* Sermon *

http://english.watv.org/

The world of the righteous and the world of sinners

3. Humble yourself for living a life of sinners

Luke 18:9-14 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "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.' But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

"We know that we ought to humble ourselves; but we may not know how to humble. The first step to humble ourselves is acknowledging we are sinners by saying-"I am sorry," "All is my fault."

Through the case of a tax collector and a Pharisee, Jesus explained well how to humble ourselves.

The following is what happened in a country school long ago. One day a teacher bought wallpaper for the wall of the schoolroom because it became old; and he told his student to paste the wallpaper and went out. But the student had never seen the wallpaper before, and he couldn't distinguish the right from the wrong side of it. After a while, his teacher came back and he stiffened when he saw the wallpaper, because the student pasted on the surface of all the sheets of the wallpaper. In a moment, the teacher hardened his face and he looked upset over it. Then the student noticed that he made a great mistake and began to cry. And then the teacher soothed the student, saying, "Don't cry. It is my fault. It is the first error that I didn't tell you how to paste. And the second one is that I didn't work together with you. And I didn't check if it was the first time for you to do that-this is the third error." The student was deeply impressed by his teacher's saying; for in spite of his error, the teacher took the fault upon himself, holding himself responsible for not teaching him how to do the work more in detail so that he might fully understand. It is said that he lived like his teacher to the end of his life.