The Pharisee and the Tax Collector - Mitch Levingston

Luke 18:9-14

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—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 all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Hey, welcome to the Center podcast. We're a church based in Dural, Sydney, who loves Jesus. And so want to make him the center of our lives, community and world. We pray that you, blessed by this word and that it reveals God's love for you in a new way.

oh, Christians are hypocrites. I'm not making that up. It's actually a statistic. Mccrindle research. They did some they interviewed about 1000 people back in 2017. We just have that up there on the screen and you might not be able to see it there. But see this at the bottom right there. It says top five blockers.

At number two, a 47% of people surveyed was hypocrisy. There's a perception out there that Christians are hypocrites, whether that's right or wrong. So actually, something that our Lord speaks a lot into Scripture speaks a lot about the value of humility, about not being a proud person. And part of, I guess, our vision for this year about being prepared, being prepared to serve our Lord and Savior.

Last week we we looked at the preparation for having unanswered prayer that that's a reality we're going to face today and look at preparation for becoming humble. Some Benedict in his teaching. He had this. He had had it 12 steps, which we'll look at later in the services. Some practical application. But he had 12 steps on how to be humble.

And he used this image from Psalm 131, verse two of just as a child, like a baby infant, needs nourishment from its mother in order to have life. So it's like us. In order to have life, we need to humbly sit under the Lord. That is first step is this idea of fearing God. Fear God first and foremost, and that will keep you humble.

Mentioned before Jesus spoke a lot about humility and humbleness about those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but those who humble themselves will be exalted. And so we come into this very famous parable, the Pharisee and the tax collector. And just to help kind of orientate ourselves into how Luke has put this little parable in his overall gospel message in, in the surrounding chapters around it, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and his way to Jerusalem.

He encounters ten lepers and he heals them. Only one of those lepers comes back and thanks him. Can anyone guess who that was? They might know who it was a Samaritan. Yeah, okay. Oh, okay. That's meant to be a bit of, like, I guess, a trigger for someone that's unusual. Samaritan Samaritans. Something people they don't do. Righteous acts.

Jesus explains to that on the signs of his arrival, which we looked at in our first week, about the signs about preparation, about, you know, signs in the stars and the moon turning black and all those kind of horrible things. Jesus actually says, if you want to save your life, you need to lose it. It's a strange kind of reversal there.

In fact, immediately after this parable, Jesus goes and blesses children and tells us they listening. So, hey, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you need to be like this little child. And so Luke's putting this parable here deliberately, intentionally so that we are getting it just kind of shoved in our faces. Hey, if you want to enter into the kingdom of God, you need to be very, very different.

You cannot be a Pharisee now. So you and I as Christians, and we know the Pharisees are the bad guys. We don't have issues with this. When we read this parable, we mean like, the Pharisee. That's the bad one. And the tax collectors, the good one. But before we jump ahead, I have just some just want to heed.

Take this morning from commentator Kenneth Bailey, has this quote here on the screen for us. And it says here, oh, maybe I didn't put in, but this is the quote that he says, but then it says, here is thank God we are not like that Pharisee. That definitely didn't put that quote. And that's okay. But you can remember that Kenneth Bailey's warning for us is not for us to say thank God we are not like that Pharisee.

Isn't that kind of what we do? We probably read this parable, and that's probably our natural inclination is to think, well, I'm not like that. I'm not self righteous like that. I don't do these religious duties like that at all. And Bailey's warning for us, so I think is really helpful, is that if we think that if we think, oh, thank God I'm not like that Pharisee, then ironically, we're exactly like that Pharisee.

And illustrating the point that Jesus is making in this parable. Pride comes in all forms, can be through religious actions, or perhaps it's through religious in action. Pride with everything that we can gain our own righteousness, our own justification through our own efforts. Now, I mentioned before that for Jesus original audience, the the clear hero is the Pharisee and the clear villain is the tax collector.

Now, let me read that text that that that Pharisees prayer. We think this is quite what it seems very proud, like it seems horrible to us. He says, God, I thank you. I'm not like other people robbers, evil doers, adulterous, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a 10th of all I get. And when we read that, I think, oh, that's terrible.

So I have a prayer to pray. So the problem for us is that's how often Jews would pray. Now, I definitely have this quote on the screen. This is a quote here from Rabbi Judah. Now, this was written sort of a little bit after Jesus was around. But the idea is the same is that this is what Rabbi Judah would write.

He wrote this in a book called the Talmud, which is a group, a set of Jewish writings. And he says, one must utter three praises every day. Praise be the Lord. He did not make me a heathen. That's like a Gentile. For all heathens are nothing before him. Praise be he the did. Don't make me a woman.

For woman is not under the obligation to fulfill the law. Praise be he, he did not make me an uneducated man. So let's now I sang like a sinner. For for the uneducated man is not cautious to avoid sins. This is coming from rabbis. This was sort of the standard operating practice in Israel for us to say. You'd say, Thank God I'm not like this.

