Summer Stories - Week 9: The Pharisee & Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14)
Jamie Yohanis · Summer Stories 2025
17 August 2025
https://media.glenabbey.church/talks/summer-stories-week-9-the-pharisee-and-tax-collector-luke-18-9-14

[0:00] We're going to move on to the next parable in Luke, which has just fallen from the persistent widow last week.
[0:07] This is Luke 18.
[0:09] Let's just get straight into it, will we?
[0:11] Luke says, Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
[0:21] This is the parable.
[0:22] Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
[0:28] 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.
[0:39] I fast twice a week.
[0:40] I give tithes of all that I get.
[0:44] 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.
[0:55] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
[1:01] For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
[1:07] So transparently, this parable is about mercy.
[1:13] It all hinges on whether or not the Pharisee or the tax collector will accept or recognize their need for God's mercy towards them.
[1:21] It's an interesting concept.
[1:22] It's been picked up throughout Luke's gospel thus far, and Jesus keeps returning to the theme.
[1:27] He is hitting at the religious assumptions of the day that were epitomized ultimately in the most extreme form by the Pharisees, which is if we present ourselves to God with the things that we've done well, our adherence to religious practices, our observance of religious laws, if we demonstrate essentially a list of our works and we say to God, hey, look at this, then God will accept us.
[1:52] God will say, that's a righteous person.
[1:54] I'm going to recognize that person as justified.
[1:57] Jesus has been criticizing that right the way through.
[1:59] And he tells this parable in its most extreme form to demonstrate that this proposition is just not the way God works.
[2:07] God does not recognize people's works and justify them and say, that person's righteous based on what they've done.
[2:12] In fact, he does the exact opposite.
[2:15] He justifies people based on their willingness to recognize their need of mercy.
[2:20] Mercy being God stands over in judgments against people for their rebellion against him, for their refusal to do what he said, for their utter corruption at their heart, which is expressed in all kinds of behaviors and all kinds of lifestyles and all kinds of actions, to recognize that, recognize that that is wrong and come to God and say, listen, I have done wrong.
[2:41] And the only way in which I can actually relate to you.
[2:43] If you are merciful to me, if you refuse to stand in judgment over me, that's the only way that I'm going to survive.
[2:49] That's the only way that I can relate to you.
[2:51] And Jesus says, this is the way God really works.
[2:55] Now, it was controversial then.
[2:57] One of the things that the Pharisees did, ultimately, whenever there were many conversations and discussions and arguments with Jesus, they eventually got so fed up with this Jesus pressing this that they incited murder against or they were part and parcel of the reasons why they wanted to see him dead.
[3:16] It was controversial then, but it's controversial now.
[3:20] In our day, there's something universal about our refusal to accept the need for God's mercy.
[3:28] And sometimes it's helpful to look through the eyes, especially if you're familiar with Christianity and you're around it all the time, to look through the eyes of critics who really are quite robust in their rejection of Christianity.
[3:39] And Christopher Hitchens was one of those.
[3:42] This is a quote from a debate he had with William Lane Craig about 15 years ago.
[3:47] Now, if you read it, you can hear the sarcasm and the derision in his voice.
[3:53] He says, to believe that a person who is moral and kind but does not believe in God will be tortured forever, while a murderer who repents will be rewarded.
[4:01] That is a wicked belief, Hitchens says.
[4:04] Now, there's lots of derision in that, and we'd need to stand back and question a little bit the terms that he's using.
[4:13] He's saying basically that somebody could be moral if they reject God.
[4:16] Wouldn't accept that.
[4:17] He's kind of speaking patronizingly about repentance.
[4:21] If we just perform certain things of repentance, we don't necessarily need to mean it, then that will get us rewarded.
[4:27] There's all kinds of caveats and qualifications you'd need to make about that statement.
[4:31] But, and this is what I really like about it, if you take it at face value, if you, the best good faith, honest version of what he's saying, it's actually true.
[4:42] And what he's showing is that for atheists and many people alike in our culture, there's something offensive about the fact that God would require us to accept his mercy.
