Another Take on the Two Ways (The Lord arranges his own illustrations)

Luke 18:1 – 19:10

INTRODUCTION

As the sovereign Lord of the universe Jesus has many advantages over us merely human teachers and preachers that have come after him. Certainly his omniscience is the main advantage (!) but this passage brings out another one.  If I want to find examples to illustrate what I want to say I have to think back to things that have already happened that hopefully show my point or just make up a story (Jesus did both of these also). But as we see in this passage, Jesus is able to arrange it so that right after he gives a teaching, a series of examples occur that illustrate exactly what he meant!  (No fair! J)

Actually Glen referred to that just last week, at least in passing.  When he asked me to preach I decided that I would like to pursue this thought a bit more and explore the four events in Luke that followed the teaching of the two men praying in the temple.  So today we will be tying together some thoughts from Glen’s series of messages in Mark, some of my recent Sermon on the Mount messages, and even the video series that we have been watching in FBH.  Yes, there will be some overlap and repetition, but God used repetition in the Bible many times to get important points across.  There are even four different gospels because different perspectives on the same events were more useful than just longer descriptions – you get a sort of 3d experience that brings out the heart of Jesus’ message and ministry.  So let’s get into the story and then what happened to illustrate it!

I The Teaching (18:9-14)

As we have seen, at this point in the gospels we are approaching the end of the earthly ministry of Jesus.  Holy week is just around the corner, with its quick succession of events from triumphal entry to arrest to trial to crucifixion to burial to resurrection. Here in Luke (which calls itself the chronological account) we see a flurry of teaching and encounters just before the end, and like the SOTM from the beginning of his ministry, these teachings weave together a big picture of the kingdom of God.  Right after he teaches about persistence in prayer with the story of the widow and the unjust judge, Jesus gives this teaching about two types of hearts “coming before God”.  Only one is saved.  Before the next teaching in Luke there are four encounters which illustrate many principles that are contained in the story.  So let’s read it one more time.

Luke 18:9-14 ESV   ⁹ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ¹⁰ "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' ¹³ 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!' ¹⁴ 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."

At a first glance we a series of two’s

• Two men with
• Two jobs  (a Pharisee and a Tax collector)
• Two levels of religion (one devout, one who had abandoned his very people for monetary gain)
• Two different lifestyles (one known for his piety and religious observance of the law, and one who lived a loose lifestyle with his non-religious friends, spending money left and right for pleasure, parties, and possessions)
• Two very different public standings (one a well respected leader followed and looked up to by all, one who was shunned from traditional society and hated by his own people)
• Two prayers with
• Two heart attitudes (one confident, proud and self-trusting and one humble, contrite and fearful)
• Two different contents (one thanking God for how awesome he was compared to others, and one asking for God’s mercy that he knew he did not deserve), and
• Two different outcomes (one not saved and one justified)

We have talked through this a couple of times over the last few months so we don’t need to spend too much time rehashing our thoughts, but we should notice Jesus’ own application in verse 14.  Justification before God will not come to those who wave their credentials in his face and expect Him to be impressed.  Those who lift themselves up before God will be humbled. The word tapeinoō pictures the whole “mountains being leveled into plains” kind of picture.  God does not abide any pride on our part.  Moses at the burning bush had to take off his shoes – even a quarter inch of leather under his feet was too exalted of a position before the holy presence of God.  In the last chapter of Isaiah God says:

Isaiah 66:1-2 [ESV] ¹ Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? ² All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

If God flattens those that exalt themselves, then what does He do with the humble?  If someone humbles himself (the same word tapeinoō then He exalts them! And this is not just putting them on a little footstool.  The word hypsoō is used as a metaphor of “to raise to the very summit of opulence and prosperity” or “to exalt, to raise to dignity, honour and happiness”.  Clearly a different outcome! 

So, if you blow your own horn you will be abased but if you humble yourself before God you will be lifted up on high!

Here Jesus has finished his teaching, and we can take a lot from this passage.  But questions might remain.  For instance:

1. What does it mean to humble yourself?  Should you hate your very existence and damage yourself and tell yourself that you have no worth?  Is God asking you to call yourself names and wish you were dead and generally be dead to yourself?  (This may seem like a silly question but how many people do you know that look at themselves this way and actually end up avoiding God or getting angry at him for this?)

