Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] All right. Good morning, Village Church. Good morning. If you're new and I have not had the opportunity to meet you, my name's Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. And this is week 10 of 11 in our series called the Questions of Jesus. In two weeks, we are starting our fall series in the book of Joshua. But today, second to last, the Questions of Jesus. And here's what we've seen so far. Jesus was the master at getting to the deepest parts of the heart through perfectly designed questions. If you have a Bible, open it up with me to the book of Luke. We're gonna be in chapter seven. And what I wanna do this morning is I kinda wanna just jump right in because this is one of those stories that is shocking, it's sad, it's beautiful, kind of all at once. And it really is a story for us to slow our brains down a little bit and to just what God does in this story.
[00:01:05] First, I need to set a little bit of context. So if you're newer to the Bible, I wanna share with you a little bit of insight into how we were intended to read the gospels. That would be Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
[00:01:17] They were written with the intention that we would read them sort of in one sitting. And so we're kind of used to maybe parachuting into a text, pulling out a verse that we find interesting or reading a story. But really, if you think about it like a book, it has a theme and it has a direction. I don't know if you're aware of how it end, but Jesus dies and rises from the dead. And so everything kind of pushes toward that end. But it's meant to be read in a sitting. So by the time we get to chapter seven of the Book of Luke, a lot has already gone on in this book that you need to know. And so the assumption is that as we read this story in Luke, chapter seven, you know what has gone on. So let me. Let me bring you up to speed on one really important piece of context.
[00:01:59] You need to know a little bit about a group of Pharisees. A group of Pharisees, that's who it is. A group of people called the Pharisees. And when you think about, like, American political leadership, we have Republicans, we have Democrats, we have independents, we have some that are further left than that and some that are further right. And so in the same way, in Jesus day, there was a group of political and religious leaders that kind of oversaw the nation of Israel. And you would have Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes and elders. And there was.
[00:02:31] The Pharisees were on the conservative end of this. These groups of leaders.
[00:02:37] But all the leaders had one really important thing in common. They all hated Jesus.
[00:02:46] You get to the book of Luke, and here's what happens in the book of Luke with the Pharisees.
[00:02:52] Never once does Luke mention them in a positive way.
[00:02:57] And by the time you actually get to chapter seven, they have been talked about quite a bit. And there is a really clear pattern. And I want to show you this pattern. It starts in Luke, chapter 5, verse 21. It's kind of the story of the first mention of the Pharisees. And they are accusing Jesus of blasphemy. It says, who is this who speaks blasphemies? A few verses later, in chapter five, verse 30, they're still grumbling about Jesus. They accuse him again. And here's the question they accuse him with. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Chapter 6, verse 7. Here's what it says. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him. Does that feel creepy to you? It's cause it is to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him later on in chapter 6, verse 11, after Jesus heals on the Sabbath, they were filled with fury and disgust with one another. What they might do to Jesus. We get to chapter seven, verse 30, just before the text wherein it says this. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purposes of God, the purpose of God for themselves. Chapter 7, verse 34. This is what they're saying about Jesus behind his back. Look at him. A glutton, glutton and a drunkard. A friend of tax collectors and sinners.
[00:04:16] And so here's what Luke is doing very early in the book. He is showing us the character and the nature of the Pharisees. And if you haven't put it together yet, the Pharisees are the bad guys and Jesus is the good guy. The bad guys hate the good guy. Again, you know how it ends. The good guy wins in the end. All right, with this context in mind, Luke, chapter seven, we're gonna start. In verse 36, Luke tells us that one of the Pharisees asked Jesus. Jesus to eat with him.
[00:04:46] And Jesus went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table.
[00:04:53] So whatever reason or whatever motivation this Pharisee has to invite Jesus into his house, Luke wants you to know this.
[00:05:03] It was not a noble purpose.
[00:05:07] And as we kind of imagine Jesus in the Pharisees home. I think it's really easy for us to transfer kind of modern notions of dinner and eating and our own own homes and kind of transferring it out of the text.
[00:05:18] But we have to think very differently about this. So what would typically happen with a wealthy person or someone of more nobility is that they would have a courtyard kind of outside of their house. And this courtyard would have been a place where they would have hosted meals, especially for people who are coming into town. You typically wouldn't bring them into your house if you were a wealthier or more noble person. So this dinner, this meal almost certainly happened outside, still in the property, but in a courtyard.
