Good morning. If you would open
your Bibles to the book of Luke. Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18. The title of my message this
morning is The Difference Between Two People. And just so we don't have any
confusion about what that difference is, let me start off by saying
the difference between someone who is saved and someone who
is lost, the difference between someone who will get eternal
death and eternal life, the difference between two people is simply
the Lord Jesus Christ. And this morning, we'll go through
a few different examples in the scripture where the Lord took
two people and put them in a situation and showed us this difference.
He took two people and put them side by side that we could look
at them and we could compare them and see how one of them
is different than the other. So our first example is in Luke
18, a story that compares two people that we don't even know
their names. They're simply known by a title,
the Pharisee and the Publican. These two people, as we look
in verse 10 of Luke 18, it says, two men went up into the temple
to pray. Jump to verse 14, and let's go
ahead and see how this ends. In each one of these, I'm going
to say how each of these stories end, so that we know how it's
going to end, so when we look at the two of them, we'll be
able to compare, each one of them knowing where it ended up.
In verse 14, the first part says, I tell you, this is the Lord
speaking, I tell you this man, or the publican, went down to
his house justified rather than the other. These two men had
the result of one being justified and one not. If we look at the
beginning again in verse 10, it says, two men went up into
the temple to pray. Let's first talk about what the
difference isn't between these two people. Well, both of them
went to church. The difference between being
saved and being lost is not going to church. It says they both
prayed. The difference between these
two men is not that one prayed and one didn't. They both prayed.
It also says at the beginning of verse 11, the Pharisees stood,
and in verse 13 it says, and the publicans standing, they
both were standing. Our stance, our standing in a
church has no bearing on our salvation. Whether you're the
preacher, you're a person teaching, you're a singer, a musician,
someone who sits in the pew, or anything else, none of that
has any bearing on being saved or being lost. We also look at the first word
each of these men said. Verse 11, it says, The Pharisee
stood and prayed thus with himself, God. And look at the end of verse
13. The publican said, God. Both of these two men began their
prayer with the same word. Just because we say the word
God or we speak His name, that's not the difference. Just because
we might know of Him and know things about Him, those aren't
the differences. Let's look now at what these
two men, what each of them said, Verse 11, the Pharisee stood
and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not
as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as
this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give
tithes of all that I possess. Do you know what else isn't a
difference? The Pharisee or the Publican doesn't answer this
question, but I feel very confident if you ask each of these men
which one was better, they both would have said the Pharisee.
A better life isn't the difference. What you've done, what you've
accomplished, that's not the difference. And this Pharisee
used a specific word more often than any others. He does a 34-word
prayer and five times he uses the word I. Now that alone is not the difference. We can look at David throughout
the Psalms and he says things such as, I am weak and lowly,
I am poor and needy, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Simply using the word I or a personal pronoun is not the difference.
The publican says at the end of verse 13, merciful to me. He uses a personal pronoun. He
talks about himself here. There's nothing wrong with using
those words, but here's the difference. This Pharisee was speaking using
I, talking about what he had done. The publican used me talking
about what he needed. There's a big difference there.
These two men had a different mindset going into their prayer. It talks about the Pharisee being
up front and the publican standing far off. These are byproducts
of what these two men already know. The Pharisee thinks he's
done well. The Pharisee wants credit for
what he's accomplished. The publican says in verse 13,
and the publican standing afar off would not lift up so much
as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast saying,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. The difference between these
two men is the Pharisee put everything he had, all his hope, all his
words about what he had done. The publican put all his effort
in saying what he needed. It's a great thing to know that
you can't save yourself. This Pharisee did not know this.
The publican not only knew that he needed to be saved, but he
also knew who needed to save him. The start of this prayer
saying the word God, the publican wanted everyone to know and wanted
it to be said that he was giving, that he was saying God's name
because he wanted to pray. He was being religious, but he
had to say that so that it accounted to him as a prayer to God. The
publican said the word God because he was calling upon him, because
he had a question, he had a request, he had something that he needed.
The difference between these two men comes down to the Pharisee
thought he was gonna do it, and the publican knew that Christ
was the only one who could do it. All these other details,
all these other actions, everything else that's done in this passage
are a product of this difference. A person who thinks they can
do it themselves wants to tell everyone they can do it themselves.
