be dealt with. He's praying for an adequate substitute to be found for the likes of him.

John Stott wrote that the concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Friends, as a church, we always want to be clear in our hymns, in our sermons, in our conversations that God has provided the right basis for us, for forgiving us through the substitutionary sacrifice of his Son. We relish that. Christianity never presents a God who simply decides to ignore sin, but rather He makes a way for both His love and His justice, His mercy and His wrath to be expressed so that His manifold wisdom is displayed through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Friend, Christ through this story of the tax collector And the use of this word even there, this idea is beginning to teach the disciples about what he was going to do on the very cross that he was walking toward at that very moment. He was beginning to teach them about this substitutionary sacrifice that they needed that he himself would literally provide.

Our humility then is a window through which we can see God's merciful propitiation in Christ. What we need is the righteousness from God that Paul writes about when he's writing to the Philippians and he goes on past writing about his own being a Pharisee. He says, Indeed I count everything as loss, this is Philippians 3, because of the surpassing work of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. That's the righteousness that we need. It's both confessing our need for and showing our taking it up and expressing the hope we have for new life now and ultimately that's expressed in the baptisms we're about to witness.

All of that is there in baptism.

If that's not enough, the stunner really is in verse 14, isn't it? It's not that He knows He's sinful or that He asks for mercy, though the way He asks for mercy, that's an extraordinary amount of information conveyed there. But what's stunning when we first hear this, is that God gives this sinner the mercy he asks for.

I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. This is saying that God found in the tax collector's favor. Could you imagine knowing that God has accepted you? We don't know that the tax collector in this story knew this, but we know the disciples and the other hearers know this verdict. They know what's been said.

It's like Paul wrote in Romans 4:5, To the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Friends, this is the news that broke out across Europe about 500 years ago now. When people had read the Bible for a long time to say and teach and it understood the church to teach that we could not be accepted by God until we were ourselves morally perfect. And we would cooperate with God through the church and we would get His grace through the sacraments. And that at some point as we are more and more sanctified, we would finally be perfected.

But for almost none of us would that be in this life so that we would die and then go to purgatory, a place of torment where we would be cleansed and purged from remaining sin until after so many decades or centuries or millennia, however long it would take in your case or mine, then there would be a time when we would perfectly be without sin morally and then we would said to be justified, declared right with God and we could be accepted into his presence. But by God's grace, his word, uneasy under wraps of ignorance as it began to be translated and studied more and more in the late 1400s and the early 1500s people began to understand, no, wait. It says here, Christ's righteousness imputed, accounted to us. And they began to read this parable differently and understand that this day the man went down to his house justified. Oh, friend, if you're here and you're a Roman Catholic, we're very glad you're here.

We've got such good news for you. As many good things as there are in your church, They've covered this one up from you. And this is the very heart of what Jesus has as good news. You need to hear this carefully. There is a justification for you provided by God's mercy in Christ, and it is available for you today.

You can today know that you are right with God, justified, by trusting in Christ, only, merely, solely, having faith in Him, trusting in Him, and you can know that you can go down to your house today justified. Praise the Lord for that. Friend, if you're not a Christian, consider all this carefully. This idea of justified means being made right with God because, as we've said, the Bible teaches that all of us have sinned, as I read from Romans, we've all done what we should not do, and because God is good, he will judge us. And our only hope then is what he's provided for us in Jesus as a sacrifice bearing his wrath, God's wrath, against all of us who would turn from our sins and trust in him.

Oh, friend, find your hope in Christ. Be justified. I love how J.I. Packer explains justification. Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.

Friends, that's us today. So great is God's provision in Christ that even this tax collector, the most cast out and canceled by those around them can find hope in Christ. Friend, maybe that's you today. Maybe you're sitting here feeling like, okay, I am the one thing that really does not fit in this picture. In this church today, I am the one that should not be here.

And some of you are feeling that very self-consciously. Others of you are feeling if people only knew the truth, I'd be all would be thinking that about me. But friends, it's for people like you that Jesus told this story so that you would know that there is a righteousness for you, each one of you.

