INTRODUCTION:

1. In this parable, our Lord draws a contrast between a Pharisee and a publican (tax collector) (18:9, 10).
2. Many years ago evangelist R.A. Torrey preached a message on our text, and he titled it, “A Good Man Lost and a Bad Man Saved.”
3. Torrey said, “Some of you may think I have this subject twisted, and that it ought to read: A good man saved and a bad man lost. But it is right just as it is. Jesus Christ Himself has given us the picture of the good man and the bad man, and Jesus Himself is responsible for the statement that the good man was lost and the bad man saved.”
4. Torrey said that the good man who was lost was a moral man in his personal habits. He was a highly respected member of society.
5. He was a religious man. And he paid tithes of all he possessed (18:11, 12).
6. But this Pharisee saw no flaw in himself. Torrey said the Pharisee in this parable was the best man – “in his own estimation.”
7. This reminds me of something Spurgeon once said. Referring to a man with a sterling reputation, Spurgeon said, “I always believed he was perfect until he told me so.”
8. Back in the days of the Lord, religious leaders like the Pharisees did not really trust in God, but rather, they "trusted in themselves" (Luke 18:9). They trusted in their own works.
9. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8, 9).
10. Furthermore, they "despised others" (18:9). Recall the scornful way the Pharisees treated the blind man healed by Jesus in John chapter 9.
11. They said to him, “Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?” And then they cast him out (John 9:34).
12. The Pharisees have been described as rigorous in their ritual observances; ostentatious in their charity and religion; pompous and self-inflated in their affected holiness; covering up an intense love of sensual pleasures by their outward appearance; diligent in the performance of every outward rite, so that they "might be seen by men," while "inwardly they were ravening wolves;" haughty and imperious to inferiors — yet cringing parasites of royalty and power; neglecting the weightier matters of the law, yet minutely critical in tithing and doing what the law did not require; "serpents" in wisdom — but leaving the trail of their slimy deeds behind them; "vipers" in the sudden and unexpected stings which they fastened wherever they thought they could strike their fangs with impunity; "graves," over which the people walked and knew not the hollowness beneath until they fell into the pit; "white-washed sepulchers," which indeed "appear beautiful outwardly — but within were full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." They substituted human traditions for God's Word. They made their boast of the law by wearing broad phylacteries, and yet dishonored the law. They turned their prayers into instruments of covetousness and extortion. They "compassed sea and land to make one proselyte," and then made him "twofold more a child of Hell than themselves." They united in the one aim of destroying Jesus, and effected their purpose through bribery, blasphemy, perjury, and a bitter vindictiveness, which could slake its thirst for blood only in the opened veins and riven heart of the Messiah!” (William Bacon Stevens).
13. Things haven’t really changed all that much. There are many spiritually blind religious people today.
14. Today most people consider themselves "good," and therefore thinks they deserve to go to heaven.
15. To most people, hell is only for very bad people. Of course, their definition of "bad" is rather vague.
16. Tonight, we will look at this parable of our Lord concerning the good man who went to hell and the bad man who went to heaven.
17. The good man was very religious but he was lost. The publican was considered a bad man but he repented of his sin and was saved.

 

I. THE GOOD MAN WAS LOST (LUKE 18:9-12)

1. This Pharisee had rather high standards (like some of the orthodox Jews today). He went to the temple on a regular basis (18:10).
2. He prayed (18:10) – but, unfortunately, he prayed "with himself" (18:11). He went through the motions but was not really speaking to God. What he was actually doing was boasting of his religious accomplishments.
3. The great expositor, G. Campbell Morgan, said: "Can you find anything in literature to surpass that for satire?"
4. Another great British expositor, Alexander Maclaren, said, “The self-adulation was absolute, the contempt (for others) was all-embracing.”
5. He apparently lived a clean, moral life (18:11).
6. He fasted, even more than he was required to (18:12).
7. He tithed (18:12).
8. The apostle Paul was just like this man before he was saved. In Philippians 3:5, 6, Paul said he was “an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
9. Paul said in Acts 22:3, “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.”
10. The Pharisees outwardly appeared very righteous but our Lord said that inwardly they were "full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (Matt. 23:28).
11. There are multitudes of people like that today. Moral and upright on the outside – corrupt and wicked on the inside! I remember a few years ago, an Episcopalian minister caught some crack-heads breaking into his church in Brooklyn. The newspapers played it up – he was a big hero!
12. Till a few days later when the police arrested him – they found him sitting at his computer working on his Sunday sermon, smoking a crack-pipe!
13. Some folks here might be thinking, "Well, I don’t smoke crack, I’m not that bad!" But we are not compare ourselves with others.
14. The Pharisee compared himself to extortioners and adulterers and publicans, etc. (18:11). He thought that made him look good.
15. But unless a man has been born again, he is just as lost as any extortioner or adulterer or dope-head or drunkard or homosexual, etc.
16. It is a fact that hell is filled with religious, church-going people.
17. Albert Barnes said it is “not wrong to thank God that he has kept us from the gross sins which other men commit; but it should not be done in an ostentatious manner, nor should it be done forgetting still that we are great sinners and need pardon. These were the faults of the Pharisees.”
18. “Ostentatious manner.” In Matthew 23:5, Jesus said, “But all their works they do for to be seen of men...”
19. Barnes said:

We may learn from the case of the Pharisee --
“1st. That it is not the man who has the most orthodox belief that has…the most piety;
2nd. That men may be externally moral, and not be righteous in the sight of God;
3rd. That they may be very exact in the external duties of religion, and even go beyond the strict letter of the law; that they may assume a great appearance of sanctity, and still be strangers to true piety; and
4th. That ostentation in religion, or a boasting before God of what we are and of what we have done, is abominable in his sight. This spoils everything, even if the life should be tolerably blameless, and if there should be real piety” (Barnes’ Notes).

