Episode Transcript
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Well as returned today. Let us
turn to Luke's Gospel and we'll be looking
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at chapter eighteen, versus nine through
fourteen, of Luke. Chapter Eighteen here
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now is God's word. He also
told this parable to some who trusted in
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themselves that they were righteous and treated
others with contempt. Two men went up
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into the temple to pray, one
a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
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The PHARISEE, standing by himself,
prayed thus God, I thank you
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that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulters, or even
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like this tax collector. I fast
twice a week, I give ties of
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all that I get, but the
tax collector standing far off would not even
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lift up his eyes to heaven,
but beat his breast, saying God be
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merciful to me, a sinner,
I tell you, this man went down
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to his house justified rather than the
other. For everyone who exalts himself will
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be humbled, but the one who
humbles himself will be exalted. On men,
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he may be seated. By the
time that we reached this passage of
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scripture, Jesus has been doing his
ministry for quite some time. He has
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been performing miracles. He has been
a showing in himself the power of God
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and he has been teaching and preaching
as one with authority, not like the
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scribes and the Pharisees and the other
leaders that the people were used to hearing.
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and Jesus has been proclaiming nothing less
than the advent of the Kingdom of
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God. He's been saying the Kingdom
of God is at hand, it is
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here, and he himself has as
much as shown that he is the king,
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not only by his works but also
but his righteousness, his power in
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the miracles and his teachings, that
he is the one that the people have
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been looking forward to as they together
as a nation under the thumb of Rome,
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were looking for their Messiah, were
looking for his savior to redeem them.
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But as Jesus has been preaching about
the kingdom, one of the things
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that has been surprising to the people
is that he is taught that his kingdom
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is not of this world and their
implications to the fact that his kingdom is
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not of this world. The priorities
of the kingdom are not of this world.
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The Way God looks at people is
not the same way that sinful men
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look at people. And the fact
that this kingdom is a redemptive kingdom by
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grace, is one that is fundamentally
different with the way that the kingdoms of
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the world usually work. The way
the people get political power, the way
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that they exalt themselves, the way
that they get the privilege and the protection
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that they need, is fundamentally different
from God and this kingdom then from the
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kingdoms that the people are used to. And so there were times when people
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would hear what Jesus had to say
and they would be happy for the miracles.
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They'd be happy, you know,
especially when he healed them or when
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he multiplied loaves of bread and fishes
and they were able to have a wonderful
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meal. They loved it when he
would, you know, out maneuver the
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Pharisees and other people who he was
debating and he would win arguments, and
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it's kind of like watching a hero
on television or something like that, you
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know, ultimate fighting championship or something
like that. They saw his power and
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they heard and saw his wisdom,
but they did not always apply to themselves
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the implications that Jesus was talking about, and so sometimes we even see,
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sadly, the disciples jockeying with one
another for power and acting in a very
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worldly way, even though they have
been brought into a kingdom which is not
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of this world. And so Jesus
teaches here, among other places, how
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different the values and priorities of his
kingdom are, and he tells his parable
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not just the Pharisees, but to
anyone who would think in a worldly way
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about how they were to to find
their standing before God. And as he
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is taught elsewhere, it is not
those who exalt themselves, it is not
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those who strive and out maneuver one
another who get ahead, but rather it
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as those who humble themselves, who
are servants of all, who will be
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exalted. And this also, he
says, is the way in which people
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enter the Kingdom of God in the
first place. And so he tells this
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parable to all who might be trusting
in themselves that they are righteous, especially
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when they use a worldly standards,
as we will see, and also those
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who treat others with contempt. Jesus
tells US parable. He says two men
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went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a
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tax collector. Now, the Pharisees
were he might think the the the princes
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of the Church of their day.
They were looked at as being the most
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devoted, the most zealous, the
most passionate about the things of God.
