EPISODE 40 Luke Chapter 18 ”Amazing Grace” for Share the Word

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. Whether you're just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you'll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. So let's listen in to today's lesson and go a little deeper. Luke chapter 18. Amazing Grace. Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else.

Two men went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other a despised tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed this prayer: I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I'm certainly not like that tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give you a tenth of my income.

And on and on he went. But Jesus said, The tax collector, standing at a distance, dared not even lift his eyes to heaven when he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow and said, 'O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' I tell you, continued Jesus, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. I was quoting from Luke chapter 18, starting at verse 9.

Welcome back to Share the Word. There's a whole lot in this chapter I would like to zero in on, but I'm going to focus on that section I just read. Other parts of this chapter will reoccur when we study the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, and we'll discuss them then. But I'm going to start today with something of a confession. When I began reading and studying for this chapter this week, it kind of brought up some bad memories for me. I hate to admit this, but when I was a young person, I was under the impression that I was better than a lot of other people.

I can still remember specific situations where I acted like that. I was somehow superior to them. I was so utterly wrong about that. I was way too full of myself, and for no good reason. Anything that I had, anything I knew, whatever I was, were in reality all the result of God or my parents giving it to me. So that kind of pride, especially when it hurts other people, is the ugliest of things.

I've actually had to go back decades later to find a few people and apologize for being that kind of person at that point in my life. I certainly didn't learn it from my parents. It was just something that grew out of my own sinful heart, I guess. I even heard lessons and sermons on passages like the one I'm going to share with you today. But I was apparently enough of a blind man at that point, I didn't see myself in them at all. Today, when I read Jesus' stories, I try to ask myself first, what does this mean about me?

I mean, I want to look in the mirror of God's Word and say, what does this say to me about who I need to be? That's how we should all approach passages like Luke 18, like we are looking into a mirror so we can see ourselves the way God really sees us. Not until we come to grips with that honestly, deal with our shortcomings before God, should we ever begin to explain honestly. What this all means to other people. If we can't do that with humility, we're going to strike out. Returning to Jesus' story about the two men who went up to the temple to pray, one thing it points up is the foolishness of imagining God must be very impressed with us in comparison to other people, like imagining Him thinking, You know, I am very lucky to have that guy or gal on my team.

They're really quite something. Confident in his own righteousness, swelling with unfounded pride, one of the men actually rehearsed before God what a great person he was. I'm sure you've noticed, God, how I tithe religiously and I fast regularly. I'm so thankful that I'm not like other people, dishonest people, immoral people, like that disgusting tax collector over there who has the nerve to show up here in the holy temple. Meanwhile, off in a corner, away from the crowd, who he knew despised people like him, the tax collector was bent over in sorrow, knowing how far short he was from who he ought to be. He beat his chest in anguish and he cried out to God from a sincere and broken heart, God, be merciful to me.

I know I'm a sinner. Jesus told this story, I'm pretty sure, for the benefit of some Pharisees who were in his crowd that day listening, as well as for some others, people very aware they had fouled up their lives badly, so much so they doubted there would ever be any grace or forgiveness from God possible for them. I imagine a dramatic pause after Jesus described the contrasting attitudes and prayers of those two men to kind of let that scene sink in. Then he told his audience, I tell you the truth, it was the sinner, not the Pharisee, who returned that day from worship justified before God. For those who humble themselves will be exalted, and those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Remember that term, justified.

We'll get back to it in a couple moments. Let me tell you another thing that strikes me about this little story. I'm afraid in far too many people's minds, no matter where they are in this world, no matter what religious tradition they've been brought up in, or if none at all, one notion commonly believed is, if there is a God and there is a judgment somehow ahead of all of us, if there really is a heaven and a hell, some kind of afterlife, I feel pretty sure that we'll be judged on some kind of sliding scale, some kind of relative moral continuum. They imagine Mother Teresa on one end of that continuum and someone like Adolf Hitler on the other side, whoever they associate with extreme goodness or absolute evil. Do you know what I mean? We want to imagine that if there is a God who is seeing and judging our lives, he's doing so in comparison to others.

