The Pharisee’s Prayer

DAILY BYTE

Now it was tradition at certain hours of the day, that people would go to the temple to pray, and this is where we first find our Pharisee. He stands up in the temple to pray, and the word used to describe his standing suggests a very firm, almost aggressive movement. It was as if by his very stance he was separating himself from others.

The text then says, “and he prayed about himself;” which he certainly did do because his prayer contains the word ‘I’ four times in just two sentences!

Now, this Pharisee was in all likelihood not a bad bloke. Had you known him, you might even well have liked him. He tried hard to follow God righteously. He had good morals and ethics. He would have been the kind of person you would have been thrilled to have as a neighbour!

So we should be careful not to demonise this Pharisee at this point, or at any point really, because when we do that, we are separating ourselves from him JUST like he separated himself from others. If we see ourselves as better than him, well, isn’t that precisely what the story is challenging?

We should rather embrace the Pharisee and treat him as one of our own, because truth be told, we CAN be like that. Perhaps not so obviously, we may be a whole lot more subtle about it, but it is still there.

This really is the point of the parable – that pride and self-righteousness are very easy to see in others, but incredibly hard to perceive within ourselves.

Yet, it is vitally important that we learn to do so because pride and self-righteousness are extremely dangerous to us.

I would not be exaggerating to claim that pride is one of the major roots of everything else that can go wrong within us. It is the ‘basic sin’, others follow in its wake, and it is so often the first of many bad choices.

Proverbs tells us that pride comes before a fall. It is an interesting choice of word – ‘fall’ – because we are also told that Satan FELL from heaven because of his pride in his own beauty and because he wanted to be God. We also know that Adam and Eve are a picture of all humanities FALL in trying the same thing in a different way.

The basic element of this good man’s mistake – the FALL of this Pharisee – was that he tried to take his salvation into his own hands; he relied on his own goodness to save him and not God.

It should frighten us to hear Jesus’ plain words that he did not go home ‘justified’ before God.

What I mean by that is our areas of pride and self-righteousness should frighten us – because they can do so much damage within us, and also outside of us in terms of our relationships.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, help us to hear this message of how very dangerous pride and self-righteousness can be to us. Once again, we pray that you would reveal to us the particular area of pride and/or self-righteousness that we may be struggling with. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Luke 18 : 10-12 NIV

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'