[4:54] There's something offensive about the fact that we can't just be good in and of ourselves.
[4:59] What he says about murderers being accepted, well, we actually see that played out across the New Testament.
[5:05] Paul may not technically have been guilty of murder.
[5:08] I guess it's up for debate.
[5:09] But he definitely had murderous intent.
[5:12] He definitely incited murder and was a complicit in Stephen's murder.
[5:16] And yet he went on to be one of the greatest evangelists in the world and the author of half the New Testament.
[5:21] God accepts murderers who repent.
[5:25] God accepts people who've committed all sorts of heinous crimes and moral failures if they call out to him genuinely for mercy.
[5:32] And the best of us, the best of the people in this world of what we have to offer, God will reject those people if they reject him.
[5:40] It's a fundamental and offensive truth.
[5:43] This is, it all kind of hinges then on whether or not we will, to use Hitchens' word, genuinely repent, or to use the words of the parable, recognize our need for God's mercy.
[5:55] What does a genuine recognition of that need actually look like?
[5:59] And what we see playing out across this parable is a demonstration of someone who has a genuine heart attitude, who's genuinely desiring of God's mercy and someone who sees no need for it at all.
[6:10] You can see a couple of, if we compare and contrast the Pharisee and the tax collector, we can see this here.
[6:16] So first of all, you can see it in their physical position.
[6:19] So they go up to the temple to pray.
[6:20] They're in the sort of temple complex, the place where the public can go at least.
[6:25] And the Pharisee is up there at the front and he wants to pray to God, but he's not part of the main group.
[6:32] He's probably right up at the front.
[6:34] He's probably speaking quite loudly.
[6:35] He's probably separating himself because I'm not just your regular type of worshiper.
[6:40] I'm the supreme, excellent, super righteous guy.
[6:43] I'm going to be at the front separated out from just your regular type of guy.
[6:47] The tax collector, he's not with the main group either.
[6:50] He's separated out from the main body of worshipers, but he's at the back.
[6:53] He's probably in the corner.
[6:55] He's probably at the edge because he recognizes, I can't really be him.
[6:59] I'm not really worthy of worshiping with these people.
[7:02] I'm actually not even worthy of being here.
[7:04] I shouldn't even be in the temple.
[7:05] He knows and he feels the weight of the inappropriateness and the incongruity of him even being there.
[7:12] You see that in their focus as well, the Pharisee starts off, and I guess it starts off pretty well.
[7:16] He says, I thank God.
[7:18] And you expect him to say, I thank God for maybe some of the attributes of God, or maybe something that God has done in the past, or maybe something that God has done in his life.
[7:27] It's a fairly formulaic way of starting your prayers if you're going to thank God for something.
[7:32] But he thanks, and then immediately moves to a list of things that he's done.
[7:36] He thanks, but it's then an immediate reflection on himself.
[7:40] It's more or less a prayer to himself about himself, about how great he is, which is, I think we're meant to view it humorously.
[7:46] I think we're meant to see, this is kind of ridiculous.
[7:48] Who would pray like this?
[7:49] Until you think about that too long and you're like, oh, I maybe have done that myself.
[7:53] But it's a reflection and a meditation on his own greatness until he sets a castigating eye on the tax collector there.
[8:01] Because it's really helpful whenever you're trying to present yourself to God as worthy of something, as righteous in and of yourself, to have somebody to compare against.
[8:09] And he sees the tax collector, definitely an unjust guy, probably an adulterer, probably an extortioner, say, yeah, I know that I'm good because I can see that guy and he's not good.
[8:20] Whereas the tax collector standing off in the corner, he beats his breath.
[8:24] And it's not like one, I don't know if you've ever beaten your breast, it's kind of dramatic, but he's like, he feels the weight of the sin.
[8:31] He feels the weight of the things that he's done.
[8:33] Yeah, he has committed extortion.
[8:35] He has taken money off people when he shouldn't have.
