The Way of Humility The Jesus Way March 22 nd 2026

It is really good to see you guys. It's so good to see Thank you. And my name's Cole and one of the pastors here. went on sabbatical back in December and got back in February. It was funny, one of the guys my good friends here, he's in my office, he goes "I'm glad to see you." I'm like, "You too." And he goes, "No, I'm like really glad to see you." "Why?" He goes don't know, thought you got fired. don't know." It's just like Not yet. Trust me, you'll know. It's really good to be with you. We're going to continue the series The Jesus Way this morning. If you would turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 18. and that's going to be verses 9 through 14 actually. Luke writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray. One Pharisee and the other tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed like this. "God, thank you that am not like other men extortioners unjust adulterers or even this tax collector. fast twice week. give tithes of all that get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. But beat his breast saying "God be merciful to me sinner." tell you this man went to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. But the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Pray with me. Holy Spirit we can't even hear what we need to hear unless you're enabling it with your power. We are so hopelessly dependent on you. We don't have plan It's just Jesus is plan straight away through. So would you do in us what we cannot do for ourselves? Which from the looks of it is just about everything. You are hero and our best friend. We ask these things in your name. Amen. got really strange phone call this week. think it was around Tuesday. It notified me that my brother have twin brother. Some of you've met him, some of you haven't. he's in South Carolina and he was meeting up some with somebody in parking lot for Facebook Marketplace, you know, purchase, right? He had an old MacBook he wanted to sell for some money. And he was expecting one individual to be there. Which made it little weird when two guys showed up. Okay? He still walked him through how to use the MacBook, showed that it worked and everything else. It was going quite well. They spent like 15 minutes together clicking through everything. And then the one gentleman gets out an envelope full of cash and ruffles through it really disorganized, right? Like he didn't quite have his stuff together. And that made it very difficult for my brother to notice the semi-automatic that the second guy had pointed at his head. Yeah. It was funny, the second gentleman had said to Caleb "We need the watch, too." But he wasn't looking over there. Right? And if you don't see the gun yet, you just sort of assume it's weird banter and he kind of goes, "Yeah, that'll be the day." You can laugh, it's fine. He's He's He's survived. It's all good. Note to self. Okay. But he noticed the guy holding the gun at his head and he noticed the finger in the trigger guard and the finger resting on the trigger. And he immediately starts weighing the options. don't know if you know this or not. When you do exactly what guy with gun says trying to rob you sometimes you still get shot. And it's not altogether clear what the wisest option is. And Caleb had lived in downtown Chicago for while. And he does kind of know how to handle himself. So there's this weird kind of stepping out of your body thing real quick where you just get the lay of the land. And between the firearm the 30-round extended magazine the fact that there's two people he figured he better sit this one out. But he said as he looked in the barrel of the gun he didn't see like darkness. This is kind of weird. He saw like photograph. Like one of those moving still photographs like you see in Harry Potter and it was of Yeah. It was of his wife holding his 6-year-old son. And there was just this moment of pause and then his next words are "Well, if you want the watch give it good home. It's Seiko. And it's been serviced and all that." And as the two guys got in the Nissan Altima and did burnout out of the parking lot my brother goes to notify the police, right? Let them know that "Hey, this, that, and the other happened and it'd be nice if we could stop it from happening to someone else." Someone else. That's the That's the phrase that sticks with me little bit, right? Because I'm pastor, right? So in some way have sort of courtside seat to just you know, the litany of human tragedy you guys will wade through on any given week, right? And so you'd think if somebody would be cured of the someone else delusion, it would be me. But really remember thinking "This seems like something that would happen to someone else." Other people. Dateline people, guess. don't know. How many in here have Let me just see show of hands. Arcade doesn't like to do the hand thing lot. know, but we're going to do it. How many of you would have have had something happen to you that until it did, you assumed only happened to other people? Yeah. It's room full of other people. Cancer's like that, isn't it? Nobody Nobody knows or thinks they're going to know all the weird oncology lingo when you go through something like that. Or even if you beat it, have that closet full of like cancer stuff that you don't know whether to get rid of or not. It's all other people stuff until it's not. Nobody thinks they're going to lose their house in fire and get so used to calling the insurance company they'll memorize the numbers it takes to get through to real person like some sort of like house fire pro. That happens to