Sermon Transcript
Oh God, worship was so great today, unlike last Sunday when Nate missed a few cues and sang a bit flat on that one chorus. Oh Lord, it’s about time to get up and preach again. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to do this. Thank you, God, that I don’t preach like Dan with his dry sense of humor. And thank you that I’m older and wiser than he is and that I’ve been here a lot longer than he has.
Thank you, God, that I’m not like Pastor Dave, who’s always so prepared and knows exactly what to say, whereas you know, God, that I just prefer to be led by your Spirit.
Please help settle my mind, God, and my nerves right now as I’m about to get up to preach. Help me to remember that this congregation is just so fortunate to have me on staff. I thank you that I spend countless hours preparing and studying for my sermons, unlike some other people I could name, but you know who they are, Lord. I thank you that even though I’m busier than others and get up earlier than they do to pray, I was able to still find time this week to lead my family in devotions every day at 3:30 in the morning, and of course to pray for every person in our congregation by name.
Well, Lord, the music’s finally done, and now the moment comes everybody’s been waiting for, to hear me preach. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I just had the most incredible prayer time I want you all to know about. Luke chapter 18, verses 9 through 14. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable. 2 men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and one 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 I 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.
One of the things that I think we do often, and we’re not even aware of it, is we make snap judgments about people whenever we first see them, whenever we first meet them, or they walk into the room and we don’t know them. Students, I bet some of you probably did this at camp last week. You see somebody across the way and you immediately, by the way that they’re dressed, or by the way that they talk, or by the way that they act, you assume certain things. I do that all the time. You all do that.
Somebody walks into the room and we immediately make assessments as to what they’re like, maybe what they do for a living. We all have mental images in our minds of who these individuals are. For instance, when I, just picture a mental image in your mind when I say the word engineer.
You have something in your mind? How about an accountant?
An attorney?
An honor student?
A middle schooler?
A stay-at-home parent?
Still getting these images in your mind? A patriotic American?
A Democrat, a Republican, a Muslim, a Buddhist, an immigrant, a homeless person, a homosexual.
A Christian.
Have all these images in your mind? We do it all the time, and what we have here in this parable are 2 people, our 2 main characters, who are playing exactly according to type. They’re playing exactly according to the way that you would expect in the first century for these people to act. All you had to do in the first century was say the word Pharisee, and everybody immediately had a picture in their mind of what you were talking about.
They already knew. You said the words tax collector, everybody immediately thought they had all the information that they needed in order to make an assessment about the person. They had an opinion immediately just by hearing the words tax collector. And when we hear 2 people went up to the temple to pray, that doesn’t stun us here in the 21st century, but in the 20th, or excuse me, in the 1st century, if you’d heard this, You would have been shocked. You would have been confused.
You would have had questions. 2 people went up to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. Well, I’ll tell you what, the Pharisee belongs there and the tax collector doesn’t. We would have said that. We’ve been conditioned over time with the Pharisees to create a mental image of who these people were.
That they were conceited, that they were pious, that they were hypocrites, that they were elitists, that they had a superiority complex.
And yet what we forget is at the time they were the cream of the crop. They were morally upright. They were revered for their devotion to God.
They were among the ruling class of Israel, and people admired them greatly. And they believed— the Pharisees did— many of the same things that you and I believe. They believed in the God of creation. They believed in the God of the Old Testament. They believed in God’s mercy.
They believed in God’s holiness. They believed in God’s judgment. They believed in the Scriptures. They believed that God is forgiving. And on top of that, they also, we know, developed an elaborate system of self-righteousness, much of which came from God’s law, but they expanded upon it greatly by adding more hoops for people to jump through to express their devotion to God.
They fasted all the time. They prayed. They tithed, they abstained, they memorized significantly large portions of Scripture. They were the personification, the Pharisees were, of human righteousness. And nobody at that time was deemed closer to God.
By contrast, nobody was deemed further from God than the tax collector. I’m not even sure what the equivalent is in our day, but the tax collector would not be somebody we would expect to be in the temple to pray. The tax collectors were viewed as crooks and as traitors. They represented the abuse of power of the Roman Empire. They got their job by paying a significant sum to Rome so that they can then collect from other people.
