God Chooses the Foolish | Sermon 09/29/2024

The Foolishness of the Cross and the Call to Humility

All right, well, it's really good to see you guys. You know, when you miss two Sundays, you're like, do I know everyone still? You know, doesn't it feel strange a little bit when you miss a few weeks?

I can't imagine what it was like for the apostles when they would be with a church every day for like three years and then they'd go off and there'd probably be this longing and that's what I had for you guys.

I had this longing and I'm so glad to be back. You can hear I'm a little under the weather. I'm getting better though. I was telling someone else that, you know, I try to do the Christian thing. I go to the apothecary, right?

I get the essential oils. I literally did neti pots with oregano oil and burned my whole system. I'm like, that's gotta kill something. Did nothing. Friday, I had to go get a Z-Pak, a zithromycin. Thank God for antibiotics.

I mean, there'd be so many people dead without antibiotics. A lot of bad drugs out there, but thank God for that. So anyways, we're gonna be in verses 26 through 31 today. We're gonna finish out chapter one in 1 Corinthians.

I hope you guys have been well. Can't wait to catch up with you all. The title of the sermon today, church, is God chooses the foolish. God chooses the foolish. So starting in verse 26, chapter one of the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true God.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame things which are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despise God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boasts in the Lord.

Thus ends the reading of God's magnificent word. Let's pray once more as a church. Let's go before God as we exposit his word. God, I pray that you'd be with me. God, as I had time away from the pulpit, it was impressed upon me once again how very serious it is to take this pulpit, that these can't merely be the ideas of men, that this is not a time for me to shine or to make myself look good or any man to do that, Lord.

This is a time, Lord, that we are asking you from your throne room to show us what these words mean, and not only what they mean, but how they impact us individually, Lord, and as a church. And so, God, I pray that today you would help me, Lord, do what only you can do.

I need you, God. I need you so much every day. I need you especially on these Sundays, these Lord's Day. God, glorify yourself in the sermon. Please help your people. Help us to stay focused. Help us to stay awake, Lord.

Help the children to be obedient in the service. God, help us to be focused on you at all costs. And so, Lord, please be with us now. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, it has been a couple of weeks, and I'm thankful for Pastor Andrew, and that was a great quick series in Obadiah.

I loved that he did that. If you remember last year, he did a two-part series in the letter to Philemon. And so, I don't know what we're gonna do next year for you. We'll have to find, you might just have to go to Topical, or yeah, maybe Jude.

I don't know, Jude's heavy. I don't know if you can cover all that. That's gonna, oh, don't even. That's gonna bring in the giants in Nephilim conversation. So, Lord, help us if that happens. Anyhow, we're back, and the last time that we studied this epistle, we saw what was called the word of the cross.

The word of the cross, we determined that that was the gospel of Christ, and it is what? It is foolishness to those who are perishing. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. You have everything about it, everything about God becoming man, a man who was born as common as anyone else, one who wasn't, from any visual perspectives, royalty or military.

You have the fact that the people that he came to save, hey, I came for you, hey, we reject you. They rejected him, they despised him, they mocked him, and even all the way to the point where they killed him.

He endured the most profane thing the law describes. Cursed is the man who hangs on a tree.

This is absurd.

This is ridiculous to the world, especially to the Jews. All of this, Paul said, was what? Moros, moronic, moronic. He eventually called it a scandalon, a scandal, something that offends people rather than attracts them to it.

And so it was unthinkable. It is unthinkable that God would do something like this, but what is even more unthinkable is that God would do all of this on purpose, that this wasn't an accident, this wasn't his reaction.

This is something that he planned. It was all his will. He was well-pleased, if you remember, to not let the wisdom of man be the key in which you open the door to salvation. It would not be the wisdom of man.

It would not be man's attempts. It would be God. He was pleased for that to be the case, for those to hear the foolish message preached and believe. That's radical. How are you gonna get to heaven? Well, there's a message you need to hear.

Let me give you the message. I believe that you're going to heaven.

It's like, what?

Okay, what else do I have to do? Will you put it out on a spreadsheet? I'm a spreadsheet guy. Can you put it on a spreadsheet? What am I supposed to do to get to heaven? No, what I just told you was it.