2. Should we not try to live a righteous life and do good because everything we do is tained by sin?  Put another way, is Jesus saying that people who live “good” lives are actually at a disadvantage to people who live awful lives, or that he secretly hates religious people?  Paul asks these questions (in so many words) in Romans (answering with an emphatic “NO WAY!”

3. What are the specific requirements or characteristics of saving faith then?  We see two heart attitudes clearly layed out but we don’t know if the tax collector said “the sinner’s prayer” or what, if anything, came with his being justified.

One of the main rules of biblical interpretation is given in three words: CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT.  As I mentioned there are four separate encounters (beyond his immediate disciples) which deal with salvation which answer these questions and more. 

In the old 3^rd grade AWANA book one of the sections asked the clubbers to answer the question “what does it mean to trust Christ for salvation?”  Can you answer that question?  Could you tell others in a way that they could understand?  This passage will go a long way to giving the answers to that question.

So let’s go on to:

II The Four Real-Life Illustrations (18:15-19:10)

The first story takes place immediately after Jesus finishes this teaching.

Luke 18:15-17 [ESV]  ¹⁵ Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. ¹⁶ But Jesus called them to him, saying, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. ¹⁷ Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

We heard this story from Mark a couple of months ago so we don’t need to go through the whole history.  But notice the tie-in to the story that Jesus has just finished.  In verse 16 and 17 Jesus relates this to “receive(ing) the kingdom of God”, so it is very clear that He is using this as an illustration of his message.

Remember what is happening here.  The disciples of Jesus are indignant that the ignorant (and superstitious) folk are bringing children to the famous teacher and healer to be blessed by him and they have actually rebuked them for doing so.  “How dare you take away the important time of our important Rabbi to do these unimportant, mundane things.  He has a higher calling and message and you are not supposed to interrupt it.  Indeed, how can these ‘mewling and puking’ infants (to use Shakespear’s language) understand anything of the sublime teaching you are privileged enough to be allowed (by us) to hear?”

Unfortunately for the disciples, their rebukes get turned around on them by the Lord himself (oh, the embarrassment!)  He slams the self-importance of his own disciples and calls for the children to be allowed to come to Him.  He is happy to bless them.  But that is not all.  He now proceeds to describe that humble, saving faith that He had just talked about.  It seems that the difference between the Pharisee and the Publican is (at least partly) a child-like attitude in the Publican.    How could this be?  A few points might be suggested right away:

1. A child is totally dependent on adults for everything it needs.  An infant not only cannot earn its keep, but it cannot even feed or clothe or clean itself.  It does not even (initially) have conscious control over its extremities or control over its excretory functions. What is the only built-in ability a baby is given to control its external environment?  It can cry.  It cannot even articulate what it needs.  It probably doesn’t even have much conscious idea what it needs – it only feels a keen sense of lack and the crying begins.  If there is nobody to hear the crying and respond, the baby will die.  It is completely dependent.  It needs a loving parent to live.

2. A child is trusting (unless through abuse he or she has been trained otherwise).  If you tell a child that a man in a red suit comes down his chimney every year to bring presents or that there is a magical fairy that gives him money for his teeth it will seem to him the most natural thing in the world.  “Cool!” will be the reply in his heart, not “you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

3. A child is not finished.  They need to grow up into adulthood.  They don’t start out as the finished product, and they are not self-made.  And they are aware that they are not there yet and long to be grown up.

When we come to God we must be like children.  We come to God with an empty hand, asking to be born.  We are glad that He receives us as we are, but we can’t come to Him expecting to stay the same.  We come acknowledging our need to change and rely on Him to accomplish that change.  Asking God to “save” us while loving the way that we are does not work. 