And what they did is they charged people more than what they actually owed, and then they would pay Rome, and then they would pocket the rest. They were wealthy. The Jewish Mishnah was a collection of oral laws And it said that tax collectors were not considered humans, they were animals. And you could lie to a tax collector because lying to an animal isn’t a sin. And if a tax collector came towards you on the street, you should walk over to the other side of the street so that you didn’t have to acknowledge them or greet them.
And a tax collector wasn’t allowed to testify in court because their word was worthless. And if you were especially religious and a tax collector brushed up against you or you accidentally touched them, You were to do 3 things. You were to spit instantly to express your disgust. You were to go home and burn your clothes. And then you were to take a scalding hot bath to purify yourself.
You get the idea? We couldn’t find 2 more polar opposites, the Pharisee and the tax collector. And yet this parable, I’m sure you’ve heard it before, many of you. I know I have. This is about so much more than just simply 2 polar opposites.
This is about something that impacts and applies to you students, to us adults. It applies to everyone who’s ever lived. And I wanna talk about that this morning. See, in verse 9 it says the target audience, who Jesus’ target audience was for this. A lot of times it doesn’t say who he was talking to whenever he gave his parables.
This one it does. Speaking to those who are confident of their own righteousness. Well, that’s the idea of righteousness. That’s not a term, middle schoolers, when was the last time you used the term righteousness? High schoolers, anyone?
I don’t know, like, we don’t use that term. We don’t have a connection with that term nowadays. But despite our lack of connection to it, what it basically means to be righteous is to be accepted and to be approved. I can connect with that, can you? There’s a deep feeling of satisfaction that comes when somebody accepts you, when somebody approves you, when you get the acceptance letter from the college, when you get the acceptance letter from the club that you wanted to be in, when you get the acceptance letter from the company that you interviewed.
There’s also a feeling of hurt and a real stab at our identity whenever we’re not accepted. We know what that’s like. We all want somebody from the outside to say, you’re in, you’re good, you’re accepted. We all want that. That’s universal.
But we’re especially that way with God.
Jesus had just spent the last chapter, several verses leading up to this parable, talking about the coming of the kingdom of God. That the kingdom of God is the spiritual kingdom we talked about last week. The spiritual kingdom in which Jesus rules and reigns. Over the hearts and lives of those who follow Him, those who put their trust in Him. And Jesus will also one day return to establish a literal, physical, earthly kingdom over which He will reign forever.
And those who are in the spiritual kingdom will be in this eternal kingdom. So the obvious question is, how do I get in? Where do I sign up? What do I have to do to be in this kingdom? How do I get made right with God?
What kind of a person does God accept? What do I have to do for God to approve of me? Is this a new question? Are these new questions? No, like we’ve asked them as long as there have been people.
We all want to know the answer to this, and the answer that people have largely landed on throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, is a person is approved by God by their merit. By their goodness, what they do religiously and/or morally. The more good I do, the more it increases my chances of God accepting me. If I’m better than you, too bad for you. That’s where most people land.
And it’s represented, this path, this approach to God, and it’s still followed today. This path, this approach is represented by the Pharisee. And I call it the path of merit.
The path of merit says, I earn God’s acceptance, or I get God’s acceptance. He accepts me when I’m good.
And I want to talk about this path of merit because there’s some things we see in the Pharisee that are really interesting that describe this path of merit. One is, is those who are on the path of merit tend to exalt themselves, tend to exalt themselves. And you may have seen that in verse 14 when he talks about those who exalt themselves will be humbled, those who are humbled will be exalted. This is a person who exalts themselves.
Verse 9, the target audience. Jesus is not only talking to those who were confident of their own righteousness, it says they looked down on everybody else. Is there a better definition of exalting yourself than looking down on everybody else? You’re up here, everybody else is somewhere below. The sense of superiority that comes.
Look at his prayer. We’re accustomed to all kinds of prayers in church, aren’t we? We’ve heard prayers of confession and thanksgiving and petition and intercession and prayers of response. How about a prayer of comparison? Does that make you uncomfortable?
Makes me uncomfortable. Even just recording the thing that we did last week, I feel uncomfortable saying, thank you, God, that I’m not like this person. Here, let me compare myself. You hear a prayer like that, you say, what kind of prayer is that? That’s not a prayer.
