This is how the publican prayed. We need to follow it carefully. Our whole eternal destiny and the happiness and our peace with God will depend upon whether we understand this: how can you approach God? How are you going to get a blessing from him? What is it that makes it possible for you to be one of those who comes to Christ, and receives his pardon and receives his new life? What makes it possible is approaching him in the way that is described here. The publican was standing afar off. What did that mean? It meant that when this man prayed, he didn't go bowling into the temple, marching straight down the aisle, standing at the front, proudly presenting himself to God. He just crept in at the back and stood in a dark shadow near a pillar afar off. Why did he do that? Because in his heart he just could scarcely believe that he had a right to be there. He could barely believe that God would listen to him. He believed it just enough to go in, and he crept into the door and he stood there and he prayed. That is the way in which you have to approach God. You have to believe that, even though you have lived your whole life justifying yourself, if you go to God now, and you ask him to wash you clean, he will. But you have to realise how little you deserve it, and the attitude which goes humbly to God is the attitude which is blessed. There is nothing you can offer God. He will only save your soul and convert you and change you as an act of complete mercy.
If you want to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be pardoned and receive a blessing, you must feel it. You cannot come coldly; you cannot come academically. You may be able to join the Tory party that way; you can join the Labour party; you can do many things that way, but you cannot come to Christ without feeling. You have got to feel your sin; you have got to desperately want him. You have got to mean it. You have almost got to as beat your breast – you feel it so strongly that you want to be forgiven and you want to be saved. Can you imagine a self-righteous person thinking like that or feeling like that? The self-righteous man has very audible prayers. He is only ever praying to himself. He is so dignified, and so controlled, and so matter of fact and polished. But the person who is going to get the blessing cries out to God.
‘[He] smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.’ What he said in the Greek is ‘God be merciful to me the sinner.’ In that moment that man thought there couldn't be a worse sinner than him. ‘Surely, he thought, God has never pardoned anybody as wretched as me.’ You may not have committed adultery; you may not have committed murder; you may not have been guilty of extortion, but there's room for every single one of us to feel, surely, God has never dealt with anybody as wretched as me.
I remember the case of somebody who had never done anything which you might call an extreme sin. Of course like all of us he had the wretched fallen heart of a sinner, the selfishness and the pride and all the rest of it. But when this man was converted he literally fell on his knees and he said, ‘Surely, God has never had to deal with somebody as sinful as me.’ Why did he think he was such a sinner? Why did he think he was so much worse than anybody else? For this reason. He had been brought up in a Christian home and he had rejected the message and the love of God for a long, long time. There's a different reason for everybody, but every single one of us has reasonable grounds to feel that there couldn't be a more wretched person than me. When you go to Christ and you really mean it, that is what you feel: ‘What a sinner, what a wretched person I am. That is the way God hears.
Such is the amazing love and mercy of God that he takes proud Pharisees very often. Because he cannot save them while they are proud and self-righteous, he turns them into humble people like this publican. What a marvellous thing! If we go to him in pride or if we ignore him in our pride, we can never get a blessing from God. But if we see ourselves as poor needy sinners then he will hear us and bless us, and in his mercy he often takes us from one situation and puts us into the other. The Apostle Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, the leading exponent of Judaism in his day. He was full of himself, a proud Pharisee, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he calls himself. He was convinced that he was righteous. How could God deal with a man like that? God brought him down and turned him into a needy sinner, one who could see himself. May God do it to many of us. We have all been proud and self-justifying people, and God has brought us down and enabled us to see the truth about our wretchedness and our need. If you want your soul to be saved, go like this publican. See him in your mind's eye as he goes into the temple. His eyes are on the ground; he is full of feeling. He is beating his breast. He is making no excuses for himself at all. He simply says, ‘Oh God be merciful to me the sinner.’ If you pray like that, then something will happen to you even this very day, which will make such a difference to you, that you will never forget it. God will save your soul, and wash away your sin, and make you his own child, and bless you for all eternity.