Luke 18:9-30

Faith is very very important! It takes faith to have the kind of humility that is essential for salvation. It takes faith to tear down the idol of wealth.

Darkness covers the Earth, and a deep and profound darkness covers the people. Chaos, confusion and the dark forces of Satan, sin and death have engulfed humanity. These ruinous forces are too powerful, and we are too weak, to overcome them on our own.

What can remove the darkness? What can bring us light? What can bring us victory over these very real and deadly forces? What can restore us into the kind of beings, made in the image of God, that the Creator wants us to be?

It is not our own efforts, works or deeds. It is nothing that we can do on our own. What unleashes the power of God to save and redeem and restore is simply our response to God and His Word. The Bible calls that faith.

Faith is two-fold: It is knowing who the Supreme Being is and then trusting this great and good and faithful Three-In-One God. Faith is also knowing what God has said and having confidence in what He has said, and then doing what He has said. Faith, belief, confidence, trust, and faithfulness to God and to His Word enable us to experience many good things that are otherwise impossible for us to experience.

The last several weeks the Holy Spirit, communicating to us through Luke based on the teachings of the Messiah, was informing us that it takes faith to be saved so that we will be reconciled to God and live forever. It takes faith to forgive the way we need to. It takes faith to have the humble attitude that God wants us to have. It takes faith to show proper gratitude toward the Creator. It takes faith to experience miraculous healing, especially ultimate spiritual healing. It takes faith to understand how God operates to extend His kingdom in this world, and the establishment of the kingdom of God on Earth when King Messiah returns.

Faith enables us to do the right things and have the right goals. Faith helps us avoid the temptations of the world and the flesh. Faith enables us to persevere through injustice and discouragement and opposition.

Faith is a necessary and extremely beneficial thing! Unbelief, unfaith, lack of trust in the Three-In-One God and His entire divinely inspired revelation is terribly, terribly destructive. We want to increase in faith! We more we learn about God and the Scriptures, and the more we are faithful to God and the Scriptures and put into practice the things that we learn, the more we will increase in faith.

This week, Luke, based on the teachings of the Messiah, informs us that faith understands that human nature has been thoroughly corrupted. We are not good. We are not righteous. We are not even OK. The destructive consequences of the Fall have deeply and negatively affected humanity. We are corrupted creatures, a spoiled species, a ruined race.

Mankind’s sin and rebellion have corrupted every aspect of who we are - our bodies, souls and spirits; our minds, emotions and wills; our sexuality; our relationship with the creation, with other human beings, and most importantly, our relationship with the Creator.

Faith understands that we are not a little damaged, but so ruined that we need miraculous, supernatural help from outside ourselves to be saved, to be redeemed from the satanic slave-market of sin and death. We are so wounded that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, and dead people can’t do anything to bring themselves back to life.

Faith understands that there is nothing that we can do to restore life to ourselves, to save ourselves, to make ourselves right with God, so that He considers us righteous. No amounts of religious deeds, prayers, ceremonies, rituals, religious activities or commandment-keeping can undo the damage done by results of the Fall and transform us into the kind of men and woman the Lord insists we become.

Faith understands that it is God’s grace, His unmerited, unearned favor that is extended to the undeserving when they have simple, child-like faith, that will transform us into the kind of men and woman He wants us to become. This kind of saving faith results in a deep humility about ourselves and a gracious attitude toward the weaknesses of others.

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee (a member of the religious elite of the Chosen Nation, an individual who was outwardly very religious) and the other a tax collector (the tax collectors were not known for being very concerned with religion. They were much more concerned about money than about religion. They were despised by the majority of the nation for being greedy collaborators of the hated Romans. Pharisees and tax collectors were at opposite ends of the spectrum of religious expression among the Jewish people).

The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ Outwardly the Pharisee engaged in much more religious activity and commandment keeping than most other people - fasting not once, but twice a week, which is very difficult; and being meticulous about giving 10 percent of all of his income. This was a deeply religious individual who seemed to be very Torah-observant. If religious activities could get us right with God, this Pharisee was in great shape!