If you believe in Christ, if you believe in what he did, and you give your life to him, you will go to heaven. You will be saved.

What?

That's radical. That's unbelievable. The Jews determine truth by a lens of signs. Do you remember that? Signs, miracles, signs and wonders, but they determined that the sign of the cross was repulsive.

The sign of the cross repulsed them. You have Greeks who determine truth by what?

Wisdom.

So you have Jews who have signs and miracles, and you have Greeks, Gentiles, who determine truth by wisdom.

Wisdom.

But the wisdom of God appeared to be what? Foolishness to the Greeks. It doesn't make sense to anyone. It destroys man's rationality and logic. But Christ crucified is what? He ended up saying it is the wisdom and power of God.

Doesn't matter what men think. Christ crucified is the wisdom and power of God. May not be the wisdom and power of man, but it's the power of God. And it's what Paul preaches. It's what makes everyone who possesses the word of the cross to be just as common or even more so than Jesus.

Those who are saved are not even greater than their master. You see, if Jesus was really low, if he brought himself low for you, do you think Jesus came so that we can all rise and be these wonderful royalty and kings and maybe in a heavenly perspective?

But he wanted us to be humble, not prideful, right? No one's greater than their master. In this, the apostle attempted to shut down their factions. If any man among the Corinthians was elevating himself, if you remember, that was the problem, division because of factions, elevating certain men, then you must know, Corinthians, apology to church, you must know that elevating yourself as a man over any other man or especially above God is opposite of what Christ did.

It is opposite of what Jesus did. So Paul is speaking this way in an attempt to take down those factions. Those who think they are somebody must understand they are nobody. In Paul's second letter, he will tell them this.

He'll say, we have this treasure in jars of clay. So that's what you are. You're an earthen vessel.

What's that?

That's a basic brownish red pot. That's what you are, but you've got treasure in you. What's the treasure? That's the gospel, that's Christ. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. That's all that you are.

The treasure isn't actually you. It's like, oh, God finally gets you. God gets you. You're the prize for God. No, God is the prize for you, amen? God is the prize. God is the treasure. The gospel is the treasure.

And these things, Christ crucified the gospel. It wasn't born in you. You weren't a jar that was born with treasure. The treasure was given to you. It was deposited in you. It's not inherent in you, it was given.

It was given to the called. And so in an effort to continue to stamp out the fire of division and exalting men above others, St. Paul will remind them where they came from. And it's not pretty. It's not pretty, opposite of what they may think.

So go to verse 26. Verse 26, for consider your calling, brethren. Consider your calling, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. So the apostle had just said in verse 25 prior to this, because of the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

And he uses this conjunction right here to point to them as an example of this. God uses foolishness and weakness. And then he points at them. He goes, God uses foolishness and weakness. And he goes, look at your calling, look at you.

Uses them as an example. Look at the state in which you were summoned by God. And he says the word brethren again, therefore, including the entire church, men, women, children, officers, congregants, brethren, consider what your calling to Christ looked like.

This is the observable evidence that God has used foolishness and weakness. What a blow to their egos. What a blow to our egos, huh? Because you and I are evidence that God uses weak and foolish things.

Because if the word of the cross is foolishness, if Christ came in a way that seemed moronic by human standards, why would God have his people who are called to be included in his kingdom be any greater?

Who will exercise their agency or their will and float to the heavens and come up to God's throne and go, hmm, and check out God, check out God's throne and go, you know what, I like what I see. I'm gonna put God to the test.

Yeah, do some things for me, God. Okay, yeah, I think I'll follow you after what I've seen here. That's by no means what will happen. No one will ascend to heaven. No one will ascend to God in that way.

He must descend to us. Corinthians, when you came to faith, you were nothing. You had nothing. Whether you had eloquent speech or if you were a philosopher or maybe as a Jew, if you experienced many signs, oh, I'm the guy here who's experienced the most signs than anyone else.

Doesn't matter. If you were a Pharisee or if you had a famous family lineage or if you were a successful politician or a businessman or maybe you were a woman who was born into a family that was richer than anyone else.