What was it Jesus said? Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. That last sentence there in verse 14 contains so much.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Jesus repeatedly taught this. The humbling there in that first half that Jesus said would be done to the self-exalted is implied that it's going to be done by God. And friends, what it means if you exalt yourself is that you will be humbled forever. That means being judged by God.

Forever. I don't know what humiliation you think of might be in front of you if you became more honest about your sins, but I promise it's not as bad as an eternal self-conscious hell. Friends, God's judgment is real and really to be avoided by God's grace in Christ. If we keep being proud, then you'll see that pride does literally go before the fall. It was proud conceit that destroyed our first parents' relationship with God, wasn't it?

Remember in the garden? Satan saying, you shall be like God. So is it any wonder that humility is the way back into the relationship with God? And Jesus would lead the way, not just in teaching in verse 14, but he's living it out. I mean, the one man who had both reason and right to exalt himself and the power refused it.

Instead, he took on humiliation, the humiliation our sins have deserved, not his. Do you see the way he's humbled at the cross? He's not being humbled for anything we've done, for anything he had done. He's being humbled for what we've done. That's the story of Christianity.

That's what Jesus taught. Parents, are you helping your kids to realize that you're calling them to follow the path not to a respectable religion, but the path of the persistent widow or this tax collector.

Pray for humility to be formed in your kids that will make them want to ask for propitiating sacrifice for them. So that they will know that they need Christ. They need His righteousness. Young people, I pray that you will each and every one come to know Christ and become, because of that, the kindest, easiest person to befriend at school or to work with. Again, look at verse 9.

You see, he said this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. The bad way you are treating other people, maybe your siblings, maybe people at school, is not unrelated to how you are not understanding yourself with God. You're not understanding that there's a God who actually deserves to be loved by you and served by you, especially in your early years where there's so much you can do for God. That God is the one who calls you to admit your sinfulness and your need for Him. And then He will give you a new life and a new heart so that you can be the kind of person who doesn't treat others with contempt because you know that they have deserved nothing differently than you've deserved.

And so you become kind and gentle with all. Kids, the confidence that we are called to have by Jesus is not so much confidence in ourselves, like maybe they teach you at school, but it's a confidence in God, who he is and who he can be for us and what he can do for us. Just like this tax collector here could call on God to have mercy. So you can be confident that God knows you and he's made you and you're made in such a way that you can come to know him forever if you come to him confessing like this tax collector did that you're a sinner, recognizing who God is and that you need his mercy. That's so much better than any self-centered self-confidence your school is trying to teach you to have.

Pray for us as a congregation. It would be a church marked by the humility of the tax collector and not a Pharisee's church. Long sermons tend us to the Pharisees' church side. So pray for us that we be a good tax collectors' church. That's why we regularly confess our sins, because it reminds us of how we interact with this gospel ourselves.

We don't confess our sins regularly, parents, I'll help you out now with the thing I said, you know, the kids could ask you later. We don't confess our sins regularly merely to remind ourselves of how unworthy we are, I mean, not exactly. It's more to remind ourselves of our unfathomable need and of the staggering wealth of God's provision for us in Christ. That all of the ways that our need shows itself through the week have been adequately met by Jesus Christ. So as a church, pray that God make us exemplary and especially exemplary in our humble confession of our need for a Savior, because only then will Christ's provision be sweet.

Only then when we realize our need will we realize how kind and perfect God has been in His provision for us. He told them this story as they were walking to Jerusalem as if He were coming to find and embrace despairing sinners like this very tax collector. And like you, like me, Jesus, strong and kind, says, if we are lost, he will come to us. You see that? Friends, don't waste your time in any religion that pumps up your self-image, like this Pharisee giving him a wrong self-confidence.

Instead, resolve to confess your sins and your need for a substitute and to take your punishment in your place in order for God to declare you not guilty.

In verse 9 we see that Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Do you realize Jesus is the one person in the world who could rightly treat others with contempt? I mean, he actually could have done that, and it would have been correct. It would have been an accurate assessment. And yet he taught this as part of his showing mercy and as part of his making a way of salvation for sinners like this tax collector.

