Luke chapter 18. We're going to look at a very
familiar portion of Scripture, that is very familiar to us, and hopefully gain a fresh blessing
from it. Luke chapter 18, and we'll begin
reading with verse nine. Luke 18, verse nine. To some who were confident of
their own righteousness and looked down on everybody 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 up and prayed about himself, God, I thank you that I'm 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 that
is, the tax collector, rather than the other, the Pharisee,
went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself
will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now I have entitled this message,
Going Up and Going Down, because it says two men went up to the
temple to pray, and while the translation we use doesn't make
it clear, it says in verse 14, I tell you that this man, rather
than the other, went down to his home, justified. Now our
Lord could teach so much, with so few words, and I suppose it
would be a benefit if I could learn a little bit of that talent. But I've been preaching a long
time and I haven't picked up on that yet, but there's always
hope. But I know this, that which cannot
be explained simply is not likely of any great spiritual value.
Our Lord said, unless you repent and become His children, you
will in no wise enter the kingdom of God. And if that means anything,
it indicates there is a simplicity to the way into the kingdom of
God, else a child would not be able to know it. One does not
have to have a seminary degree to understand the scriptures.
I've made the point before, you don't need a seminary degree
to understand grace. You need to have a seminary degree
in order to preach something that sounds like grace, but it
really works. Now, I'm not faulting everyone
that's got a seminary degree. I got halfway there. I went to
the first four years of Bible school, got what they call a
pre-seminary Bible degree, and then that was it, so far as formal
education's concerned. And there have been many who
came out of seminaries and were faithful ministers of the gospel.
But I know this, there is nothing about the scriptures that's that
difficult. It may require some mental abilities
if you want to argue with those who twist the scriptures. because
they do such a good job of getting them all tangled up. It can take,
well, you know what it's like if a string gets tangled up.
You know, you got a lot of work. But if you just keep the string
straight to begin with, there's not much of a problem. Now, our
Lord addressed this parable specifically to the self-righteous. He was likely to the Pharisees
because one of the characters in the story is a Pharisee. Now a Pharisee was someone that
their name actually means separatist. Now I come from a religion, that
is the religion of my youth, that was real big on separation,
even what they called second level separation. You were supposed
to separate yourself from the world. And you're supposed to
also separate yourself from people who wouldn't separate themselves
from the world. Things like one of the principles
they had, they wouldn't go to a place where they wouldn't drink
beer. That was separation. You couldn't
have any alcohol. And then they wouldn't shop at
a store that sold it. I don't know what they're doing
now, considering nearly everybody sells it. But back then, there
were places you could go. But they were separatists, and
that's what these Pharisees were. And they were doing what they
thought was right. They had begun probably as a
response to the abominations brought about by
Antiochus Epiphanes when he forced the Jews to sacrifice pigs on
the altar in the temple. And they were the ones, they
reacted against that, stood for the purity of the temple, they
stood for the scriptures. But as time went by, and this
happens any time a movement starts, any time a group gets formed,
they get themselves an identity, we're the separatists, and they
just start separating from everything. And they begin to take pride
in their separateness, thinking that somehow or another sin is
out there, such that you can live your life in such a way
that sin and you don't come in contact. They utterly fail to
recognize sin's not out there, it's in here. And wherever you
go, there you are, and wherever you go, sin goes with you because
it's in you. But they thought by such separatist
activities. They were separating themselves
from sin and uncleanness, thus they were very shocked about
our Lord saying, this man is friends with notable sinners
and tax collectors. He even eats with them. Because
they thought you couldn't closely associate with such people without
their uncleanness, their sinfulness somehow or another attaching
to you. But they gave themselves this
name, Pharisee. We need to be very careful about
giving ourselves a name. And it'd be best if we didn't
give ourselves a name at all. And I don't mean the name that
people call you. I'm talking about a descriptive
name. God, let God give us our name. He said, beloved, now are we
the children of God. I'm good with that name. I didn't
take it. I didn't take it to myself, God
gave it to me. Here's another name been given
to me, sinner. Here's an interesting thing.
Never in the scriptures is a noble name given to the people of God
unless it is connected to the grace that's been given them.