[00:05:48] Second thing you need to know about dinners like this is that dinners like this were not usually private. We're gonna call these things semi private. Okay, so if I had you over to my house for dinner, better yet, you had me over to your house for dinner.
[00:06:01] And then like Pastor Dean's looking in the window and he's creeping through. Right? That would be weird. Okay, that would be also creepy. But in this context, I would have you over. We'd be sitting in our courtyard, and then people could stand around and listen and observe. And so these were meant to be events that a little bit like a host showing off. And there'd be some really interesting dialogue that could go on in these events.
[00:06:27] Third, people didn't sit at chairs, they reclined, if you notice even some of the words in the text. So there would be cushions. And this is gonna be really important for what happens in the story.
[00:06:38] What you would do is you would lay on your side and then you would eat with one hand, and then your feet would be outstretched, okay? And so your body would be facing kind of the center of the table, usually the host, but you'd be laying on your.
[00:06:52] On a cushion with your feet extended. So with all of this in mind, things get interesting. In verse 37, an uninvited guest shows up to the party, says, and behold a woman of the city who was a sinner, in other words, a prostitute.
[00:07:10] When she learned that Jesus was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster flask of ointment. So she hears. And when she hears that this is happening, knowing this is a semi public or semi private event, if you will, she goes and gets this alabaster flask of ointment. Now I want you to notice verse 38, where this prostitute is standing. Luke tells us that she was standing behind him at his feet. So Jesus is laying at his side. She comes up from behind him. Jesus is facing the heart host. He doesn't have eyes on her standing behind him at his feet, and she's weeping.
[00:07:56] She began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment. There's a lot more here. We're going to come back to this in a moment, but for now, look at verse 39.
[00:08:11] Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him, Jesus, saw this, he said to himself in his own mind, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is, who's touching him, for she is a sinner.
[00:08:28] I already just don't like this guy. Like, he just pretty much annoys me.
[00:08:32] But Jesus literally just sits there and allows it to happen. A little bit later in the text, you'll realize why I say this, but he's letting this happen. And it would seem he's not even looking at her or. Or acknowledging her.
[00:08:46] And so this Pharisee, he's just a wonderful case study in legalism.
[00:08:53] And all this man, like a good legalist can see when he looks at people, are rule breakers and rule keepers.
[00:09:02] And Jesus is a rule breaker, and the prostitute is a rule breaker. The rule breaker needs to be punished by all the rule keepers. And all the rule keepers in the room said, amen. Don't say anything, okay?
[00:09:15] The Pharisee had so much hatred for Jesus and for rule breakers that he could not see the beauty of what was happening right in front of his face.
[00:09:27] A savior was being worshiped by a sinner. Now, years ago, a village church, there's a younger man, he was sitting like, right in this area. It was his first time coming to church. I didn't know anything about him, but I watched kind of a series of events unfold.
[00:09:43] And this younger man had the audacity, like, you're. You're not going to believe what this. This young man did. He came into church and he worshiped with a hat on. This is where you're supposed to go, how dare you.
[00:10:01] What? He didn't know, unbeknownst to the young man, as I'm sitting right over here, was a legalist.
[00:10:05] And so the legalist stood up in worship, walked over to the young man, he took his hat off of his head and he said, we don't wear hats in church.
[00:10:21] Audibly enough, so that everyone around could hear it.
[00:10:25] And this old curmudgeon missed the point.
[00:10:31] We come to learn that the young man was trying to get right with God and he came to the only place where he knew how to do that.
[00:10:40] And in case you're wondering, we had a pretty stern conversation with the old curmudgeon and that never happened again. Praise God, Jesus. He seems to be completely unfazed by what this woman is doing. And I want you to just consider something like onlookers are gasping, the legalists standing around and even sitting at the table. We'll see toward the end of this that they have an opinion of this too.
[00:11:05] They're sitting there just judging and doing whatever they do. The disciples, they're probably in freak out mode. They're like, all right, Jesus does not seem to be aware that there is a prostitute and she is touching him. And this is gonna be a really, really sad thing for them to deal with. But what is actually happening is that a sinner and the only way that she knows how is coming to a savior and asking for a new start.
[00:11:30] I wanna go back to verse 38 for a moment.
[00:11:33] So as this prostitute is weeping, Luke says that she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment. If you've been around the Bible or church for a little while, you know the story. But I think it's really, really easy to miss what is so obviously happening right here. So could we just agree for a moment that in its cultural context, this woman's behavior does not make logical sense.
