Why do people brag? It’s because they want recognition; they want others to notice them. After all, doesn’t it feel good when others sing your praises? Of course it does! But what if they won’t do that? What if the moment passes and no one notices how hard you’ve worked or how clever you are? You then brag to make sure that doesn’t happen. You brag to make sure that others will appreciate you.
Now, complaining is the flip side of bragging. The complainer wants others to know about some injustice that another has perpetrated against him. Complaining calls out for someone else’s attention and sympathy. The complainer complains because he wants to make sure that someone else gives him that attention or sympathy.
Bragging and complaining both originate from an emptiness inside someone. By bragging or complaining, a person tries to get someone else to fill that void, so he feels better. And so he takes matters into his hands to make that happen.
That’s what the Pharisee wanted at the Temple. He wanted others to notice and recognize him. After all, he had disciplined himself, denied himself many pleasures of the flesh, and stayed away from misdeed and vice. He made sacrifices, fasted twice a week, and tithed. Those are all good things! He wanted God to say, “Good job.”
But the Pharisee’s deeds don’t impress God. Now, why is that? Why isn’t God impressed? It’s because He’s God. What people do or don’t do, doesn’t impress Him. For it doesn’t matter how good you’ve been or all the great deeds you’ve done—they simply aren’t good enough to impress Him.
So, what then pleases God? Scripture tells us: “The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God will not despise a broken and humbled heart” (Psalm 51:17).
What had the Pharisee done? In today’s way of seeing life, did he go the speed limit? Did he mow his lawn, so he met neighborhood expectations? Did he recycle all his paper and plastics? What did he do? In God’s eyes, he did nothing. For sinful impurity tainted everything he did.
The Pharisee trusted in himself. He thought he was better than others. So what if he didn’t murder, he still had anger in his heart. So what if he didn’t cheat on his wife, he still knew lust. Would he then dare to stand before God and boast of his works?
Here’s the truth: everyone’s life is hard. Everyone hurts, struggles, and suffers loss. Everyone has a broken heart. “Stuff happens,” as the saying goes. For how real was the fall into sin? If it was real, and it was, then why should any of this surprise us?
Now, some may deny that they are broken. They may not want to show weakness, and so they try to hide their brokenness. Some think their brokenness is none of your business. But no one goes through life unscathed—no one. No one is free from doubt, regret, or sorrow. For “no trial has overtaken you that isn’t also common for all mankind” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
“The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God will not despise a broken and humbled heart.” When it comes to God, pride in yourself is the way of death. That was the way of the Pharisee. He was arrogant enough to think that he could do what only the promised Messiah could do. Yes, the Pharisee went to the Temple—but he went home condemned.
But Jesus still has more of the story to tell us. Someone else also went to the Temple. Someone else, like the Pharisee, did what was right. He, like the Pharisee, went to be where God had promised to deliver His forgiveness to His people: The Temple.
So, consider that person, the tax collector. Unlike the Pharisee, he knows and admits his sins. He has a broken and humbled spirit. His sins had cut him to the quick. Because of that, he laid out the garbage inside him and gave it to God. Why should that be weird?
In the Old Covenant, why did God have a Temple for His people? There, the priest sacrificed animals every day, pointing forward to the Messiah, who would come to be the sacrifice for sin. The Temple existed to deliver God’s forgiveness to His people.
For someone to go to the Temple and then boast about his righteousness, instead of receiving the forgiveness that God gave him there, was idiotic. But even worse, it didn’t trust in what God chose to do there for His people. The Pharisee was saying that he didn’t need what God wanted to give him. He was good enough!
Not so for the tax collector. He knew that he wasn’t good enough. But knowing that you aren’t good enough still isn’t good enough. Knowing that you aren’t good enough just diagnoses that you are sick and in need of healing. But knowing that doesn’t automatically give you the needed medicine.
So, the tax collector went to where God promised to be, where God promised to give him forgiveness, life, and salvation. The tax collector went to the Temple in faith—not faith in Himself—but faith in God and in what God wanted to give him at the Temple.
What was the difference? It was where each had placed his faith. The Pharisee looked to himself; the tax collector looked to God. “God does not despise a broken and humbled heart,” not because a broken and humbled heart in itself pleases God. No, God doesn’t despise a broken and humbled heart because when a heart is emptied of itself, it can be filled with God.
Like boasting, when it comes to suffering, your affliction in itself amounts to nothing. But, when faith in Jesus fills your heart, even your suffering has value. For God will even use what afflicts you for your eternal benefit, just as He used Jesus’ suffering on the cross for your eternal salvation.
In yourself, you bring nothing of value to the table—at least when it comes to God! So, why go the way of the Pharisee when it only points to yourself, which can only fail you. It’s when you are emptied of yourself that God pulls you away from yourself to give what He has for you—life and salvation.
Think about our Old Testament reading. Both Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices to God. Cain offered a portion of his grain harvest to God. Abel offered the firstborn of his flock to God. But why was Abel’s sacrifice acceptable to God but Cain’s wasn’t?
Cain, in his grain offering, came to God on his own terms. Those blood-spilt sacrifices of old pointed forward to Jesus’ blood-spilt sacrifice. But Cain didn’t care about that. He approached God on his own terms—and then he even had the nerve to expect God to be pleased with him! Now, if what Cain could do was good enough, then why would he need Jesus, the promised Messiah? In the end, Cain trusted in himself, and that was his downfall.
But Abel was different. Having faith in the Messiah to come, Abel brought his offering. Abel came to God on God’s terms, for he knew that whatever he did wouldn’t be good enough. But having faith in the Messiah to come, the spilled blood from his sacrificed animal reached forward to what the Messiah would do, and he was forgiven.
The book of Hebrews tells us: “By faith, Abel offered a better sacrifice to God than Cain did. By faith, he was declared to be righteous because God accepted his offerings” (Hebrews 11:4). Cain was like the Pharisee in the Temple. He came to God in the way of his choosing, not by faith, and then he expected God to be pleased with him.
Abel was like the tax collector. He didn’t bring his deeds to the table but, instead, had faith in God. That faith, not only brought him to trust in God but also to delight in the ways that God chose to bring him forgiveness and salvation. Abel, came with a broken and humbled spirit, emptied of himself, trusting in the mercy of God.
So, where do you fit into all this? Do you come to God on your terms and expect Him to be pleased with you? If so, you’re a Pharisee. For when you come to God on your terms, what you bring to the table is never good enough!
Sin still infects whatever you bring; it still falls short. Whatever you bring is nothing but dirty and putrid rags to a holy and righteous God. When you come to God as you choose to come to Him, that’s not a broken and humbled spirit. Your heart is, instead, filled with yourself, not with God and faith in Him.
The story that Jesus tells has only two characters. You are either the Pharisee or the tax collector. Jesus brings no third character into His story.
A Pharisee and tax collector go to the Temple, the place where God had promised to be for them to give them life and forgiveness. The Pharisee wanted God on his own terms and went home condemned. The tax collector came to God with a broken and humbled spirit, emptied of himself, and was filled with God’s life and salvation.
Two people went to Church, the place where God, in His New Covenant, promised to be for them to give them life and forgiveness. One of them wanted God on his own terms and went home condemned. The other came to God with a broken and humbled spirit, emptied of himself, and was filled with God’s life and salvation.
Trust, then, in God’s ways for you. Like the tax collector, bring nothing to the Table, except your sin, for that’s all that you have to give. For it’s when you are emptied of yourself that Jesus comes to fill you with His life and salvation at His Table, in His way. Faith simply says, “Yes” and receives what God has for you. Amen.
