We’re continuing in this series called “Crossing Over.” I appreciate Brian kicking it off last week with the most important foundation for all of it: Believe. Let’s face it, if you don’t believe Jesus deserves to be the Authority in your life, none of the rest of this will really do you any good. But if you really do believe that, or maybe you’re starting to, then listening very carefully for the next 3 messages will be very important to you. We want for you to cross over into life with Jesus. Today, we’re talking about repentance.
There’s nothing like a storm and a being swallowed by a whale to get you turned around from going the wrong direction and headed in the right direction.
That’s a simple way of saying what the word “repentance” means – it’s what happens when a person is sorry for the direction he’s been headed, and he turns away from it and heads the direction he’s supposed to go. It’s what Jonah did, after he was done trying to run from God. It’s was the people of Nineveh did, after they listened to Jonah’s message that they were going to be destroyed if they didn’t change – so they all put no sackcloth and ashes as told God they were sorry.
“Repent” is not originally a religious word, but it’s one of the essentials for a person who wants to cross over into life in Jesus. On the day the Church began, when people asked what they needed to do, the very first thing they were told is “Repent!”
It’s about changing your heart, so that your life changes. It’s the kind of change Peter is talking about in
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
God is kind. He isn’t slow. He wants everyone to come to repentance. Today, I want to look at a story from Jesus that helps us see what it looks and sounds like.
Joke - A young woman went to her preacher and said, "Brother Dunn, I have a lingering sin, and I want your help. I come to church on Sunday and can't help thinking I'm the prettiest girl in the congregation. I know I shouldn’t think that, but I can't help it. Can you help me with it?"
The preacher smiled and said, "Mary, don't worry about it. In your case it's not a sin. It's just a terrible mistake!"
The story we’re looking at today is short. It’s about being justified, and what it takes to get us there. By the end of the story, I want to talk about being justified – but that’s the destination. The road to get us there is humility. What you are about to read is what it looks like when someone is repenting.
Luke 18:10-14
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2 men. One man went home justified. Will you today?
Let’s find out…
The man who went home justified…
I. Humbled Himself in Front of God
Someone has described humility as the ability to see ourselves exactly as the Lord sees us.
We live in a society that is all confused about humility – psychologists decry it; self-help gurus avoid it; and the consumer industry encourages you to forget it – it hurts their business.
The evidences are all around us: we have a long way to go where humility is concerned. So did the people at whom Jesus was aiming this parable. Lk describes them for us in
v9: To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable.
The goal of the parable is to change peoples’ understanding of what it takes to look right in God’s eyes. So there are 2 characters – a hero, and a villain. Spoiler alert: the hero isn’t the one people expected, he’s just the opposite: The tax collector. It’s not the Pharisee. The tax collector is the man who went home justified.
First, because he was humble – you can tell he was, just by the position he assumed when he came before God.
The Pharisee stood up – that’s not too unusual for any Jew – and it was probably near the entrance to the holy place in the temple – that’s not too unusual for the Pharisees – after all, they were the “religious men” of that time. Jesus said, "…when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.” That’s what we picture here. He’s a man who has chosen the time and place and way he’s praying so that other people will see it and be impressed by his holiness. It has very little to do with God, and everything to do with pride.
The tax collector stood somewhere away from the Pharisee. He was in no mood to even look up, because he had a broken heart about his life and the way it stood between him and God. In fact, he was beating his chest as he spoke. Have you ever been there? You’ve done something wrong, and when you’re confronted with it, you can’t even look at the person talking to you? One of the ways we can show to God that we’re serious about humbling ourselves is the position we assume. Sometimes there’s a place for us to be on our knees or on our face. Sometimes there’s a place for tears on our cheeks when we humble ourselves before the Lord.
Ill - When you consider that the word Islam means “submission,” it doesn’t seem so strange that they would require their adherents to bow themselves clear down when they pray. It’s one of the obvious ways they show submission, at least on the outside - by the position they assume when they pray. I found it interesting when I learned that in the Greek Orthodox Church the typical position of prayer assumed by priests during ordination isn’t kneeling, or bowing. It’s stretching out completely with their face on the floor.
Another way we can tell the tax collector was humbling himself is by his words.
We would do well to look at the prayer of a Pharisee. Jesus actually says he “prayed toward himself.” Look again at his words, and that makes sense. He mentions God at the beginning, but from there his prayer has very little to do with God. He was just speaking from one part of his mind to another.
Have you ever sat and listened to a prayer and wondered if God was the audience or maybe it was someone else? That’s an issue of humility.
The tax collector was speaking to God. What he had to say wouldn’t gain him anything in anyone else’s eyes.