As we have pointed out so many times, Jacob had two names, Jacob
and Israel. One was the name he had by nature,
and it is not a praiseworthy name. when we learn about these tax
collectors, we'll find that Jacob himself was very much like the
tax collectors of the days of our Lord, and he was named as
one who was a deceiver, one who would trip you up. But God gave
him the name Israel, which means one who prevails with God and
with men, but primarily with God. Now that is a remarkable
name. Jacob did not take that name
to himself. God gave it to him by grace. Now the Lord had many challenging
confrontations with these Pharisees, but he didn't dismiss them. And
we, you know, a part of our message from the very beginning, way
back in 87 when this church started, We have preached against self-righteousness. We need to be careful that while
we do this, we do not dismiss the self-righteous as though
they are unworthy of hearing the gospel or any less likely
to be saved by God. After all, God saved Saul of
Tarsus, a Pharisee. and not just any Pharisee. He
said, I was beyond all my peers. He was as Pharisee as a Pharisee
could get. Let us never think that self-righteousness
is any worse a sin than the sins we are guilty of. It's true that self-righteousness
lies at the core of unbelief. but every other sin's connected
to unbelief as well. And I'm not just talking about
that self-righteousness of those who are smug, you know, and we
kind of don't like to be around them. We're talking about self-righteousness
in the sight of God, of thinking there is something superior about
us as opposed to other people that makes God more likely to
show us good than to show someone else good. We are all born as Pharisees,
and in our flesh we remain that. And even if we've been born again
by the Spirit of God and have experienced the grace of God,
that Pharisaical principle still is in operation in us. So how
do you know? Well, it says, to some who are
confident of their own righteousness and look down on everybody else.
Do you look down on anybody? The moment you look down on somebody,
you're right there. And we all do it. Well, I've sinned, but I never
did that. That's just a pharisaical statement. Well, I've sinned a lot, but
at least I know I'm a sinner. I'm no Pharisee. Yes, you are.
Your confession proves it. In our flesh, we are all Pharisees.
I went up to the temple. He went up to the temple to pray. Now, in my training as a minister
of the gospel, I've gained benefit from a lot of men, from their
experience, from hearing their messages, but there's two men
that stand out prominently. One of them, you know, Brother
Henry Mahan. The effect that he had on me as a preacher of
the gospel is inestimable. But there was another man, he
was my philosophy professor in college, and much of what I have
taught you has come from the things he taught me. Heard me
refer to the relationship between God and us being like the relationship
between William Shakespeare and Romeo. And I've used that to
explain a lot of things. Well, I got that from this philosophy
professor. And the other day, I think it
was Friday morning, I thought, I want to listen to somebody
preach. So I got on sermon audio and I think, I'll see if any
of Mr. Greer's sermons are online. And
I found one on this text. And oh, what a blessing it was.
And I thought, I got to preach on that. I'm just going to have
to. Not because he taught me anything new theologically, but
he was able to add a great deal of background information that
I did not know, details about temple worship that make this
story all the more powerful. Now, these were things that would
have been known to anyone to whom our Lord was speaking that
day. And really, if someone would take the time, you can find these
things out in Scripture, though I think a few of the points he
made were probably gleaned from other sources about how temple
worship went on. The laws are in the Old Covenant,
and how they played out, they're in other sources. But it makes
what our Lord said stand out in such sharp relief, sharp contrast. And I know that the Pharisees
and the tax collectors and everybody else who listened to him give
this parable understood what he meant. Now you can gain a
lot from this without ever understanding the background of temple worship.
But I hope that as I relate some of this stuff to you that he
mentioned, it'll begin. Well, number one, if you're like
those Pharisees, if you're yet trusting your own righteousness,
I hope it'll break you. And if you're like that tax collector
who cannot think of any reason why God would be good to him,
I hope it's good news to you. Two men went up to the temple
to pray. Outwardly speaking, you could not choose two kinds
of people who, according to the flesh, would be perceived to
be so different. There was this tax collector.
King James says publican. Now, even in our day and age,
nobody likes the taxman. But that's just because the taxman
may take more money from you. But that's not the only reason
tax collectors were so despised in Israel. They were hated not
only because they collected taxes, but because they did so for the
Roman government, who was at that time holding Israel under
their thumb. They were betrayers in the eyes
of their Jewish kinfolk. Traitors, treasonous. I'm sure
if they could have got away with it, they would have killed them. They were hated and despised. Now, their method of collecting
taxes was rather interesting. They would meet at the procurator's
place. I'd be a pilot was one of those.
And there'd be a map. This is something I didn't know.
They'd have a map, and the area would be marked out in districts.
And the tax collectors would bid on those districts. And they'd
say, I'll give you so many denarii for this district or that district.