other people, right? Until it doesn't. There's one other kind of experience think that we fall into the other people trap with. And it's this. We assume Pharisaic self-righteous blinding moralism is something that other people struggle with, isn't it? I'm sure that's what the broader network of Jesus followers assumed. But our text this morning demonstrates that despite what we may assume, they and we are all other people. Jesus reassures his followers back in Luke 17 that yeah, that the kingdom is coming. Don't fear. In Luke 18, there's this really pronounced shift from Jesus talking to the Pharisees to his own followers, right? He teaches that there was widow once and she had to make her case known to this unjust judge and eventually she got what she needed and that's what the kingdom is like. Keep asking. Keep waiting. It's going to be fine. And you'd think it would land there. This happy ending, but he doesn't. He concludes with question that could stop train and put ice water in your veins. Right after that parable, Jesus asks question and it's the immediate verse behind what we just read this morning and the question is this, nevertheless, will when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? In other words, the real question isn't whether Jesus will or will not keep his promise. He will. The question is whether you will still care by the time he does. Whether the wait will have made you and me into someone who runs to him or someone who forgets they even wanted to. And he's doing this because stirring among his own community of followers is kind of spiritual contagion, slow-moving, hard to spot, but it came from trusted voices, teachers and Pharisees, the people you'd actually want to listen to. They were teaching that sort of collective style lifestyle of covenant end-of-days activism devoted to keeping certain version of their law might move God's heart to finally intervene in their Roman occupation and fix the world. That their faithfulness, imperfect, sure, could accelerate the day of judgment where God would finally vindicate his people in the sight of heaven, earth, and hell. These Jesus followers had built load-bearing confidence in their own sincerity. And sincerity, weird thing about it is, it always brings measuring stick, doesn't it? These disciples' measuring stick were other disciples of Jesus. Other Jesus followers who weren't quite as serious, committed, or devoted as they were. Which is exactly why Luke gives us that editorial note before the parable even begins. Did you catch it when we read it? It's the verse nine. He also told this parable to some in his own company who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Here is the thing about self-important blinding moralism, right? It doesn't look like evil. It doesn't look like villainy. It looks like lot of times someone who's finally getting serious about this Jesus thing, right? Someone who has organized their whole life around serving him. Someone you'd probably admire until you noticed how they talked about everyone else. See, that logic has this brutal underside. If God's rescue depended on the collective faithfulness of his people, then the weakest link is not Rome. It was other disciples whose lack of excellence was literally hindering the kingdom for everyone else. The sincere theology behind contempt for Jesus' people. It doesn't just produce disciples who pray differently than their neighbor. It produces disciples who see their neighbor as problem to be solved. Contempt is the first mile of very long road. The word Luke uses, contempt, it means something like this, to regard as nothing. Verse 19 makes perfect sense then once you realize what some Pharisees and some Jesus followers thought was at stake. So, Jesus tells parable. Not to expose the Pharisees though. It's to x-ray his own community. Because this kind of legalism, this kind of moralism never looks like cancer from the inside. It looks like faithfulness. It looks like finally taking God seriously. It looks like man who goes to the temple to pray. Verse 10, two men went up to the temple to pray. So, twice day the Jerusalem temple around this time ran something called the Tamid or it was called that later. It was just like perpetual offering. It was daily sacrifice. It happened two intervals. They did it twice, right? One at dawn, think, and the other like at 3:00 in the afternoon, somewhere around there. And the whole city sort of organized its day around it. You didn't just walk to the Temple Mount either. You more or less climbed, right? the Temple Mount is sort of elevated. It's courts are concentric, like kind of like an onion, right? Each ring or section required higher degree of not moral purity, ritual purity. The outer court first, it was loud, crowded, open to like nearly everyone. and then through the gate into the court of women, which is as far as you could go. Both men, now inside, Pharisee and tax collector, they're inside the sacred precincts and ahead of them through the gate they see they see these priests sort of moving around. There's big altar right about 15 ft-ish above the ground, right? There'd be sacrifice burning on it and you could smell it from where you stood. Every Israelite whoever watched this knew what it meant. Israel giving itself back to God collectively again. So far, so good. There'd be blast of silver trumpets. Levites, depending on the occasion, would kind of be on these riser things and they'd sing kind of in the direction of the people who'd gathered to pray. And the officiating priest would disappear into the sanctuary, into the holy place, and then the singers and