They don't truly have a need of God. A person who knows they
can't do it and knows Christ is the only one who can, they
don't want any attention. A person who knows they're a
sinner, that truly understands it, doesn't want any attention
because they know what they deserve. A sinner, this publican is standing
there knowing, Lord, if you don't have mercy on me, I'm gonna get
what I deserve. I don't want anybody looking
at me. So the difference between these two men is simply the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now turn with me over to Genesis
chapter four. Genesis four. This is another story about two
people who are connected of this story, Cain and Abel. We almost never use their names
except with each other. And let's look at the result
of Cain and Abel. Look at the end of verse four
in Genesis four. And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering, But unto Cain and to his offering
he had not respect. Let's again look at what's not
the difference. These two men are brothers. They're in the same family. That's
not the difference. It doesn't matter what family
we're in. It doesn't matter what our name is. That's not the difference
in salvation. Both of these men brought an
offering or a sacrifice to the Lord. Bringing an offering or
making a sacrifice is not the difference in salvation. There
are many people who say they sacrifice things, give up things,
they don't do this, they don't do that, they don't eat this,
they don't do that. They make sacrifice or offerings.
They give money, they give their time, all of those things. And
not that any of those things are wrong or shouldn't be done,
but they're just not the difference in salvation. The difference
is what the particular offering represents between these two.
Now a sacrifice began after Adam sinned in the garden. And the
Lord told him, because you've sinned, there must be a sacrifice. There must be a payment for your
sin. And you know that Adam had taught
both of these two boys exactly what the Lord told him. They
both knew what to sacrifice, what it meant, and what they
were doing in their offering. So let's look and see what these
boys did. Verse 3 says, And in the process
of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of
the ground an offering unto the Lord. Cain brought things that
he had made himself. Verse 4 says, And Abel he also
brought of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. Abel brought the sacrifice the
Lord had told him to bring. As a child, I remember thinking,
it's a little unfair that Cain was a farmer and he just brought
what he made, and Abel was a shepherd and he just brought a sheep.
That's not really fair. Well, what these two men did
as an occupation has nothing to do with it. You know that
if Cain had gone to Abel, Abel would have given him a sheep,
or he could have used this food that he made to trade for a sheep. He knew better. He knew what
he needed to bring. And Abel knew what he needed
to bring. The difference in this, if we
look at the end of verse four, and the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering
he had not respect. The difference is that Abel brought
what the Lord said and followed the Lord's word. Cain did what
he thought was best. Cain thought he had a better
way to serve. He had a better way. His salvation
would be procured in the way he wanted it to be done, not
in what the Lord wanted it to be done. And the result of that
is that the Lord did not accept his offering. And in verse 5
it says, And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. Cain
was upset. Cain found a problem with the
judgment of God. It's not enough that he brought
the wrong sacrifice, but that he also blamed God for not accepting
it. Look what the Lord did. And the
Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance
fallen? He says, Why are you upset? It's
very obvious what you did wrong. I told you something and you
didn't do it. Verse 7 says, If thou doest well, shalt thou not
be accepted? If you do the right thing, you'll
be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin
lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou
shalt rule over him. The Lord is simply teaching in
a different way, using different words, the same thing he taught
them when he taught them the sacrifice that needed to be made,
what needed to be done. He tells Cain, why are you so
upset? If you do well enough, and if
you can do a good enough job, and you come to me in yourself,
you will be accepted. If you're perfect, you can represent
yourself. But if not, sin will rule over
you. If you're gonna choose your own
path, you have to be as good as the sacrifice that was required.
This sacrifice was a teaching, was a preclusion to the Lord
Jesus Christ being the sacrifice for his people. And Cain went
after this and said in verse eight, and Cain talked with Abel,
his brother. I love that the Lord, from when
Cain brought this sacrifice, Cain ultimately said, I don't
care what you think. I'm going to do this my own way.