Right after this the second encounter happens as a listener asks Jesus a question:

Luke 18:18-23 [ESV] ¹⁸ And a ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" ¹⁹ And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ²⁰ You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'" ²¹ And he said, "All these I have kept from my youth." ²² When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²³ But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

Probably without even realizing it (or maybe having his conscience pricked for the first time in his life by Jesus’ parable) a very good man in the crowd asks Jesus a question.  And it is exactly the wrong question.  Because it is the wrong question he gets an answer that is not what he wants to hear.  But it is the answer is what he needs to hear.  Just like the billionaire who was asked “how much money will be enough” that answered “just a bit more”, the person on the treadmill of earning salvation by good works who asks “how many good works does it take” will always get the answer “just a bit more”.  But it is always a bit more.  Jesus is merciful in that He chose the one step that was too far for the rich young ruler to go on his own.  Unlike some works-based religions which keep people on the treadmill by offering absolution by repeating a prayer a few times or doing some easily done good deed Jesus attempts to kick him off the treadmill completely.  If he was ready to receive salvation he would have realized his need and immediately asked for mercy.  But he was not yet ready.

Just as an aside, though most teach that this man was never saved, I have a different opinion.  Certainly we are not told about his future, and things do not look good at the end of the encounter, but consider several things:

1. In the account of this encounter in Mark these words are added: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said…”.  It could be argued that this was His universal love for all (in John 3:16), but I think it was more.

2. Jesus lamented to his disciples right after this that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom.  This completely shocked his disciples, of course, since riches were seen as a blessing of God given to the worthy.  But they seem to understand what Jesus is saying and immediately ask Him “then WHO can be saved?”  They understood that Jesus was speaking about everyone, and He gave the great hopeful message of the gospel “with GOD it is possible”.  Again it was the broken person with the open, empty hand who is saved.

3. When Jesus closed the door of hope for someone’s salvation he spoke surely and prophetically.  Like when with Judas Iscariot he said “it would have been better for him not to have been born”.  THAT is a pronouncement of sure judgment.

Because of this, I believe the following probably occurred (and nobody will be able to prove me right or wrong until we get to heaven):  The ruler came to this divine appointment because God had brought him there.  The Holy Spirit had been working in his heart, or it would not (I believe) even occurred to him to feel doubt about his salvation.  Certainly the Pharisees would not have asked that way.  Though he was not ready at the time, Jesus hit him with exactly what he needed to hear (remember he had also just heard the parables of the widow and the two men in the temple as context).  I think he was probably one of those 3000 who were saved on the day of Pentecost (or soon after) and I think it would not be at all unlikely that he might have been the first of the people in Acts 2:45 where it says “And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

As I said, there is no way to prove it one way or another, but if true it illustrates an important point for evangelism.  Some programs emphasize the importance of trying as much as humanly possible to force a commitment (down to wording the question in such a way as to make it harder to reply “no”.  Jesus did not do that.  He told them exactly what they needed to hear and left the work of conversion to the Holy Spirit.  Nicodemus came to Jesus in John chapter 3 and was told that he needed to be born again.  We see him later asking the other leaders to give Jesus a chance, and later he is a disciple.  Jesus did not “seal the deal”, he planted the seed by telling the truth.  In our “results oriented” culture we try to do the work of the Spirit and end up with a lot of people who “prayed a prayer” but fall away from Christ in huge numbers soon after.  Maybe we should be more like Jesus?

After this story there is a short break where Jesus reminds his disciples about his upcoming death (which they STILL do not understand) and then we have the third encounter:

Luke 18:35-43 [ESV] ³⁵ As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. ³⁶ And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. ³⁷ They told him, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." ³⁸ And he cried out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" ³⁹ And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" ⁴⁰ And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, ⁴¹ "What do you want me to do for you?" He said, "Lord, let me recover my sight." ⁴² And Jesus said to him, "Recover your sight; your faith has made you well." ⁴³ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

Since this was the topic of last week’s sermon I will go through this quickly.  While salvation is not mentioned (as such) in this account, it is part of the section and fits in beautifully.  Notice especially the parallel with Jesus’ parable.  The man is excluded from society and downcast, and his request is identical to the one of the publican in the story: “have mercy on me!”  While grace is the giving of something not deserved, mercy is not giving someone something bad that they deserve.  Sometimes when we come to the Lord for grace do we also realize that our need includes mercy (which is the opposite side of the same coin in this case)?  So right away we get the idea that he is not coming to Jesus with any pretense that he is deserving of anything but his current condition.  He is not demanding help, he is coming with an empty hand with nothing to motivate him but hope and faith.

