Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 18:9-14)
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.”
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, send us all the Holy Spirit
so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, in the name of your dear
Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus tells us a parable about two
men: a Pharisee and a tax-collector. And these two men go into the temple to
pray. We heard the words of these two prayers earlier in our Gospel reading.
The Pharisee says: 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!”
Then Jesus says at the end of the little parable: 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.
Notice, Jesus tells us here that this tax collector when down to
his house justified. Now, what does this word mean: “justified”?
As Lutherans today, we need to understand this word very deeply.
Some people have said, and I think they are right, that the teaching of justification,
or being justified, is what makes the church stand or fall.
Many of you, if someone asks you down the street what church you
go to, you would say to them: I’m a Lutheran. But do you know what it
means to be a Lutheran? Is there any point in being Lutheran today? Do you know
how the Lutheran church started and where it came from?
Some people like to tell people that in the early church there was
one great big happy church where everyone loved each other and held hands and
sung Kumbaya every Sunday! This is not true. There have always been disputes in
the church right from the very beginning. Just read the book of Acts and 1
Corinthians, for example, and you’ll quickly see that there have always been a
lot of problems and disputes in the church.
But in the 1500s, Martin Luther came along. And in 1517, he
criticised the Roman Catholic Church of which he was a part for getting people
to pay money for their forgiveness. In the year 1521, Martin Luther was kicked
out of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who agreed with him and followed
him were nick-named Lutherans. The word “Lutheran” was a kind of insult.
Originally, the Lutherans were called “evangelicals”, because evangelical means
to do with the gospel, and means that we preach the gospel. Eventually,
these two words joined together, so that people would call themselves
“Evangelical Lutherans”, and members of the “Evangelical Lutheran faith.” Now
we who are here today are part of that church which comes from those times,
when Martin Luther was thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church.
The reason why he was thrown out had to do with this word: justified.
Jesus says in our Gospel reading today: I tell you, this man went down to
his house justified, rather than the other.
So what does it mean to be justified? When you go to pray, or when
you come to the Lord’s Supper, or even when you go to heaven and enter eternal
life and are judged on the Last Day, on what basis can you go to God and be
with him? You’re a sinner, aren’t you? What gives you the right to enter into
God’s presence? Because of your works or because of God’s works? Of course, we
would say because of God’s works!
The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that we
enter into God’s presence both in this life and the next life because of both
his works and our works. The official teaching of the Lutheran Church is that
we enter into God’s presence both in this life and the next life because of
God’s works alone. We don’t do anything. This is the teaching of the Scripture.
I say this not because we as Lutherans should say to God: I thank you that I am
not a Catholic, like the Pharisee in our reading, but to call us back to
understand and believe the teaching of Jesus in the Scriptures.
So let me explain what it means to be justified.
All of us are on trial constantly. On the Last Day we will be on
trial before God’s throne especially because there will be nothing else for us
to distract us from God’s courtroom. But we always live in God’s courtroom, we
are always on trial.
God is the judge. The accuser is the devil. The devil wants to
stand in God’s courtroom and accuse us. You are on trial: you are the person
who is accused.
Now the accusation is true: you are a sinner. You have sinned
against God and before man. You are no longer worthy to be called God’s child.
And so the devil wants to accuse you of this. Your conscience also bears
witness against you. And the Holy Spirit who searches out your heart and knows
everything also knows that this is true.
And this is a serious business. Your sin is serious. You have
broken God’s law. The guilt is great and heavy and weight. The punishment which
you deserve because of your sin is endless.
The law by which you are accused came from the hand of Moses from
Mount Sinai, and God has every right to sentence you by it and is ready to do
it.
But then Jesus comes. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world. He is our High Priest. He is our Advocate in the courtroom, our
defender. And he comes into the courtroom with his blood which is more powerful
than anything that we could possibly imagine in this world. Jesus comes into
the courtroom and says: I know that this person is a poor, helpless, lost and
condemned criminal, but I have suffered and died for this person. I have paid
the price for this person and I have won the victory over all this person’s
enemies.
How thankful this person must be to have such a friend who comes
and saves him!
The God the Father’s voice comes tearing out of his holy temple:
Tear up the accusations. You can go free because of Jesus, and you are forgiven
from all your guilt and punishment. You are justified, and completely freely.
Christ’s righteousness is reckoned and accounted and credited to you,
completely for free.
And then what happens in heaven is done on the earth, and is
proclaimed by pastors from the pulpit, from the sanctuary and at the altar, and
also on a simple, quiet bench somewhere where in private confession people can
receive through their pastors this forgiveness privately. This is forgiveness
on earth as it is in heaven.