The Pharisees prayer would seem totally normal. This is what you did. You thank God. I thank God I'm not a Gentile. Thank God I'm not a woman. Thank God I'm not an uneducated person who doesn't know Torah.

This is what Jesus is coming to do, is destroy this, destroy this attitude, this attitude of proud self righteousness and to be humble. It's interesting, the Pharisee that mentioned that he fasts twice a week. God only prescribed one fasts per year, and that was on Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. Only one time a year I like.

Yeah, sure, fasting is a great spiritual discipline to be involved in. There came this practice in the Jews to fast every Monday and every Thursday. So in our story, we have to just kind of pretend that we're Cheese's original audience. This guy here is praying the prayers that were normal. He's doing the actions that was seen as normal.

I think for us, we just can't understand the horror and the disgust that Jews had towards tax collectors. Like, I was just trying to find the equivalent in our time. I just don't think we haven't, like, just think of, like, the enemy of the state. Someone who betrayed you. Someone who gave every scrap of Jewish identity to take taxes for the Romans.

Tax collectors were just seen as the scum of the earth. And Jesus done this deliberately to be provocative. That's why Luke has it sort of put in there in between these stories of a Samaritan coming to say thank you, Jesus of Jesus blessing little children and reminding his followers, hey, if you want to save your life, you actually need to lose it.

This is part of the upside down values of the Kingdom and the tax collectors. Just his posture and what he does is quite remarkable. So what would happen is, is when you came in to pray, this was sort of the posture of prayer. And we and we'll say, people do this in worship. You, you raise your arms up to heaven and your idea is you look up, you look up towards God because the idea is that God is in heaven.

Okay, so how's that? You have an arms race up, lift your eyes up towards heaven, towards God's domain. Now let's just say this tax collector does says he would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Now this beating of breast, can you guess which gender normally did that?

Was it a man or was it a woman? 5050? What do you think, man? I think it's a an action that a man would do. A woman would do him. Men. Not women. Women, only women at funerals. This is what females do. When I was reading through Kenneth Bailey's book, he said, I've only seen he lived in Middle East for 40 years.

He said, only have seen men beat their breasts once in the entire time he lived in the Middle East. And he said it was, we Shiite Muslims were now reenacting the death of Prophet Ali. So that's the only time he's seen it. This reenactment of the death of Ali, who is meant to be the son in law of Muhammad.

This is not something that men do. Men do not beat their breast, is what women do at funerals. And Jesus point here is, like I said, it's meant to be provocative. Is the villain. The tax collector is here. Kevin is standing by himself, which I forgot to mention is people prayed. Like any community communal. He's here by himself.

I doubt I even look up to God and beating his breast just like females would do at funerals. It's meant to be this vast contrast between the pious Pharisee praying, thank you God, I'm not like this. It's the man that's looking down and beating himself. I'm like, he's humiliating himself in some ways. And the assumption would be, yeah, well, of course the Pharisee is the one who is justified.

But Jesus response is, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Here's a scandal. That's kind of the nature of the gospel. I think, too, like going back to Kenneth Bailey. But his warning for us is that we automatically see the Pharisee go, oh, thank God, I like that's heresy.

I thank God I'm not like that type of person. Do a lot of a character. We are. If we hold in pride, those chains tell us, hey, if you proud, you're going to be humbled. Therefore humble yourself. You will be exalted. The other cool thing and mine. I probably talk about this a bit, Umberto, if you know what the answer is.

It's our weekly podcast. We talk about the passage a little bit more in depth. We'll talk about this a bit more, but I'll give you a little teaser. Is that what's what's kind of interesting from I guess, a forgiveness point of view is that the, the, the, the, text, by bearing his breath, saying, Lord, have mercy on me.

There's no indication of a sacrifice being offered, because the time of day that they've gone to is the afternoon, the time of prayer, where there would be a sacrifice being offered. People don't say, hey, like there's no actual like under. Like there's no description of a sacrifice being offered to justify this man, which is pointing to something deeper.

That Jesus is the one to bring justification, that the kingdom of God is changing. How people encounter God, how people find forgiveness. So I'll just leave that there. And if you want to learn more, tune into better about that. But as I said at the beginning of this little talk, a lot of people think Christians are hypocrites.

47% of those surveyed said that this was number two of the top five blockers. So while I would not be interested in faith, that's all not doom and gloom. Friends. These people who were surveyed, 16% said seeing people live out of genuine faith is an attractor to spirituality. And so while we've just talking a lot about the need to be humble and not to have pride in us, well, how can we do that?

And hopefully today I can give you just some tools, some tools that you can take or leave to help in your journey to live out Jesus words of living as humble people who don't exalt themselves. So if we can just have the screen. Thanks, Jeremy. Pitch of a lot of there it is. So I mentioned earlier, Saint Benedict in here, the role of Saint Benedict.

He had 12 steps for how to be humble and all for peace, because there I took those 12 steps and made it into an eight step ladder. Hopefully you can kind of see that on the screen. And actually he's part of small groups this week. If you have the small group study, you have an opportunity to kind of work through this as a group.

