Only Bad People Go To Heaven
ONLY BAD PEOPLE GO TO HEAVEN Trinity
Luke 18:9-17 29.12.19
The Chinese government has just decreed that all religions are now to be in line with “the requirements of the new era”. Christianity has been singled out, and the edict requires that future editions of the Bible be re-written to conform. Which parts in particular do you think they find so dangerous?
The edict says it is the parables of Jesus. The parables? Those homely stories and innocuous sayings we often reserve for the kids. Why the parables?
I think Xi Xing Ping and co know that there is enough dynamite in a parable like the one we read from Luke 18, to undermine down every other system there is. Every religion, every political system, every ism anywhere. I suspect they know that it is more revolutionary than anything that came from Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Two men have come to the temple to pray. They could not be more opposite. One man is a good man … a very, very good man. He is religious. He applies the laws of God in his life to the letter:
- God’s law required a farmer to bring 10% of a wheat harvest to the temple … this man brought 10% of the parsley plant.
- The law of God required at most one day of fasting every week. This man did it twice a week.
- A thief, an adulterer or a crook? Not even close.
If you graded everyone on a scale of goodness, this man had to be in the top 1%. He knows that he really is good.
There is a second man praying. In every sense he is a BAD MAN. He is a tax collector which means he works for the occupying forces against his own people. If he is typical of Roman agents, he will add as big a margin to the taxes as they people can bear – for himself. If the GOOD MAN is not an extortioner, the BAD MAN certainly is.
If the GOOD MAN is in the top 1% on the goodness scale, the BAD MAN is in the bottom 1%. By every measure, they are the facts. The bad man IS bad and the good man IS good.
Now here’s the question: Both men are praying … which man does God hear? Which one does God accept? Is there a path to God for the good man, or the bad man?
If you are religious, that question matters. Improve your goodness by washing in the Ganges, make a pilgrimage to Mecca, observe Sabbath days, get baptised at the start and receive the last rites at the end, and be as good, good, good as you can be in between.
Even for people who are not religious, there is often a sneaking suspicion that the question might matter at the end. So, just in case, make sure that your list of good things is longer than the bad. At the very least, you want them to say that it was like that when it comes to your funeral.
Does God hear the GOOD MAN or the BAD MAN? Who will it be right for in the end?
Who cares what religions say? Or what our friends say at our funerals? They might all be wrong. The question is what does the Living God say? What is the verdict of Jesus, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords? What does he say?
Verse 14 “I tell you, this man (the BAD MAN) went down to his house justified, rather than the other (the GOOD MAN).” Has he mixed up his words – does he mean to say it the other way round?
No. Jesus says the BAD MAN is “justified”. He goes home with a record that says “NOT GUILTY”. The GOOD MAN goes home under a “GUILTY” verdict, with his criminal record unchanged.
Just to be clear …
- Jesus is NOT saying that no good people have a clean record.
- He is NOT saying that all bad people have a clean record.
But he is saying that this man with the bad record was declared by God to be “not guilty”.
What makes the difference? The GOOD MAN thinks that he can fix his guilty verdict. The BAD MAN knows that God alone can fix it. His prayer was so, simple. Verse 13 “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” We could translate his words more fully: “God, be propitiated to me”. That’s the word he uses.
He knows that God is angry with him. He knows he can’t satisfy that anger. He knows that God alone can make things right.
This man doesn’t know how God will save him from his desperately bad situation but we do. We know that “God put forward Jesus Christ as a propitiation by his blood.” (Romans 3:25). The bad man didn’t need to know how God would remove his anger against him. He needed only to know that he could, and he would.
Religions and isms fall into one of two groups: either you fix the problem or God does. You save yourself from God, or he saves you from himself.
Can he? Does he? Will he? Yes, yes, yes. The Bible says that He is “rich in mercy”, that he “abounds in grace” and he “shows great compassion”.
This man is humble, but the parable is not about humble people making themselves right with God. It’s about the amazing mercy of God. It is a story about God who puts people in the right. It is a story that says God alone can fix what we will never fix.
A young hitchhiker and I got to talking about Jesus: how Jesus showed such great mercy to sick children and grieving parents, starving crowds and demon possessed people and to bad people, people like this man in the parable.
This young guy told me that Jesus could never show mercy to him. He had a criminal record; he was on heavy drugs; he had abandoned a pregnant girlfriend; and he had tried to kill himself.
Could he be friends with the Living God? Could he have a clean record in heaven and a totally clean start with the Living God? What would you have told him?
On the basis of his goodness? No, he had no more than I have but on the basis of the mercy of Jesus to the undeserving.
Are you like that young guy? Too bad for Jesus? Your bad record sends you away from Jesus, rather than to him?
Have you decided that your child or grand-child, your ex business partner or spouse, friend or neighbour who has made a mess of their own life and of others as well, is too bad for Jesus? Too far out of reach of his mercy? The parable tells you that that’s not possible.