It doesn't matter. None of that, none of that aided the Corinthians into coming to faith, none of it, not a bit of it. In fact, those are the very things that often inhibit faith, success, a great name, right?

Works of the law, I'm really righteous. Those things can inhibit true faith and especially anything pertaining to our view as righteousness had to be shown as utterly void of what God requires to enter into heaven.

Your thoughts of righteousness were too low, too low. They weren't high enough. They're not good enough. As much as the cross of Christ is folly to the world, it is grace for us. It's another acting on our behalf to enter heaven when he didn't have to, by the way.

In choosing the Corinthians and in choosing you, God overlooked anything about you that the world would have considered of some worth. And not only that, but if there's anything that they think now elevates them in this moment, they have to remember who they are and what they were.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to human standards. He says the so-foy, the learned, the clever, the intelligent, there were not many at all. There were certainly none who were learned of spiritual matters, but even the unspiritual things.

He says, you didn't know it very well. There were not many wise among you. You were both dumb in spiritual and material things, not very wise. You did not know well at all, Corinthians. Before you were saved, did you think like, man, I know so much.

Did you ever feel that way? I'm like, if I'm honest, I thought like, I knew I didn't know everything. I didn't know rocket science. But I felt like as far as figuring out the world,.

I had arrived.

Yep, I know. This is what things are.

This is who I am.

You know, we think we're clever. We think we're smart. We think we know science. We watch a 30-minute Facebook short and go, yeah, I'll do it that way now. That internet scientist is correct. And then we pass it on.

We're like, yeah, we know so much. That's how I started shooting oregano up my nose. You know, like, that's what happens. We think we know so much. We know so much about morality, religion. I see a lot of atheists, of course, who think they're very clever.

But it would be wrong for me to leave it there, right? We all thought we knew things. Our way of thinking was right. And so what Paul is trying to do is to humble the believers. Humble them. Even if you are saved now and have the true wisdom of God now, you were nothing beforehand.

But also, apart from God's doing, you'd be nothing now. You'd have nothing now apart from God. And so if the truth puffs you up, if the knowledge of the truth puffs you up, you're in sin. Because really, every time you and I come to the truth, it should be like a mirror.

It should humble us. But sometimes when you and I read the Bible, it's a window looking at other people. Oh yeah, this could be really good for this person in the church. This could be good for my mother.

Wow, yeah.

We use the Bible as a window to look at other people and their sin. It's not like a mirror looking at how ugly you are. We need to repent from that. We need to change that. The truth should always humble you, always.

So he continues, remember brethren, there were not many mighty, dunatoi. Not many had power. This could be physical power, but it's likely he means not many had the kind of social or political power that you think of.

You know, you have Nebuchadnezzar, you have Alexander the Great, you have men like Julius Caesar, but none of the Corinthians were like them. None of them. And the apostles weren't like those men either, nor was Christ even like those kind of world leaders.

No, God would not let anyone think that any world leader could affect the kind of change to the world that he would bring by the Holy Spirit. It would have to baffle men. You see the conquest of these men, you see the conquest of Rome, you see the conquest that the United States has made, but the gospel would be different.

It would baffle people. You know how organized you have to get in the campaign to infiltrate other nations, to take them down, to topple their government, to take over, to sustain all that, to fuel all that, to pay for that?

The gospel, though, takes on a power of its own. You know, the gospel was supposed to get too big for the apostles. It was supposed to get too big for the evangelists who were sent throughout the Roman Empire.

The gospel was supposed to get too big for local churches, the ones that they planted. You can't contain it. The power of the gospel baffles mankind. It would show that no one single man or woman achieved any of it.

God shuts down the men and women who put notches on their belt, those who look for a pat on the back for one more convert, one more convert, one more convert. God shuts those kind of people down. He fills their churches with people with ears who want to be tickled.

It's not even a church. God shuts that kind of stuff down. One more well dug, one more orphanage built. I have been to a mega church where, on a screen twice as big as this, and there were two or three of them, on this screen, they had the head pastor, and he was pouring water into children's mouths in Africa, he was like digging dirt out.