[00:12:04] So, like, if this woman came to you and she said, I want to give my life to Christ, but he's in the middle of a heated political dinner that is a semi public event and there's a lot of tension in that room, you would most likely advise her and say, girl, Jesus would love to talk with you. Let's wait till things are over and when they're over, we can have a really good, beautiful conversation.
[00:12:30] That's probably how you would advise her.
[00:12:33] Instead, she interrupts a formal semi public event with likely one of the, if not the most powerful persons in the city, which is unthinkable by the way. She crosses social boundaries not just as a woman, but as a prostitute with religious leaders, which is unthinkable.
[00:12:56] She engages in behavior that could, and I don't know if you've picked this up yet, probably did appear to be sexual in nature, as if she was coming on to Jesus, which is unthinkable.
[00:13:09] And Then she has the audacity to let down her hair. In a culture where this is something that women only ever did in private. So if you've been around here a little bit, you've heard me say this. Whenever something doesn't make sense, there's always a piece of information that if you had, it, would make sense of everything.
[00:13:25] Let me cut to the chase and tell you what is being implied by her completely desperate and illogical behavior.
[00:13:33] This woman very likely just had a terrible sexual experience with one of her clients that devastated her and brought her to the very end of herself. She is broken, she is desperate. She is not concerned with social consequences. She is completely over etiquette. And this woman needs now what she knows only Jesus can give to her, which is forgiveness and healing and a brand new start. I want you to just take a moment. I want you to think even more deeply about the series of events that happened. She hears that Jesus is in town. She goes to her house and gets a very expensive jar of ointment that is in an alabaster, very important, very beautiful. She brings it as she has probably a series of expectations that are gonna happen. When this event unveils before her, she finds herself behind Jesus and she starts weeping. The text, the way it's written, implies that this was not a part of the plan. She starts weeping now. Jesus, his feet are dirty, which they shouldn't be. We'll get there. His feet are dirty and now they're soaking wet and it's dirty tear water. And she's like, I can't leave him like this. All she has is her hair. So she undoes her hair. She's desperate. This did not go the way this woman thought it would go. Everything broke the moment she got into the presence of Jesus. And here's what the legalist could not see. Despite all of the uncouthness, it was completely sincere.
[00:15:04] Now, if you're Simon, that's his name, the Pharisee. If you're Simon, this moment is a dream come true. What have you and your buddies been trying to do with Jesus? Trap him? Trick him?
[00:15:17] You came into this thing prepared with gotcha questions. You know what I'm saying? You're like, how's he gonna answer this one? Now you can just feel like all of the Pharisees and legalists observing or sitting at the table, they're like, this is better than we could have ever asked. Literally, he's letting a prostitute come onto him in public. Now we can tell everybody. See, told you. He's a Troublemaker. He's not from God. We need to get rid of this guy. He's up to no good. And they are chomping at the bit. How is Jesus going to get out of this one? And you can just kind of feel all of his friends, like, get him, Simon, get him.
[00:15:50] Look at verse 40 with me. And as you hear this verse, I want you to just remember this.
[00:15:55] While Jesus is talking to the Pharisee, the woman is still behind him, weeping, anointing his feet and kissing his feet and answering to him, the Pharisee. He says, simon, I have something to say to you.
[00:16:10] And he answered, say it, teacher. Like, bring it. Like, what could you possibly say to me in this moment? Can you, by the way, feel the tension? Because I can. In verse 41, Jesus responds with a parable. Now, he's gotta be smart here because he has watched Jesus make a mockery out of other spiritual leaders. Got you questions. He's really good at it. Flips them on their head, and they don't know what to do with him. At this point, he's like, how could anything go wrong? I've trapped him.
[00:16:39] So Jesus says, a certain money lender, he had two debtors.
[00:16:43] One owed 500 denarii, the other 50.
[00:16:46] When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. And denarii, denarii, it's one day's worth of wages. So we had one person who owed 500 days of wages and one who owed 50. But either way, they both had the same thing in common. Neither of them could pay their debt.
[00:17:01] In verse 42 to our question of the morning, Jesus asked Simon, the Pharisee, now which of them will love him more?
[00:17:10] Be careful how you answer. He knows this. The trap is being set. He's not going to fall for it. Choose carefully, Simon.
[00:17:17] Simon answered. The one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt, he said to him, you have judged rightly.