He went home justified because he humbled himself in front of God.
Have you done that today? Have you done that in your lifetime? Have you ever approached God with the same view of yourself that He has of you? Will you leave here, justified?
The man who went home justified…
II. Didn’t Compare Himself With Others
Story - King Frederick II, an eighteenth-century king of Prussia, was visiting a prison in Berlin. All the inmates tried to prove to him how they’d been wrongfully imprisoned. All, except one.
He sat quietly in a corner, while all the rest were protesting their innocence. Seeing him sitting there quietly while everyone else argued to the air, the king asked him what he was there for. "Armed robbery, Your Honor." The king asked, "Were you guilty?" He said, "Yes, Sir, I entirely deserve my punishment." The king then gave an order to the guard: "Release this guilty man. I don't want him corrupting all these innocent people."
This story from Jesus impacts us differently than it would the people of the 1st cent. They’d be expecting a different ending. The Pharisee was the “Church man.” Surely, he’s the one who goes home looking good. The tax collector was more like a member of the Jewish Mafia.
Lk says Jesus told this story for some who looked down on everybody else. In other words, when it came to trying to look good, they did it by looking around at other people. We can all look around and find someone who’s worse than ourselves.
There’s no sense in trying to make yourself look better by pointing a finger at someone else, because, unless you’re from another planet or something, you’ve had your share of mess-ups too.
Quote - Bill Hybels – “People already know we make mistakes. They want to know if we have the integrity to admit them.”
Re-read the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The moment you hear this story and you start to say, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee,” then you are like that Pharisee!
Ill - Several years ago, two men held up a bank in Dallas. For some reason, only one of them wore a mask. In ten or fifteen minutes they were captured. Can you imagine one of those men standing before the judge and saying, "Your Honor, I admit I robbed the bank. I admit that I did it. But at least I went in there without a mask. I wasn’t a hypocrite. Everybody saw who I was."
That doesn't make it with a judge in Dallas. All that makes you is a robber who’s not so bright. If you want to play the game of Pharisee, you can play it from almost anywhere on the game board.
This Pharisee speaks of himself as the one person who needs no forgiveness from God, while the tax guy speaks of himself as the one guy who does need it! The tax collector didn’t even say, “God, I’m a sinner along with all these other sinners down here!” He said, “God, have mercy on me, ‘the sinner.’” He could do that because he wasn’t looking around and comparing himself with other people. He was comparing himself with the perfect God and how he’d failed to live up to God’s perfection.
And this man went home justified.
As you sit here today and think about your relationship with God, who are you looking at? I’ll bet you can find someone here who’s more of a sinner than you are. I’ll bet that, with just a little prodding and a little information gathering, you can feel pretty good about yourself, compared to someone else. But the man who went home justified didn’t compare himself with others. As he prayed, it was just him and God. And he went home justified. Will you?
The man who went home justified…
III. Wasn’t Counting On His Own Goodness to Be Enough
There was a teaching among 1st cent. Jews that may sound familiar. They realized that no one kept the OT Law perfectly, but they still believed that a person could make it into heaven. And so they held that, on Judgment Day, a person’s deeds would be set on the scales. If the good deeds outweighed the bad deeds, he made it! If the bad deeds outweighed the good, he was sent to hell. If there was a tie, then one of two things was going to happen: either that person would be sent to hell to burn just for a while until he was purified enough for heaven, or, another view held that to break the tie, God would reach over to the good deeds of some really good people and use some of them to get that person into heaven. That was a 1st cent. Jewish belief, but it sounds suspiciously like what most 21st cent. Americans believe – and maybe what a lot of people in the Church believe, deep down. Somehow, many are counting on their own goodness to be enough.
Jesus told this story “to some who were confident of their own righteousness,” like Pharisees…
The Pharisee listed all the bad things he hadn’t done. I’m not a robber, an evil doer, an adulterer – and I’m certainly not a tax collector!
Have you ever used that reasoning? Ill - Some articles appeared in the Christian Standard a few years ago. Readers were asked to sound off about Christians and R-rated movies – should we see them or not? And one of the age-old lame arguments that was sent in said, “Well, some PG13 and even some PG movies are just as bad, so how can you say R movies aren’t OK?” There’s no end to this kind of nonsense: “Sure I shot and killed a man, but at least I didn’t kill 2 men!”
After highlighting the things he hadn’t done, the Pharisee even threw in a couple of good things he had done. “I fast 2X a week” – that was true. A really devout Jew went beyond what the Law required and didn’t eat on Monday or Thursday. According to Jesus, it was done for show, so that people would think they were real religious. “And I give a tenth of all I get!” – that was true too. Jesus said the Pharisees tithed even their little dill seeds, but they “neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness.” They should have done both.
