Pathway to Victory

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Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and Dr. Robert Jeffress.

We're dedicated to bringing you bold biblical teaching that transforms your life and strengthens your walk with God.

And you can study God's word alongside Dr. Jeffress in person on the 2026 Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska.

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Have you ever witnessed the breathtaking majesty of massive glaciers rising from crystal blue waters? Or stood in awe as bald eagles soar over snow-capped mountains?

I want you to experience these unforgettable moments with me on the Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska, June 13th through 20th, 2026.

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Join Dr. Jeffress and the Pathway to Victory family for a spectacular seven-day adventure aboard Holland America's luxurious Koningsdam.

Indulge in elegant staterooms, world-class dining, and expansive decks perfect for breathtaking views.

Visit historic ports like Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan, where wilderness and frontier history await.

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There's something powerful about connecting with God.

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And fellow believers in the majesty of his untamed wilderness.

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I truly believe this journey will refresh you spiritually, physically and emotionally.

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Cabins are filling quickly, so reserve yours today. To book your spot on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

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Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm.

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Glad to study God's Word with you.

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Every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

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If you have a hunger, you have a thirst for being more obedient to God, then you're in pretty good spiritual shape. You may not feel like it, but you're on the road to spiritual health.

In fact, you are only seven words away from a right relationship with God. And today we're going to discover what those seven words are in a familiar parable.

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Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. It's disappointing indeed when a prayer goes unanswered. Sometimes our Heavenly Father clearly says no. Other times he tells us to wait. And you know, we don't like either one of those responses, do we?

But today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares one request that God responds to every single time by saying yes.

But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

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Thanks David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Before we get started with today's Bible teaching, I want you to know that I've chosen to extend a special limited time offer so that you don't miss out. Friday we concluded our practical series called how to Make Wise Decisions. Well, the demand for this resource has convinced us that we need to extend this offer through the end of the month.

So when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory today, I'm going to say thanks by sending you my book, how to Make Wise Decisions. Tragically, some people view God's will like some kind of complicated maze. It's like we're the proverbial mouse trying to find the cheese, turning left, then right, bumping into dead ends, trying to figure out how to reach the goal. Let me assure you, God's will is nothing like that. He's not teasing you with a giant puzzle whereby you're required to figure out the riddle.

He's crafted a plan for every believer's life, including yours. In my book called how to Make Wise Decisions, I'll help you get rid of the distracting noise so that you can clearly hear God's voice. And when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request a copy.

That's a lot of information. And so David and I will repeat these details later in the program, but right now let's turn in our Bibles to Luke, chapter 18. I titled today's message the One Prayer God Always Answers.

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My friend in Bible scholar R.T. Kendall tells about a time that he was nine years old and he was staying one night with his grandmother. The next day, he had a test at school that he wasn't prepared for. So when he awakened the next morning, he told his grandmother that he wasn't feeling well and didn't feel like going to school. She said, "Okay, we'll go back to bed." He protested and said, "Well, I would like breakfast first." She replied, "If you have an appetite, that means there isn't much wrong with you. So you go get dressed for school and I'll prepare breakfast."

Well, you know, Jesus is saying the same thing: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Your appetite is a pretty good indication of your spiritual health. If you're a Christian and you have a hunger, you have a thirst for being more obedient to God, then you're in pretty good spiritual shape. You may not feel like it, but you're on the road to spiritual health. In fact, you are only seven words away from a right relationship with God. Today, we're going to discover what those seven words are.

In a familiar parable, turn to your Bibles and to Luke chapter 18, beginning with verse 9, as we look at the one prayer God always promises to answer. Now, this is one of those parables Jesus told that's very easy to interpret because Luke gives us the right interpretation. At the beginning of the parable, he tells us the reason Jesus told it. Look at verse nine: "And Jesus also told them this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt." This parable is directed toward a group of people, specifically the Pharisees, who trusted in themselves. Literally, in the Greek text, it says who based on themselves thought they were righteous. They thought God looked on them with favor, that they had a judicial righteousness. They were not guilty before God. They also were ethically righteous; they did all the right things, but their reason they believed that was a standard that was based on themselves.

