Publican and Pharisee: Two Portraits / Two Mirrors

The point: Behold your own faces as the portrait becomes a mirror, identifying with either the proud Pharisee or the humbled Publican.

The entire sermon is framed as an excursion to a portrait gallery, with Jesus as the curator, to help listeners visualize the two characters and their spiritual states.

And may close with that offer of mercy. We plead through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now this morning with this portion of the word of God before us, we're going to make an excursion together, one that most of us would not make on a Lord's day, one that may be a little bit more difficult, one that may be a little bit more difficult, one that many of us would never make on any day of the week, for our excursion is to a portrait gallery.

5:18 - 5:52 Read in full sermon

The point: Behold your own faces as the portrait becomes a mirror, identifying with either the proud Pharisee or the humbled Publican.

The central metaphor of the sermon, explaining that after observing the portraits, they will transform into mirrors, forcing personal introspection and identification.

And we're going to be escorted to that portrait gallery by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He will be our tour guide or the curator of the art gallery into which we are taken this morning. And what is unusual is that the Lord Jesus is the one who has painted the very portraits that he himself will explain to us. We will stand with the Lord Jesus looking at the portraits that he has painted and listen to his own word as he explains to us the significance of these portraits. However, these are very unusual portraits because they have the unusual faculty and ability. Once we have g...

5:54 - 7:14 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But when we stand before these portraits and we gaze upon them and they turn into mirrors, those mirrors polished by the very rectitude and the pure holy attributes of God reflect perfectly what we really are like.

Compares distorted fun house mirrors to the perfect, rectifying mirrors of God's word, which reflect our true spiritual condition without distortion.

There are dominant features in both portraits that are almost the mirror image of the other, in that they are both creatures made in the image of God. And they are both creatures who fell in Adam and have come under the condemnation of God. And as we look at both portraits, standing before the one and before the other, and there long enough for the portrait to turn into a mirror, these mirrors are never like the mirrors in the fun house. Some of you kids have stood before the mirrors in the fun house. You maybe just 4'2 inches tall and you stand before one mirror and it makes you taller than S...

16:41 - 17:43 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He had such a low, unworthy, trivial view of God that he thought the God of the universe, who spoke worlds into being by the word of his mouth, brought them into being, and out of the womb of nothing, by sheer creative s…

Describes the Pharisee as a 'self-inflated religious balloon and windbag' to vividly portray his pride and emptiness before God.

The Pharisee was full of himself and full of pride. He was a self-inflated religious balloon and windbag who dares to vent some of that very wind in the presence of God in the kind of prayer that he prays. But at the foundation of the contrast in the two portraits is this radically different conception of God. Though the Pharisee was a very religious man, and though outwardly many parts of his life were very meticulous in religious things, he had so small, so trivial a view of God that he actually believed...

28:02 - 28:46 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He had such a low, unworthy, trivial view of God that he thought the God of the universe, who spoke worlds into being by the word of his mouth, brought them into being, and out of the womb of nothing, by sheer creative s…

Illustrates the Pharisee's trivial view of God, believing he could earn God's favor through good deeds, like accumulating 'brownie points'.

spiritual life and his religious deeds could earn enough brownie points that God would look favorably upon him now and take him to heaven when he died. He had such a low, unworthy, trivial view of God that he thought the God of the universe, who spoke worlds into being by the word of his mouth, brought them into being, and out of the womb of nothing, by sheer creative speaking, the God who upholds all things by the word of his power, the God who needed nothing from anything that he ever created, who is totally self-sufficient in himself, he's got such a trivial, small God that he really thinks...

28:54 - 30:18 Read in full sermon

The point: Be honest about whether your self-perception is rooted in the influence of a Christian home or religious practices, giving you 'brownie points' before God.

A childhood ditty is quoted to humorously but pointedly illustrate the Pharisee's self-love and self-congratulation, which is horrendous when directed towards God.

he was full of self-esteem self-confidence and self-congratulation when it says he stood thus and prayed with himself that's what he was really doing he was really just bragging into his own ears God wasn't impressed with any of this but he's so full of self-esteem self-confidence self-congratulation when I was a kid there was a little ditty we used to sing I love me I think I'm grand I go to the movies just to hold my hand I put my arm around my waist I get fresh I slap my face silly little ditty isn't it innocent enough when kids sing it but when a man dares to sing it in the presence of alm...

41:54 - 43:20 Read in full sermon