You're listening to Heat the Word with our pastor and teacher Ken Davis. Pastor Ken is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Southwest Metro in Burleson, Texas. Please join us as we study the Gospel of Luke verse by verse.

You see, we think of sin as something I do that is bad, don't we? But that's not what sin is at all. Sin is missing the mark of perfection. So if I were to stand here, you've heard me say this before with a bow and arrow, and in the back of the room there was a target, and I were to take aim with my bow and let the arrow fly, and that arrow hit anywhere other than dead sin or bullseye right on the mark. That is missing the mark. And that is defined as sin.

The Gospel of Luke is the third account in the Gospels of the life and teachings of our Savior, Jesus Christ. As believers, there are a few studies that will benefit us more spiritually than studying the life and teachings of the Master. The scriptures teach us that we've all sinned have fallen short of God's standard. There's no one who's righteous in and of themselves. There's no amount of good deeds you could do or church services you could attend that will forgive you of your sins. It's only by Jesus' life-changing grace through faith that we can be saved. Don't forget to stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Eat the Word, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, please open your Bibles to the book of Philippians, chapter 4, verse 4. We'll begin there and then continue our study in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18. Now, here's Pastor Ken.

And so men ought always to pray and not to faint. We are to persist, to persist in prayer. Turn to Philippians chapter 4. Starting in verse 4, Paul writes, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What is he saying? He's like, persist in prayer. Rejoice in the fact that God hears you and that God will answer you. And don't worry about it. Worry is sin. Because worry basically says, I don't trust God. And yet he tells us that we can trust him. Be anxious for nothing. But take everything to God in prayer. What weighs on your heart? What weighs on your mind? What is it that keeps you up late at night? Take that thing, whatever it may be, to God in prayer. And he will do marvelous things. And you say, well, sometimes I pray and I don't see the answer. Well, what is it that he said he would do here? He says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. It surpasses understanding. When we pray for healing, and the healing doesn't come, and yet there's peace in our hearts. That surpasses understanding. We can't understand that. How is it that we can have peace in our hearts when what we have asked for we have not gotten yet or not seen? Because God is working in our spirits and He is giving us a peace in our spirit that is saying, It's okay. I've got it under control. You see, we don't know the whole plan. We don't understand why sometimes things happen. People die, people get sick, we lock our keys in our car, any number of things. We we don't always understand or know why we go through the things that we go through. But when we stop worrying about it, and I'm guilty, I worry about things. I've worried about things this week. And God convicts me. He says, Come on, Ken, am I in control or aren't I? And I have to concede, yes, Lord, you're in control. But when we take those things to God in prayer and we put them in his hands, then the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. What an awesome promise that is. Now, let's go back to Luke chapter 18 and continue on because Jesus has told us here that we ought always to pray and not to faint, to pray and to not give up. You know, so often we begin to pray and we stop because we don't see the results, and so we assume that God isn't going to move when in fact all we need to do is just continue to pray. And in his time, he'll bring the answer that he wants to reveal in our lives. But it's also important when we pray not to just have persistence in prayer, but to have the right perspective in prayer as well. And the next thing that we're going to see really does give us a good perspective on prayer, and we're going to witness or to watch the prayers of two very, very different men. Picking up in verse nine, he also spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Now you see, this is in direct contrast to the parable that he just taught on, because he's just taught us to pray and not faint, right? If we are praying, then who are we trusting in? Are we trusting in ourselves? We're trusting in the Lord, aren't we? But there are some there who think, hey, I don't need that kind of help. I don't need that kind of justice. I have got it going on. And that's what we're about to see now. He also spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and despised others. You see, there are two things that we see here that really reveal something to us about the nature of self-righteous people. Self-righteous people are those people who are very impressed with themselves. And through the fact that they are very impressed with themselves, or rather because of it, they become very unimpressed with others. They despise other people. Because you see, if I think that I'm all that, I look even better if I compare myself to somebody who isn't, don't I? And so they begin to establish a standard of comparison that makes other people look really, really bad so that they can look really, really good. The sad thing is the only one that they're really looking good to is themselves. Verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed this with himself. God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax collector. You see, these two men that we have here are as different as they can be. You've got the Pharisee, right? Who is the elite of Israel, who is the righteous of the righteous, the creme de la creme, the very best that the nation has to offer in terms of outward righteousness? These guys keep the law. And as we're about to see, they even go beyond keeping the law, at least in their own minds. Whereas the tax collector was as vile a person as you could ask for. Do you realize that in Israel during this day, tax collectors didn't even have civil rights? They had no rights. They couldn't go to court and seek justice. They couldn't do anything. They couldn't enter into the temple per se. They were outcasts because they had basically sold out their nation in order to collect taxes for