The short version of the Pharisee’s prayer is, “God, You should let me into heaven. I’ve earned it.” But God wasn’t impressed.
But the tax collector wasn’t counting on his goodness to be good enough. He didn’t say anything about being good. He simply was sorry and appealing to God’s mercy.
Paul says in 2 Cor. 7:10 that Godly sorrow leads to repentance. That’s what we see in this tax collector – the beginnings of true repentance.
Like I said, repentance is originally not a religious word. It comes from a culture where people were nomadic and there were no maps or street signs. When you’re walking through the desert, it’s easy to get lost. The landscape starts to look unfamiliar, and finally you say to yourself, “Hey, self, I’m headed in the wrong direction!” It takes some humility to do that. That's the first part of repentance.
The second part of repentance is to go in a different direction. It also implies that you not only do this but you admit it to your companions. That takes some humility too. Here we have a man who’s admitting it to his God. And he went home justified.
This morning, as you consider the way you look in God’s eyes, are you counting on your own goodness to make you good enough? Listen to what God has to say about that:
Titus 3:5
…he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.
Galatians 2:16
…know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
If your way of preparing to appear before God’s judgment throne is to make a list of all the bad things you haven’t done and all of the good things you have done, you’re not going home justified today.
The man who wasn’t counting on his own goodness to be enough, but repented, went home justified. Will you? Will you be willing to say to God, “Please have mercy on me, the sinner!”? If you are, let’s not forget this last point:
The man who went home justified…
IV. Was Completely Forgiven
This is the part where we finally talk about what it means to be “justified.”
Joke - There was a secretary who occasionally had to miss time in her office. Each time she came back, she’d ask who had filled in for her. Finally, she got to where she would say, “Wendy filled in for me this time, didn’t she?” Someone said, “Yes. Could you tell by the work she got finished?” “No, I could tell by the white-out all over my computer screen!”
White out – what great invention - it covers over all your mistakes and allows you to start over just as if there were none. When typewriters were first invented there was no way to correct typing errors. To send a perfect letter it had to be typed perfectly or retyped.
Then white out was invented. This magical liquid covered over errors, typos, and unfortunate slip-ups. You brushed it on and simply retyped the word or letter that was wrong. Done correctly, it removed every trace that a goof had even happened.
Today we have computers. Misspell or type a wrong word or sentence or even paragraph and you can remove or replace or rearrange. And once again, all traces of mistakes are totally removed. That’s what it means to be justified. When God regards us as cleansed by the blood of Jesus, it makes it, “Just-as-if-I’d” never sinned. God declares you righteous. You’re completely forgiven.
Being justified is an all-or-nothing condition. There were 2 men in this story. One was justified, the other was not. And this morning you’re either one or the other. There’s no middle ground. It’s like being pregnant – either you are or you aren’t. I’ve never heard of someone who was sort of pregnant.
Ill - I was driving in the car, and a woman called in on a talk show. She’d had an abortion a few years before, and now she was convinced that she was wrong to do it. “Can I still be a good person? Am I a murderer?” She was crying. You could sense her remorse. She was basically asking if she could ever be forgiven of what she had done. Could such a person be justified – be declared righteous again by God? She can if she receives His mercy. She can if she’ll be washed clean by the blood of His Son.
• Maybe you’ve messed up sexually. Some things just can’t be undone. But the guilt and the stain can be undone. And God can declare you clean once again.
• Maybe you’ve been a cheat and a liar. Maybe you’ve hurt a lot of people. Can God forgive you? Can you be justified? Can you go home today, justified? You can if you receive the righteousness of God that comes by faith in Jesus Christ.
• Maybe you can’t highlight some heinous crime you’ve done, but you realize you’ve definitely fallen short of perfect. Can you be justified? Can you be declared righteous by God? You can if you’ll receive His mercy.
What should you do? You should repent.
You should take your genuine sorry and put feet to it. You should turn around from the direction you’ve been headed in life, and start over.
Conclusion:
Ill - In The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, the cartoon character Calvin says to his tiger friend, Hobbes, "I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I'm sorry I did it."
Hobbes suggests, "Maybe you should apologize to her." Calvin thinks about it for a minute and then he says, "I keep hoping there's a less obvious solution."
When we want to restore our relationship with God, we need to remember that He has a liking for the obvious solution. The obvious solution for you this morning is to look at the example of the man who went home justified.
Do you believe what Jesus said? Don’t compare yourself with others. Don’t count on your own goodness to be enough. Repent.
This morning, you can be a person who goes home justified. Are you?