And of course, most of us want to believe that we're certainly on the side, generally speaking, of goodness, closer to goodness for sure than to evil. And so, we shouldn't have much to worry about. God knows we're pretty good, at least a lot better than other people that we can readily think of. But wait, isn't that exactly how the Pharisee praying in the temple was thinking? In his own estimation, he was better than other people. God must surely be pleased with him and what he was doing.

He felt certain God was grading him on a moral curve against other people, many of whom he considered, well, sinful, disgusting human beings. How could he not be safe in comparison? How could he not be justified in that light? While the tax collector, who was broken before God, was not measuring himself against anybody else. He knew full well how far short of God's perfections he fell. He was measuring himself against God's holy standards, and he knew he had nothing to offer, nothing to plead.

He could only cry out to God for mercy and grace. This is such an important thing for us to understand. Let me shed more light on it by telling you about something insightful that happened to a great prophet of God in Old Testament times, recorded for us in the Bible because it's so instructive. His name was Isaiah, and he was a man who honestly did love God and serve God. He was a man who, if there was a moral continuum that governed the judgments of God, he was well over on the side of goodness and light compared to others. Yet in his writing, which we call the book of Isaiah, he tells about a vision that he had that shaped his perspective on all this.

It's in chapter six of his book in the Old Testament. If you'd like to read it for yourself, it begins like this. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe was filling a temple. Above him stood seraphim. Each had six wings. With two they were covering their faces, and with two they were covering their feet, and with two they flew.

And as they flew, they called out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds of the temple shook at the voice of them who called out, and the house was being filled with smoke. Then I said, Woe is me. I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips.

I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Remember, Isaiah was a great man of God, one of the greatest we're told about in the Bible. But he experienced here apparently a vision, a glimpse of what God's throne room in heaven is really like, and he writes about it. When he was there, he was overcome with a sense of his own personal uncleanness. He saw even the beautiful, powerful seraphim in heaven, an angelic being, class of angels that tended God day and night, and when they were in His presence, they even covered themselves in shame, covered their bodies, hid their eyes from Almighty God's burning holiness. When Isaiah was transported there in his vision and saw and heard and felt what he did, his immediate response was, Woe is me, I am lost.

So is everybody else I know. He sensed immediately that he was completely doomed before such a high and holy God, that he was so unworthy, so unclean by comparison, not to others, but to God, that he had no chance if he had to stand on his own in the presence of the Holy One. I love the song Amazing Grace. Do you know it? It's one of the best known and loved Christian songs of all times. Both the music and the lyrics always touch me deeply when I hear them.

You've noticed, no doubt, that if you've seen the song published, it always says the composer's name, that is, who wrote the music, and then the lyricist's name, whoever wrote the words, if it's someone else. But in the case of Amazing Grace, the person who wrote the words, we know, was John Newton. But who composed the music? That's always listed as unknown. John Newton's father was a shipbuilder in England in the 18th century. And young John went to sea at a very young age.

After a stint in the British Navy, he served on ships in the slave trade for several years, transporting captured human beings like cargo from West Africa to the Americas. In that ugly business, he himself once was captured by an African tribe and spent time as a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro tribe in what is now Sierra Leone. Even after he was rescued, he returned to sea again and back to the awful business of the slave trade. In time, he even became a captain over several ships. Once, after a terrible storm at sea, which brought him face to face with his own mortality, John Newton called out to God to spare him. And after surviving that close call, he began seeking God and actually reading the Bible.

Soon he experienced a conversion to Christianity and became a follower of Jesus. Newton renounced the slave trade, gave up all his business interests in it, and in fact became a prominent supporter of abolition. He dedicated the rest of his life to serving God. It was while working as a parish pastor in an Anglican church in Olney, England, where he spent the last couple decades of his life, that Newton wrote the words to the beloved hymn, Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saves a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.

The lyrics were autobiographical. He realized that he, once a cruel slave trader, came to know and experience God's grace in his life, and he was truly amazed by that. If God could and would reach down and save such a messed up person like him, he could save anybody, Newton realized. The words to the hymn were really his own story. But what about the music? That's still something of a mystery.

I've heard that the tune is on the pentatonic scale, which was used in West Africa by the tribes there. It's believed that he may well have gotten the music for the hymn from hearing the singing of African slaves rising from the bowel of his ships when he was transporting them from Africa to the New World. Many believe that it was the music to one of their songs, the tune that lodged inside his head and came back to his mind years later, and he fitted to it these beautiful words, Amazing Grace. That once lost, now found John Newton lived long enough to see the British Empire abolish the slave trade in 1807, just months before his own death. Why am I telling you these true stories?