[00:17:25] In verse 44, Jesus finally looks at the woman. Then, turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman?
[00:17:35] Yeah, we all see her. The prostitute is coming onto you for sure.
[00:17:39] Jesus continues, I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet. But she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Verse 45. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil. Oil, which is basically cheap, everyday olive oil, sign of honor. But she has anointed my feet with ointment.
[00:17:59] Have you Guys ever been in a room where, like, there's real tension in the room, things are awkward and nobody says anything. Jesus loves these moments. And he. He just sort of like, I'm going to say the thing everyone's thinking, but nobody's saying, I really appreciate this. So if you didn't know kind of how, how this culture works, if you are hosting, you're a wealthier person, you're hosting like a guest of honor. You're gonna have this whole outside courtyard thing set up and there's gonna be cushions and food and servants. Here's basic protocol, like one on one. Like, lowest level.
[00:18:32] I'm not gonna let you track mud in. We're gonna wash your feet. We'll have one of the servants do it. We're gonna take a little bit of olive oil. We're going to anoint your head with oil. We're gonna do a customary, like, you think of a handshake or a hug. We're gonna do a customary kiss on the cheek. Like, this is just basic 101 of what you were supposed to do. And the Pharisee did none of it, which is a passive aggressive way of communicating to everyone around that Jesus was invited, but Jesus is not welcome. And not a single person watching would have missed the lack of basic 101 hospitality toward Jesus in verse 47. Here's the point, Simon. Therefore, I tell you her sins, which are many.
[00:19:18] Like, we can all agree, if you have been a prostitute for years, you've sinned against your own body, other people's bodies, other people's families, and against the holy God. Like, this woman has accrued a lot of sin in her life. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven for she loved much. I bet my bottom dollar at this moment. Jesus turned to Simon at this point and says, but he who's forgiven little loves little.
[00:19:49] I want you to see a hard truth here.
[00:19:52] The depth of your love for God corresponds directly to how sinful you actually believe you are.
[00:20:01] I cannot tell you how many people who basically think as believers in Jesus, that they're pretty good people and at least they're not as bad as those other really bad sinners whom we look down on and judge. But if you believe you are inherently a good person or a mostly good person, if you believe that Jesus death was mostly for other sinners, I mean, yeah, you needed it a little bit, but it's mostly for the other people.
[00:20:23] If you believe that your sin, like, you know it's sin, like, you can think of some things in Your life, but you're. I don't really care about it. It's just not that big of a deal. I got heaven, I'm fine. Then here's the net effect of that.
[00:20:35] Your love for God and others will be very, very small.
[00:20:41] Let me illustrate this principle with forgiveness.
[00:20:44] If you believe that you have sinned wickedly against the holy God and that you have been forgiven of egregious sins that should be paid for by hell, then you will be far more inclined to forgive people who have hurt you when they ask for it.
[00:21:07] Or we'll illustrate this with generosity.
[00:21:10] If you believe that everything you have is from God, every dollar, every penny, every breath, every good gift, every wonderful relationship is from God, then you will, when there are opportunities for generosity, realizing you have received everything from God, nothing got to you unless it went through Jesus. When your moment of generosity comes, you will be generous. We'll apply this differently with weekly worship. How you come into this room, the way you worship in your heart, the way you respond, directly corresponds to your understanding of what Jesus has done for you. Not just on the cross, but every second that you're alive. Like we come into this room. And here's what I can guarantee about most of us. Most of you sinned in one way or another this morning. Either in what you should have done, didn't do judgmental, thought you had passive aggressive thing to your spouse, anger that you exercised in a way that wasn't godly, some addiction that you have, whatever it is, most people probably to some degree came into this room with some level of awareness of sin in your heart. And guess what? There's a whole lot of stuff you and I aren't even aware of. And we carry that with us. And we stand here forgiven by God, graciously and generously. And our response to God in worship corresponds in this moment to our understanding of that. Let me just be super generous for a moment. I walk into church on a regular basis burdened with stuff. And there are times like we'll get through a couple songs or I'll just be sitting there and by the end of the service I'm just like, I haven't even processed much and like I have to stop and I need to take a moment and just say, I gotta get my head straight because I am coming with my people, my church family, to lift high the name of my unbelievable God who has saved me and died for me and sustains this very breath. I need to get some perspective.