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If you were to look around and
say, you know, if you were
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living in that community at that time, and ask yourself, who are the
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most religious people, who are the
people who are really sold out to God
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among us, you would naturally think
of these pharisees. They they had separated
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themselves from other Jews. They were
very strict and very stringent in the law.
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They knew the law and they knew
the traditions that have been handed down
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from their fathers and they were very
zealous about those things and about to things
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such as purity and ceremonial cleanliness,
and they really prided themselves on knowing the
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Law and knowing the word of God. And so this Pharisee, you could
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almost see him strutting into the temple. You know he's one of these.
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He knows it's not only other people
who think well of him, but he
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thinks well of him too, and
he goes to the temple to pray and
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we might think, will isn't that
natural? The zealous person is going to
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the temple to pray. Well,
he's not the only one, though.
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We see also a tax collector.
Now, the tax collectors were basically on
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the other end of the spectrum in
terms of religiosity, in terms of being
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thought of by the people as the
vanguards of their faith. These tax collectors
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were basically sell outs, not to
God but to the Romans. If you
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could think of a more worldly,
earthly occupation to have, it would be
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hard. These are people who worked
for the Romans to collect taxes, to
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help with the oppression of the people
that the Romans were carrying out, and
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they did this to their own prophet. This was their business to help the
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Roman Empire collect taxes and to make
a profit for themselves besides. And these
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people were known for having abuse of
tendencies, because they're incentive was simply profit.
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They wanted to make money, and
so to them they were thinking like
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businessman. They would do anything they
could to make a buck, even if
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it was the expense of their fellow
Israelites. And so the Israelites looked at
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them really as collaborators, much like
someone in France or Holland might look at
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it. Someone as a collaborator during
World War II who, you know,
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went along with the Nazis and and
helped them at the time when they were
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invading Europe. Most of the Jews
despise them and certainly the Pharisees would not
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have thought that they were in the
same league and the same category as themselves.
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And so these two men are there
at the temple praying, they come
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before God, before the place that
God has set his name. They're in
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Jerusalem, and the Pharisee we read
stands by himself and he praised us.
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He says God, I thank you
that I am not like other men.
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He starts out with this PSALMA thanks. I mean that's a good thing,
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right to thank God, to give
God thanks, but he goes on not
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to list the things that God has
done, but he goes on to list
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down his checklist the ways that he
is not like other men, the ways
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that he is in a separate category
all by himself and not like these other
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sinners. He says, I thank
you that I am not like extortioners,
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that is, those who who take
money by force. This word could also
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be translated robbers or swindlers, people
who either physically steal something from others or
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who blackmail them and connive and engage
in corruption to get money from other people.
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He says, I thank you that
I am not like them. And
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going along with that, he mentions
next the unjust, and this word could
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refer generally to people who are thought
of as wicked, like you know,
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if you think about a neighborhood that
you're going to move into, you you
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kind of learned about the bad side
of town where the undesirable people live,
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the people who are kind of lawless
and maybe they're in a gang. He
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says, I'm not like those unjust
people. Or this could even refer to
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those who are in positions of power, like judges who take a bribe those
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who are perverted in their justice.
Interestingly, these first two descriptions, one
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of extortioner and one of being unjust, could have very well fit the reputation
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of the other man who is at
the temple, the tax collector, because
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they too were often unjust and thieves
when they collected their money. You recall
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what Zach he has did it when
he converted, when Jesus called him down
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from the tree, said this day
I get back five times what I've stolen
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from other people see. He used
his power unjustly to steal. And so
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we see this interesting paradox here with
these two men standing at the temple and
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the pharisee distances themselves and he says, I'm glad I'm not like that guy.
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I'm glad I'm not like an adulter
or even like this tax collector.
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He puts him in this same category. We've heard during his campaign season the
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phrase basket of deplorables. Well,
that's basically what this Pharisee is doing.
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He's putting all these people in this
basket, this category, and he's separating
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himself from that category, saying I'm
not like these people and I thank you
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God that I am better than them. And so he begins to describe himself.