I don't even, I doubt he dug the whole well. I think you need a machine for that, but he's like, you know, it's ridiculous. And then all the women were like, I remember, Sarah, you remember this? There were women in front of us, going, oh, pastor, you know?

It's sick, it's honestly sick. It's funny, but it's sick. It's disgusting. The whole video was this pastor and all that he did in the name of God. It was disgusting. And he got the praise that he wanted, and if that's what you want, if you want the praise of men, then God will never praise you.

If you want the praise on earth, you'll get the praise of earth, you won't get the praise of heaven. You want the reward of earth, you'll get the reward of earth, you won't get the reward of heaven. That's what you get.

God will transform the world in such a way where only he will get the glory. Only his son will have a name that is above every other name. You see, the world wants power in displays that are similar to lightning.

The world wants power in displays that are similar to lightning. Let me explain. I remember in Arizona, we would have monsoon season, and sometimes we'd park our car, and it'd be pitch black outside, and with our little daughter, we'd watch the lightning over the mountains during monsoon season.

And you'd see the lightning flash, and it was really neat. But you know what? Lightning is brief, it's impressive, and powerful, but it's brief. But God's power, although greater than the sun, is more powerful compared to the lightning.

The sun is more powerful compared to lightning. The sun is always taken for granted. You know the shining ball of light out there? That sun's taken for granted all the time, but it's always there. It's always more powerful than anything else within sight.

The sun's more powerful than any nuclear plant that we could create. It's constant, the sun is unyielding. It's always displaying consistent brilliance. It's always giving off life and radiance. Lightning in the sky at night is not more spectacular than the sun.

The sun is 864 ,000 miles wide. It's 109 times wider than the earth. It would take 1 .3 million earths to fill the volume of the sun. The center of the sun is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit in a regular space suit.

You could get probably about, they say, they think within three to four million miles from the sun. Any closer, it'd kill you. But it's just right outside these windows. It's just going. It's there, and such is the power of God.

Such is the power of God compared to the so-called power of men. The power of men is like a brief blitz of lightning, but God's power is constant. It's more powerful, it's bigger than anything else.

It's like the sun.

But infinitely greater, not many mighty. Every false religion can point back to some man or some woman. You have Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell. You have Mary Baker Eddy. You have Jim Jones, David Koresh, and so many more.

Christianity is the only religion that starts and ends with God. Cult leaders, cult leaders have to feed the beast that they made. Cult leaders have to get more people. Oh, I've got to get more people to believe on this because I need more money, of course.

Cults need money. And so the cult leader has to get these people. He's got to gain more and gain more, and they've got to give their life savings for it. They've got to sell everything for it. And even so, a cult leader has to start trying to find out who's causing problems because he doesn't want the whole cult to implode on itself.

So he's then, he or she is then finding people who are naysayers or questioning, and you've got to remove them. Otherwise, you can't contain it. And so a cult is something that someone, some man or some woman has to control so delicately.

The gospel of Christ takes over in this world, seemingly without men or women, without them. Now, I'm not saying that men or women don't spread the gospel or that there are not appointed leaders or officers in a church.

I'm saying that the means and the ends are God's. God controls it. I've told some of you before, some of you have asked me, you know, now we just reached three years of ministry. We're working on our fourth year of ministry here.

I'm relatively speaking a new pastor, although I hear at year five is when most pastors quit. So I guess in that sense, I'm tenured, you know. But some have asked me, Pastor Wade, what's it like? And I said, I've told you, sometimes I step back and I look at this, or I look at a koinonia, or I look at you guys evangelizing, or I look at you guys singing, and it almost brings me to tears because it hits me all at once that I couldn't have made this.

Pastor Andrew couldn't have made this. This, it feels like it's just going, you know. God just made this and it goes. And yes, we serve and you serve and we all participate, but it takes the power of God to do this.

This isn't Wade's church. This isn't Andrew's church. This isn't even ultimately your church. It's God's church, and we're all just in it. It's amazing to me. It blows my mind. I couldn't empower this.