And the Pharisee’s prayer was about his 3 favorite people: me, myself, and I. It mentions himself and I 6 times in connection to his prayer. His prayer was about himself, and the thanks that he does offer to God is really about himself, not God. Thank you, God, that I’m not like everybody else. There’s no elements of confession, there’s no elements of remorse, there’s no repentance here.
This is a person who elevates himself and exalts himself. And look at his posture, his position. Jesus had already called out the Pharisees in the Sermon on the Mount for how they went about praying. You people, you Pharisees, you love to stand on the street corners. You love to stand in these public places where everybody can see you and hear your long prayers and your long diatribes so that they will be impressed with you.
That’s your motivation. Jesus condemned them for that. And what we see is we see a similar type of an attitude here from the Pharisee, don’t we? Says that he stood by himself and prayed. Some translations say he prayed with himself.
There’s even some translations that translate as being he prayed to himself. This is not a prayer to God. Whatever it means, he stood away from everybody else. He was not near anybody else so maybe he wouldn’t get any sin on him or anything like that. This is a person who exalted himself above others.
And you can almost picture him in some sort of prominent position there in the temple saying, look at me, so that everybody else could see and hear even though he was away from everybody else. Wow.
This is an extreme example. I thought about this this last week and going, how do I connect with this idea of exalting myself and this person exalting himself? And what I’ve come to the conclusion of is when it comes to exalting ourselves, we don’t see it. Whenever we do it. If you’re a prideful person, you don’t know it.
If you are self-righteous, you don’t see it, but everybody else does. Has anybody ever told you you have bad breath?
Or perhaps offered you a mint or 5?
You don’t know you have bad breath, but everybody else knows it. And aren’t you grateful that somebody tells you that? Oh, I didn’t know. I didn’t see that in myself. You ever have something on your face and somebody goes like this?
So, oh, you go to the mirror and you’re so grateful. Would you rather just be in ignorance and live in this idea that, nope, I don’t have anything on my face. I know you see it, but I don’t see it, so it must not exist. I know you say I have bad breath, but I must be the only person in the history of the world who’s never had bad breath. And when it comes to self-righteousness and pride, we don’t see it.
We don’t realize, you know, we talk an awful lot about ourselves. We insert ourselves into different conversations.
We pat ourselves on the back when we do something kind and we’d like other people to know about it. False humility. It’s prideful. We may not exalt ourselves exactly like this Pharisee, but we do it more than we realize.
That we feel entitled to something, and whenever we don’t get what we feel like we’re entitled to, we get frustrated. And if you call me on something, I’m gonna get defensive because I don’t want to be told that I’m wrong. So I will fight against that. What is that? Self-righteousness.
We do it all the time. We’re glory junkies. We love that feeling of other people being impressed with us, and yet people may never know on the outside what’s going on on the inside. But there’s another characteristic of those on the path of merit. Those on the path of merit look at sin and look at righteousness and virtue only through the lens of external and comparative terms.
External and comparative terms. Here’s what I mean by that. Is he focused on anything inside, the Pharisee? Is he focused on his character at all? No, he’s only focused on what he does or doesn’t do.
What’s on the outside, what other people can see. I don’t do this, I don’t do that, and I do these other positive things. And yet Jesus again, on the Sermon on the Mount and throughout his ministry, said it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that matters. The inner motivations of your heart, your character, what’s going on, your attitudes, the things that nobody else may see but God sees. That’s what God is looking at.
It doesn’t matter how clean the outside of the cup is if the inside is filthy. And this Pharisee is filthy and he has no clue because nobody’d ever told him until Jesus came along. And the things he lists off as not doing— listen, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal— well, those are good things that he doesn’t do those things. But then did you notice he conveniently slips in something he does do? I fast twice a week.
Do you know what the Old Testament requirement for fasting was? Once a year. It’s connected to the Day of Atonement. So he’s saying, God, you know that thing that you told us to do? I do it so much more than anybody else.
I do this twice a week. I go above and beyond, and I’d like other people to know about that. Thank you, God, that I don’t do those things that other sinners do, but I do fast twice a week. Meaning he’s taking something that God didn’t require of people, and he’s ratcheting it up a little bit to elevate his self-righteousness and put himself above everybody else. Compared to everybody else, everybody else is just a robber or an adulterer.