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As he prays to God. He
says I fast twice a week and
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I get ties of all that I
get now he, like many of the
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Pharisees, was going well above and
beyond what the law demanded. God demanded
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only on certain times that the Israelites
fast. It was nowhere close to being
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on a weekly basis. And this
guy fast twice a week. That means
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two days a week he's not eating
but he's using that as part of his
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religious service and devotion to God.
And he also says I give ties of
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all that I get. Indeed,
going above and beyond the law. The
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the law commanded that you give a
ten of your harvest. If you brought
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in, you know, wats or
even with your animals, you were to
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give a tenth of them to the
Lord. But, as Jesus mentions,
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these folks were so scrupulous, these
scribes and Pharisees, that they would even
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tithe on their little garden plants.
They're dill and they're mints and their human
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and all these other things. They
would tie on that and give a tenth
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on that. And there's one commentator
who who mentions that's just to be sure
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that everything, every produce that they
took in, was tithed on. They
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would even tie them what they bought
in the marketplace because maybe the person,
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maybe the farmer, who grew that
produce didn't tie enough, and so just
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to close that loophole, they would
tieth even when they bought produce from the
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market place. They would tie it
on that too. They were so scrupulous.
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They wanted to make sure they were
squeaky squeaky clean. They went above
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and beyond and in their mind they
were completely righteous. Now, if we
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think about you know, if you
were part of a religious community, religious
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society, and you had to ask
yourself who are the most righteous people,
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who are the ones who are the
most passionate about God, it would be
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him. There'd be no question about
that. In the eyes of man,
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in the eyes of other people,
it was clearly these pharisees who are the
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most zealous. Well, by contrast
to that, Jesus next mentions the tax
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collector. He stands by himself,
but it's because he's standing far off.
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He does not get too close to
God, even though he's come to the
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temple to pray, even though he
gets close to where God's presence was,
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he doesn't get too close. He
stands far off and he does not even
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lift his eyes to heaven. He
doesn't want the spotlight on himself. He
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doesn't want the emphasis on his works, because he doesn't have anything that he
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is proud of. He's not even
willing to look God in the eyes,
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so to speak, but rather he
beats his breast, which is a sign
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of humility, a sign of debasing
himself before God. And he simply says
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to God, be merciful to me, the sinner. He does not exalt
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himself, he does not want the
light of God's justice to fall upon him,
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he does not want to enumerate all
the different things that he has done.
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He simply puts himself in the category
of this center and begs the Lord
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word for nothing more than mercy.
Now, in many English bibles this is
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translated as a sinner and one might
get the sense that he is simply saying
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I am a sinner like many others, and so he is asking for God's
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mercy. But in the Greek it's
unmistakable. The definite article is used here.
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He's saying I am the sinner.
He's saying I know, between me
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and the Pharisee, there's no comparison. I'm not the good guy in this
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comparison. I'm not the good guy
in the situation. I am the sinner.
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And more than that, he may
even be saying absolutely that I am
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the greatest sinner. The way that
Paul talks about himself is being the chief
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of sinners. He's saying if you
were to look up the word center in
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the dictionary, my picture would be
there. That's who I am. I
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am the sinner in this situation.
And so he casts not the good lights
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of God scrutiny upon Him, but
he casts himself in the worst light possible
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and he says, God be merciful
to me. He throws himself upon God's
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grace. And the result of this, Jesus says, is I tell you,
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this man went down to his house
justified rather than the other for everyone
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who exalts himself will be humbled,
but the one who humbles himself will be
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exalted. And we might ask ourselves
at this point, why is it that
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the Pharisee goes home not justified?
I mean, yes, maybe he was,
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maybe he was a little self centered, maybe who was focusing on himself.