But, the reality was that he was still a sinner - but a different kind of sinner. He was what we might call a religious sinner. He may have not engaged in the more obvious sins of cheating, or being unfair to others, or adultery or greed and collaboration with the Roman occupiers, but the truth was that he was far from God. He was guilty of the sin of pride - having an attitude of independence from God, and depending too much on self.

At the other end of the outward religious spectrum, Messiah tells us about a second man - a tax collector. He may have been irreligious on the outside, but something of God, something of faith, something of salvation, something of the work of the Holy Spirit was happening to him on the inside.

But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to Heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner’! His actions - beating his breast (a sign of heart-felt remorse); and not looking up directly toward God (a sign of acknowledging shame); along with his short prayer -  acknowledging to the Creator that he was a deeply flawed creature, and asking for mercy - that God would not deal with him the way he knew he deserved - all were very different from the prayer of the Pharisee.

The Supreme Teller of Truth now gives us the lesson He wants each one of us to learn. I tell you, this man went to his house justified (he was considered to be in a right relationship with God; the Judge of Humanity considered him to be righteous, and he would be welcomed into His righteous and eternal presence!) rather than the other. Outwardly, this doesn’t make sense. One was so deeply religious, and the other was not! But God, unlike most human beings, looks at the heart, and not on the outward things. It was the tax collector who became right with the God who looks at the heart - and not the Pharisee.

What makes such a crucial difference for one individual to become righteous and not the other? The Son of God tells us: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted”.

It’s faith that results in humility. It is the realization that all of us are sinners; all of the ruined son and daughters of Adam and Eve are in the greatest need of God’s mercy; that makes the difference between becoming righteous or staying in a state of unrighteousness, between life and death, Heaven and Hell. Pride in our religious accomplishments, so that we assume that we are saved by our own efforts, and are in a right relationship to God, and contempt toward the failings of others, shows that we don’t have true faith and are not saved.

Are you like the Pharisee or the tax collector? Are you raising yourself higher than you should, thinking that you are in a right relationship with God when you are not, assuming that you and your own efforts have made the difference? Or are you humbling yourself by agreeing with the Word of God that you are part of a fallen race, a sinner that is only saved by the unmerited mercy of God that comes to us by grace through faith in the Messiah?

Many Jewish people believed that the young, miracle-working Rabbi was very close to God, and they wanted the blessings of God to flow from God through Yeshua to their children. And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them.

But, Messiah’s disciples felt that children weren’t very important to a great King and a great movement. Children were a waste of the King’s valuable time. They needed adults; they wanted powerful leaders and wealthy people to join them as they headed to Jerusalem to establish the Messianic Kingdom. But when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them.

The divine Son of God, who is the King of Glory and Immanuel, and is the supreme example of humility, who came into this world as a child, knew better.

But Yeshua called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these”.

All human beings are important - sinners, children, even the littlest of children who are still in their mothers’ wombs, because they are made in the image of God and are inherently valuable. They have potential to become the eternal sons and daughters of the King of Kings! The kingdom of God especially belongs to those who are like children - who realize they are weak, who are humble, who trust God and His entire Word - not those who think they are wise and strong and rich and sense little need for God.

Each one of us must approach God like a young child approaches a good father - with respect, with trust, realizing that the father is far wiser and stronger than the child; we must approach the great God of Heaven with respect, with submission; approaching Him with faith and confidence.

Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. A child’s love for his parents, and his close and trusting relationship to a loving mother and father, are more important to him than anything else.

It is simple, child-like faith, belief and acceptance in God and the entire Bible - every word from Genesis to Revelation, that enables human beings to enter God’s real and eternal kingdom. Is your relationship to God one of child-like trust and respect and love and yieldedness? Or, are you more like the rich ruler that Luke tells us about, who had so much, and was so close - and yet was so far?

A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Rabbi, what shall I do to inherit eternal life”? This is the kind of addition to the movement that the disciples wanted - a rich young ruler! And, one who was serious about God and the Divinely Inspired Writings. And, one who respected Rabbi Yeshua, and looked to Him for the answer about what to do to experience eternal life. But the Son of God knew that in spite of the many good things going for him, he still might not be ready to become a humble disciple of the Messiah. And so, Yeshua interacted with this leader in order to bring him to the place where he needed to be.