[8:37] He has hung around with all the people that hang around with people like that because tax collectors were traitors to their people.
[8:43] They were inherently irreligious, and all the people who culminated around that type of person with that amount of money got up to all sorts of things.
[8:51] And he knows that.
[8:52] He feels the weight of that.
[8:54] He's like, I'm standing here.
[8:55] I shouldn't even be part of that group.
[8:57] I shouldn't even be here.
[8:58] And it's just weighing him down.
[9:02] And then we see finally, oh, then we see finally they list out their different achievements.
[9:08] For the Pharisee, he says, I'm not an extortioner.
[9:10] Brilliant.
[9:11] It's brilliant to not extort.
[9:12] I'm not unjust.
[9:13] I'm not an adulterer.
[9:15] And he says, I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all I get.
[9:19] Which is interesting, because it's not immediately obvious from the text, but we know from reading the Old Testament that there really only was one stipulation for fasting, probably once a year in preparation for the Day of Atonement.
[9:29] That was really only fasting obligation.
[9:32] The Pharisee fasts twice a week.
[9:33] That's a lot more fasting it's necessary.
[9:36] The people were meant to give tithes as a celebration of giving back to God and a generosity for God's people, but he gives tithes of all that he gets, and what he probably means is he's down there in the spice cupboard separating out a tenth of the cumin, a tenth of the dill, a tenth of the whatever other spices they have, and he's so fastidious and so particular, I do it all, I give a tenth of all that I get.
[9:58] He's listing out, hey, look at me, look at how righteous I am.
[10:03] For the tax collector, he doesn't say any of that.
[10:05] His prayer is surprisingly pithy.
[10:08] He actually only says all that there is to say.
[10:11] What has he got to present to God?
[10:13] Nothing.
[10:14] What has he got to say to God except the only way I can stand here, the only way I can talk to you, the only way I can even hope to survive in relationship with you is if you are merciful to me because I'm a sinner.
[10:28] He's focused on himself and he knows the truth of the matter.
[10:34] Jesus summarizes it this way.
[10:35] I tell you, this man, the tax collector, went down to his house justified rather than the other.
[10:42] For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
[10:48] This is a fundamental principle and it's universal.
[10:52] Sometimes when I read these texts, I think of myself being in the story, and maybe I'm standing beside Jesus, and I'm like, yeah, Pharisees, those guys are a joke.
[11:03] And I'm kissing over his shoulder at those Pharisees.
[11:06] I'm like, if I was there, if it was me, I wouldn't have done it.
[11:08] I'd have listened.
[11:09] I'd have been like this tax collector.
[11:12] And then you realize, well, it's exactly that type of self-deluded lack of awareness that to assume that I would have gotten it right, or to assume that I'm naturally in the right that's kind of at the heart of all of this.
[11:24] Jesus is criticizing the Pharisees, yes, but this isn't limited to, what, three, four thousand hyper-religious Jews in first century Palestine.
[11:35] It's not that particular, it's universal.
[11:37] And one commentator I read said that this parable in particular requires careful reflection because at the part of it is a problem that's particular to every human being.
[11:50] So what Jesus is doing here, he's not criticizing the Pharisees, so we can say 2,000 years later, I'm glad I'm not a Pharisee.
[11:56] He's using it as an example to say, this is what goes on in every person's life.
[12:01] Every person naturally wants to present themselves to God and say, hey, look at me, I'm naturally good in and of myself.
[12:08] And that's a problem because it's not the way God accepts us.
[12:12] So we could put it like this.
[12:13] There are serious inherent dangers for all people with respect to self-righteousness, that we naturally come wanting to justify ourselves to God, wanting to present ourselves as good to God.
[12:25] And that leads to certain problems, a couple of which are worth mentioning.
[12:30] If we relate to God on the basis of works, if we say, you know, I'm good and I want you to accept me as good, I'm righteous, I want you to recognize me as righteous based on what I do, There's always uncertainty about the effectiveness of that.
[12:43] Because what happens if I actually do fail?