Someone else takes the credit. Who has the power to do this? You know. So Paul says, remember Corinthians, not many of you were wise, not many of you were mighty. And then he says, not many of you were noble, noble.

The word noble here is eugenes. It is from where we get the word eugenics. You ever heard of the word eugenics? Typically you hear Bill Gates' name tied to that word eugenics, or you hear about Nazi Germany tied to eugenics.

Eugenics was, it literally means in the Greek good genes, good genes, good genetics. You're trying to whittle down a bloodline to get the best genetics. And so you have people, you have people like you have Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood, who said, boy, it's too expensive to send the blacks back to Africa now that slavery is illegal.

And so what we need to do is kill them from within. So to exterminate the blacks, we're gonna make Planned Parenthood in low-income places where there's a lot more minorities, and we're gonna kill them from within.

And that's really where abortion came to be from. And Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. You know, wanted to get rid of them, didn't want them to mix with society. Nazi Germany, they would look at those who had Down syndrome or things like that, and they would want to get rid of them.

Kill off those who have bad, what they would call bad genes in society. And so this word noble is eugenics, good genes. And so we've learned already that this is not a philosopher or a wise man religion.

This isn't a religion imposed on the people by a powerful king or politician, one with might. But now, nor is Christianity a religion for just those of noble stock. Those well-born with high pedigrees in the ruling class, this isn't just a religion for them.

You gotta think for the Corinthians back in Greece there. You had people who were just born right into slavery. You had free men, freed men with a D, free men, freed men, you had slaves. And so slaves could become freed men, but they would never ever become free men, okay?

And so with that came a limitation. You couldn't go up all the way. You could go up a little bit in social class, but you couldn't go very high, okay? It was really hard for them. And so noble stock was important to the Corinthians, good genes.

This was something that you were born into. Prestige only came from a noble bloodline, but one doesn't become a child of God by blood. One doesn't become a child of God by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but by God.

That's how you become a child of God. One must be born again. One must be born of water and spirit. And this is something that only God can exact upon someone else. When Paul preached the foolish message of the cross to those of nobility, they couldn't conceptualize their need for Christ.

Why would you need to be born again when you idolize the bloodline in which you were born? These types of people believe that they don't need purity. They don't need their blood to be pure. I should say they don't need purity spiritually.

They don't see that they need the untarnished blood of Jesus Christ because these type of noble people cherish their own blood. They love their blood. They love their family in a way that is idolatrous.

When the prophet Jeremiah lamented over the coming demise of Zion, he cried out, where are the true wise men? And the Almighty says in verses 23 and 24, Jeremiah chapter nine, thus says the Lord, let not a wise man boast of his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast of his might.

Let not the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in those things, declares the Lord.

Many people believe that this is the formula that Paul's following in his letter. Did you see that? He said, not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble. And then Jeremiah says here, not many wise, not many strong, and not many who are rich.

Very synonymous, very similar, okay? Point is, some of us need to let go of this. The Corinthians needed to let go of this. We need to know we were nothing without Christ. You were not wise, you were not mighty, you were not noble.

Maybe by earthly standards, truly weren't without God. We were nothing without him. But these Corinthians were in a culture that coveted the highest social standings. Their pagan neighbors were obsessed with obtaining worldly honor, and I'm sorry to say that it impacted the church in Corinth.

It's impacted the American church. It's impacted the church today. Arrogance and disdain for others began to infect the church. For them, it wasn't, as Philippians 2 says, regard one another as more important than yourself.

It was regard yourself as more important than all the others. That's what they became to be. But let me make this very clear to us. Not one, not a one, was called to this salvation because of who they were or who they would become.

Let me say that again. No one, not a single person was called to this salvation because of who they were or what they would become. Not one, but you would be called to this salvation because of who Jesus always was and is.

That's the fact. That's it.

God's Choice of the Foolish, Weak, and Despised

And so for the first time in history, in Christ, whether mighty, wise, or noble or not, we've become equal in every way. Go to verses 27 and 28. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.

And the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen the things that are not so that he may nullify the things that are. So you look in those verses three times. What does it say three times in those two verses?

