Praying for Mercy

This is our last week in Red Letter Prayers. Just as a reminder, there will be no 1:30PM church service next week. We will be meeting on Easter Sunday, but we will leave right after service so that you can go home to your families and do Easter Dinner. Okay, enough house keeping. We started the series by talking about how praying God’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven gives us power and authority here in our lives. We said that power and authority comes from the act of reconciliation that God brings to us through Jesus, but as a result of that, through our own forgiveness of others. I concluded that day that if we truly believe this and pray this that there would be irreconcilable forgiveness happening which would shake the foundations of our lives. Additionally, we travelled to Gethsemane, where we found Jesus being swayed by his prayer. He wasn’t swaying God, he was finding solace in the hard work which was God’s will. Sometimes in our lives, we have to understand that for God’s good, we need to pay dearly. Because we need to pay dearly, yes it will cost us, we need to pray this prayer of, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” This means that we’re telling God that we’re ready to submit to what God has in store for us. What Jesus teaches us about prayer is that, it’s not only asking God to do His will, it is our conversation and agreement with God to submit to what He wants. Today, we look at how not to pray. This isn’t really a prayer of Jesus. Rather, it is a parable told by Jesus about how not to pray. In telling this parable, Jesus was instilling into his hearers a mindset and a heart to pray powerfully like Jesus. Let’s read Luke 18:9-14. 9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 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, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down 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.” – Luke 18:9-14 Clearly there are two types of prayers going on here in this story. The first type is called the “humble brag” and the second is called the “hopeless.” I gave them those names myself. I’m going to go over them in a second, but I want to divert your attention to who Jesus was talking to. He was talking to hypocrites. Look at what it says in verse nine. Jesus described the characteristics of a hypocrite. Now that I’ve said that, I know half of you stopped listening and are ready to turn off right now because nobody in this room is a hypocrite. But let me get your attention because if you had that thought, you may be exactly the type of hypocrite that Jesus is talking about. Just to get our definition of “hypocrite” on the same page, a “hypocrite” is somebody who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. Now, when you really think about that—we’re all hypocrites. We’ll all hypocrites because we believe in God and that we should follow and obey his commands, but we don’t necessarily adhere to them ourselves, do we? Better yet, we feel that we should be treated a certain way and when we don’t get treated that way, we become an unrighteous color of angry, don’t we? But God forbid we don’t treat another person the way they feel they should be treated, aren’t we the first trying to sway them into understanding? Of course we are, because we’re all hypocrites. So, this lesson, as easy as it is, carries so much weight in our lives, that we should be very careful to consider what Jesus is saying about our own prayers and our prayer lives. The first type of prayer was said by a “Pharisee.” The Pharisee, as demonized as he or she is, in the Bible, is no different than people who consider themselves as part of the Republican party today. The Pharisee in this story did something good that Jesus subtly mentions: he stood by himself (v11). He wasn’t bragging. He wasn’t show boating. He wanted, for as far as the eye can see, try to be a good person and pray in private to God—to have that unique time of communion. It’s a good thing. Nothing wrong so far. Here’s where the prayer starts to go awry. The Pharisee goes off in a “humble-brag.” If you don’t know what a humble-brag is, let me tell you what that is. It’s when you say something like this, “I don’t want to brag, but I just saved three dogs from that burning house over there and I got third degree burns on my arms.” Okay, that was an exaggeration, but really, it sounds like you’re being humble, but you’re really not. It really is like saying something like this, “95%, well, the good news is that I didn’t study THAT hard for this test.” I know, too close to home. Let me give you a more churchy example: You don’t sing the song of praise to God perfectly, like God Himself wasn’t standing here inhaling the singing. This is the humble brag, “that was good for a small church like this, I only got two hours to practice in between my utterly busy life.” You know people like this or people who pray like this. The problem was that his prayer was kind of dumb and pointless. If we read verse 11 and 12 again, here’s what the guy is saying, “Thanks for making me better than those other hypocrites. Thanks for allowing me to do the bare minimum. Much love.” This is wrong, not because he was wrong for saying something like that, but because he is trying to justify himself. God doesn’t care about all that stuff. Here’s what God says through the prophet Hosea in chapter 6, verse 6, “for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” In Isaiah, God says this: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats… Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” (Isaiah 1:11, 16-17). Here it is again from the mouth of David, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17). If you don’t know where that’s from, it’s the verses immediately following the song, “Create in Me a Clean Heart.” What Jesus is teaching us here is that we don’t need to play the comparison game with God. We don’t need to pray because and for the sake of trying to prove our worthiness. He already knows that we’re unworthy and wretchedly worthless. In fact, there is nothing charming or wonderful that we can do for God to really warrant a good feeling. I mean, if we could impress God, then He wouldn’t be God, He’d just be a figment of our imaginations. Personally, I don’t think I would want a God that I could impress with my so called actions and words, that’s a pretty weak God, if you ask me. You see, what we think is impressive in our faith or in our actions or according to whatever motivations we have in our so called altruistic heart for doing what we do is really an abomination in the sight of God. People might love it. People might think you’re the awesomest Christian for whatever it is that you do, but to God, it’s not. Especially here in the Korean church. There are some things that I could do that we could do, that I know would make people so especially happy. But the reason I don’t do them is not because I want to be a rebel, but because the motivations of my heart would be to justify myself before them and that is an abomination before God. Do you all understand that prayer is not about justifying ourselves before God. This is what Jesus is teaching us. We’re not in a competition for God’s love and adoration. He is love and therefore has enough love to be spread around for more than enough of all of us. But now, Jesus gets into the second type of prayer that I call the “hopeless.” The reason it is called the “hopeless” is because the person praying is only sees total depravity in what he is and does. Doctors and psychos would diagnose this as an individual suffering from survivor’s guilt or even extreme depression. Listen to what this tax collector says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Unlike the first guy who really trusted that they were perfect in the eyes of God, that God was somehow indebted to listen to what they had to say, like most other religions; this guy was humiliated before God. He couldn’t even lift his eyes up to face the rap. He tried punishing himself. He expressed his repentance and humility in what he did; and his gesture, when he addressed himself to his devotions, was expressive of great seriousness and humility, and the proper clothing of a broken, penitent, and obedient heart. Fear and shame hindered him from saying much; sighs and groans swallowed up his words; but what he said was to the purpose. He has no dependence but upon the mercy of God, that, and that only, he relies upon. Here’s what I want to press upon all of you today as we close this series on Jesus’ prayers. Praying, the way of praying, the power of prayer has nothing to do with us or our faith. The power of prayer has everything to do with the love of God that is poured upon us who pray. When we abase ourselves before God, as subject to him and begs humbly for grace and mercy, find ourselves at the point of exaltation by God. This is the power when we understand who we really are and how much we really are when we pray. Our prayers begin to unfold what God can do for some body who doesn’t deserve it. God answers prayers and responds to our prayers because of His name sake and not our own. This is the beauty and majesty of prayer. This is the testimony of prayer. I’m going to be honest and tell you that the nature of prayer is that—it changes how we see ourselves and find ourselves wanting from God and the world. I want to sing this song: From the the Inside Out, and as we sing, can we take a moment to humble ourselves and pray before Easter, and ask God that we can find mercy and grace through our prayers to him. Let’s sing.