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But but if he's right, if
he really is, that just what's
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the problem? And the answer is
that, even though he did look good
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on the outside, even though other
people might have looked at him as being
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at the vanguard of their faith,
as being one of the most righteous and
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zealous people in their community, God
could see things that other people could not
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see. And that is the situation
with us too. You might look at
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somebody and you might look at their
religiosity. You might look at their church
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attendance, or you know that what
they put in the offering, play it,
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or the different ways that they volunteer, which are all good things.
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Nothing against charity, nothing against volunteerism, and we may come away saying that
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person is truly righteous, that person
could stand before God and be acquitted.
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And yet if we think that,
if we stop there, we fail to
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realize that God's sight, his vision, is much more penetrating than ours.
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For God can see even into the
heart of man, and he could see
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into the hearts of even those who
were looked at as the most religious of
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people. Indeed, they could fool
other there people and they could fool even
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themselves, but they could not full
God. One of the reasons that Jesus
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uses a pharisee in this parable here
is because these people were quintessentially guilty of
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this very sin. In another place
in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus actually pronounced woes
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against the scribes and the Pharisees.
He said in Chapter Twenty three, says
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woe to use scribes and pharisees,
hypocrites, for you tithe mints and dill
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and Human and I'm the GLADE.
It neglected the weighty your matters of the
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law, Justice and Mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without
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neglecting the others. You Blind Guide, straining out in nat and swallowing a
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camel. Woe to use scribes and
pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the
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outside of the cup in the plate, but inside they're full of greed and
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self indulgence. You Blind Pharisee,
first clean the inside of the Cup in
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the plate that the outside also may
be clean. Woe to use, scribes
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and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you
were outwardly like whitewashed tombs, which appear
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beautiful, but within are full of
dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So
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you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hip,
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hypocrisy and lawlessness. He see,
basically the problem with this Pharisee is
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that he was wrong. He was
exalting himself unjustly. He thought he was
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right. He was self deluded enough
to think that he was righteous, and
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certainly other people would have thought,
Oh yes, he ties, you know,
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everything he gets. He's fasting and
praying twice a week. I mean,
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if you knew someone like this,
see you know, you'd probably think
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they were the most religious person around. And yet what man could not see?
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God could see that beyond that that
glittering cleanness of the outside was the
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most unclean thing imaginable, death and
decay and decomposition, as you would find
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in a grave. Inwardly, they
were wicked, and that is why it
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was such a dangerous and foolish thing
for this man to hold up his righteousness
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before God and say, here I
am, God, look at me,
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look how righteous I am, as
if that could justify him. That was
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indeed a tragic and terrible thing for
him to do, to be that deluded,
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and it is for that reason that
he walked away not justified. Well,
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we might ask, then, well
why? What about the tax collector?
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We know that the Pharisee is not
that righteous. So okay, he
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couldn't fool God, but why is
it that the tax collector is justified?
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Because he just admitted that he's not
righteous either? He's a sinner, and
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just because somebody humbles himself, just
because they admit that they are sinful,
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doesn't mean that they're going to get
off the hook. There are people,
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even though there's an old saying there's
nobody guilty in prison. Everybody thinks they're
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innocent, but there are people in
prison who actually admit that they are guilty.
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They'll tell you I did it,
I was wrong and I've changed,
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but they still have to serve their
sentence. They're still sitting in prison paying
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their debt, even though they admit
that they are wrong. And so we
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may ask, why is it that
this tax collector is being not only,
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you know, shown some mercy,
but he's actually being pronounced justified as he
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goes home, just for throwing himself
at the mercy of God and just for
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admitting that he is a sinner.
And the answer to that we can find
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in one detail that Jesus mentions at
the beginning of this parable. Notice what
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he says at the beginning, in
verse ten, that two men went up
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into the temple to pray. This
symbol here alone gives us a glimpse into
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why it is that this tax collector
would go home justified. God gave many
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symbols to Israel, but the temple
was the symbol par excellence of what happened
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when people were cleansed of sins.
