Title: Who Was Justified?
Contents
Sunday day worship sermon
Text: Luke 18:9-14
Title: Who Was Justified?
The Israelites became God's people through Abraham. There are many gods in the world, but there is only one God who lives and works. Living and working means eternal life. To become such a people of God cannot but be a great blessing. Therefore, the people of Israel have a strong national pride because of the fact that they serve God more than any other nation in the world, and they have been living with a completely exclusive attitude toward foreign nations.
To such people, a carpenter's son who has no appearance and no status in the world appears out of the blue, admonishing them and serving God, do it right! Do not serve God only on the outside, but serve God from the heart of your heart. At that time, who would have recognized him as the Son of God? But he is the Son of God, no matter what anyone says. He is our savior.
If you look at the content of today's text, "And he spoke in parables to those who believed in themselves as righteous and despised others." Among the Israelites, those called leaders had already declared themselves righteous. They are the ones who mistakenly believe that becoming a leader through zeal is ‘righteousness’. So, those who worked less hard or acted a little bit against the law were treated as unrighteous sinners and refused to engage in business. How foolish must they have seemed in the eyes of the Lord? Although human beings could never justify themselves, when they say that they are justified themselves, we can see that they themselves have become another God.
It is a fact that everyone knows that the standard of faith is to be God. But the reality is that this is not the case. It may be that the Israelites were zealous and served God according to their own opinion, but the perspective of the Lord, the Son of God, is vastly different from their own. This is also true of those who claim to believe in Jesus today. If the Son of God came and confirmed the faith of today's Christians, what could be more fertile than the people of Israel then? At that time, the people of Israel had a physical law, so they wanted to live according to that law. However, Gentiles now think that it is okay to live as long as they call on the name of Jesus.