[12:46] Or what happens if I have failed significantly in the past?
[12:49] What means of salvation is there for me?
[12:51] Or maybe even if I'm a walking believer and I come into some serious moral failure, what does that say about my salvation if I'm kind of relating to God on the basis of my ability to get it right?
[13:04] And then I realize very obviously that I can't.
[13:07] We're also primed to reduce God's standards.
[13:10] If we want to be able to demonstrate ourselves as righteous to God, we need to have a level of righteousness that we can achieve.
[13:17] So God says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
[13:23] He says, if you want to follow me, be holy as I am holy.
[13:28] And we say, I tell you what, I'm going to skip a few meals a week, and then I'm going to cut up my spices to make sure they're all weighed out right, is that okay?
[13:37] Or whatever the modern equivalent is of that, of saying, I'm going to behave in a certain way or I'm going to act in a certain way, is if that was something that ultimately mattered.
[13:46] It's not that tithing doesn't matter, it's certainly not that fasting doesn't matter, that's not it at all.
[13:50] It's that religious practices in whatever form they come, or moral behavior, no matter how good it is, never actually saved anybody.
[13:58] It doesn't actually deal with the heart of the problem of sin.
[14:01] That's why it's so incongruent and dangerous to think of it If we want to relate that way, we also end up with a distorted self-perception.
[14:09] We are primed to not see the truth about ourselves.
[14:13] I don't want to look deep into my heart.
[14:16] I don't want to admit the truth about myself.
[14:18] I don't want anyone else to point out the truth about me.
[14:20] I'd rather live in a comfortable obliviousness that I have got serious sin problems.
[14:27] I've got serious problems that God wants to address in my life, but I don't want to address those.
[14:31] In fact, I can't address those if my whole basis of relating to God is that those don't exist in the first place.
[14:36] And so we end up being very unselfaware, self-unaware.
[14:41] We end up being completely oblivious to the truth about ourselves, sometimes more than other people can see.
[14:46] And the biggest risk of all is this, that if I'm relating to God on the basis that I really have got it all together and I'm able to get it all together, and then there is a serious moral breach and I do something really messed up, then what does that say about salvation?
[15:00] What does that say about God?
[15:01] What does that say about me?
[15:03] Maybe I was never really a real Christian in the first place.
[15:06] Or maybe the thing that God offers actually doesn't help.
[15:08] Maybe God's not real.
[15:10] It causes all sorts of existential crises.
[15:13] So self-righteousness is a problem that's universal.
[15:16] And one of the things that this parable shows is that God wants to extract that venom.
[15:24] He wants to take that away from us.
[15:25] He wants to disarm us of the problems of self-righteousness.
[15:32] And it's not necessarily obvious, but just slightly later on in this text, Jesus goes on to say, and to predict his death a third time.
[15:41] And he says to the disciples, you know, this is what's going to happen.
[15:44] I'm going to be betrayed, and then I'm going to be killed.
[15:47] And everybody's very upset about that.
[15:50] But the purpose that serves in this part of the text is to show this is all connected.
[15:55] This is all going somewhere.
[15:57] So Jesus gives a parallel about praying persistently whenever there's injustice.
[16:02] In this one, he talks about mercy for those who need it.
[16:06] He goes on to talk about the rich young ruler and how riches get in the way of following him and so on.
[16:11] But these aren't just random collections of little ideas or religious sayings or truths or principles or anything like that.
[16:17] They're all culminating.
[16:19] They're all going somewhere.
[16:20] And Jesus is saying, Ultimately, this is heading towards the cross.
[16:25] So that the mercy that I'm talking about here is not just a principle.
[16:28] It's not just an idea.
[16:31] It's something that demonstrates God's delight to show mercy.
[16:35] Micah 17 says that God delights to be merciful.
[16:39] He wants to be merciful to all people.
[16:43] He wants to find people who want to receive that mercy.
[16:45] It's not begrudging or meager or anything like that, it's generous and abundant.
