TWO MEN WENT UP INTO THE TEMPLE TO PRAY

The Lord Jesus turned again to the Pharisees, described as being self-righteous, trusting in themselves and despising everyone else. This was another parable about prayer. In the previous one He showed the character of the God to whom our prayers are directed. Now, He teaches concerning the character of those who pray. In the first, we see that God answers prayer but now we learn what kind of prayer He answers.

Two men went into the temple to pray; two sinners approaching the God of heaven in the house of prayer. But there the similarity ends, for these two men were different in every way! One was a Pharisee, the other a publican, a tax gatherer. People would have known what they were, just by their appear­ance. Pharisees openly flaunted their religion in order to receive the praise of men. This man was proud to be a Pharisee. On the other hand, folk would have recognized the tax gatherer, despised as a traitor who collected tax from his own people for the occupying Romans. He knew what people thought of him!

See them in the temple court: the Pharisee standing proudly in the presence of God and the tax gatherer standing uncomfort­ably, just inside, with his eyes to the ground.

Listen to their prayers. The Pharisee is praying ‘with him­self’. It goes no higher than the roof! He is thanking God, not for His mercy and grace, but that he is so much better than other sinful men, like this tax gatherer, who in his opinion was guilty of extortion, unrighteousness, and probably, adultery. He not only kept the law but fasted and tithed far more than was required! But listen to the man who is praying to the God of heaven. He’s beating his breast. The problem is in his heart and he knows it. Without daring to look up, he cries, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’.

See them leave: the Pharisee, self-centred and proud, far from God in his empty religion, heading for eternal damnation; the tax gatherer, justified on the grounds of his repentance and God’s merciful provision, the blood of sacrifice, and bound for heaven. How wonderful to be ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’, Rom. 3. 24.