AN UNPREACHED SERMON (205)
Sometimes, when chatting with people I don’t know too well, if there is any inkling that they might be open to a deeper religious conversation, I like to ask the non-threatening question, “Are you a churchgoer?” As you can imagine, it has received a variety of answers over the years. Very seldom, however, has it shut down the conversation. People have often grasped at the opportunity to talk about deeper things. Without doubt, people are looking for answers and sometimes in a casual conversation they welcome the chance to bring up things they dare not talk about to
others. Of course, they may change to another topic to avoid the embarrassment of “talking about religion”, but more often than not they use it as an opportunity to ask questions, share problems, tell of disappointments with the church, or bad experiences that put them off religion for life.
Who knows what suddenly motivates people to go to church, but I have spoken to ministers and elders who tell me that increasingly they are seeing people “just turn up” in their worship services. In many cases, it is a sign that God’s Spirit is moving ever so tentatively in their lives drawing them not just to the church building but to Christ who is the Head of the Church. Did you know there’s a story in the Bible about two men who decided to go to the Jewish church, the Temple? It was told by Jesus and is usually known as “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican” (Luke 18:9-14).
Of course, Jesus wasn’t talking about a pub owner. Publicans were people who worked for the Roman government among the Jews collecting taxes. They were despised, looked down upon and seen as traitors. Nobody expected such people to turn up in church and if they did, they would have been shunned and unwelcome. It was common knowledge that they added a bit on to the taxes to line their own pockets.
Pharisees were different; church was where they belonged. They were looked upon as people who really knew their Bibles and for whom prayer was the most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, they thought themselves a cut above the rest and came across as proud and arrogant. Not only the world, but God owed them a living. They had “great self-confidence and scorned everyone else” (v9 NLT).
NOTICE FIRST, WHY THEY WENT TO CHURCH.
Both men went with the same intention; in that there was no difference between them. They were there to pray (v10). The Pharisee was a regular in God’s house. He knew his way around; he was on familiar ground. Religion was his bread and butter, day in day out. But who knows when the publican had last been in church, if ever? His job did not fit well with religion, and yet something stirred within him that day to attend God’s house to do business with God in prayer.
The fact that these two quite different characters were both there to do the same thing, shouldn’t surprise us in the least. The need to pray is a basic need in us all, whether we do it or not. It is the common, universal instinct in every human being. People who say, “You’ll never catch me in a church” are denying and suppressing what is basic to their very nature. And sometimes God draws them in a way they least expect; they just feel a need to pray.
NOTICE NEXT, WHAT THEY DID AT CHURCH.
Although they both went with the intention of praying, they actually did quite different things in their praying. Jesus brings this out very clearly in the words of the prayers that each would-be worshipper used.
The Pharisee was full of himself.
Approaching God, he had nothing to bring before Him but his pride. Just like little Jack Horner his attitude was, “O what a good boy am I”. Only he wasn’t hiding in a corner, but standing in a place where he could be seen. He deliberately set himself apart from others, but within their sight so they could watch and listen in on him praying (v11). I wonder if he raised his voice so as to be heard when he uttered the words, “I am not a sinner like everyone else” and with a flourish of his hand pointed over to the publican as he continued, “especially like that tax collector over there” (v11). It was quite a list of his non-sins he reeled off to God (v12). All he was doing was parading his supposed goodness before others. It just oozes with self-centredness. Note how often he uses the personal pronoun “I”; he was suffering from “eye trouble” and just couldn’t see it.
The Publican had no illusions about himself.
He couldn’t even bring himself to lift his eyes heavenward. Here was a man who knew he had fallen short of his own standards, not just God’s. His attitude was so different and he expressed it in the Middle East way of beating his chest. All he asked for was mercy, because he knew that to be his biggest need. That day when he went to church, he was deeply conscious of the only two things that matter when we turn up in God’s house: that we are sinful but God is merciful. Unlike the Pharisee he had not come with a list of his good points, for he knew he had none.
NOTICE LAST, HOW THEY WENT HOME AFTER CHURCH.
Both had to go home when the service finished, but “going to church” had had a different effect in each of them. The genius of Christ’s parable is in the punchline. “I tell you, this sinner not the pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humbled honoured” (v14).
Nothing changed for the Pharisee.
He might as well have not gone to church. He was still self-opinionated and self-centred as when he had set out from home. The only thing it had done was inflate his own ego.
Everything changed for the Publican.
Whereas the Pharisee had sought to justify himself, the Publican allowed God to justify him. Like all who come to prayer relying only on God’s mercy and grace in Christ, he went home with the assurance in his heart that he had been “justified freely by God’s grace” (Rom 3:24). He went home a changed man, a better man, a new man. He had dared to come to church with his burden of sin and been real before God, and God met him at the point of his need.
There then, are the two main characters in this most powerful parable: Mr Hypocrisy and Mr Honesty. Both of them will be going with you this coming Sunday as you make your way to church. In conversation with them, allow them to question you.
Why are you going to church?
What do you expect to happen while you are there?
What difference will it make to your life when you get back home?
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