Jesus taught a parable with profound implications. Can a sincere person truly find grace in the eyes of God? Join Pastor John Bradshaw for a life-changing look at an ancient story.

<p>Jesus taught a parable with profound implications. Can a sincere person truly find grace in the eyes of God? Join Pastor John Bradshaw for a life-changing look at an ancient story.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

The Pharisee and the Publican

I'm glad we have this opportunity to open the Bible together on In The Word.

We will pray together, we'll ask God to bless us and we'll expect that as we open up the Bible he will do just that.

Our Father in heaven in the name of Jesus we come to you.

We stand at the edge of something very exciting, very dynamic.

Every opportunity we have to crack the pages of a Bible is an exciting opportunity because we anticipate that you'll speak to us.

So bless us now by your Holy Spirit, through your Holy Spirit's ministry.

And touch my heart, touch our hearts that they'll be open to being impressed by you, open to being led in your way.

We thank you and we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Young man I know bought a car this is not someone related to me lest you think oh that happened to John's son no it wasn't my son but a young man I know bought an automobile it looked great He paid the money and he brought it home and I'm not quite sure of all of the details but it wasn't long and he realized that he had purchased what is affectionately known as a lemon.

Oh, he tried to jump through all of those hoops.

But the short story was it looked good on the outside, but it wasn't good.

Before I bought my first ever car my sister said there's someone in my town this was an hour from where I lived who had a nice red Ford Laser.

Where I grew up, you could buy a Ford Laser then.

And it was for sale at a pretty decent price too.

And I'm pretty certain this would have been my first ever car, it would have.

So somehow I got myself to my sister's home an hour away.

It was more than I wanted to spend, but being as it was such a nice car, I would stretch and it would last.

I spoke to the owner and I said, I'd like to take this vehicle to a mechanic.

My sister and her husband had many mechanic friends, you know.

I said to the owner, I'm going to take the car to the mechanic and have it inspected.

He drove the vehicle over the pit, you know the hole in the ground a mechanical get down in and look up under a vehicle and I heard him say something that I wouldn't repeat in polite company.

The passage of years means I don't remember the exact words, but I know that they are words you don't say in church.

Well, while the car looked good on the outside, the fact of the matter is, it was 2 cars that had been chopped down and put together.

That was, it was the front of 1 car and the back of another and then wrapped up a new paneling.

They were once upon a time vehicles that had been in an accident And then the new frame of the vehicle with 2 bits put together had been welded together, good enough to drive down the road.

I could have bought that car and would never have known unless it a gave me some kind of problem and fell into pieces or b I took it to a mechanic 1 day who might have thought and might not have thought to say to me you do know that this is a salvage job and the frame of the vehicle has been welded back together.

Maybe a big enough deal that the mechanic said, don't buy this car whatever you do.

The owner said, okay thanks so much for your time, sorry it didn't work out.

And then I said, how am I going to get home?

To this day, I can't quite remember how I got home, but I know I did.

Well, I just about spent what would have been for me a lot of money on something that wasn't quite what I was looking for because I didn't possess the ability to look beneath the surface.

When I took the vehicle to somebody who could look beneath the surface we saw that this was a car that had a lot of problems.

Now you don't think I'm here to talk with you about buying cars do you?

No You know that we're here to talk about the Bible, to talk about faith in God.

So what happens if you look beneath the surface of your religious experience?

What do you find when you look beneath the surface of your Christianity?

We are introduced in the Bible to a couple of individuals, 1 of whom you would have looked at from the outside and said, this is the real deal, this is a good guy, this is someone who is walking in the favor of God.

You would have looked at the other person if you had been living in Jesus day and you'd have said this other person no good but Jesus teaches that it is a matter of the heart not a matter of appearance Jesus makes very clear that it's possible that we can be successfully or otherwise hiding, obscuring a grim spiritual reality, a grim spiritual reality.

And so let's look at this passage it's in the gospel of Luke.

We are in Luke chapter 18 and we're going to start in verse 10.

In fact if we jump up to verse 9, this would give us some better context.

Verse 9 of Luke 18 says, And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.

We could talk for a while about that couldn't we?

People who believe that they're righteous and they trust in themselves and then they have the temerity to look down their noses at people that they believe don't measure up and despise them in some spiritual sense, rate them less, believe that they are not worthy of everlasting life, believe that they're second rate church members or second rate Christians.

1 thing that comes through in this passage is that we shouldn't ever judge others.

Nor should we ever think that we, because of ourselves, are in a righteous state in and of ourselves.

We find a fellow here who felt that way, thought that way, and Jesus put us all in our place when he addresses this phenomenon.

Because there were some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and they despised others.

Isaiah chapter 64 and verse 6, he says that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

We don't possess anything that we can recommend to God, not anybody.

And I don't mean the guy in the pew or that lady over there.

I mean there's not a single soul on earth who can go to God and say, Look at me, I am fine.

But what a damaging place to be when a person says, I'm all right, I am trusting in myself, and then other people who don't measure up to my standard, I believe that they're not good at all.

Let's see what the Bible goes on and says in verse 10.

The 1 a Pharisee and the other a publican, which is another way of saying a tax collector.

You couldn't find a greater contrast, I don't think, between 2 people.

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The Pharisee and the Publican

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