The priests ministered their daily. Animals were
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sacrifice daily, blood was shed daily
as people would confess their sins and as
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they would be pronounced clean and forgiveness, and as those sins were toned for
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symbolically at that temple, what God
was trying to tell his people through all
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the centuries, both when the Tabernacle
was there and later the temple, was
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that he was a god who redeems, he was a God who forgives.
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He was saying to his people,
yes, you are not good enough in
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yourself. Yes, you do fall
short of my standards, but I am
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able to provide for you what you
are not able to provide to me.
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I am able to give you a
righteousness that is sufficient to meet my bar
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of justice. I am able to
give you the peace of mind to know
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that what you have, because I've
given it to you, is good enough
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to survive the Judgment Day. And
that is the reason, because of the
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God that he was coming to,
that this tax collector went home justified.
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He went to the right God,
he went to a god of grace,
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he went to a God who is
powerful enough to save, and he flung
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himself at the feet of this God
and he received mercy from this God.
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That is why he went home rather
than the Pharisee justified, because the PHARISEE
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did not do any of that.
He did not want God's mercy, he
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did not ask God's mercy. He
thought that what he had done was not
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only good enough to to pass God's
borrow justice, but was good enough that
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he could thank God for it and
also look down on others. Not I
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don't know if there's been a time
in your life when you thought things were
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going well, maybe financially or maybe
in your marriage. You thought things were
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just humming along, but then all
of a sudden, one day you uncover
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evidence, to your surprise, to
your horror, that things are not as
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good as they appeared. Then now
that check that you wrote was going to
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balance because you didn't have those funds. Or now the marriage that you thought
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was healthy was not so healthy and
now you had to reassess things and you
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realize I was wrong and it's a
horrifying thing. Well, how much more
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horrifying would it be to think that
you are just before the Holy God,
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that your eternal life was secure because
of all the righteous, charitable deeds and
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all the external things that you did
throughout your life and you brought them to
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God like Cain bringing his fruit to
God, only to have God say no.
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I reject that. That's not good
enough. What horror that would be.
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But, beloved, we don't have
to do that, we don't have
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to roll that dice, we don't
have to risk that, because God has
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already given to us a righteousness that
is more than sufficient that we can have
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complete peace of mind that it will
pass his scrutiny, that it will pass
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muster, that even now we can
know that we are justified before him,
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just as this tax collector went home
to his house justified at that moment,
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because what God gives is sufficient.
and Jesus told this parable to the people
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that he was hearing, or that
we're hearing him, so that they would
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not make the same tragic mistake as
that Pharisee, because before their very presence
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was someone greater than the temple.
Jesus Christ himself was the one that all
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those sacrifices pointed to and the priest
pointed to and that even a temple pointed
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to, and he was there saying
I'm at guys, I'm the one who's
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going to die for you. I'm
the one who's going to cleanse you of
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your sins. And so he wanted
to tell them in unmistakable terms to get
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their eyes off of their own pretended
righteousness and instead to trust in him,
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who could give them exactly what they
needed for eternity and beloved, this is
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still the case today. If you
are here thinking that because you know you're
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a nice person, you're a charitable
person, you give to the right charities
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and you feel good about yourself when
you give to night charities and you come
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to church and you know everybody thinks
well of you and you look good and
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all that, and you think,
I'm okay, God, God thinks of
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me the same way as other people. Think again, because God's law goes
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all the way to the heart.
It's not just about the externals and it
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certainly is not about the way the
world looks at us. But God knows
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exactly what is going on inside.
And realize that, even though he knows
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this and even though he is a
holy God, more holy than we could
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ever be in ourselves, it is
provided a holiness to US freely. And
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if we cling to that, if
we beat our breast as this tax collector
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and humble ourselves before the Lord that
he will exalt us at the proper time.
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And so, beloved, let us
come before God truly and not be
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deluded, as the world is,
but come before a holy God humbly and
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waiting for him to be the one
to lift us up, as he will
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when Christ returns. Let us pray