And what it was, that was, you know, Rome got their money from
the tax collector. Whatever the tax collector paid
them in order to have the authority to tax the citizens in that district. And so say, somebody said 10,000
denarii or whatever, you know. Okay, he's got the right to tax
the people there. Then he would go out and tax
the people. Now, the thing is, when he made that bid, if he
won the bid, just like at an auction, he had to pay the money
right then. He couldn't go out and collect
taxes until he'd paid what he bid on that place. And as I understand
it, he owed Rome no more. Then he started taxing the people.
And the only way he made money was to take more from them than
what he paid to the Roman government for the right to tax them. And
to do that, they often cheated. They were known for it. Not that many people back then
knew how to read or do arithmetic. Tax collectors were among the
educated class, and they could pull tricks and whatnot and get
you to give more than what you actually owed. But whatever they got, they were
allowed to keep. And of course, the goal was get
more than what you had paid as a bid to be able to tax those
people. These tax collectors were hated. They had no civil rights in Israel. They were not allowed in the
temple. A tax collector would never be
called on to give testimony in a court of law. And no one would
look them in the eye. In other words, the Jews looked
at them as non-Jews. They were Gentiles in their sight.
Cut off from Israel. Aliens. Cut off from the covenants of
promise. When you consider all of this,
how tax collectors were thought of, and I knew that they were
hated, but here in this description of how they got the right to
tax and how they carried it out, you could see just how much they
were hated. What a remarkable thing then. that among our Lord's 12 disciples
which he chose, he chose a tax collector, Matthew. That means that Matthew had bid
and paid for a particular district in which he collected taxes.
And our Lord came up to him as he sat at his table collecting
taxes. He'd already lost the money,
he'd already paid it. And the Lord said, come, follow
me. And Matthew stood up, he left his money behind, and followed
the Lord. He didn't take even what he'd
already collected, and he now forfeited anything he might have
collected. Rome didn't care, because Rome
had already got their money. The Lord calls all kinds of people.
But everyone he calls, there's something they give up. And yet
when they give it up, they don't count it loss. Paul gave up that
wonderful pedigree of legalistic righteousness. And he says, and
I counted garbage. People say, oh, I sacrificed
this for Jesus. Really? What have we sacrificed
for him? But some, like the Pharisees,
they have what you might call riches in self-righteousness. That is, riches in a high esteem
for themselves, thinking that they've actually done things
that God is pleased with and is going to reward them with
good. And they will give it all up. Matthew, what did he have? He had all that money. He walked
away from it. Why? Did he walk away from it,
you know? Okay, maybe I can give something. He walked away and
never looked back. If God is pleased to show you
what you are and show you what Christ is, nothing else has any
value. I know the flesh is not convinced
of that and it keeps trying to interject things of value, but
if there's anything in this world that you would refuse to give
up for the sake of Christ, what it demonstrates is you've never
met Christ. It's not a matter of a law that
we begrudgingly keep. It's not like I say, oh, but
I want all that stuff, I guess I'm going to have to give it
up for Jesus. If you've seen Him. If he said, well, do you remember
the rich young ruler? What good thing must I do to
obtain eternal life? He said, well, you've heard the
commandments. Yeah. And the guy said, yeah, I've
kept them for my youth. And the Lord said, well, one thing you lack. Give all your wealth to the poor
and come follow me. There was something that man
wouldn't give up because he loved it more than he did Christ. There was this tax collector
and there was a Pharisee. Now, I doubt that many Pharisees
were liked much more than people liked the tax collectors. They were just as irritating,
I'm sure. They did collect a sort of tax in the way they would
burden people with more and more rules and look down on them and
tax them with guilt and such. And they were normally rich.
But they would gain their wealth by legal but immoral means. So what do you mean by that?