20. Therefore, this Pharisee in our Lord’s parable was "good" in man’s eyes, but he was lost in God’s eyes.

 

II. THE BAD MAN WAS SAVED (LUKE 18:13,14).

1. The second man who went to the temple to pray was a publican (tax collector) (18:10, 13).
2. Most of the publicans in our Lord’s day were dishonest and corrupt (cf. 19:1, 2, 8). The Gospels often refers to “publicans and sinners” (Matthew 9:10, 11; 11:19; Luke 5:30; 7:34; 15:1; 19:2; etc.).
3. Our Lord said to the chief priests and the elders, “Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31).
4. The publicans were Jews who collected taxes for the Roman government. Therefore, they were despised by their fellow Jews. But many of them responded to the Gospel and were saved.
5. Two notable publicans who got saved were the apostle Matthew (Levi) and Zacchaeus, “which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich” (Luke 19:2).
6. The publican in our Lord’s parable stood “afar off” in the outer court (18:13), as far as possible from the temple, because he felt unworthy to approach the sacred place where God had His holy habitation.
7. He “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven” (18:13). He was humble. He was conscious of his guilt. He knew that he was a sinner, and shame and sorrow prevented him from looking up.
8. Albert Barnes said, “Men who are conscious of guilt always fix their eyes on the ground.”
9. “Smote upon his breast” (18:13). This designates grief and anguish because of sin. “It is a sign of grief among almost all nations” (Barnes).
10. The publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (18:13b). The publican confessed that he was a sinner, but the Pharisee didn’t. Worldly, unrepentant, unsaved people do not see themselves as lost sinners.
11. The publican could sing that great hymn, “I’m only a sinner, saved by grace!” But the Pharisee could not sing that song.

Naught have I gotten but what I received;
Grace hath bestowed it since I have believed;
Boasting excluded, pride I abase;
I’m only a sinner, saved by grace!

Only a sinner, saved by grace!
Only a sinner, saved by grace!
This is my story, to God be the glory—
I’m only a sinner, saved by grace! — James M. Gray

12. The prayer of the publican was totally different from the prayer of the Pharisee. The publican did not boast of his own righteousness, and he acknowledged that he was a sinner (18:13).
13. This is the kind of prayer that will be acceptable to God (18:14).
14. The humble publican confessed to God that he was a sinner, and that is something that the proud Pharisee would not do.
15. The Pharisees thought they were righteous, and did not need to repent. Many people think that they are right with God, but they have never been genuinely born again.
16. A person must be honest before God in order to be saved. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).
17. The Greek word translated “merciful” is translated “reconciliation” in Hebrews 2:17, where it says Christ made reconciliation for the sins of the people.
18. The publican was literally saying: "God, be reconciled; be propitiated to me, a sinner" (18:13; cf. Scofield notes, bottom of page).
19. The words reconciliation and propitiation mean that God is satisfied with the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

III. WHICH MAN ARE YOU, SAVED OR LOST?

1. Our Lord told this parable before He went to the cross. Before Calvary, a devout Jew would go to the temple to pray.
2. The publican looked to the mercy seat in the temple as the place where a sinful man could meet a gracious God.
3. Now, after the cross, we look to the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (which the blood on the mercy seat typified). It is our Lord’s shed blood that propitiates.
4. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood…” (Rom. 3:25).
5. The humble, contrite "bad man" asked God for mercy and Jesus said that he went home justified (declared righteous). The publican was approved of God. He was saved (18:14).
6. Spurgeon said, “We shall be exalted by the Lord if we humble ourselves. For us the way upward is downhill. When we are stripped of self, we are clothed with humility, and this is the best of wear.”
7. Have you asked the Lord to be merciful? Have you asked Him to save you?
8. If you are not saved, don’t be like the proud, self-righteous Pharisee who exalted himself. The man who exalts himself, Jesus said, "shall be abased."

 

CONCLUSION:

Behold how sinners disagree,
The publican and Pharisee!
One doth his righteousness proclaim,
The other owns his guilt and shame.

This man at humble distance stands,
And cries for grace with lifted hands;
That boldly rises near the throne,
And talks of duties he has done.

The Lord their different language knows,
And different answers He bestows;
The humble soul with grace He crowns,
Whilst on the proud His anger frowns.

Dear Father! let me never be
Joined with the boasting Pharisee;
I have no merits of my own,
But plead the sufferings of Thy Son. — Isaac Watts.