And the Lord's response to this was not to condemn him. The Lord
taught him again. The Lord showed him the way he
needed to go. But Cain's response to that was
he went and talked with Abel, his brother. Now, we don't know
what was said, and I don't like to assume what was talked about. But this is definitely implying
that Cain talked to his brother Abel about this sacrifice. That he talked to him about he
was not accepted and his brother was. And you know what Abel taught
him. Abel brought the correct sacrifice. Abel told Cain, this is what
God told our father. This is what our father has taught
us. This is the only way for us to have our sins forgiven.
And Cain heard that, and it came to pass, when they were in the
field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him. Cain talked with Abel, and Abel
just repeated what God had told them. And Cain's response was,
I will not have this God to reign over me. And he killed Abel. The difference between these
two men, the difference between any two people that are saved
or lost, is that one of them thinks they are in control, and
one of them knows that the Lord Jesus Christ is in power. The
difference is, Cain thought he could do it his own way, and
he depended on himself. Abel knew that the only hope
for a sinner is the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, turn back to the
book of Luke with me. Luke 23. Luke 23. In Luke 23, look at verse 32. And there were also two other
malefactors, or thieves, led with him to be put to death.
And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary,
there they crucified him and the malefactors, one on the right
hand and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do. And they parted his
raiment and cast lots. And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them
derided him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself,
if he be Christ, the chosen of God. And the soldiers also mocked
him, coming to him and offering him vinegar, and saying, If thou
be the king of the Jews, save thyself. And a superscription
also was written over him in the letters of Greek and Latin
and Hebrew, This is the king of the Jews. And one of the malefactors
which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save
thyself and us. Let me read you a few verses
out of Matthew 27. This is the same story, but there's
an important couple bits of information that we must know before we keep
going. In Matthew 27, it says this. And they that pass by reviled
him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest
the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come
down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests
mocked him, with the scribes and elders saying, He saved others,
himself he cannot save. If He be the King of Israel,
let Him now come down from the cross, and then we'll believe
Him. He trusted God, let Him deliver Him now, if He will have
Him. For He said, I am the Son of
God, and listen to this, the thieves also, which were crucified
with Him, cast the same in their teeth. The thieves said these
same things. We all know this story as the
Lord is on the cross being crucified and there were two people, one
on each side of him, one on the right, one on the left, and the
only thing we know about these two people is that they were
both guilty sinners. That's all we know. All the things
we've said about the other two stories, it's very important
to realize there's not a single thing that we know about these
two thieves that would differentiate them between each other. Nothing. We don't know a name. We don't
know what they look like. We don't know where they came
from. We don't know their jobs. We don't know how much money
they had. We don't know if they did good works. We don't know
anything except they were both guilty sinners. And we will all come to a time
where we face God in a life or death moment. We will all be
just like these thieves at one moment. We are about to die. We are in need of a miracle that
we have no hope of performing ourselves. And what happens in
that moment will be the difference between life and death. It will
be the moment of us being saved or us being lost. And unfortunately,
we will do exactly what the Pharisee did. We'll claim ourselves. We'll look to ourselves. We'll
say what we did. We'll be proud of ourselves and
think maybe we did enough. We'll be what Cain did. We'll
do what he did. We'll stand on our own volition.
We will look and say, he's not the ruler over me. I've got this.
And we will do what these two thieves did. They stood there,
or they didn't stand there, they were being crucified next to
him. And they both listened to everything
that these Pharisees and everyone were saying, and they kept repeating
it. They were looking at him, it
said there in Matthew, the thieves also said the same from their
teeth. They spoke the same evil words
to God. If you're God, save yourself.