Sinners have everything that they need here. This is what it means
to be justified by faith, this is what it means to have peace with God and joy,
and to have the joy of the Lord as your strength.
Now in our Gospel reading today, Jesus shows us the verdict from
God’s throne upon these two men: The Pharisee was not forgiven, but the tax
collector was. Jesus says: I tell you, this man went down to his house
justified, rather than the other. Jesus is able to tell us the verdict
because he is equal in majesty to his Father in heaven and will execute
judgment on the Last Day in the presence of all his angels, even though now, in
our Gospel reading, he is sitting humbly among his people and telling them this
little parable.
What we believe is only shown by what we say. In Romans, we read: if
you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. This is what we come to do
every Sunday when we join in with that wonderful divine service that is always
going on in heaven. We confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. It is also
important that that faith which we speak is not just a faith of our mouths, but
is also the faith which shapes and forms our hearts, our souls, our spirits,
our consciences. It should also be the faith that we believe in our heart.
And what is it that we should believe? That God raised Jesus our Lord from
the dead. We are saved not by our works—even faith itself it not a work—but
by God’s work, by Jesus’ works, by the Holy Spirit’s works.
Now what we believe is also shown not just to us by what we say,
but to God by what we say. The first fruit of faith is prayer. If we are
justified by faith, if we are forgiven completely before God, the great gift
that God gives to us is allowing us into his throne room to speak before him
and to talk before him. Romans 5 says: Since we have been justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we
have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Do you hear? We have access by
faith into God’s grace. We can stand in his presence and rejoice there. God
lets us come in and talk to him.
Often the best indication as to whether a person believes in Jesus
Christ is whether or not they pray. Often if a person commits a great sin,
their prayers dry up and stop. The Holy Spirit who is given to us as our
Comforter, as our forgiver, is called in Zechariah 12 a spirit of grace and
of prayer. Through the forgiveness of sins, through justification by faith,
the Holy Spirit is sent into our hearts by faith to cry out to our Father in
heaven and plead for his mercy in everything. Galatians 4 says: God has sent
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
But Jesus gives us a warning in our reading. He wants us to know
that there is such a thing as a good prayer and a bad prayer. And a bad prayer
comes from a bad heart, a heart that is not right with God, a heart that is not
justified by faith.
In the first commandment, we are told: You shall have no other
gods. We should fear, love and trust in God above all things. All of us who
are sinners want to take God out of his proper place and put something else
there in his place. We want to remove God and set up an idol instead. We want
to humble God and bring him down and exalt ourselves and make ourselves into
little gods. But this is not the way things should be. Jesus says at the end
our reading: 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.
We are the ones who need to humble ourselves under God’s mighty
hand. God is the judge, not us. He is the one who searches out hearts, not us.
We only look at the outward appearance. We are pathetic, second-rate gods when
we try to replace God.
So you can see in our reading, this is exactly what the Pharisee
does. He humbles God and takes him off his seat and makes himself a judge. And
so the first thing he does is passes judgment on the tax collector and on other
people.
We read in our Gospel reading: Jesus also told this parable to
some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others
with contempt.
God is our Father. Jesus is our brother. The only reason why we
can speak to God the Father is because Jesus is with us with his forgiving
blood. Now that means that all Christians are brothers and sisters together. St
Paul in his letters constantly addresses us as brothers. Jesus says to
Mary Magdalene after he rose from the dead to go and speak to his brothers,
not his earthly family, but his disciples.
And so the Pharisee says: I thank you that I am not like other
men, or even like this tax collector. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Mr Pharisee, you
are exactly like every other man who has ever lived. You are exactly like every
person since Adam who has listened to the snake whispering in your ear, saying,
“Did God really say?” You are exactly like every man who wants to take God off
his throne and put yourself there, and your words prove it. If only you were
like this tax collector! You are exactly like every extortioner in the world,
every unjust judge, every filthy prostitute and gigolo, because you were
created by the same loving hand! If only you were repentant like them too! If
you only you knew that you are not a god, and that when you pretend to be one,
you are a completely pathetic klutz of a second-rate god! Let God be God.
Humble yourself and let him be your judge. Don’t exalt yourself and judge God,
and the sinners he chooses to forgive out of his love, and grace and mercy.
We read: But the tax collector said: God be merciful to me, a
sinner! I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.
Dear fellow sinners, let’s also go back to our houses today
justified for the sake of the blood and death and resurrection of Jesus, our
Saviour and our Lord!
Amen
Lord Jesus, we thank you for your words to us today. Thank you for
pouring out your forgiveness upon us who are sinners! Strengthen us, your
family, your brothers, and forgive and take away our inclination to want to
despise others and look down upon them. Amen.
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