[16:51] And he loves to find people who are in desperate need of mercy and be merciful to those people.
[16:57] So much so that he cements it in the historical event of Jesus' death.
[17:02] So much of it, he says, somebody's got to pay for the sin.
[17:06] Somebody's got to pay for this unrighteousness.
[17:07] Somebody's got to pay for all the problems that you've caused.
[17:10] I'm putting that on my son.
[17:13] And on the cross, Jesus takes that for anyone who would accept that from him.
[17:17] And so God can be merciful and be just at the same time.
[17:21] When we are confident that God delights to be merciful to us, it disarms the desire for self-righteousness.
[17:27] It disarms the need for it, because I can actually come to God because I know he wants to be merciful to me.
[17:34] He's desiring to give that and to show that to me.
[17:37] And there are a number of sort of opposite effects of the things that we've talked about.
[17:41] So instead of a lack of certainty about whether or not we're saying, have we done enough?
[17:47] Have we performed enough?
[17:49] Maybe have I done too much to make it that I can't be saved?
[17:51] We can say, of course I can be saved.
[17:54] Of course I can come and be declared righteous by God, not because of anything that I've done, but because that's the way God works.
[18:00] God declares people who are unrighteous to be righteous because he's a merciful God.
[18:06] And we know that, we see that right throughout the Old Testament.
[18:09] We knew that he delights to be merciful, and that he cemented that in the historical fact of Jesus' death.
[18:14] We can celebrate that and have confidence in it.
[18:18] We can also celebrate God's holiness.
[18:20] We don't need to bring the standards of what God says is appropriate right down to the level that we can kind of achieve.
[18:26] We can celebrate them from what they are.
[18:28] God is a holy God.
[18:29] God has all sorts of rigorous standards.
[18:34] He's purely good and purely moral, and he is the arbiter of what is good and right.
[18:41] We don't need to be afraid of that because we know that we don't meet it.
[18:44] We know that we can't meet it and we can celebrate him for who he is.
[18:47] We don't have to pretend or distort anything about him.
[18:50] And we can also be confident that even though we'll not be perfect in this life, that the holy God, who's merciful to us, one of the things that he's going to do is chip away at our sin, chip away at our problems and make us increasingly holy.
[19:04] Which leads to the next point.
[19:05] In order to get there, We need to be honest about ourselves.
[19:10] But this is the cool thing whenever we relate to God by mercy.
[19:13] I don't need to pretend anymore.
[19:14] I don't need to pretend with God.
[19:16] I don't need to lie to myself about myself.
[19:20] I can tell the truth to myself about myself and not be afraid of facing up to what is true.
[19:25] So lots of us have problems.
[19:28] Anybody's got problems.
[19:29] But we don't need to be afraid of actually just recognizing what God says is true about us.
[19:35] and we can be honest with God, with ourselves and with others, because we know that there's no, and now you're not going to get anything from God from it, because we know that God is merciful, and he delights to be merciful to people who recognize their sin.
[19:48] We don't need to hide away from any problems that we've got.
[19:51] Finally, not finally, finally, but finally on this point, failure isn't spiritually final, which is, we all have lots of problems, we all sin in lots of different ways.
[20:01] Every so often we have serious moral breaches and we really mess it up.
[20:06] And it's not to say that there are no problems or consequences for that, but it happens.
[20:10] But it doesn't need to be spiritually fatal because whenever we recognize, oh, I am well beyond the peel here.
[20:17] What am I going to do about it?
[20:19] How can I possibly come back to God?
[20:20] How can I possibly get this sorted?
[20:22] Oh yes, God is merciful to sinners.
[20:27] God is merciful to people who recognize their need for that.
[20:30] And I, whilst I may be, you know, I may have difficulty in dealing with all of that, there's not an existential crisis in the same way, because I know that God deals mercifully with people who mess up like that.
[20:44] Okay, so if we are recipients of God's mercy, if we've accepted that, we're kind of in that position where like, I've got problems and I bring them to God and I'm honest about that, then it fundamentally changes the way in which we view the whole of life.