What are legal but immoral means? The Lord Jesus said of them that
they devoured widow's houses. Now what does it mean to devour
widow's houses? Well, my assumption is that widows
Husband had died. They don't have support. They
got a house, but you can't buy bread with a house. They're destitute. They need money. So they sell
their house. But you know, when people are
in distress, they tend to sell cheap because they need to sell
fast. And the Pharisees were right there to gobble up those
widows' houses for pennies on the dollar. That was theft. So you see, while these two men,
the tax collector and the Pharisee, were looked upon differently,
there really wasn't any difference in them. They were both rebels
against God, both claiming what was not rightfully theirs, both
of them traitors to their kinfolk. One by way of civil government,
the other by overthrowing the form of religion that God had
entrusted to them. The Pharisee thought he was different,
better. He wasn't. These two men went
up to the temple to pray, going up there thinking One was different
than the other, but they were the same. Now when they went up to the
temple to pray, there was two times in the day that prayer
was made at the temple. At first light, and at three
in the afternoon. And the two prayers of the Pharisee
and the tax collector take on a particular significance when
they are viewed in the light of what was happening around
them when they prayed. And this is what adds the contrast. This is what adds the context
that makes our Lord's words so powerful right here. So let's
take a few minutes to learn how worship was conducted Before the sun came up, the priests
would gather at the temple. And they would meet in the court
of polished stones. And these were stones whereby
the lot was cast. And there would be a decision
made as to which priest would be responsible to get the temple
ready for the day's activities. And whoever was responsible would
go to the altar and take all the dead coals off of it, spread
out those coals which yet remained, and put fresh wood on it to restart
the fire. Then they would go back to that
court of polished stones. The polished stones was a white
stone and a black stone, actually two of each. But the second lot
would be cast to determine which priest would offer the land. And then the sixth priest on
his right and the sixth priest on his left would help him. Now
there were, I believe, 12 courses in the priesthood, they called
it. That is, the Levites were all divided into 12 and each
would you know, go and serve, I guess, for a month at the temple.
But who did the actual work would be chosen among those priests
by this casting of lots. And so it would fall to one to
do the sacrificing, but the sixth to his right and the sixth to
his left would join him in carrying out that work. And just as first
light would come, a priest would go to the pinnacle of the temple,
And he would say, the sky is already lit. And they would ask,
is it lit as far as Hebron? They made a lot of extra rules.
I don't think that you can find that in the Old Testament, that
you don't open the temple until the light's as far as Hebron.
But that's what they would ask. And if he said yes, then the
great gate to the temple would be open. And there would be a
blast of the trumpet to announce the temple's open. The priest would prepare the
lamb for sacrifice. This lamb had been pinned up
for four days to prove that it was worthy to be a sacrifice
without spot and without blemish. And they would put its, excuse
me, and people would file in and they would take that lamb
and they would put its head through one of the loops on the altar.
And then the priest would take a knife and slice this gullet,
collect the blood, sprinkle some around the altar, and pour the
rest of it out. And that lamb, alive only moments
ago, would be hung up on a hook and flayed and cut up according
to precise instructions and salted on both sides. then they would go in and the
holy place would be made ready. If any of the lights and the
candlesticks had gone out, that would be fixed. Everything ready
so the holy place is in order for the priest. Then would come
the third lot. This would be to choose the priest
which would offer the incense before the Lord in the holy place. And only those who had never
done it before were allowed to participate in this. And so any
priest that had ever had that job before wasn't included among
those to whom the lot might fall. And they would take the lot,
and on whomever it fell, they would be responsible for that
job. Remember the story of the father
of John the Baptist, Zacharias. He was in the course of priests
working and the lot fell on him and it was his job to burn the
incense that day when the angel told him that John the Baptist
would be born. But he would choose two of his
closest friends and they would help him with this, taking some
coals from the altar and a censer full of incense and they went
into the holy place, but when it was time to actually do the
work, the two friends left, the only one in there be that one
priest. And he would offer that incense before the Lord. And
when he was done, he would go out and raise his hands and bless
the people with, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord lift
his countenance upon you and give you peace. Now, you know
the Jews would not pronounce the name of God. Yahweh or Yahveh or however.
I don't know if anybody really knows how it's supposed to be
pronounced. In English they say it Jehovah. But they didn't pronounce it
because the law said don't use the name of the Lord in vain
so they thought well the best way to not do that is never use
it at all. And when they would get to that word when they were
reading scriptures they'd get to that word and they'd say Adonai
instead which means the Lord. And that's why in nearly all
English translations of the Bible, in the Old Testament, you'll
see the Lord. And if the word is Lord is written
in all capitals, what it means is that's the Lord's name, Jehovah. That just became the practice.
There was only one time they ever spoke the name of God. And that was at that blessing.
Yahweh bless you and keep you. Yahweh lift His countenance upon
you and give you peace. Now you remember Zacharias in
there? The angel told him about the birth of John the Baptist.