And, like this Pharisee, and like you and me, we are a kind of third character implied in the story. And Jesus is directing our gaze to notice first the Pharisee and then the tax collector. And, of course, He's doing that so that we'll draw a conclusion about ourselves, so that we'll understand something about how we relate to God. And he draws us to these surprising, revealing conclusions. And friends, this surprise of justification for such a sinner as this has been repeated countless times ever since this story first shocked its first hearers.

Every time a sinner has received God's mercy in Christ, You remember that Levi, Matthew was a tax collector, one of their own number. And in fact, if you keep staying tuned to these studies, you'll find at the beginning of chapter 19, we're just about to get the story of Zacchaeus, where this parable kind of comes alive. Jesus is preparing them to understand that, yes, someone like this, who is despised and reviled and canceled in the culture, can become a beloved and treasured child of God.

Friends, that's what's happened every time we've heard a testimony of a new Christian here. Ultimately, as Christians, we are motivated by this promise here in verse 14 of God's exaltation of us finally and forever in Christ. We share the hope in our hearts as we gather at the dawning of a new week, reminding us of Christ's own resurrection. We share this hope as we read God's Word and relish His promises in the readings and the sermons and the prayers. We exult in the bright prospects we have in Christ in the words of our hymns as we sing about being with a perfectly holy and good God.

We pray in song, Mighty Jesus, bear us over there to kneel before thy throne. May we join thy saints forever praising thee and thee alone. And for endless days we will sing your praise, O Lord our God. Friends, here in this parable we see more than need confessed but we see need met by God's mercy in Christ. The needed mercy given.

Jesus came to exalt the humble. We should conclude, in the end, our self-assessment is less important than God's assessment of us. We have a vested interest in our self-knowledge being accurate. Don't we? But for most of us, it's so much easier for us to see others' faults than our own.

How many times when I've tried to talk to others about following Jesus, do they simply dismiss the conversation because Christians' lives look no different than their own?

I think I've shared before the story of when I came back from Cambridge and my mom kind of wanted to show me off. To a relative. I didn't know this relative, had never met this relative, have never seen this relative since this meeting.

She was an older woman, direct in speech, successful, pretty clear-headed. We met for coffee, just my mom and me and her. And we talked pleasantries for a little while about life in England and in Cambridge. And then the conversation turned to what I was going to do now. Well, in fact, I was moving to DC to pastor a church.

Well, clearly surprised, she said sharply, I don't like organized religion. Really? I said, why is that? She said, well, it's just a pit of vipers. I said, Really?

She said, Yep. I said, Do you mind if I ask you a question? She said, no. I said, what about the world? Do you really think the world's so much better?

And she said, well, I guess not. She said, But at least they know they're vipers.

And I said, well, you may be surprised how much I agree with you. I agree with you the world is filled with vipers. That's true. And I agree with you that the church is a pit of vipers too. And any church I'm ever going to be a part of is going to know that.

But I think the difference is, I don't think the world knows they're vipers. I think the church knows they're vipers. In fact, that's why we're there. And you know what? We've always got room for one more to slither on in.

I really said that verbatim. Sadly, There's no great response to report. She kind of looked down at her coffee and just kept stirring it. Well, I don't know whatever happened to her. I don't know if she ever slithered on in.

But I do know of all the places churches should be full of people, Pharisees and tax collectors, who realize that we're all sinners. That our only hope is in the merciful provision of God as He propitiates, satisfies His right wrath through the freely offered death of His Son in our place. Only with such mercy could sinners like you and me dare to find anything other than humiliation and everlasting judgment from such a good God. Our virtues don't make up for our vices. Our only hope is that God will be merciful to sinners like us.

In Christ, it's a solid hope if we will simply trust Him, hope in Him. Let's pray.

Lord God, pry our fingers off of our assertions of our own righteousness.

Help us to accept the gift of the superior and perfect righteousness of Christ. Be propitiated towards us. Be merciful to us as sinners. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.