[20:57] It's one of those, you know, paradigmatic changes.
[21:00] it changes everything.
[21:01] It changes the way we see and look at everything in our lives and everything in the world around us.
[21:08] And so if we view ourselves as recipients of mercy at a fundamental level, it comes with all kinds of benefits, which are really interesting.
[21:17] One of which is this, it precipitates spontaneously joy and peace and gratitude.
[21:25] I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you, you know, you've messed up and you're coming to the person who you've messed up.
[21:32] I feel like I'm continually in this position in work where I'm coming to my boss.
[21:35] I'm like, I messed up again.
[21:37] And she's like, do you know what?
[21:41] Sorry, don't worry about it.
[21:42] We'll sort it out.
[21:43] And the relief, you're like, oh my goodness, I thought I was going to get fired.
[21:46] The relief of somebody not holding against you what they could have held against you just precipitates, oh my goodness, I'm at peace now.
[21:57] I'm actually kind of happy.
[21:58] I actually kind of want to spread this around.
[22:01] And I was talking to a buddy, a man about this teaching, and he pointed out that in the next chapter, we have the story with Zacchaeus, the sycamore tree, and Jesus going to his house for lunch.
[22:12] And today, salvation's come to this house.
[22:15] And Zacchaeus is like, I want to give, you know, fourfold, payback fourfold of what I took off people.
[22:20] And I want to give to the poor, and I want to get rid of all this money and all the rest of it.
[22:24] You see that spontaneous joy and generosity coming from someone who's had a merciful encounter with Jesus.
[22:31] And I think you can't prescribe it, you can't, you know, but you just have to experience it.
[22:36] And when you experience God's mercy, it flows out like that.
[22:40] Incidentally, there's a case story.
[22:44] I always thought, I remember reading it as a child thinking, how is he going to find everybody who he's extorted?
[22:50] That seems to me, I have a natural aversion to administration.
[22:53] And I was like, how's he going to find everybody?
[22:55] He must really want to do that if he's going to go around and say, what was it I owed you?
[23:00] And all the rest of it.
[23:01] That's a besides point.
[23:03] But it shows you how happy he was.
[23:06] Anyway, similarly, we have, it generates this desire to be merciful, to not be other people contemptuously.
[23:15] One of my favorite pastimes is judging people.
[23:18] And I love a good judge session where you think about why other people aren't quite as good as you.
[23:24] And then it's better to do it with friends where you can sit around and talk about other people.
[23:27] And you're like, first, much better than them.
[23:30] And even if you do it in a more subtle way than that.
[23:33] But there is a lot of good reasons to judge people.
[23:36] If you're feeling insecure about your own position, or maybe you're wanting to shore up your sense of self, I am a good person compared to that person.
[23:44] or I am talented or whatever, or smart or moral or whatever happens to be in comparison to that person.
[23:50] I've got my problems, but I'm not as bad as her.
[23:53] Those are the reasons why we judge people.
[23:56] But if we're recipients of mercy, and if we view ourselves as that, and we know that God is not holding anything against us and has actually taken all the weight of the responsibility of that office, it removes the desire.
[24:08] It removes the need to view other people contemptuously.
[24:10] It robs it of its life.
[24:13] And we're like, I just want to be merciful to other people.
[24:15] Actually, I want other people to experience that mercy too.
[24:19] I don't want them, I don't want to be contemptuous because I don't want them to be dealt with contemptuously.
[24:26] Finally then, it leads to a stable spiritual life.
[24:30] I'm sure you've heard of that Martin Luther analogy, you know, the drunk man on the horse.
[24:38] Maybe not.
[24:39] Martin Luther has an analogy of a drunk man on a horse.
[24:42] So if you imagine in a medieval pub, guys had a skin full across the whole evening, and then he gets on his horse to go home, and he gets up, and the horse trot, trot, trot, takes a wee walk, and then, boom, falls off one side, and then he sort of clambers back up onto the horse, trot, trot, trot, falls off the other side.