[00:23:04] And so like, this is. We'll call it a Proverb. We'll call it a general principle of life. We call it a proverb because it's true the majority of time. But there are exceptions. The one who believes they have been forgiven little forgives little.
[00:23:17] And the one who believes they've been given little. I got it all myself. They give little. The one who believes they've been loved little loves little. But this, this is not our story.
[00:23:28] We are people who have been forgiven more than we could ever imagine. We are people who have been given everything.
[00:23:36] Every breath, every gift, every penny, every benefit, every relationship. You fill in the blank. We are people who have been loved beyond any kind of human love. We have been loved in the most perfect and beautiful way humanly possible. Our God became flesh and died for our sins in our place. The alternative is you go into hell.
[00:23:56] And so God, who has never sinned, has taken our punishment on himself.
[00:24:02] Those who are forgiven much, love much. And to Simon, those who are forgiven little love little.
[00:24:08] I'm going to share with you two. So what's number one?
[00:24:13] Never underestimate what God might do in the lives of those most far from Him. Okay, so I've already drawn your attention to think what likely brought this woman to the place of her brokenness. But there's actually more kind of going on beneath the text.
[00:24:27] Here's one thing that we're almost certain that we know.
[00:24:30] It is really apparent by the way this whole story unfolds that this woman knew who Jesus was.
[00:24:38] She had almost certainly already heard him teach somewhere, probably in her city. And so Jesus would go from city to city to village to village, and he had the the same set of messages that he would preach from place to place. We don't know how many times she heard him. We don't know exactly where she heard him, but she knew enough about him to know that someone like her would be welcomed and forgiven by someone like Jesus. And so here's just like a brief snapshot of the kinds of things Jesus said before we even get to Luke, chapter 7, verse 36.
[00:25:14] Prior to this Luke, in Luke, Jesus was inviting to himself the sick captives, sinners, the unrighteous. He had been publicly talking with and setting up meetings with people who are social outcasts. He would welcome them, forgive them, healed them. And here's what this woman knows. If I am safe with anyone, anywhere, it's Jesus. If I want forgiveness and healing, I know exactly who to go to. Now, I've preached a lot of sermons at village church and at other places, and the vast majority of the Time that I preach, here's what I know. The majority of people who are not Christians, who are listening are not going to come to faith because I preached a sermon and they're not going to come to faith. In that moment, I know that most people are not going to give their life to Christ until they find themselves in a place of profound brokenness. And most of the time, that happens when they are alone.
[00:26:14] And so, knowing that non Christians are listening every time I preach, I want you all to know this.
[00:26:24] When the time comes that you hit the end of yourself, and when the time comes that the sin you've committed to breaks your soul and shatters you into pieces, I want you to know that, like this prostitute, you can weep on Jesus, you can come to Jesus, you can worship him. And his answer to anyone who asks forgiveness and believes in him is yes, Christians, let me talk to you for a moment. You should know this principle.
[00:26:55] It is not uncommon that those in the darkest lifestyles, no matter what face they put on, want out. Most just don't know how.
[00:27:08] The person who knows they are sick is far closer to seeking a physician than the person who thinks they're well. The hardest people to bring to faith in Christ are those who are really religious and they think they're good people.
[00:27:19] But there's a whole bunch of people in your orbit and mine who, they know that they are sinners. They know they are living a lifestyle, and they might even defend it to you.
[00:27:29] But deep down inside, in the private moments of their life, they know they're slaves. They don't want to be a slave. They can't stop doing the things that they're doing. And so my encouragement to you is this. We get scared of the people who are the most resistant. And I would just say, send them a sermon, open up a conversation, ask how they're doing. Like, be a little more bold, because here's what you want them to know. Hey, wherever you're at, I love you unconditionally, number one. Number two, wherever you're at, if you ever get broken by this thing, I want you to at least have a sense that Jesus is always ready to receive you.
[00:28:02] So, number two, I like this one.
[00:28:06] The judgmental jerk needs the blood of Jesus just as much as the prostitute. Amen, fellow church. All the judgmental jerks are like, I don't like the way he said that. Okay, well, so sad.
[00:28:17] I want to come back to verses 41 and 42 just for a moment. Verse 41, the parable.
[00:28:22] A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, the other 50. The numbers, by the way, they're just. They're unimportant. Here's what's important.
[00:28:30] When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both who couldn't pay, neither of them. Who cares if you're 50 denarii in debt or 500? You're bankrupt and broke and you're in debt. And do you know what the consequences in this cultural moment were going to be? You would have to legally become their slave. That's a big deal for a certain amount of years to pay off your debt.