the music go quiet. While the priest represents the whole assembly, the crowds voice their own individual needs to God. Wis- for wisdom, healing, better yield of crops, anything. The Pharisee and the tax collector are in the same crowd. Both inside court whose architecture answers the question, how do people who cannot hold it together keep meeting with the God who rescued them and will keep rescuing them forever? Both men would have grown up knowing this. But in the parable, only one of them still does. One, Pharisee, and two, collect- tax collector. At this point, we have to stop. Do you know why we have to stop? It's because the moment you heard the word Pharisee, if you've been in church for any length of time, something happened in your brain. caricature appeared. Right? It's some amalgam of every self-righteous, impossible-to-please, legalistic jerk you've ever known, sort of combined with whatever you think the the Taliban probably looks like, right? You know, that's Pharisee. Got it. Church people have been trained to hear Pharisee and immediately clock the villain, right? We're already waiting for him to trip over the coffee table of God's grace and like Steve Urkle be like, "Did do that?" you know. and need us to resist that this morning. Okay? Hold the line. Resist it. Because Jesus is not telling this parable to people who hate Pharisees, right? He's telling it to people who admire them, and brace yourself, and have very good reasons for doing so. Pharisees were not like this monolith. They weren't like the same Everyone wasn't the same. Not all of them were equally legalistic. And by the first century, there were fair number of Pharisees who were actually communicating something like theology of grace. Like it does happen every now and again. And that's precisely what makes the corruption some of them will stoop to at when it comes time for the crucifixion. That's what makes it so jarring, right? For anyone who knows the lay of the land. Just to think about this. Did you ever notice this? Two chapters earlier in Luke, right? Jesus is in Perea. He's criticizing Herod Antipas. And you know who comes alongside to Jesus and says, "Dude, watch yourself. You got to get out of here. Herod's going to kill you." The Pharisees. Like they were covering his six. Did you know that? lot of us don't. don't know that knew it till like year ago. These are complicated men in complicated world, and some of them are really trying to be faithful in it. Which means when the Pharisee in the parable arrives at the temple, the crowds don't see him as villain. Why would they? They see someone they respect. They see someone they want to be. Now granted, the Pharisee doesn't slip in quietly, okay? Luke reaches for verb he'll use repeatedly for someone who plants themselves, like more like sets up camp somewhere on purpose to kind of be seen. The Pharisee positions himself deliberately kind of near the front, facing the sanctuary. The smoke is rising. The music has stopped. And this is the hour of prayer. And what is the Pharisee going to pray? Verse 11. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed like this. "God, thank you that am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. fast twice week twice week. give tithes of all that get." At this point, you're probably rightly thinking, "Ha, told you. Self-righteous clown." Right? May complicate the picture just smidge? Do you realize the Pharisee's prayer is largely based on Psalm 26? "Vindicate me, Lord, for have walked in my integrity. do not sit with men of falsehood. wash my hands in innocence and go around your altar, Lord." Who's wrong? Jesus or the Psalms? Or is there more going on than meets the eye? See, the Psalms are full of this, right? The The paradigm of where there's righteous man differentiating himself from the treacherous, the violent, and the corrupt. And if you think tax collectors weren't treacherous, violent, and corrupt, man, we got another thing coming. We'll get there. The fasting's probably real. Twice week, more likely Mondays and Thursdays, well beyond what the law required, right? The tithe on everything he gets. It's not just the produce the law specifies. He's going well beyond the legal minimum. This is man doing more than his duty because he probably means it. He's not lying. He's not even bragging in the way we usually mean the word. Then what's the problem? He's filing battlefield report with God during the time of prayer requests. He's giving status update on his covenant activism. So the prayer isn't just simply pride. It's his end-times theory in action. God of my ancestors, I'm holding the line. I'm keeping the covenant. I'm doing the work. Come back to Zion. The Pharisee is so busy dunking on the tax collector and thanking God that he fails to ask for anything. This prayer time of the service he's in is specifically set apart for personal petition. Request for wisdom, help with stubborn sins, for healing, for provision. Luke himself calls it the hour of prayer in different context in Acts 3. Not the hour of Thanksgiving, not the hour of worship, prayer. And in Jewish context, that meant being an asker. You're person who asks for things, empty-handed. Which is exactly what Jesus, think about it, had just been teaching in the chapters leading up to this, right? The persistent widow, relentless in her asking, refusing to stop coming. And then immediately, in the very next parable, boom, two men arrive at the temple at the hour designed for exactly that. And then immediately, the Pharisee comes to the one place in the world built for people who know they can't stand before God on