If you're not part of the small group, you can work through this by yourself. But I'll just go through this briefly each step and how this is, it's just a tool. It's not the be all and end all, but it's a way to help orientate yourself. And so step one is for God and be mindful of him. It's a great first start.

Hey, if I'm actually fearing God and aware of his presence in my life, that's actually gonna help me in some of the decisions that I make, what I will do or won't do. And so that's the first step. Step to doing God's will. Not our own will or not. Others will, but God's will. Following what he says. Step three willing to subject ourselves to the directions of others.

Oh, that's a big one. And are we free to give up our arrogance and all power ness, open to accepting God's will as it comes through others? That's that's a that's a huge step. It's like to wrestle from maybe in a modern world, a manager, a boss, maybe even a police officer telling how fast or not fast we should be going.

That's that's just an example of that step for patient to accept the difficulties of others. Oh, man, I hate that one. I hate that completely. That's three small children. I'll just leave it there. I sometimes very, very difficult and I work with lots of I don't work with that many difficulties. But we're surrounded by difficult people in life, aren't we?

No. Hey, that's good, that's good. You know, thing on us. There you go. Step five. Radical honesty to all of us about our weaknesses and faults. If you can find it in your life, I'd highly recommend this. And, hey, I'm willing, even if you want to use me, willing to do it. That. Find someone that you can just share.

Have a friend, an anchor in your life. Someone you can just speak to about how you're just tracking with the Lord, or not tracking me radically honest to others about your weaknesses. Step six is deeply aware of being chief of all sinners. It's Apostle Paul's language, dude. I wouldn't think of the Apostle Paul as a chief of all sinners.

But yeah, there's this recognition that actually I'm more sinful than those around me. And you can see what Paul's doing here, because we're not taking on the attitude of like, look at that text letter. Look at that Pharisee. I'm so much better. I'm worse than then. That keeps you humble. Step seven. This is a big one for the monks, which I never really understood.

I read Bendix, it talks so much about not speaking well. But get this. But actually, the more I speak, the more I recognize. Actually, it's good not to speak. So step seven purposeful to speak less based off Chase. Hey, everyone should be what I to speak quick to listen. Control your tongue. You have wisdom. That's what step seven is so important.

And step eight transformed into the love of God and not being haughty, not being sarcastic, not putting people down. So that's just there's some steps there. And that's a tool at all. You can choose or not choose to use this to help us walk on that step of obedience. And the second tool that I have, it comes from, I've mentioned X men before, but if you if you weren't here for that or forgotten the X-Men, this is the you can type this into the the App Store or the Play Store X I mean, and that's the, the logo, the little the little clouds.

And the X is an exercise made by Ignatius of Loyola just to help reflect upon your day and how you seen God moving in your life, and how you have responded to different situations. And the excellent app has a whole bunch of different exercises. And this is exercise number 13, and I won't go through it all in depth because you can find them yet.

But this is actually probably one of my favorites because deeply confronting and sometimes I don't like to confront things in my life. And you go through your thoughts, your words and your deeds. It's that ten minute, 15 minute little exercise. And so you just ask God to reveal your thoughts of the day, and you ask some of those questions, and then usually you can think of a thought.

You had it like, oh man, yeah, that's the first thought that comes to my mind. Does it bring us closer to God or doesn't it? Angel that was a word you dealt with. It did. That's a way to just become more aware of. Oh yeah. Great. Yes. I'm a throw this thing about someone no one else is going to know about that I really may and God.

But when you start to become aware of that, it's very, very humbling. And what I love about the exercising just jump on to next slide. Thanks, Jeremy. It says now I look to tomorrow what thoughts and attitude do I desire to hold tomorrow? And it's really, really good to do this Christmas before you know you have a difficult meeting or you're going to see someone that rubs in the wrong way because you can something about that and ask the Lord, you know what deeds of love and reform to cold or make some sort of resolution.

Hi friends. These are not silver bullets. Hey sir, just tools, but there tools to help us not all of us, myself included, here to walk in humility, to not be like that Pharisee and to be proud and think, well, thank God I'm not like this and go, I'm not like her or him, but to humble ourselves, to walk in the footsteps of our master who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Now, as I finish, I found a lovely prayer, from the Christian tradition. It's called a Christian prayer for the virtue of humility. And the author here is not known. So as I pray this song invite, right? And the band back up, let's pray these words. May the Lord help us to walk. Walk in this way, Lord Jesus, when he walked the earth, your humility skewered your kingship.

He'll make this confused. The arrogant, hindering them from grasping your purpose, your nobleness, attending to the destitute. Teach me to model after your example, to subject my human nature to humility. Grant with me a natural inclination to never, ever view myself greater than anyone. Banish all the sparks of self-importance that you that could elevate me. To think I'm greater than you.

Let my heart always imitate your humility. Amen.

Thanks so much for joining us. Don't forget to write and subscribe to help others discover this channel. Check out the description if you want to find out more or get in touch with us at the center. Gerald. But in the meantime, praying for God's hand over you as you continue to step into everything Jesus has in store for your life.

Be blessed.