I have an idea that the Bible is like an album. I look at a picture and think, “Why, that looks like a man I know.” I look at anther. Well, I know that man." I come upon another. "Why, that man looks like my brother." I keep turning over the leaves. "Well, I declare, there is a man who lives in the street I do—why, he is my next-door neighbor." And then I come upon another and I see myself.
My friends, if you read your Bibles you will find your own pictures there—it will describe you. Now it may be that there is some Pharisee here tonight and if there is, let him turn to the third chapter of John and see what Christ said to that Pharisee.
"Unless a man is born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
Nicodemus was one of the finest specimens of a man in Jerusalem in those days, yet he had to be born again or he wouldn't see the kingdom of God. You may say: "I am not a Pharisee; I am a poor, miserable sinner who is too bad to come to Him." Well, turn to the woman of Samaria and see what He said to her. See what a difference there was between them. The I have an idea that the Bible is like an album. I go to a man's house, and while waiting for him I open an album. I look at a picture and think, "Why, that looks like a man I know" I look at another. "Well, I distance between them was as great as that between the sun and the moon. One was in the very highest station, and the other occupied the very worst. One had only himself and his sins to bring to God, the other was trying to bring in his high position and his aristocracy.
I tell you, when a man gets a true sight of himself; he drops all false ideas about himself. See this prayer: "I thank God, I am not like other men,—I fast,—I give,—I possess." When a man prays, to God, he does not praise himself. He falls flat in the dust before God. In that prayer you don't find him thanking God for what He had done for him. It was an unbeliever's, prayerless prayer-just going through the motions.
I hope the day will come when formal prayers will be a thing of the past. Formal Christians get up like this Pharisee and thank God they are not like other men; but when a man gets a look at himself he prays with the spirit of the publican.