their own. The one hour scheduled specifically for Israel to bring his their needs before God, and he brought no needs. Because he was too busy differentiating himself from the compromisers. Here's weird hot take. man who has nothing to ask of God has very little to say to God. You feel that? You ever wonder why there's not just huge Thanksgiving portion like we'd expect in the Lord's Prayer? It's because Luke knows we're needy. He'll call it being poor in spirit. It's not defect. It's bug It's not bug. It's feature. He won't ask for thing. But somewhere behind him, ba- just barely inside the threshold of the court, at the greatest possible distance from where the Pharisee had planted himself in the front, there's another man. Same place, same hour, the same smoke rises above them both. And this guy is not filing report. Let's talk about the tax collector. We have to understand what just walked into the temple. Jewish tax collector did not just collect taxes. The first thing he did was win an auction. See, Rome would put certain village up for bidding. And bunch of tax collectors would come around and bid for the right to tax it. Okay? And all the other tax collectors had to elbow the other guys out with the boldness of their bid. They're telling Rome, "I'll get you this much." And the other tax collector says, "No, no, no, no, no. That's that's chump change. I'll get you this much." And that goes and goes and goes and goes until the only one who wins it is the guy who is willing to inflate the amount so egregiously much. This borders on parody. And he still hasn't made his money yet. The only way the tax collector then can collect salary is if he squeezes that village beyond the crazy amount he promised to Rome. Right? This wasn't like bureaucratic job. He was It was predation. Franchised, though. And it wasn't just in against abstractions. It was against real families, children, neighbors whose names you knew. In the Pharisee's world, tax collector wasn't just sinner. He was problem. He was the reason the Messiah had not come yet. His idolatry with Rome was precisely was actively prolonging the occupation, the exile. He was in essence what's wrong with the world. And what was wrong with the world just walked into the temple. Standing far off, it says in verse 13. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. Not to the front. He's not Not standing in the front. You kidding me? Far off. He's basically in the doorway of the first place the temple starts to recognize sacred space. Just within the threshold, right? The greatest distance from the altar while still technically being inside its precincts. The altar You could He could see the smoke from it, but probably barely. The grammar here it it reaches for the floor. Luke uses this compound negative construction to describe someone who actually who literally cannot look up. If you were to put work kind of walk it in the English really wouldn't leave be he would not not even not lift his eyes. Right? The closest parallel have to that kind of language comes from Jewish folklore where angelic beings sinned so badly they broke the cosmos and they all lie prostrate before God unable to raise their faces because of what they have done. In other words, Jesus is reaching for the language of maximum abasement to describe this man's reckless honesty before God himself. The tax collector before God has put himself at the bottom of every hierarchy there is, cosmic, social, moral, spiritual. He's weeping from the bottom of the created order, from the bottom of his own predatory, tragic, and miscarried life. Eyes glued to the limestone like gorilla glue. 13, continuing but he kept striking his chest and saying, "God have mercy on me, sinner." This is frame-by-frame inversion of everything the Pharisee has just done. The Pharisee located, right? The problem in that guy. The tax collector is saying, "Yeah, basically but it's worse than you think." The tax collector has basically said, know what's wrong with the world. It's me. I'm what's wrong with the world." He found it in himself and wouldn't stop striking there. And then from the threshold, still down, chest still aching, the man uses his words and reaches. "God have mercy." It's the same mercy seat language from like Leviticus 16. He brings nothing to his defense. Nothing. No option, he didn't win, no neighbor he decided not to bankrupt, no battlefield report, no competitive score. He's standing at the bottom of his own life with one sentence, "Have mercy upon me, sinner." yeah, that's the other thing. Behind the English it doesn't just say sinner. It's ha amartolos, the sinner. Have mercy on me, the sinner, the big one. He has identified what he is, where he is, and what this place was built for, mercy. Now, there's vision for the church. You ever just have really horrendous week and you just don't know? Can say it? Or am going to get like the crowd control look? You know what mean? Like that weird pheromone we all give off like is this can we talk about this? don't know. I'm going to look at all the other people and make that decision and sort of scatter like cockroaches. He's not more spiritual than the Pharisee. Guys, he's just honest. And it turns out that kind of reckless honesty it's grammar, it's language, it's mother tongue that only guilt and pain and squandered potential can teach you. Some people find it in the temple. Others find it on road. Luke calls it being poor in spirit. But whatever it is it's the way God rescues people. Let's look at the justified car ride home. How we doing? They love me in family ministries. tell tell you "This one," Jesus