But God has chosen, one, and God has chosen, two, God has chosen three. Three times in those two verses, it says the phrase God has chosen. We are seeing the very prerogative of God in his plan for salvation.

This is not unlike the shaming of the false gods in Egypt in the book of Exodus, that the Lord will make sure that no one but him will have the glory. Everyone will know that there's a God in heaven. He has chosen.

He will do it. He is the active initiator here. He moves when no one else moves. God seeks when no one else is seeking. He chooses when no one has the power to make a choice. John Calvin rightly observed here that when God shames and nullifies the strong, the great, and the wise, he's not exalting the weak or uneducated or worthless above the others, but brings them all to one common level.

And you see this in action in different places in the Bible. Go to Luke chapter 14 real quick in your printout or in your Bible, Luke chapter 14. Luke 14, look at this parable of Jesus. You see how everyone's brought to one common level here.

Luke 14, verses 15 through 24. Look what Jesus says. When one of those who were reclining at the table with him heard this, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.

But Jesus said to him, a man was giving a big dinner and he invited many, and at the dinner hour, he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, come, for everything is ready now. But they all alike began to make excuses.

The first one said to him, I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused. Another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to try them out.

Please consider me excused. Another one said, I have just married a wife and for that reason, I cannot come. And the slave came back and reported all this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, go out at once into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and the crippled and blind and lame.

And the slave said, master, what you've commanded has been done and there's still more room. And the master said to the slave, go out into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in so that my house may be filled for I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.

This church is to shame the noble and the powerful. You don't have time for God, he doesn't have time for you. He rejected the Jews who rejected him. It's very contextual here, but it's also got a timeless principle to it.

God has chosen the things the world regards as foolish to shame the wise. What do you see here? He says, get the lame, get the blind, get the ones without power, get the ones who are foolish, bring them in, they'll get it.

They'll get to sup with the master. And this is to shame them, Paul says. This word to shame is to humiliate or disgrace someone. That is the person feels a sense of unworthiness though previously they thought they were greatly worthy.

And so that's what happens. They lose their sense of worth when they're humiliated or shamed. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. And in this God doesn't take the weak and make them like the strong of the world.

God didn't take the lame and the blind and the deaf and the sick and the lepers and suddenly make them into these kings and queens.

No.

He brought them from a low standing up. There's no doubt about that. But God doesn't save these type of people. He doesn't save you and me. Again, I've kind of mentioned this before throughout the sermon so that we would be higher than Jesus so that we would have more of a name than Jesus.

He makes us strong, not of this world but of the heavenly world. And so it's not necessarily Popper to Prince or Kid to King or Beggar to Bureaucrat or Aladdin to Alibaba, I don't know. We were watching Aladdin two nights ago, right?

There's not this crazy exaltation after coming to Christ. There's something better than that. There's not a worldly exaltation. There is something far better than that. God is not concerned with the upheaval of social classes with the gospel, though that can happen.

The wise of the world thought the cross was pure folly and incapable of saving people and bringing them to heaven. The strong and mighty of the world thought the cross was far too weak. So first the wise of the world thought the cross was stupid.

Now the mighty of the world think that the cross can't actually save people, it's impotent. It's not strong enough. That's not the case. Therefore, these type of people felt that they would have been lowering themselves.

The wise, the mighty, the noble, when they look at the cross of Christ, they go, ah, I don't want that because that'll make me lower than what I am now. That's what they see. They can't commit themselves to Jesus Christ.

They look at Jesus Christ as not as something, as someone who lifts them up. The wise and mighty and noble of this world look at Jesus Christ like a ball and anchor, right? A millstone that brings you down.

That's how they look at Jesus Christ. You see this play out many times in the gospel scenes and the parables. You have sinners and lepers and prostitutes hearing the forgiveness of God, tax collectors beating their chest, forgive me, God, a sinner, while you have next to him a Pharisee going, I'm righteous, I'm not like this guy.

Jesus says, that one who was beating his chest, forgive me, a sinner, he's the one who walked away justified, not the other one. But the Pharisees and the scribes, they were blinded to their sin. They saw no need for Christ's righteousness as they believed they were already righteous.