[00:28:54] I don't want you to miss this, that the financial debt, it represents sin debt, in case you haven't been able to put it together yet. And just because somebody has sinned more or more often or more egregiously, it doesn't change the fact that you and they are in the same exact predicament, broke, in debt, and about to be a slave.
[00:29:12] This brings the metaphor full circle. The wages of sin are physical and eternal death for all, no matter how sinful you have been.
[00:29:19] Look, when you stand in judgment before Jesus, unforgiven sinners are unforgiven sinners. It doesn't matter at that moment how much unforgiven sin you have. And when you stand before Jesus, forgiven sinners are forgiven sinners. And it doesn't matter how much sin you had to forgive. The blood of Christ covered all of it for everyone. You could be 500 denarii in debt, or 50 denarii, or 1.
[00:29:40] You all came, we all came before Christ with nothing. And if we are forgiven, we are all forgiven.
[00:29:48] Jesus is making, I think, a really awesome point. Even invisible sin puts you in debt to God. This invisible sin of judgmentalism or whatever invisible sin you can think of just as much as the prostitute. It leaves you in the exact same place unable to pay your sin debt. Now, I'm not sure who observed this first, but I really appreciated this observation about the apostle Paul. Somebody identified that as you track his self understanding of his sin throughout the chronology of his letters, there's an evolution.
[00:30:19] The evolution goes like this. His first letter is in the book of Galatians, and he acknowledges, I persecuted the church.
[00:30:26] First Corinthians was written shortly after that, a couple years. And so then he says, okay, of all the apostles, I'm the least.
[00:30:33] Well, then a few years later he writes the book of Ephesians, and he says, of all the saints, I'm the very least.
[00:30:39] And by the Time you get to the end of his life, the last couple years, he writes 1 Timothy and here's what he says. I am the foremost of sinners.
[00:30:48] And kind of here's the principle that we learned from Paul. The longer I walk with Jesus and the closer I get to him, the greater I understand the depth and the weight of my own sin.
[00:30:59] Finally, I want you to look at what the moneylender does. It says he canceled in verse 42. He canceled the debt. This is a really cool Greek word. It's charisma. It comes from the Greek word charis, where we get our word grace.
[00:31:11] And when somebody charismize somebody, it is a free, willing and generous action.
[00:31:20] And what I love about the moneylender is that he's not like 500 denarii. That's a lot.
[00:31:25] He is pumped to forgive those who were in debt and to set them free. And in the same way, this is what Jesus did with this woman.
[00:31:37] And in the same way, if you have never come to Christ and asked him to forgive you and to save you, this is what he is waiting to do for you. And that is really good news.
[00:31:50] Let's just finish reading the rest of the story. Verse 48 he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.
[00:31:59] Verse 49 gives us a great insight into the attitude of those people sitting at the Pharisees table, those judgmental jerks.
[00:32:08] Then those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins?
[00:32:14] And he said to the woman, lest you think it was her good works that saved her, your faith has saved you.
[00:32:21] Go in peace. Her tears didn't save her. The ointment, the expense of it didn't save her. Her big act of worship didn't save her. Her faith saved her.
[00:32:32] This is the good news of Jesus that bankrupt people broken in a debt deserving of hell. For our sin can be freely, generously, graciously, once and for all forgiven not by being good, but through faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Amenville Church Amen. Let's pray together.
[00:32:54] Father, when we get to heaven, I really want to meet this woman.
[00:32:58] I want her to describe for me what happened from beginning to end. I want to know her story. I think we all do.
[00:33:05] And I just want to thank you that you inspired Luke to put this into his account so that we could read it just this morning. Way I want to thank you for these stories that remind us of the power of the blood of Christ, the kindness of Jesus, but also it's really good to know that he sees people for who they really are.
[00:33:24] It's really good to know that he's just not all nice all the time. But Lord, we are so grateful that you are just and merciful and gracious for those who refuse you. You are just. We don't want to refuse you. We want to be like this woman and we want to come before you with all of our sin visible and invisible, because we all have both. And we want to just say we are sorry. And for those of us that you have forgiven, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, fill us with gratitude. And I just pray that you would consistently, continually show us, like the Apostle Paul, the depth of our sin in a way that increases and amplifies gratitude, worship and generosity and love. We pray all of this and we do it it in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