And if you don’t do what he does, what he prefers to do, it’s not what God commanded. He’s saying this is the divine will of God that I fast twice a week. No, that’s not what God commanded us to do, but he’s going above and beyond, and now he’s taking a personal preference and saying if you don’t do those things, you’re not as righteous as me. He’s saying if you don’t worship like me, then you’re not as good as me. If you don’t believe what I believe, if you don’t behave how I behave, then we’re different from each other, and in fact, I’m a little bit better than you.
You’re telling me we never think this? We never do this?
He’s saying if you don’t do what he prefers to do, what his conviction tells him to do, it’s not in God’s law, but again, what God has convicted him to do, then you’re just lumped together with other sinners. Why do we do this? Why are we so focused on the externals? Why are we so focused on the outside and comparing ourselves to others? Because it makes us feel better.
Because it makes us feel like God might accept us a little bit more and increases the odds of being more righteous. There’s all kinds of reasons that we do it.
Because if we can compare ourselves to other people, then it doesn’t matter how bad we are. People are worse, and so Maybe that increases our odds. Have you ever watched a show on TV or seen a movie or seen people in the community or observed anybody and ever said, thank God I’m not like that person? It’s not that you’re saying you’re that much better, it’s that they’re just a little bit more awful than you. You’ve never done that?
We may not voice it in the form of a prayer, but that kind of thinking is all too common. We have a knee-jerk response to seeing other people and then judging them in the moment, not seeing that we’re guilty of the very same things.
But then notice there’s a third thing, and this is a crucial one for those who are on the path of merit, at least in the form of this Pharisee. He remained unjustified before God. Remained unjustified. What does it mean to be justified? To be justified means to be acquitted from all charges, from any charges brought against you, and to be accepted by God as righteous.
That’s what we want. To be justified, but he was unjustified, and he stayed that way. Why didn’t God justify him? I mean, this is the most important New Testament idea that we have to explain how God forgives sin. Why didn’t God justify him?
Because he didn’t trust in God’s goodness, he trusted in his own goodness. He didn’t trust in God’s merit, he trusted in his own merit. He thought he could justify himself. And he couldn’t. He was just as much in need of mercy as the tax collector and as anybody else, and he didn’t see it.
He could talk about God days on end. He didn’t know how to be made right with God. And we don’t know the rest of the story for the Pharisee other than that day he was declared unjustified before God. He wasn’t right with God. And perhaps the rest of his life, maybe there was a turn.
At some point he went on a different path.
But at this point, the assumption is, is that he remains unjustified, and those who are unjustified spend eternity in hell. We don’t like to talk about hell. It’s not a polite conversation that you just lightly have with somebody, but hell is filled with people just like the Pharisee— good people, moral people, Religious people, people who pray, people who tithe, but people who trust in their own merit. I’m from the South, and so one of the best compliments you can ever give somebody is to say, boy, you were raised right. There are going to be people who were raised right who are not in heaven.
The Pharisee was condemned, separated from God. There is an alternative approach, and it’s represented by the tax collector. You see, the tax collector is a person who, as opposed to exalting himself, he did what? He humbled himself. People on the path of what I call mercy, the path of mercy, is opposite from the path of merit.
On the path of merit, you trust in your own goodness. On the path of mercy, you depend upon God’s goodness. And on the path of Mercy, you humble yourself. Again, using Jesus’ words in verse 14, those who humble themselves will be exalted. He’s not trying to exalt himself, the tax collector’s not, not at all.
Look at his prayer, look at his posture. The Pharisee stood away from everybody else. Well, so did the tax collector, but the terminology’s a bit different. It says he stood at a distance. He stood at a distance.
He was on the fringe. He was an outcast. He had no right, the tax collector did, to draw near to God, and he knows it.
In ancient Jewish history, one of the ways that people would pray is they put their hands on their chest, they would lower their eyes. You know that people didn’t close their eyes that we know of in the Bible with prayers. That was developed later on. I don’t know when, but People would still lower their eyes as a sign of humility, a posture of humility. But he takes it a step further and just with such contrition and humility and remorse, turns his hands into fists and hits his chest rapidly and repeatedly.