You know, today there's a lot of talk about having self-esteem and that people suffer from a bad self-image. But the truth is, the problem with most of us is not that we think too little of ourselves, but that we think too much of ourselves. Dr. David Myers is a psychologist who has written a lot about what he calls the inflated self-syndrome in America. He reports that when the College Board surveyed high school seniors, they found that amazingly, 0% of high school seniors thought that they were below average compared to other students. Sixty percent believed they were in the top 10% in their ability to get along with others. He concluded that the most common error in people's self-image is not unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather self-serving pride. It was not an inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. That was the group that Jesus was talking to—those who thought they were righteous.

Notice the second phrase he uses: "and they viewed others with contempt." I mean, that's the byproduct of feeling superior. What's the good of being superior if you can't look down on other people, right? There are actually some people who are proud of their own humility. Whenever I read this parable that Jesus told about the Pharisees, I'm reminded of the third-grade Sunday school teacher who, after teaching this lesson to the children, said, "Now children, let's bow our heads in prayer and thank God that we're not like the Pharisees." There are people who feel that way.

The purpose of this parable that Jesus told is very clear in verse nine. This parable is not a parable that teaches us how to pray. It's not a parable that answers the question of why God answers some prayers and doesn't answer other prayers. This parable is about how to be righteous, how to be in a right standing with God. In this parable, we find two very different approaches to God: one that is based on our goodness, our own works, and one that is based on God's grace.

Now let's look at the two characters, the two players in this parable. Verse 10: "Jesus said two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector." Now, a good Jew would walk up the southern steps of the temple, just as many of us have done before, to go to the Temple Mount area in order to pray. They prayed twice a day, at 9 AM and 3 PM. So on this particular day, two people went up to the temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. Jesus could not have selected two people at more opposite ends of the socio-religious spectrum than these two characters. If Jesus were telling the story today, he might say two people went into the church to pray: a preacher and a prostitute. That's the contrast Jesus is trying to give us here.

The Pharisee, let's look at him. First of all, they were highly revered, respected men. They knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards. Not only that, they were thought to be truly godly people. They had a desire to be godly. Their problem was they had the wrong idea of godliness. They thought that godliness was based on themselves and not the grace of God.

Now notice his prayer. The Bible says Jesus said this Pharisee, when he went to pray, he stood to pray. Now, a lot of people make a big deal out of that. "Oh, look how proud he is. He stood." There's nothing wrong with standing to pray. In fact, a good Jew would stand to pray today. If you go to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, people stand there and pray and pour out their hearts to God. The problem with this man's prayer was not his posture; it was his attitude. You see that in the second phrase: he stood and he prayed to himself. Isn't that a funny phrase? He prayed to himself. Now, he probably didn't think he was praying to himself, but you look at the prayer here; it was a prayer of self-congratulations about all he had done.

Look at verses 11 and 12: "The Pharisee stood praying this to himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector over here standing next to me. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.'" This Pharisee's problem was he had an "I" problem. I, I, I, I. He was focused on himself. Have you ever noticed people today who try to give a testimony, but they can't help but make themselves the hero of the story? Their testimonies are what one friend of mine calls "Bragamonies." It's about me, me, me, me, me. We see that sometimes in our worship music—some of the worship music, not in our church, but in other churches. You see, it's about me and my struggles and my doubts and my unhappiness and my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, instead of being focused on God. True worship is always focused on God, not on me.

But that Pharisee didn't understand that he had a distorted sense of his own righteousness. Notice what he says: "I fast twice a week." Now, the Jews were only required to fast once a year. Pharisees only fasted once a week. But this Pharisee fasted twice a week. He said, "I pay tithes of all I get." He gave 10%, not just on his income, but even on passive income and assets. He gives a tithe of everything. We might say today he tithed on the gross and not the net. He was good about his giving. And not only that, he said, "I'm not like everybody else. I'm not a swindler, an adulterer, and certainly not like this tax gatherer." Now, that was a fair evaluation. He was telling the truth about himself. What he missed was that God is as interested, if not more interested, in our heart than he is in the actions that flow out of our heart. The Pharisee's problem is he was more interested in style rather than substance.

