That's the only way to approach God. If you come into a church where the gospel is preached, you must have had some interest in order to come. Someone perhaps has invited you to come. You have some interest, perhaps, in knowing how to find God. Maybe you are still, to a large degree self-confident, self-opinionated. Like the Pharisee, you're not actually asking for anything from God yet. As you look through that Pharisee's prayer, he didn't ask for anything. Why didn't he need anything from God? He didn't even understand what God had to give him, and it may be that this is your position. You have gone to a Christian service of worship because you have been invited, but you don't feel you need anything from God. You don't really understand enough about conversion to even desire it or realize how much you need it. But here is how you come. If the time comes that you are going to be converted to God, and you are going to know him, you will come with this great sense of unworthiness. That is the only way to approach God. You will come to him and you will feel, ‘How can I come at all? How can I come with a life like the life I have lived, and all my contempt for him, and all my rotten pride. I have lived for myself, and I thought I was so clever and I had no need of him? How can I be sure he will accept me at all?’ You will come in fear and trepidation, as this tax gatherer did. He just about got inside the door and direct his prayers to God, realizing he had no right to be there. Here is the way in which you come to God. You realize that you deserve nothing and you have no right to come at all. You realize that it will only be because God is a God of grace and deals with people who deserve nothing, that he will hear you at all. That is the spirit in which you have to come.
We can be more encouraging than that. While you have to come to him thinking, ‘Why should he deal with me? I have got nothing to bring him but my filthy rags, this fallen heart, my selfishness, my pride, my covetousness. It's true that I have sinned against him all my life. I can only come on the grounds that he will have mercy towards me. Yet we can be more encouraging, because it is the simple truth that whoever has come to our God, whoever has come to our Father and our Saviour in that frame of mind, has always been received by him, always. Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ says that whoever comes to him in that frame of mind will not be turned away. But that is how you have to come, not proudly, like the Pharisee.
He would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven. All the time he was looking hard at the ground. Why was he doing that? Because he knew that until God saved his soul and forgave him his sins and converted him, he couldn't look up at him. He had no right to. He just had this downcast eye. That's how you have to come to God with great humility, not only realizing you deserve nothing, but deeply conscious of the fact that, first and foremost, you need your sins washed away. ‘But smote upon his breast.’ He was in the grip of great feeling. First of all he felt so badly about his sin and his godlessness and his proud spurning of God all his life that he was gripped with anguish. He felt it so keenly. When you come to God, you can't come to God and just say, ‘Oh, God, yes, I acknowledge I've got my faults and I'm something of a sinner, so forgive me.’ The only way you are truly converted by God and you feel the power of God coming into your life and changing you and converting you is because you come with great feeling. You are ashamed of your sin. You do so desperately, urgently want God to forgive you and help you and bless you. You say, ‘Oh, God, if you don't help me, if you don't convert my soul, I shall be lost eternally.’ You want this more than you've wanted anything else, and you are ready to let God do whatever he will in your life. He must break your past habits and your past desires and lusts. He is going to give you new feelings, new motives, a new life. From now on you are going to serve him, not yourself.
Perhaps some have sought the Lord and you haven't got this feeling. It's been a very cold, calculated affair. You mustn't be surprised that nothing has happened. Go back in prayer to God. You may not feel him near you. You may not perceive him there, but go back and pray to him and say, ‘Oh, God, I can't even repent, I'm so proud. This heart and mind of mine is so stuffed full of myself. I'm so proud and I'm so lost. I can't even feel ashamed. I can't even feel my need. Oh, God, help me. Help me to feel.’ And He will. The only way is as this tax gatherer. He's smote upon his breast, and here was his prayer: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ Make no excuses. Just desire his pardon. There is only one reason why even Almighty God, in the parable, could pardon and accept that tax gatherer. It is because of what Christ has done on Calvary.