Why is he doing this? Is he trying to make a show of things? I don’t think so, because Jesus ultimately accepted this man. Probably because he recognizes that sin is not external. It resides in our hearts.
I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it many times in the future. The heart of our problem is the problem of our hearts. That’s where sin originates again and again and again. Sin is so much more than what you do or don’t do. It’s what’s inside.
And this man is locating sin in his heart. God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And let’s talk about his view of sin and righteousness. You see, the Pharisee viewed sin and righteousness like a lot of us do, externally and comparatively. The tax collector viewed sin and righteousness in absolute terms, in absolute terms. What I mean by that is this, is that if you surround yourself with enough people, you will always be able to find people who sin more than you. Did you know that?
I can always find people that I measure up better than. I can always find people that I compare more favorably to.
And that’s why we focus on the externals and on the comparisons. But the man here is not saying he is a sinner. And in fact, in the original— I don’t know why it’s not in most of our translations, it’s in a few— he uses the Greek definite article. Not a sinner, but the sinner. God, have mercy on me, the sinner.
He’s thinking of it in absolute terms. Not in comparison to anyone else.
He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t offer explanations. But God, you don’t understand. He doesn’t explain some sort of rationale. He doesn’t point to the good things he’s done.
He doesn’t talk about the bad things he hasn’t done. He’s not saying he’s the worst sinner, but he’s saying, God, all I know is I’m lost, and where everybody else is in comparison to me doesn’t matter. In his eyes, he’s worthy of judgment. He is the sinner.
Look at the response as Jesus tells us. He and those who are on the path of mercy are declared justified before God. Declared justified before God, accepted by God as righteous. Why? Why was he declared righteous?
It helped that he had a humble, repentant approach. That was a great start. He had a humble, repentant approach to God. It helped that he acknowledged his sins. That’s a great step.
But ultimately, it’s because he trusted in the mercy of God, not in his own goodness, but in the mercy of God. He’s throwing himself on the mercy of God. What is his prayer? 7 words. God, have mercy on me, a sinner, the sinner.
And when he says, have mercy on me, the original, language is much stronger. He’s actually saying, God, atone for my sins. Atoned for my sins.
Meaning he’s not saying, God, would you please lower your standard? God, can you help a brother out? Can you, can you, can you let me off the hook? Can you overlook my sins, please? He doesn’t, he doesn’t pray that.
Because how does that help us with unrighteousness? How does that make us right with God? All it does is, is just God turning a blind eye to sin. We need something else, and in the Old Testament when there was an estranged relationship, you needed reconciliation, there needed to be a sin offering. And Jesus at this point had not yet died, but there’s something within this tax collector that says, I need something else, I need a substitute.
I need someone to atone for my sins. I need someone to make me right, ’cause I’m not right on my own, and just ignoring that doesn’t make me any better. I need someone to change my position. Have mercy on me, God, atone for my sins. And it says he was justified and went home that day.
The tense of that verb, justified, describes something that’s complete, it’s permanent. In the moment, not future tense. Go home, wash yourself 7 times, and then you’ll be justified. Go home, say some Hail Marys, and then you’ll be justified. Go home, wait a little bit, and then talk to the priest, come to church, And then we’ll see where things stand.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying he went home justified, completed, permanent. Meaning Jesus is saying, guys, don’t miss this, a person can be justified in an instant, in a moment of time.
No works, no good deeds, no worthiness, no merit. No ritual, no moral achievement, no religious achievement necessary.
There’s no time lapse. There’s no penance.
There’s no ceremony. There’s no sacrament. There’s no purgatory.
Do you realize that, guys, this is 180 degrees opposite of everything that every major world religion teaches? It’s stunning.
That’s not how the world works according to our terms, but that’s how the path of mercy works. By throwing yourself on the mercy of God, a person could be justified in an instant. That goes against every innate human instinct or notion.
So we have him justified in this moment. He goes home justified, but what’s even more stunning than this— how many of you have heard this parable before? I’m just curious, by show of hands. Yeah, several of us have heard this parable before. I’ve heard it before.
I think we should be more stunned and amazed by verse 14 than what I think we actually are. That this man went home justified. I think that that should be stunning to us, and I don’t think it hits us like it did the original audience. Wait a minute, Jesus, you’re telling me this sinner was received as righteous by you? That must have just stunned them.