And he didn't believe. And because he didn't believe,
he was struck dumb. He had one chance in his whole
life to speak the name of the Lord. And through unbelief, he
couldn't do it. He walked out and couldn't say
a thing. Through unbelief, he missed a
blessing, and through unbelief, he could pronounce no blessing
on the people. That's just a little side lesson about the power of
unbelief. But once all this was done, The lamb had been cut up according
to precise instructions and had been laid back on the altar roughly
in the form of a lamb, the pieces arranged there. And it would
be offered. And it was at that time that
prayer began. Now here's the first thing to
learn from this. There can be no approaching the
Lord. apart from a satisfactory atonement. Nobody prayed until the lamb
was sacrificed, until the priest went in and offered that incense
and came back out as a testimony of the acceptance of God and
pronounced blessing. Then the people would pray. Two men went up to the temple
to pray. Both of them saw this going on.
Both of them saw the solemnity. Both of them witnessed the precision
with which this was carried out. Because, you know, an approach
to God is no light thing. It's no small thing to come into
the presence of God. There's a way to do it. And those
who don't do it right Now understand, I'm not talking about us coming
to church like this, you know, that's not, the temple was an
outward physical form of worship serving to illustrate true spiritual
worship. God wasn't really behind the
curtain. That lamb that was slain, two of them every day, one in
the morning, one at three in the afternoon. Every day. Not
one sin was ever put away by any of the sacrifice of any of
those lambs. Not one real blessing fell upon
the people because some descendant of Levi or Aaron came out, lifted
his hands, and pronounced that blessing. All of that was simply
symbolic of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done because he is every one of those
priests, he is the altar, he is the lamb that's offered on
the altar, and the sweet, or the incense is his prayers on
behalf of the saints ascending to God. All of it is about him. But the tax collector and the
Pharisee went, and when it came time to pray, The Pharisee stood
proud, stood tall, and he prayed within himself about himself. And he did it right there in
the presence of a dead lamb, a holy priesthood, a holy temple. every one of them a testimony
of His sinfulness. People say, and I've heard it
often said, you take people to the law to teach them about their
sin, then you take them to the cross to teach them about grace.
Well, the law will tell them they're a sinner, but I don't
know that the law ever convinced anybody that they were a sinner.
They make excuses. Do you know what convinces someone
they're a sinner? Jesus Christ hanging on a cross. You cannot behold the sufferings
of the Savior and understand what they mean and then make
any boast about yourself, can you? I hear people say, I'm proud
to be a Christian. Why? What is there to be proud
of? I'm proud of Christ. I glory
in Him. But when I say I'm a Christian,
what I'm saying is I am such a wicked man that nothing else
than the slaughter of the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary to
save my wretched soul. How in the world can I make a
boast of righteousness? Right there at the cross. But
that's what that Pharisee did. Right there, a lamb slain for
sin. A priest wearing the right clothes,
probably trembling as he went about his work because he wanted
to make sure he didn't do it wrong. A temple that he couldn't
go in. That is, the Pharisee couldn't
go in. Not even in the first part of it, the holy place. And
nobody but the high priest went into that back room and then
only once a year and never without blood. In the midst of all this
awesomeness, in the midst of all of this testimony of the
sinfulness of man and the strict justice of God, this man had
the unmitigated gall to stand there and tell God about his
righteousness. Yeah, what an awful fellow he
was. You're missing the point. What awful people we are. Week after week after week, we
come in here and we have what went on in the temple preached
to us in its reality. Christ and him crucified. And we can be blasé about it. Or we can go away, and I'm sure
we've all done it, with a smug feeling. Well, we understand
it, but none of the other churches do. Friends, no matter what anybody
else believes, if we believe what the truth is, we have absolutely
no reason to boast about it or look down on anyone who holds
it to something else. Because we are them plus the
grace of God, that's all. And the same grace that saved
us can save them if God is willing to extend it to them. But there was another man, this
tax collector. I don't know what moved him to
go to the temple to pray. He wasn't supposed to be there.
Maybe he had got to begin to convict him in
his heart, not just that he was a tax collector. His crimes, being a tax collector,
could have easily been taken care of simply by paying back
everything he cheated according to the law. That could have been
taken care of. He went there. Maybe that's what
brought him there. Come to think of it, a lot of
times people approach the gospel or hearing the gospel because
they feel bad about some particular thing they did. But the point
is, if God is pleased to bless the preaching of the gospel to
their heart, they're gonna find out me being a tax collector
is not the bad part. It may be bad, but it's not the
really bad thing. This man was moved in his heart.