Because I want to superimpose kind of Isaiah and John Newton over the characters in Jesus' story in Luke 17 about the Pharisee who prayed, God, I'm glad I'm not like other people, and proudly recited his acts of righteousness, and the tax collector who would not even lift his eyes toward heaven when he prayed because he was so aware of his sinfulness. He only could cry out for mercy and grace. Isaiah, the great prophet of God, could have, I suppose, had the same attitude as that Pharisee, could have felt he was, by comparison, much better than other people. But because he saw what God is really like in that vision, because he rightly understood God's absolute righteousness and holiness, Isaiah knew he and everyone else is in real trouble apart from mercy and grace. No different than John Newton.

No different from any of the rest of us sinners, because we all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. It's only foolish pride and self-deceit that would cause any one of us to be confident in our own righteousness, as Jesus put it, to think we are safe because we are better than others. If we think that way, we're no different from the self-righteous Pharisee in Jesus' story. It shows we have a very wrong, very inflated idea of ourselves and no real idea of what God is really like. If we had any sense of His holiness and justice, we'd realize, along with Isaiah, along with John Newton, just how lost we really are. We'd confess we are miserable sinners who desperately need the Savior God sent.

If we didn't, think about this. If we didn't, Jesus would never have needed to come out of heaven. But we do. We all do. And thank God He came. He came, as Luke keeps telling us, to seek and save those who are lost.

When I'm trying to help someone visualize all of this and feel this critical spiritual reality, I often use a diagram. On one side of the piece of paper, near the bottom, I draw stick figures to represent us. And on the other side of the paper, as far away as possible, up in the far right corner, I draw a triangle to represent God. We're far away from Him because of sin. He is high and lifted up, to use Isaiah's term. There is a great gulf between us.

There is no way, in our own strength, by our own efforts, that we can possibly reach Him. Yet in Jesus' story, He was crystal clear in pointing out that one of those two men went home from the temple that day justified. That's a key term in the Bible, in the New Testament. The term means declared righteous by God. Justified means declared righteous by God. But it wasn't the religious guy who felt confident in his own righteousness who he compared himself to others who was justified.

It was the lowly tax collector who cried out to God for mercy and grace who went home justified. Listen very carefully to me here because this is at the very heart of Christian theology. It doesn't matter where we have been on the imaginary moral continuum, how people may judge or view us, much less how we compare ourselves to others. There is only one way to be justified in the eyes of the ultimate and final judge, and that is to be declared righteous by Him, to be declared righteous by God. Why would God do that? Why would God declare us righteous when He knows good and well we are not?

The Apostle Paul explains it like this in the all-important doctrinal book called Romans in the New Testament. Listen to this carefully. This is from Romans chapter 3. But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law. That means away apart from our performance. He continues, We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm still quoting now. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned and fallen short of God's glorious standards. Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He does this through Jesus Christ, who frees us from the penalty of our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice of atonement for our sins.

Man, that is in essence the good news right there. This is the gospel message that although, in fact, none of us deserve to be declared righteous by God, we are all sinners who fall far short of who we ought to be. There's a great gulf between us and our holy Creator. Because of His great love for us, He made a way for us to be declared righteous in His sight, a way for us to be justified by His own pronouncement. He made a bridge that spans the gulf between us and Him, and that bridge is the way of Jesus' cross. Did you hear the Apostle Paul?

We are made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, who became the sacrifice of atonement for our sins. When we admit that we are sinners in need of God's grace and personally claim what Jesus did for us on that cross, we are crossing that bridge from death to life, from being a sinner estranged from God to being declared righteous and accepted by God and a part of His family. We are, because of God's grace and on the basis of our faith in Jesus, who was the atonement for our sins, justified by a judicial act of Almighty God, a pronouncement of Almighty God. Not because we are religious and are achieving our righteousness, because that'll never measure up, but because we have placed our faith and confidence in a capable Savior. That is how the once morally blind and lost slaveer John Newton found grace and forgiveness. That's how a sinner like me found grace and forgiveness.

And it's how you can find grace and forgiveness too. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.