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Sermon for Trinity 11
2 Samuel 22:21-29 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-10 + Luke 18:9-14
Our Scripture readings today all present the same fundamental truth of our religion. You know it, and yet you can never know it well enough, because the Old Adam rages against it. And for as complicated as theologians over the ages have made it sound, it’s really very simple. No one, no human being has any righteousness that counts before God, because all alike are sinners. No one can ever do enough, no one can ever be good enough to earn the approval of the righteous God. But the righteous God has made a Way for sinners to be counted righteous. He sent His only-begotten Son into human flesh, to be righteous, and to die for the unrighteous. The only righteousness that does count before God is that of Jesus Christ, who is both God and Man, the sinless One. So the only way for anyone to be counted righteous before God is by means of faith in Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
You see, then, how foolish the people were in our Gospel to whom Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. It says that Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. To trust in yourself? To trust in your own righteousness? To despise others because they are not as “righteous” as you? That’s a recipe for eternal destruction. So Jesus tells this parable.
The Pharisee goes up to the Temple in Jerusalem and looks up to heaven with pride. God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess. Here was a man who tried to stand before God with his good works as his defense. He was confident that he had God’s favor because, while he may not have been perfect, he was a good man.
How would that sound today? “God, I thank You and I am not like other men—murderers, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, tax cheats or IRS agents. I go to church, at least once in awhile. I have a strong faith. I try to be a good husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, cousin, friend. I do the best I can!”
Then you have the tax collector, who, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ Here was a man who knew his faults, and didn’t make jokes about them and didn’t try to excuse them and would have done everything differently in his life, if he could go back and do it over again. But he couldn’t. Here was a man who knew he deserved only God’s wrath and displeasure. He knew he had no right to approach God or come into His presence. And yet, where is he? He, too, has come to God’s temple. Why? If you have nothing to offer God and you deserve only His punishment, why come to His temple? Why pray at all?
Because he had heard—for his whole life, probably—that this God is merciful. He had heard that this God had an altar in Jerusalem, in the Temple, where He accepted the blood of the innocent for the blood of the guilty, where this God had promised to be propitious, where His righteous wrath was satisfied. The tax collector went to the Temple because he trusted in God’s mercy. Because he actually believed that he, a poor miserable sinner, would receive mercy from God. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
How would that sound today? Not much different. “I, a poor miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them, and sincerely repent of them, and I pray You of your boundless mercy, and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.”
Who was right? Who received God’s approval? The Pharisee or the tax collector? Jesus tells us. I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. He who trusts in his own works remains under God’s condemnation. But whoever relies on God’s mercy in Christ Jesus is justified before God. He is the Throne of Grace where God is propitious, gracious, merciful. His is the blood that was shed, the innocent for the guilty, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. Whoever trusts in Him will never be put to shame.
Now, I said at the beginning of the sermon that all of the Scripture readings today point to this truth. Let’s take a look.
In the Old Testament reading, we heard the words of King David’s song which he composed on the day when the LORD had delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. Now, listen again to the first verses of that song, and see who you think David sounds like more—the Pharisee or the tax collector:
The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, And have not wickedly departed from my God. And as for His statutes, I did not depart from them. I was also blameless before Him, And I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness in His eyes.
Hmm. He kind of sounds like the Pharisee here, doesn’t he?, talking about “his righteousness,” his obedience, his blamelessness. Was David trusting in himself here, in his own righteousness? The answer is, yes, but not before God.
In his dealings with King Saul, David had been blameless and righteous. David loved and respected Saul, but Saul hated David without cause. Saul tried to kill David over and over again, but instead of seeking revenge, David simply fled and lived on the run for years while Saul pursued him. Twice during that time, God delivered Saul into David’s hands so that David had the chance to kill Saul. But both times, David refused to harm his king. Why? Because he refused to sin against Saul; he trusted in the Lord to deliver him, as the Lord had promised.
So, with regard to Saul, David was blameless and righteous; he didn’t deserve Saul’s wrath and anger, and so David recognized God’s deliverance of him from Saul as a gracious reward for his righteousness before men. But that didn’t make him righteous before God. Even in his dealings with men, David wasn’t always so blameless, and his trust in God faltered at times, too.
So, how was David different than the Pharisee? Listen to how David’s song continued: You will save the humble people; But Your eyes are on the haughty, that You may bring them down. “For You are my lamp, O Lord; The Lord shall enlighten my darkness.” The Pharisee never got to the “humble” part. He thought his deeds made him righteous before God, but David knew that he only stood before God because of God’s mercy.
The same was true for the Apostle Paul. Remember, he used to be the Pharisee named Saul, much like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. He had a certain righteousness before men. He even holds himself up as an example of the height of human righteousness in Philippians 3: If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
But then Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus and condemned his self-righteousness and led him to repentance and faith in Christ and the waters of holy baptism. Paul received from God what he then delivered to the Corinthians, as you heard today in the Epistle: For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Paul received mercy from God and forgiveness. Saul the self-righteous Pharisee became Paul, the “tax collector,” the one who rejected his own righteousness and looked to God for the righteousness of Christ.
So that passage from Philippians 3 goes on: But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;
And as Paul concludes in today’s Epistle: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. As a Christian, the Apostle Paul struggled and worked hard to be righteous before men, and yet, he knew that his righteousness before God was only through faith in Christ. He also recognized that even his works of service were not something he could claim as his own; they were God’s works. It was the grace of God that accomplished everything.
So we come back to that fundamental truth of our religion: That there are only two possibilities: either a person relies on himself for God’s approval, like the Pharisee in the Gospel, like the Apostle Paul before his conversion; or a person relies on God’s mercy in Christ Jesus for God’s approval, like the tax collector, like David, and like the Apostle Paul after his conversion. So God calls on all of you again today to humble yourselves before Him, and to join David, Paul, the tax collector, and all true Christians throughout history, huddled around the Throne of Grace, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, seeking God’s mercy in Him, so that you, like they, may go down to your house justified. But you don’t have to climb up into heaven to reach this Throne of Grace. He is here, in this ministry of the Word, in this Sacrament of the Altar. Here you have an altar where God hands out the blood of the Innocent in order to cleanse the guilty, where God has promised to be propitious. Here is the righteousness that counts before God, for everyone who pleads, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Amen.