[24:59] And if you can imagine how many times the drunk man falls off from one side to the other on his way and on his way until he eventually gets there.
[25:07] Martin Luther uses that picture to talk about the Christian life, that we tend to move from one extreme to another.
[25:13] And so you can see this play out across the New Testament, where you have people who are genuine Christians, but who end up running back into the arms of legalism, like the Galatian church, for example, or running back into the arms of religious rite and ritual and practice, like the Colossian church, going so far into that that that Paul has to write and correct them quite strongly.
[25:37] Or, on the other hand, you've got churches like the Corinthians who are like, yay for salvation, nothing matters anymore, let's do the drunken parties, let's do the sexual immorality, let's take each other to court, and so on.
[25:48] And Paul has to write them to correct them.
[25:51] But if you view yourself as fundamentally, at the core of your identity, a recipient of God's mercy, mercy that you didn't deserve, but mercy that God has generously given you and bought it for you by means of the cross, you're corrected from going away into legalism and religious ritual as a means of salvation.
[26:09] You say, I can't do that.
[26:11] God has already sorted this out for me.
[26:12] How could I go and add to that by obeying one law or one practice and so on?
[26:18] But on the other hand, I can't just go headlong into sin because the thing he's been merciful to me about actually really matters, and it's a serious moral problem to do all those things, and he's been merciful to me.
[26:30] How can I not honor him?
[26:32] How can I not show him love and respect for that?
[26:35] I don't want to do that either.
[26:36] So it stabilizes and protects us from running either into legalism or into licentiousness.
[26:43] All right, let's finish this up.
[26:47] One of the things that I really like about mercy is that it's, this parable, is that it draws us back to our fundamental a relationship with God.
[26:55] And I know for me, I struggle to receive things from people, struggle to receive good gifts from God.
[27:02] I would much rather be able to just live independently.
[27:06] But God is pressing on me, and I think he presses on all of us.
[27:10] We need from him mercy at a fundamental level when we come to faith in him, but we need it at all times and to keep coming back to receive that from him.
[27:21] So what I'd like to do is to finish up by praying.
[27:23] I'm going to pray by reading a couple of excerpts, one from Psalm 103 and one from Psalm 51.
[27:28] The excerpt from Psalm 103 is a meditation about mercy.
[27:34] The excerpt from Psalm 51 is a request for mercy.
[27:38] And what I'd like to do is to use that no matter where you are in your walk with God or not.
[27:44] I offer this to you as an opportunity for us all to pray it together.
[27:47] If you're not a believer, if you're considering whether or not you want to put your trust in Christ, the first is an exploration of what mercy is, and the second is an opportunity and words to ask God for it, and you could do that now if you wanted.
[28:01] If you're a believer who's been walking around, you know, you've been a believer along, but you've kind of gone off the boil, you're kind of far from God, you're on ice, on bricks, and giving God the cold shoulder, or maybe you're just a believer who's up to their neck in sin, and he's got lots of problems, is not really able to cope with it, you can use those Psalms as a way of dealing with that as well.
[28:23] Talking to God about what his mercy is, and asking for it.
[28:26] Or if maybe you're just like me, fine, I'm fine.
[28:31] But you're always on the cusp of trying to be independent from God, not relating to God on the basis of his mercy, but on the basis of what I can bring, then you can use these Psalms as an opportunity to say, in ways that I don't even see, and I don't even realize, I need God's mercy today in my life.
[28:50] So, let's pray this together.
[28:54] Psalmist says, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
[29:02] He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.
[29:05] He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
[29:11] For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.
[29:18] As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
[29:25] As the Father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
[29:32] For he knows our frame, he knows that we are dust.
[29:38] Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.
[29:43] According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
[29:47] Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
[29:51] For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.
[29:56] Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.
[29:59] Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
[30:02] Let me hear joy and gladness.
[30:05] Let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
[30:08] Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
[30:12] Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
[30:17] Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
[30:22] Restore me to the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.
[30:28] Amen.