I remember reading about Joseph Kennedy, the head of the Kennedy clan. He used to tell his boys, "What you are is not nearly as important."

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As what you appear to be.

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That's the motto the Kennedys live by. It's not what you are, it's what you appear to be. That was the Pharisee. As long as he appeared to be righteous, that's all that mattered. Commentator JC Ryle says even a child recognizes what was missing in this Pharisee's prayer. There's no confession of sin, no expression of need for God, no supplication for God's mercy.

Contrast him to the other character in this story, the tax collector. The tax collector, at the other end of the socio-religious spectrum in Jewish life, was the tax collector. He was down on the bottom rung, right down there with used chariot salesmen and televangelists. That's what people thought of tax collectors. They were absolute scum. The reason people looked down on tax collectors was really twofold. Most tax collectors were Jews, but they worked for the Roman government. They had purchased a franchise from the Roman government that gave them the right to collect taxes. There was a base amount that the Roman government required from people, but the tax collector could add whatever surcharges he wanted onto that base amount. He would mail off the required tax of an individual to Rome and keep the difference for himself.

The Jewish people hated tax collectors for two reasons. First, they were helping fund the oppressive Roman government that was occupying their land. Second, they were cheating people, taking more than they were supposed to take. And so this tax collector went up to pray as well. Don't miss the point that this tax collector was just as much under God's judgment as the Pharisee was. They both went to the temple to pray. But notice his prayer. In contrast to the Pharisee's, the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but instead was beating his breast saying, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner."

This is one of the shortest prayers in the Bible—seven words in the English language, six words in the Greek text. And yet this prayer reveals the two essentials for righteousness, for a right standing with God, for God's salvation. First of all, he expresses sorrow for his sin. You hear that in the prayer: "be merciful to me, the sinner," is what it actually says in Greek. It's articular. There's an article before the word "sinner." It's not "be merciful to me, a sinner," just like everybody else in the world. No, it's "be merciful to me, the sinner." I am the chief sinner of all.

What led him to say that? Perhaps he went up to the temple after committing a heinous sin that even he himself thought he was incapable of committing. He went out of desperation. Or maybe his life had slowly unraveled over a period of time, and he was at the end of the rope. Whatever it was, he expressed his need for God's forgiveness. By the way, notice his position. He stood some distance away. Away from what? Well, probably away from the altar of sacrifice representing the presence of God. But he even stood away from the Pharisee. "Oh, I can't be near a holy man. I can't be near to him, and I certainly can't stand near to God."

But here's the paradox: by standing far away, he was closer to God than the Pharisee. Here's one thing you understand: the more you understand the true holiness of God, the more you understand how sinful you and I really are. A real encounter with the genuine God leads you to understand your own unholiness. Isaiah expressed that. Remember in Isaiah 6 when he had the vision of God on his throne and the angels flying around the throne? What was Isaiah's response? He fell down and he said, "woe to me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips."

Or remember when the apostle Peter saw the glorified Lord in Luke 5:8? He said, "depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." Or remember the apostle John in the book of Revelation, there on the island of Patmos, when he saw the vision of the glorified Christ and the state he'll be in when he returns one day? What did he do? The Bible says he fell down as a dead man. That's what happens to any sinner who confronts a holy God. You are aware of your need, but an expression of sorrow for your sin isn't enough to be forgiven. It's not enough for salvation.

There's a second ingredient you see in this brief prayer, and that is he requested God's mercy to cover his sin. He requested God's mercy to cover his sin. He said, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner." You see that even in the way he prayed. James Montgomery Boice points out the simple sentence structure of this prayer. It's a prayer that starts with God and ends with the sinner, but has mercy in the middle. It is God's mercy, it is God's grace that connects sinful man to a holy God.