He didn't go to the temple to fulfill a duty. He went to the
temple because he felt estranged from his God. And symbolically,
that's where his God dwelled. And yet, he stood at a distance. I'm so glad we have boldness
to enter into the most holy by the blood of Christ. But this flippant attitude toward
the God of heaven is though I can just saunter in without a regard
to who he is and what it cost to give me access to him. Act like he's my pal, he's my
buddy, he's definitely my friend. but he's God. And I would not think to approach
him apart from Jesus Christ and the blood he shed. That man, that tax collector,
standing afar off, not out there where everybody could see him,
but wherever he was, Doubtless he's in sight of that altar and
those priests, and the blood poured out, and that innocent
lamb cut to pieces in that magnificent temple. And he said, God, be merciful
to me, a sinner. And this is not the normal word
for mercy, such as Bartimaeus used when he said, Jesus, thou
son of David, have mercy on me. The word actually means propitiation. It's another big word. Atonement. An atonement is a payment that's
offered to put aside an offense. You've done something that offended
somebody, offended them deeply. And an atonement is an attempt
to make a payment that will put the sense of offense away and
restore the relationship. This tax collector knew he was
alienated from God. And he knew there was nothing
he could do about it. That every action of his only
added to the offense. that all his attempts at righteousness
were actually spitting in the face of God, who is perfectly
righteous, to add our filthy rag righteousness, to present
that to God as though that's something he could be pleased
with? What was this man pleading? God, let that atonement be for me. May that lamb, innocent but slain,
bear my sin and make things right between you and me. That's what
he was saying. He, by the grace of God, had
learned what that sacrifice meant. He knew there was nothing he
could do. If he did pay back everybody
four times what he'd cheated them of, If he quit being a tax collector,
if he swore off allegiance to Rome and prostrated himself before
the authorities of Judaism and repented in sackcloth and ashes,
none of that would fix what was wrong with him. He had one hope,
and that was that lamb offered on the altar. Oh, God. Let that lamb be for me. What does that mean for you and
me? Well, the lamb slain is Jesus
Christ. John the Baptist said, behold,
the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. We just came through the Christmas
season. Everybody loves Jesus in the
manger. And I got no problem with that.
I understand that. My friends, if you want to learn
something about salvation, you've got to find Jesus on a cross,
and you've got to look square into the face of that suffering
man, the Son of God, God in human flesh, pouring out His soul unto
death and realize, that's the only thing that can make me right
with God. I'm so wicked, nothing less will
do. And if you ever realize that,
you quit looking down on other people. You quit trusting in
your own righteousness. But if you're here this morning
and you have a sense of your sinfulness, a sense that leads you to despair,
let me tell you this, that lamb is enough. Jesus Christ crucified, suffering
the wrath of God. It's enough. God's wrath was satisfied. His offense, that sin, was put
away. And your plea to God should be
like that of this tax collector, O God. Let that atonement be for me. Accept Him for my sake. Lay my sins upon Him and deal
with them there, because if you don't, I perish forever. We got to be careful we don't
get over theological with this. I know that Jesus Christ died
for a chosen people. And every one of them was atoned
for, but we don't know who they are. We don't live in the domain
of God's eternal sovereign decree. We live in the domain of space
and time. And I call on you this morning.
If you are trusting in your goodness, Stop. And the only way you're
going to stop is to look at Christ and recognize that's what it
would take. If you were the only sinner there was, it would take
that to save you. And if you're in despair and
hopelessness that God would never save you, I've got good news
for you. Everything you need to be accepted
by God is in Christ. In your plea, O God, let this
sacrifice be for me. We'll be heard. For it is written,
that tax collector, not the Pharisee, went down to his house justified. What does justified mean? It's
simply a declaration, not guilty. Not guilty. You say, but I've
done so many things. If Jesus Christ is your atonement
in the sight of God, you're not guilty of anything. No charge
will stick on you. It may bother your conscience,
may make you feel miserable as it should. Sin shouldn't be taken
lightly by us, but know this. If your hope is in God's land
slain from the foundation of the world, the reality behind
all those lands slain at an altar there in Israel, in Jerusalem,
if Jesus Christ is your atonement, God's not upset with you. His
wrath will never fall on you. Your sins are paid for. And he
says, I will remember them no more. He'll never bring them
up again. Two men went up to the temple
to pray. One of them didn't pay attention to what was going on.
The other understood. And it changed how they prayed. May God add his blessing. You can take out your hymnals
and we'll turn them to number 233. Depth of Mercy, number 233,
and we'll stand as we sing. ["Depth of Mercy"] Depth of mercy, can there be? Mercy still remains.