the Romans. Well, why would they do that? Well, because it was very lucrative. It was very profitable, and they were hated by their countrymen. And so we have two men who in this day and age would very obviously be from two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. And the Pharisee, of course, is aware of that. Verse 11, Jesus tells us that the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. Well, it's pretty obvious that he's praying with himself because I sure don't think he's really communicating with God in this instance. He says, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week. First of all, religious Jews during this day were only required to fast once per year. And that was on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. That was the only day that they were required to fast by the law. And so this Pharisee says, hey, not only do I keep that fast, but I fast twice a week. Not only do I keep the law here, but I exceed the law, don't I? He goes beyond it. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. Now, if you were working on a farm in Israel or if you were raising animals, you were required to give a tenth or a tithe of all your increase. Means if you had a sheep or two or three or ten, and those sheep each had another sheep, so you got ten more sheep. Well, of those ten sheep that you had increased by, one of those would belong to God, and you would take him and sacrifice him at the temple. That was your tithe. But here he's saying that I give tithes of all that I possess. What he's saying is not only would the Pharisee here give tithes of his increase, but if he went out and bought something in the marketplace, he would take a tenth of what he had bought and give that his tithe, because far be it from him to partake of something that maybe hadn't been tithes off of. And so here, not only again is he keeping the law, but he's exceeding the law. He's very impressed with himself. And the tax collector, 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. I tell you, this man 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. You see, the Pharisee was a good man. There are a lot of people out there who are good people, aren't there? You go and you try to share Christ with someone, and you know, you ask them that question, you know, why should God let you into heaven? And they come back with a response, something like, well, you know, because I'm a good person, you know, I don't, I don't kill anybody, I don't steal from anybody, I'm nice to people, you know, that kind of thing. Those are the very general answers you get. The fact of the matter is, guys, being good can never get us into heaven, can it? Doesn't matter how good you are, you're never gonna be as good as God. Jesus said, Hey, your Father in heaven, he's perfect, so you be perfect too. He also said another time, he said, Hey, if your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you can't get into heaven. For the Jewish people to hear that was a horrific thing because no one was more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees, as you would measure outward righteousness. And yet when Jesus said that, what he was talking about was something that goes so far beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees that we can't even imagine it. You see, the only righteousness that we can have that would meet that requirement is the very righteousness of God Himself. And so what Jesus was saying in that instance was, unless you have my righteousness, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And so you see, it doesn't matter how good you are as compared to other men, because other men are not the standard of measure. Now, if we were to measure righteousness in height, then we might say that this tax collector was three feet tall, right? And that this Pharisee was a giant of a man standing seven foot eight. And if you were to have the two of them stand here in front of you, you would look at them and you would say, Well, surely this man is much more righteous than that man, wouldn't you? And by outward comparison, we can look at ourselves and we can say, hey, I go to church every Sunday, I give my 10%, I serve in the children's ministry, or I do this, that, or whatever I do. And I can compare myself to the heathen out there, to the person who never goes to church, except for Christmas and Easter, maybe, who maybe at the most prays over his meal, but never really has a conversation with God, or maybe even worse than that, from the guy who's sitting out there on death row because he committed mass murders or something of the such. And we can look at these other guys and we can say, I, little church member here, am certainly more righteous than they. And we can justify ourselves and we can say, thank you, Lord, that I'm not like other men, but that compared to other men, I'm so much closer to you. And you know what the bottom line is? Unless we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, none of that matters at all. Because the standard of righteousness is the standard of perfection. God is a holy God. And our problem so often is we fail to recognize what sin really is. You see, we think of sin as something I do that is bad, don't we? But that's not what sin is at all. Sin is missing the mark of perfection. So if I were to stand here, you've heard me say this before with a bow and arrow, and in the back of the room there was a target, and I were to take aim with my bow and let the arrow fly, and that arrow hit anywhere other than dead sin or bullseye right on the mark, that is missing the mark, and that is defined as sin. And that is the standard that God has for us: perfection. There's not one thing we can do that's good that can ever undo anything we've done that is bad. You see, righteousness and holiness are not measured like balance, like weights in a balance on a scale. You put so many here and you put so many there. It's not like that at all. And so maybe the good will outweigh the bad and God will let us into heaven. You see, that's not it by any measure. Righteousness, rather, is like a white canvas that is pure and is clean and is undefiled. And sin is like the paint that I take and I splash on that canvas. There may not be much of it, but the canvas is no longer perfect, is it? It's no longer clean. And we can come with our righteous acts and our good deeds like a washcloth and try to wipe it off. And we may erase some of the darkness of the stain, but what will be left