Now the really remarkable thing about this story is Jesus’ response.  “What do you want me to do for you?”  If Jesus showed up right now and asked you that question, what would you ask for?  But the man makes a simple request.  He wants to be able to see like the people around him, to not be excluded from society and to be able to take care of himself.  And the answer is “yes”.  And unlike the 9 lepers who were cleansed, he was not only thankful but three more things happened:

• He followed Jesus,
• He glorified God, and
• He caused others to glorify God also.

Based on this, we see that more than a physical healing occurred.  And the crowd following Jesus has now seen in the last two examples a real-life picture of what Jesus had just taught them.  But there is one thing missing – the tax collector. But look what happens next:

Luke 19:1-10 [ESV] ¹ He entered Jericho and was passing through. ² And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. ³ And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. ⁴ So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. ⁵ And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today." ⁶ So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. ⁷ And when they saw it, they all grumbled, "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." ⁸ And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." ⁹ And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."

It is probably true that the people of that day were more surprised by this than any of the previous events.  “ Tax Collector?  We thought that was just an extreme example in your parable.  You could not possible have meant that they could literally be saved? That’s too much to believe!”  But Jesus had arranged this meeting from the beginning of time (like all of us as Paul wrote in Eph 1) and when the exact moment came, Jesus and Zacchaeus were there in the same place.  It was Jesus who looked up at the diminutive sinner ridiculously perched in the tree and saw a heart of a man ready to become a child of God.  And Zacchaeus gives us the final puzzle piece to understand the parable.

Unlike the outwardly righteous rich young ruler, Zacchaeus has come to the point where his money is not as important as his soul.  Please note that this is not teaching that one has to take a vow of poverty to become a Christian.  We are not told what percentage of his wealth he gave away.  That is not the issue.  But what he did was a clear illustration of something else.  He specifically repented of his sins, which were many.  Like the publican in the parable, he did not trust in his own righteousness, but came to Jesus with the attitude of “be merciful to me a sinner”.  His money was not evil.  The fact that he had cheated others out of their money to get some of it was.  Under the Roman system if someone was able to get themselves appointed as a tax collector for Rome they did not receive a salary but were given license to collect extra from the people as their salary.  Some were undoubtedly greedier than others, and abuses abounded.  It was a lucrative position to get because you got to set your own salary and could extort it from the taxpayers with the full authority of Rome.  No wonder they were hated!  But Zacchaeus wanted to be saved.  He divested himself of all of his sin and showed his actual repentance by making restitution to all of his victims.  It may have impoverished him – we don’t really know.  But the result is clear, Jesus declared unambiguously that he was saved!

III The Two Questions

As a third point I would like to point out an amazing contrast between the saved and the unsaved people in these encounters.  As I said, the rich young ruler came to Jesus with the wrong question.  We can re-word it as follows:  “What can I do for YOU?”  As we said, that is the WRONG QUESTION.  As Paul said to the Greeks at the Areopagus:

Acts 17:24-27 [ESV] ²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. ²⁶ And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, ²⁷ that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

When it comes to salvation, we bring nothing to the table.  Our only cry is “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner”.   But notice something amazing – when blind Bartimaeus came to Jesus with that plea, the Lord responded (paraphrased); “what can I do for YOU”. 

Now if the question is going to be asked by you or by the Lord, which would you rather it be?

III Conclusion

So in conclusion I think the context teaches us a lot about saving faith.  These four encounters tell us that salvation requires:

1. Childlike Trust – dependency, a declaration of inadequacy, and an open, empty hand to receive God’s mercy
2. Self-Abandonment – Trusting in ourselves leaves us without any hope.  As Paul wrote, after listing all of his righteous accomplishments “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:8 ESV)  We bring nothing God wants but ourselves – we have nothing that he needs.
3. A step of faith.  We need to ask (to seek, to knock).  (no presumption, no entitlement, just a heartfelt need and request)
4. Repentance – an acknowledgement that we know we need to be saved because we have sinned against God.

With all these things in place, we can have Jesus’ assurance that we, like the publican in the story, “go away justified”. 

That is the hope of the gospel.  That is the message we need to tell.  Can you tell someone the answer to the question “what does it mean to trust Christ for salvation?”