They said these things. We will do all those things unless
we are in Christ. We will do all those things unless
He speaks for us in that moment. We will chide Him. We will look
to ourselves unless the Lord Jesus Christ stands in our place. Unless He shows us that the Lord
Jesus Christ is the only hope for salvation. And this is exactly
what happened for one of these two thieves. Look in verse 39. It says here, "...and one of
the malefactors, which were hanged, railed on him, saying, If thou
be Christ, save thyself and us." We know from Matthew's account
that both of them were saying these types of things. But all
of a sudden, one thief repeated this line, and in a moment, I
find this so amazing to think that these men were being crucified,
looking at him, yelling at him, and condemning him. And in just,
I don't know if it was a second, a moment later, however long
it was, the one thief just totally turned. The Lord did this and
caused him in verse 40 to say, but the other thief answered,
rebuked him saying, does not thou fear God? In a matter of
moments, the Lord showed this man who was hanging next to him. He didn't know and then all of
a sudden his eyes were opened and he knew. And the very first
thing he did was he said, do you know who this is? He had
to say, this is God. And verse 40 says, does not thou
fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? We're
in the same position as him, but we indeed justly. We're sinners. We did it. We're
here because we deserve to be here, but not him. For we received
the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing
amiss. He did absolutely nothing wrong,
but he's still here. And he said unto Jesus, after
he had said that and rebuked that other thief, he turned to
the Lord and said, Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom. This man, this thief, this sinner,
this malfactor, had nothing going for him. He had no reason to
hope, he had nothing. He was about to die. And in just
one moment, the Lord showed him who he was, showed him who God
was, and exactly what he needed. I love that we don't know anything
about these two men to differentiate. We cannot look at these two men.
There's no reason, there's no excuse, there's nothing. Nobody
in this world can give you a single thing that could possibly be
the difference. In one of these men, look in
verse 43, And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee,
Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. We cannot find one
single thing about these two men except simply we can look
at this and say, This man was shown that he needed the Lord
Jesus Christ to save him. That's all he had. He didn't
have any testimony to fall on. He didn't have any works he could
count in. He didn't have any ceremonies
he'd proved or provided that he'd done. He had nothing other
than looking at the Lord Jesus Christ and saying, remember me. Likewise, it's also wonderful
that that's all it takes. That's all it is. It says multiple
times in the scripture, it says, Everyone that asketh, receiveth. In all things whatsoever ye shall
ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. Ask, and ye shall
receive, that your joy may be full. This thief, this sinner,
this awful person, just like us, simply said, Lord, remember
me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Now, did the Lord save
him because he asked that question? The Lord had already saved him.
He asked that question because of what the Lord showed him.
He doesn't deserve any credit for asking that. He would never
have asked it. He was doing the same thing the
thief was doing just moments ago. We know that this man didn't
learn better than that over his life and he just mistakenly said
something wrong. No, that's who he was and that's
who we are. We're guilty sinners who have
no hope apart from the Lord opening our eyes and showing us that
we need him. That's all we need. And in this
question of him saying, remember me when thou comest into the
kingdom, of Abel bringing the correct sacrifice, the lamb,
the blood shed for his sins, and the publican saying, Lord,
have mercy on me, all of that culminates in exactly what the
Lord was doing at that very moment. To think that he was on the cross
bearing the burden of all of his children, the indescribable
pain and torture he was going through, In that moment, he still
had only one thing in mind. He was looking after his sheep,
looking after his children. Not one of them will be lost.
Turn with me to Matthew 7, and we'll close. The only difference between life
and death, between salvation and being lost, the only difference
between two people is the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Matthew
7, the Lord spends this whole chapter giving advice, giving
warnings, giving all this information to these people that they might
know and be leery of some of these things, false prophets
and evil speakers and so many things, that in Matthew 7, verse
24, It says, therefore, whosoever
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, whoever gives
heed to my word, this book, to the things I've said, whoever
does that, I will liken them unto a wise man which built his
house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and
it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be
likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall
of it." The only difference between a wise man and a foolish man
is understanding that they must put everything they have, they're
totally dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Our lives are an
example of this, of this wise and foolish man. We spend all
our days building our house, accumulating things, doing things
that we feel are good, just getting everything we possibly can. And
if we do that, and that's what it's based on, if everything
we have is based on what we've done, we're the foolish man and
it will all fall underneath us. We will be lost, we will die,
we will have no hope. But if the Lord is pleased, if
he shows us, if he becomes our rock. If He puts us in Christ,
if He puts us in His bosom, if He puts us under His wing, if
we're in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we'll be classified as a
wise man. Not because of what we've done,
but because He is the wise man. He's the place we must be found.
And if so, our house will stand. We will stand in Him. Remember,
the only difference between being saved or being lost of eternal
life, of eternal death, of being wise or being foolish, of being
accepted, of being denied, all of it is the Lord Jesus Christ.