But on top of that, we should be stunned by the fact it doesn’t say the tax collector was also justified in addition to the Pharisee. It says he was justified rather than, instead of.
The righteous person was declared unrighteous, the unrighteous person was declared righteous. That’s crazy.
No one will ever be justified before God who has not prayed the prayer of of the tax collector.
I don’t mean those exact words necessarily. Use your own words, but whatever it takes for you to say, God, have mercy on me. I need to be saved. I need someone to rescue me out of my situation because my merit, my good deeds, it doesn’t matter how I compare to everybody else. What matters is how I compare to you, and I fall short, God, of your standard.
Come in and forgive my sins. Something like that. No one will ever be justified who hasn’t done that. No one will ever be justified who hasn’t placed their trust in Jesus, who though He was sinless, became the sinner for us, the ultimate sinner. I don’t mean He ever sinned.
I mean that He— 2 Corinthians 5 tells us, He became sin who knew no sin so that we might become righteous, declared right with God. That’s what that means.
And it happens in an amazing way.
What brought you to church today? What were your motivations? Maybe to feel better about yourself? Out of habit because you thought you ought to? Maybe you needed some encouragement?
Maybe you came to church today because you wanted to be around other Christ followers? Whatever it is that brought you here today, the fact is, is that you’re here, and that’s good. That’s great. That’s not the biggest issue. The biggest issue, as Jesus would say, is not what brought you here, it’s how you’re gonna go home today, justified or not.
If you’ve never made that decision to follow Jesus before today, you can go home justified. By putting your hope and your trust in Jesus’ goodness and not in your own.
But let’s say that you’re a person who today, and I think this is for many of us, already feel that you have made that decision, you have already made that decision, you’ve gone public with your faith, you’re justified before God. I have another question for you. Who do you identify with in this parable? The Pharisee or the tax collector? I think if you’re like me, I think a lot of you are, we never see ourselves in the bad guy in these stories.
We’re always the good guy. Yep, the story of the prodigal son. Yep, that’s me. I’m just like that. I’m not like the older brother.
And in this parable, yep, I’m, I’m more like the tax collector than like the Pharisee. I can relate to that.
And I think we’re deluding ourselves if we think that. We’re more like the Pharisee than what we realize. We are in need of God’s mercy.
And wouldn’t it be ironic if we left here today justified with God but doing the very same things that the Pharisee did? Thinking about all the legalists in our life who just don’t get it. Thank God I’m not like the Pharisee. Thank God I’m not like those legalists and I live by grace. Thank God that I’m not like other people.
We’re doing the exact same thing that the Pharisee did, right? That’d be tragedy if that’s how we left today. I had somebody coming up to me after the first service, an older couple that is faced with a very difficult moral situation with some family members who were coming into town and they were asking for some counsel. On what they should do. Some people who were coming to stay in their home who live a lifestyle that they totally disagree with, and it was interesting that this was the message.
And they said, are we supposed to be like the Pharisees or the tax collector? And we talked about that a little bit. It was interesting. I don’t know where this is gonna land for you. I just know that for me, I’m more like the Pharisee than I care to admit.
So verse 14 is on my heart, it’s on my mind, and I hope it’s on yours this week. Those who exalt themselves, those who lift themselves up above others, those who trust in their own righteousness, those who trust in their goodness, those who exalt themselves will be humbled. They will remain unjustified. They will miss eternity with the Lord. But those who humble themselves and throw themselves on the mercy of God will be exalted.
We’ll be saved. We’ll be justified.
That’s the point of this message. Let’s pray.
Father, we just, Lord, acknowledge that your word is like a sword, and sometimes it just cuts us and it hurts, Lord. It’s convicting, and I thank you for that. I thank you that you’re pointing out something that we’re blind to, that we’re Pharisees. That we’re legalists, that we’re judgmental, that we’re self-righteous, that we think more about our goodness and how we compare to others than we do about the mercies of God. I pray that, God, you would turn our heart to you.
I pray that we would fall on your mercy today. Trusting in your goodness.
Father, as we leave this place, give us opportunities this week to have this message brought back to us in new ways and remind us that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, those who humble themselves will be exalted. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