is a smear that covers that canvas. We cannot, through anything we do, make it perfect or clean again. And so we come to God like that tax collector, and we say, Be merciful to me, a sinner. And God takes that canvas and he throws it away, and in its place, he puts a perfectly clean one again. That is the one that belongs to him, his righteousness that he gives to us, replacing our own. He doesn't take us and clean us up and say, okay, you look a lot better now. No, he creates us anew. He makes us all over again and he justifies us, which means it's just as if we had never sinned in the first place. And so here this Pharisee comes before God in the temple and says, Thank you, God, that I'm not this and I'm not that, and thank you, Lord, that I do all of these things as though God should appreciate what this Pharisee has come to share with him, as though perhaps God would owe him something as a result of his good works and his good deeds. When the fact of the matter is, he was unrepentant. He didn't even recognize his own need for mercy, so much so that in his own self-righteousness, he was ready to condemn other people, particularly this tax collector. But the tax collector we see comes to God with an understanding of his complete and utter unworthiness. And this is a man who loves the mercy of God because he realizes that he himself, apart from that mercy, is completely and utterly lost. Now, will this man who himself is so aware of his own need for mercy withhold such mercy from others? Do you see this publican, this tax collector in any of his prayers say, Lord, what about that Pharisee over there? Not at all. Not at all. Because he is aware of just how much he himself has been forgiven. So should we be. Amen. There is no difference between the most moral human being that does not know Christ and the most vile murderer who does not know Christ. Both stand guilty before a perfect and a holy God, and it's only through the mercy of God that we can receive his righteousness and be forgiven. We are not the standard of comparison for one another. God is holy, and thank God He's merciful. And it's upon that mercy that we cast ourselves as Christians. You see, any other religion in the world that you can think of is based on works. This Pharisee would fit right in with many of them about, you know, what are you gonna do for God? But you see, Christianity isn't like that at all. Christianity is about what God has done for us. He's paid the price for our sins. Verse 15. They also brought infants to him that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him and said, Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them. For of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it. Do you want to enter into the kingdom of God? Then you must enter as a child. How does a child enter in? A child enters in unpretentiously. A child enters in trustingly. A child enters in humbly. You see, we cannot come to God as this Pharisee, talking about how great and how wonderful we are, and how lucky he is that we decided to become Christians. But we need to approach him with the humility of a child, knowing that the one to whom we come loves us as a father loves his son and calls us to come to him. The Bible tells us very clearly that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. You see, if you're proud, you're not going to come to Jesus because you're going to think you don't need him. But when you come face to face, like that tax collector did with the fact that you are completely unrighteous, then you'll recognize just how much you need a savior. You see, this Pharisee thought he had it going on. He thought he was keeping the law, but he had forgotten a very important thing. As I looked at these verses in Luke 18, I thought to myself, how do these fit together? We're looking at, you know, persistence in prayer. We're looking at perspective in prayer, looking at that perspective being from God's perspective rather than our own in terms of how we approach Him. And we're looking at coming to Him with the humility of a child. And as I was studying and as I was looking and as I was asking God, Lord, how does this all fit together? God reminded me. Micah 6, 8. He hath showed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly. You see, this unrighteous God did not want to do justly. He did not want to exercise justice on behalf of the widow. He was called to do so and he refused to do so. To love mercy. This Pharisee did not love mercy because he did not recognize his own need for mercy. And in not recognizing his need for mercy, he refused to extend mercy to the tax collector. The tax collector, by comparison, understood and cried out for the mercy of God in his life. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. That man loved mercy. And to walk humbly, just like a child. As a child walks holding on to his father's hand, that's how we're to walk in fellowship with God, humbly with him. To walk humbly with thy God. I'll read it again. And to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. That's chapter 11, verse 10 of the book we are currently studying here on Heed the Word, Luke. Luke's gospel account of the life of Jesus is an invaluable study that we know God will use in your life. We do thank you for joining us today. This has been another edition of Heed the Word with our pastor and teacher, Ken Davis. As you likely heard at the beginning of today's program, this message is available free of charge on our website. Simply log on to www.heedtheword.org. That's heedtheword.org. Once you're there, select the Listen Online page. There you'll find the Heed the Word Media Player. For your convenience, today's message is available in MP3 podcast and mobile formats. By far, the best way to stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Ken is to subscribe to the Heed the Word podcast. So log on to HeedTheWord.org and continue studying with us today. If today's message has ministered to you and you live in the Burleson, Texas area, or will be passing through, we'd like to invite you to join us for worship. We meet each Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. and Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. You can log on to heedtheword.org for driving directions and more information. So please stop by and visit us. Well, that's all the time we have for today. We encourage you to join us next time as Pastor Ken continues teaching through the Gospel of Luke on the next edition of Heatheword.