"God, be merciful to me, the sinner." Two men with two very different ways to approach God. One who tries to approach God based on his own righteousness and one who approaches God based on God's grace. Now, if Jesus had stopped right here with the prayer and said, "Now I'm going to give you a pop quiz, audience, you've heard the story. Which man walked away from the temple justified in a right relationship with God?" The audience, without a doubt, would have said, "Why, the Pharisee! Of course. The Pharisee is the one who ended up righteous. I mean, look at all of the things he's done. He's tithed, he's fasted. He's not like these adulterers and murderers. He's righteous."

Why would that tax collector think a little seven-word prayer suddenly makes everything all right with God? Haven't you heard that before? How can people think that praying a prayer of salvation erases all of the bad that they've ever done before? They would have picked the Pharisee for sure. And that's why Jesus turns their expectations upside down. In verse 14, he says, "No, I tell you, this man, the tax collector, went to his house justified rather than the other."

You know what's interesting to me? I'm sure when the Pharisee finished his self-congratulatory prayer, he felt great. I'm sure he left the Temple Mount that day saying, "You know, nothing like some good quality prayer time with the Lord." And I imagine that the tax collector probably left just as miserable as he went, feeling bad and terrible about his sin. But guess what? Your relationship with God isn't based on...

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How you feel about your relationship with God.

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It's how God views you. How he sees you, how he feels about you. And Jesus said, I'm telling you, regardless of this tax collector's feelings, he left the mountain that day, justified, declared not guilty because his prayer wasn't based on his righteousness, it was based on my mercy.

And then Jesus adds this word, these familiar words: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. The person who refuses to bow before God and admit his need for forgiveness will one day be humbled. One day he will be shocked to hear from the Lord he thought he served utter these words: depart from me, you worker of iniquity, for I never knew you.

On the other hand, the person who bows before God and says, God, I am a sinner. I am the sinner and I have no hope except Jesus Christ. A person who humbles himself will one day be exalted and will be welcomed into God's kingdom.

As A.W. Tozer said, in ourselves, nothing. In Christ, everything. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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Can you imagine knowing the truth and yet walking away from the offer God extends to us at Pathway to Victory? It's our prayer that everyone who listens to this program will say yes to this invitation from Jesus. In doing so, you will be welcomed into God's kingdom. The gospel message is what drives our mission at Pathway to Victory.

And today I'm inviting you to join me in this all-out effort to share the good news of Jesus Christ here in North America and all around the world. When you give a generous gift to support this effort, I'm going to say thank you by sending you my book called *How to Make Wise Decisions*. In my book, I'll help you understand how to distinguish between God's voice and your own personal desires. I'll explain what to do when God is silent, and we'll also cover those awkward moments when we make the wrong decision and learn how God proves faithful even in our weakness.

I'd like to send you a copy today. It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Just ask for the book called *How to Make Wise Decisions*. This is also an excellent book to put in the hands of your child or grandchild who may be wondering what school to attend, what vocation to pursue, or whom to marry.

But this is the very last day I'll mention this resource, so please get in touch right away. Thank you for giving generously today. Your gift enables us to provide this bold biblical and practical ministry. Here's David with all the details.

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When you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you the book *How to Make Wise Decisions*, written by Dr. Robert Jeffress. To give a gift and request your copy, call 866 or visit ptv.org when your gift is $75 or more. You'll also receive the complete CD and DVD teaching set for the series *How to Make Wise Decisions*. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. If you'd prefer to send a check, write to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. Have you ever had the unsettling feeling that there's more going on in your life than meets the eye? Join us for a brand new series about spiritual warfare. It's called *Spirit Wars* and starts Wednesday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Experience the breathtaking majesty of America's last frontier on the 2026 Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska.

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Board Holland America's luxurious Koningsdam ship with.

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Amy and me for a journey that.

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Will refresh your soul and renew your spirit.

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Experience the unforgettable adventure June 13th through 20th, 2026. To book your cabin crew, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word.

To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.