God be merciful

Bible passage: Luke 18:9-14

Series on what the Christian idea of salvation is all about:
? Need to be saved
? Salvation expressed in different ways – deliverance (rescue, liberation), redemption (paying the price).

Today’s word is atonement – not such a scary world – at-one-ment, becoming at one with an enemy, joining together. Becoming one with God by the offering of a sacrifice. Jesus’ atoning death – he died as a sacrifice for us to make us one with God.

The whole idea of sacrifice is a strange and foreign one to us – start with a familiar story.

Pharisee and a tax-collector both go into the temple to pray.
First we have to realise that to Jesus’ listeners the Pharisee is the goody in this story – the religious one, the one who lived the good life – in our day we might say the Archbishop of Canterbury – someone known to be religious and good. Tax-collector was the baddie – collaborator with Rome – taking advantage of others for his own ends – in our terms the drug-pusher or pimp to a prostitute. Unless we understand that we can’t appreciate the story.

Pharisee (hooray) went right into the inner courts of the temple and prayed with his head lifted high – prayed about himself (or could be translated to himself) some in the crowd start to laugh. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’”

In their terms not an outrageous prayer – was a good man – didn’t really need to tell God what he did but he was alright.

But the point Jesus is making is that he wasn’t alright. He though that because he was good compared to other people he was good enough for God. Doesn’t work like that. I was quite good at chess at school – played for my school chess team. I once beat a boy at my school who once beat Nigel Short in the British Junior Championships a few years later – Nigel Short went on to play for the World Title. Thought I would do alright when I entered the County Championships, so it was quite a shock when I lost every game and came last. Different league.

Pharisee was good compared to the tax-collector but compared to God he was the same as you and me – a sinner – hadn’t grasped the basic truth that no-one is good enough for God.

The tax-collector (boo, hiss) wasn’t pretending when he said “God have mercy on me, a sinner”. He was a sinner – no doubt about it. Earned money from immoral actions, disloyal to his country. But he didn’t enter the holy place in the temple, stayed back in the courtyards and his prayer was simply pleading God’s mercy. Three parts to his prayer: God, the sinner and the mercy between them.

Pleading mercy in the Temple is what brings us to what Jesus listeners understood about atonement. God had prepared for Jesus through the OT law which said that no-one could come to God with confidence because if his holiness. Only the High priest could come to the covenant box in the centre of the temple and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement. He would go with a perfect goat which would be offered on the lid of the covenant box which was called the mercy seat. Goat represented the sinful people and the sins were symbolically transferred to the goat which then had to be killed. The blood turned away God’s judgement against sin for another year.

Whole procedure was a visual aid to remind people that their relationship with him couldn’t be taken from granted and a preparation for the coming of the Saviour. Place where the sacrifice was offered, the mercy seat, was the place to find forgiveness. The people were mercy-seated before God, in a restored relationship.

All this seems very strange to us but for that tax-collector and the people listening to the story it was part of their religion – knew all about it. They knew that there in the temple the tax-collector wasn’t just saying “have mercy” he was saying “I come to be mercy-seated” – I come depending on the sacrificial offering.

The NT says again and again very clearly that Jesus is the once and for all perfect offering for sins. 1 John 4 says “God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. We are mercy-seated to God through the sacrificial death of Jesus. The place of sacrifice is no longer the mercy seat but the cross. Just as they Jews met God at the covenant box in the temple, we can now meet God at the cross. Where God is – in Jesus and where the sacrifice of blood is made. We don’t come to the Temple but to the cross and we don’t have to do it year after year but Jesus’ sacrifice is once and for all.

But we still have to come – come before God and ask his mercy – depending on the sacrificial offering of Jesus. When we do that we are forgiven and our sin is atoned for.

Jesus says that the two prayers in the temple that day got different answers. The tax collector went home justified before God, the Pharisee didn’t. Despite all his sins God forgave and justified the one who asked for mercy through atoning sacrifice.

Jesus says in this story that sinners can’t be saved by anything sinners do, only by something God does.