says, "This one went down to his house justified rather than the other. Because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." The tax collector went home with verdict, man. Not character assessment, not progress report, not provisional approval pending behavior, right? Not PIP plan or whatever. verdict rendered by God who had witnessed every extortion he'd ever performed. Every family he'd ever bankrupted and every child who grew up too fast because the taxes landed their parents in debtors prison, right? This has like real bite and consequence to it. The man in the parable who goes home justified is the least like Jesus' activist followers, the one who were super legalistic going on that kind of weird path. He's the one who walked home with the very vindication those disciples assumed would be theirs. He went home justified. And that's not less than that's not less than courtroom language, man. The verdict is real and legal. Jesus uses the language of the courtroom deliberately. The verdict declared, already rendered, and still standing. It is not less than courtroom language. It is more, though. When Jesus says the tax collector, hopeless case if there ever was one, right? Standing far off at the threshold goes home justified. Do you know what he's doing? He's reaching back into Isaiah's vision where the salvation of God for stubborn and distant people is equated with the righteousness of God. What is that? Isaiah 46:12-13. Listen to me, you stubborn of heart. You who are far from righteousness. See the lingo parallel? He was far. The tax collector far from righteousness in Isaiah. bring near my righteousness. It is not far off and my salvation will not delay. Do you notice who Isaiah is comforting here? It's not the obedient. It's the stubborn of heart. What are we doing? And he comforts them by announcing that God's righteousness is coming. If you're me, would assume, yeah, it's coming. It's probably coming at 100 miles an hour and left jab and right cross, right?" No. If righteousness only means only means the standard of perfection you haven't met that's death sentence. Isaiah does not say it as threat. He says it it's like the best news he could ever give you. For Isaiah, the righteousness of God is God's refusal to abandon you. You feel that? Because he cannot deny himself. This is exactly what Paul reaches for near the end of his life writing to Timothy, isn't it? From prison cell. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. For he cannot deny himself. won't ask for show of hands for this. How many people in here, though have just assumed God's done with you? How many times do you fire up the same browser? How many times do you tell the same lies? How many times do you lust after the same people? How many times do you covet that is that which isn't yours? How many? How many? How many? How many? How many? God doesn't know how to give up on you. That's the issue. His righteousness is also the engine of your rescue, not the obstacle. The tax collector goes home carrying something he did not build which means he can't take it apart. The righteous verdict of God. He didn't find it which means he can't lose it. Some of us today are going to walk out of here the same way the Pharisee walked out of the temple. That is inevitable. Having brought status report with knack for exalting you rather than humbling you. Half the time it's me. Just be real here. And if that's you or if that's me that won't feel like pride. It'll feel like clarity. Maybe you have very strong convictions about say Christian parenting. The school choice, the screen time policy, the Sabbath calendar, all of that, right? but maybe somewhere in the last year you started confusing those wise, legitimately wise, personal convictions for the righteousness of God. They're not. They're not. And maybe you've stopped returning the phone calls of people who aren't on the same page as you. Maybe you've read widely and you're one of those guys you thinks one of those gals you think super carefully about theology and that's genuinely good. Yeah, yay raw, more of that. But maybe it's also become credential, way of sorting the serious from the coasting, right? The people worth the conversation from the ones in your view are still on VeggieTales theology in their 40s or whatever, right? Maybe you're deeply engaged with justice and the repair of God's good world and that engagement is real and is right, but it's also become somewhere in the last few years holiness metric you quietly hold over other people in the suburbs who haven't moved to the inner city like you yet, right? Maybe you keep Sabbath margin with consistency that is formative, countercultural, all that, right? And genuinely worth keeping. But the problem is you know exactly which families at this church don't. You can't not think about it. And you know what you've quietly concluded about their priorities. yeah, you know which side their bread's buttered on. Maybe this runs in the other direction now. Maybe you watch other families engage with cultural or political questions you've decided are distractions from the gospel and for your home and your restraint on social media or anything else becomes its own kind of righteousness. These poor Claude Hoppers always posting about everything. Don't they know we should just be posting about the gospel? They're going to distract everybody. And then all of the sudden you're sort of like up here and everybody else is sort of down there. Been there. Maybe it's giving. Maybe it's mission trip participation. Maybe it's how often you notice folks miss church and you see their log out of commitment. You