I’ll tell you what’s possible: to be so good, so upright, so law-abiding, so wonderful a parent, so faithful a worker and so loyal as a friend, so self-righteous in fact, that you don’t think you need the righteousness that Jesus gives.
Some people think that badness is a block to God’s mercy. It isn’t. Others see goodness as a bridge to God. That also is wrong.
Could Jesus be any clearer about who is right with God? Not the good man who trades on his merit. But the bad woman who leans into the mercy of Jesus. It’s mercy, or it’s nothing. It’s God’s action not yours. If Jesus is right, and you have been wrong, then it would be crazy to keep holding to your view over his, wouldn’t it?
Being justified is a change in God’s verdict, in heaven. What does that look like on earth? If the mercy of God is the ROOT of everything, what’s the FRUIT?
In a single phrase, you are free.
- When Satan accuses you of not being good enough, you are free to agree with him and because that’s not the biggest deal, his accusations no longer matter.
- You are free from the treadmill of agonising over whether your goodness today has been enough and if it isn’t, of working out what you can do tomorrow to even the balance. Free from the agony of wondering whether the extra is enough. This is a killer of a way to live … it chains people tightly.
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You are free to love other people. Did you notice to whom Jesus spoke this parable? Luke says it was “to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (v9). Merit based religion means you naturally despise people who are not as far up the ladder as you are.
More than that, if being right with God is about being in the top 2% or even the top 50%, then you need people lower on the scale than you. You need them to keep being bad. You have to keep all the sleazy people and the criminals and the failures below you, so that you can keep your position on the ladder.
This bad man doesn’t compare himself to others. He calls himself “the sinner”, not “a sinner”. Comparisons with others don’t matter. That means he is free to love them.
- You are free to welcome the “wrong people” into the kingdom of Jesus. Can bad people sit at his table? Sure. Primitive pagans and hateful atheists? Sure. People who have hurt or abused you or your trust or spurned your love? Sure. People without clout – just ordinary, little people? Yes.
Can the widow at the beginning of this chapter, the lady who has no rights in Israel, be in the kingdom? How about the blind beggar at the end of the chapter, the man who calls out to Jesus only to be told that Jesus wouldn’t listen to him?
How about little children who have no money, no political influence, no standing, no nothing? Jesus’ own disciples want them barred from Jesus, we read in verse 14.
What if it’s about mercy? What if mercy creates a level playing field that means it’s not about age or size or goodness? Such that widows, blind beggars and little children find just as much a place at the table as the biggest or the best people? Mercy means you are free to welcome all who turn to Jesus.
This week at Summerfest we’ll be showing Jesus to a couple of hundred children and junior teens. Is there room in the kingdom of Jesus for a 4-year old boy? A 10 year old girl? A 14-year old who has caused only grief to others? Of course, if it is all about entry by mercy and not by anything in them.
- One last freedom – perhaps especially for the Summerfest team, but also for us all. When you know that entry into the family of Jesus is by mercy alone, and not by merit, you know that you are dealing with something that stands apart from every other ism and religion there is. That makes you free to be bold.
In King Street Newtown, in Sydney, the Thai restaurant is next to the Indian which is next to the Chinese, which is next to the Nepalese … and so on, for the length of the street.
Our gospel is not just one more among many others. Mercy makes it different, from all the others – ALL of them. That sets us free to be bold as we offer something astonishingly and radically unique.
Mercy sets you free, dear friends.
- Free from any power in Satan’s accusations.
- Free from slavery to have to do more and more and more.
- Free from having to score others, and free to love them.
- Free to welcome all the ‘wrong’ people into the family of God.
- Free to be bold in the way we love and speak for Jesus.
Remember, being loving and accepting and humble have never been the basis for being right with God. The basis has always been mercy. It is the ROOT – these things are the FRUIT.
The ROOT says that God must do it. All of it. Satisfy his own anger and declare me right in his sight because of his amazing love and unbounded mercy, that is just what he does.
Is this so familiar, it has lost its edge and force for you? Might you need to come back here in a new way, at the end of one year and the beginning of another? Does your prayer need to be:
“Lord, with all the changes in my life, for which I am so grateful:
àat heart I remain by nature the crook, the sleaze, the adulterer, the pimp, the druggie; how can I treat anyone with contempt?
àHow can I ever be self-righteous, when I am THE sinner?
àI stand before you not because of any merit in me – for there is none – but on the basis of your abounding mercy and steadfast love;
àLord, show me again, the abounding mercy of Jesus and his love which passes understanding;
àmake it for me that in 2020, I live as a person who is amazed at the mercy of Jesus for sinners and lost people, exactly like me.”
Would the Living God hear you, if you payed that prayer? Sure, because the true and living God always hears those whom religion says he does not hear.