see families with sporting events during like the summer and the weekends and you've rendered verdict about their priorities, but you won't say it out loud. Maybe you're looking at couples who have just got married and they're not having kids yet and you thought they would and where's their priorities and all this stuff? Aren't they serious about the king? Blah, blah, blah, right? All of these things are status reports when God wanted real prayers. They're all battlefield summaries. Prayer that ends on human being instead of faithful God. So, what's the Jesus way? See what did there? I'm going to try to be helpful as can, right? Three movements. Simple enough to remember, but hard enough to mean something, guess. number one. Write the prayer your heart has actually been praying. Not the prayer you'd read out loud. The one running quietly underneath. Name who's in the blank. Thank you, God, that am not like why? We can't repent of something we won't name. Does that make sense? Two. Name what is hardest to name about yourself. To the Lord. Have mercy upon me blank. And then hold it in the love of God in front of God. Anybody see that movie Heat with Robert De Niro way back in the day? Remember when he robs that bank, he think he punches bank teller and he's got bloody lip and he goes, "Don't wipe it off. Let it bleed. Let it bleed." Let it bleed there for second. Hold what is hardest to to admit is true about yourself in front of the love of God in Christ and marvel that you're okay. Third. you might think this is weird. kind of like it. Pick doorway in your home that's your threshold. You don't have to hit your chest, but maybe touch it every time you you move through it. Let your body do what the tax collector did in miniature. Let the posture be prayer. There's not all You know real life is like insane. There's not always time for bunch of words, clear arguments. Sometimes there's only time for an image, for motion, the posture. The chest that Christ was willing to have struck for you. The fatal blow he took and lived to tell about. And if could have few elders and their wives just be willing to come up for prayer here as close. my brother didn't talk his way out of that parking lot. He didn't negotiate with strength he didn't have. He gave up what he had to, said what was true and walked away with the only thing that really mattered. The tax collector had one move. Hands open, nothing to offer. He walked away with the only thing that mattered, too. Statistically most of us probably won't have gun in our face, which means we have to get to that position on purpose. Eyes down, chest bruised, nothing to present. Some of us won't or will struggle to. get it. Some of us will walk out of here the way the Pharisee walked out of the temple. have before, by the way. Credentials intact, the account ledger still running, categories sorted, still holding the line, filing the report. If that's you, the gospel has good news for you, too. hope you know that. Jesus also knows how to reach the Pharisee as he leaves the temple. Or maybe even Jerusalem altogether. There's long road outside Damascus. The Pharisee of Pharisees on it breathing threats against the new Jesus way, letters in his bag authorizing contempt into action. Then the light came. Bright as 10,000 suns. Like the kind where like because eyelid skin is thin, you close your eyes and you still see what's out there. And knocks the Pharisee face down on the ground. And there his letters scatter in the wind. No more battlefield reports, no more contempt, just voice asking in thick Galilean accent, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" And man with nothing left to say except, "Who are you, Lord?" Which is, if you think about it, you're scared enough, way of saying, "Lord, have mercy on me." Years later, that Pharisee put ink to parchment and also called himself the sinner. The chief of sinners, in fact. See, for those God sovereignly rescues, the real difference between Pharisees and tax collectors, you know what it is? Time. One went freely, eyes already down, chest already bruised. The other needed road, light, and 3 days in the dark before the scales fell. Contempt is the first mile of very long road, guys. But so is confession. It turns out that kind of reckless honesty is new mother tongue. It's language. It's grammar. Some people find it in temple. Some find it on road. And some of us find it in parking lot watching Nissan do burnout. Realizing the only thing we got to keep was the thing we never earned. And that is good news for tax collectors and Pharisees like me and tax collectors and Pharisees like you. Would you pray for me? Jesus forgive us for complicating such whole and complete love. think we struggle to understand your love because it's so foreign to the way we love. We've never given you anything you didn't already have. We're used to quid pro quo and all that weirdness and Jesus, we stumble so much because it is so foreign to our world. So foreign in many ways to the homes we grew up in. would you keep not abandoning us? Show your righteousness in the way you come and get us and bring us to the light every single time. To anyone who wonders if they can do this Jesus thing and they look around and see people have it together, stuff like that. pray you dispel that illusion. Dispel it in the name of Jesus, the same way you dispel the ravens who steal the seed of the word. We love you. We thank you. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. May the God of endurance can't remember how Craig says it. May God cause his face to shine upon you. Go in his peace. Peace be with you.