Luke 7:36-50

Hey, this is Pastor Josh.

Thanks for tuning in to our weekly podcast of our sermon from the preceding week.

The following sermon was recorded on April 15th.

We're in the book of Luke, currently finishing up chapter seven.

If you're interested in finding out more information about Haven City Church, you can visit our website, www.baltimorechurch.com.

We're also on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

We'd love to hear from you.

If you're in the area, we'd love to have you visit with us.

God is doing some awesome things all around Baltimore.

There's some awesome church plants in the city.

And we would love to connect you with what God is doing in the city, whether it's at our church or at another local church.

We are a big fan of God's work in Baltimore City.

God bless.

Luke chapter 7 is where we're going to be at.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

We've been in Luke now for um a few weeks, even before Easter.

So we're going to wrap it up today.

That should be fun.

Luke 7, verse 36 through 50.

Luke 7:36–50

And everybody's got it.

Luke's Luke 7.

Good passage.

Here's what it says.

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisees' house, reclined at the table.

A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house.

So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

As she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisees who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is.

That she is a sinner.

Jesus answered him, Simon, I have something to tell you.

Tell me, teacher, he said.

Two people owed money to a certain money lender.

One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.

Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both.

Now which of them will love him more?

Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.

You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

Then he turned towards the woman and said to Simon, Do you see this woman?

I came into your house.

You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears, and she wiped them with her hair.

You did not give me a kiss, but this woman from the time I entered has not stopped kissing my feet.

You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.

Therefore I tell you, her sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown.

But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.

Then Jesus said to her, Your sins are forgiven.

And the other guests began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?

And Jesus said to the woman, Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.

Let's pray.

God, we just pray.

We surrender ourselves before you and your word, and we want to let you speak to our lives through this text.

And we know you do that by the Holy Spirit.

And so, God, we want to just have an attitude of surrender and submission to you.

Lord, there are things here in the sermon notes, things that you laid on my heart, but you may speak through this text by your Holy Spirit to the folks that are here in something very unique, something cutting.

And Lord, we want to give you permission to do that in our lives.

Lord, we want to acknowledge that this week for our church has been a week of just turbulence.

I know just it being connected with individual lives.

There are people that are just being slaughtered by the onslaught of just the devil attacking people.

And uh some of us that are here have felt that, and others who are not here are in the midst of warfare.

And so, Lord, we pray for your great grace to be poured out upon your saints.

Lord, that you would be our protection, that you would be our help, that you would be our comforter in time of need.

And Lord, that you would raise up a standard and that you would stop the devil from having just his way with us.

Protect your saints.

Lord, we are vulnerable, we are uh weak, and we need you, Lord, to be our protection.

And we ask for that in Jesus' name.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, so we have read through this text, Luke chapter 7, and before we get specifically into these points, what I want to do is just kind of walk through the text and catch you up with where we've been.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Now, the book of Luke has three major themes.

Three major themes.

The first theme is that God has a plan.

God has a plan with his church.

And Luke continually, as he goes through the text, he's highlighting the fact that God's plan is unfolding, that God is faithful in his work.

The second theme is that God's kingdom is breaking through into the world, that God is the king, that Jesus is the king, and that he is breaking through.

That kingdom is kind of showing itself in reality.

And the third uh theme that we see uh all the way throughout the book is this idea of giving certainty to what you've believed.

Many of you, I'm trusting, that you've given your life to Jesus Christ.

If you haven't, we're gonna talk more about what that is today.

But for those who believe, Luke is saying, I've written this so that you have a greater sense of certainty in what you have believed, that you feel confident in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So if you've missed any of that, you can go back, you can look.

We we've got the podcast up, and some of the previously recorded sermons are up on the website to cover some of those themes, and and and that's all up there.

Baltimorechurch.com.

I think slash sermons is where it's at.

Last week we wrapped up this story of uh remember the parable where Jesus said, Um, you guys are like kids in the marketplace and you're unresponsive to the work of God.

He says it's like kids that are shout, they're they're playing music and you won't dance.

And then they're mournful and you won't weep.

In other words, the picture that would come to the mind of the person listening to that is this the marketplace and people that are just kind of passing by.

Sometimes maybe you do that when you're stopped at the red light, you know, and the person's holding the sign there, and you just you're you're unresponsive, like they don't exist, right?

And that's what Jesus is saying this culture is like.

God's broken through.

John the Baptist has come on the scene and he's preached as a radical prophet this message of repentance and baptism.

And some didn't respond.

And then Jesus comes on the scene completely different than John.

He hangs out with sinners, right?

That's a it's just so different from how John is, and yet people are unresponsive.

And so Jesus is saying there is an unresponsiveness about this generation.

And in Luke 7, verse 35, it says this.

Luke 7:35

I don't have it on the slide, but 7, 34, and 35 says, A man, the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, but wisdom is proved right by her children.

And then Luke is going to go now into this next story.

And the next story that Luke tells of Jesus is when he's invited to this Pharisee's house.

Simon is the name of this Pharisee, and this is one of three Pharisees that Jesus goes to.

So we also have Jesus going over to a Pharisee's house for dinner in chapter 11, verse 37 through 54, and then also chapter 14, 1 through 24.

So it's interesting how Luke gives us these three specific accounts of Jesus going over to the Pharisees' house, uh, the houses.

As you go through this text, we see Simon brings in, Simon brings in the um brings in Jesus.

Simon doesn't do what he should have done as a hospitable guest.

Uh he doesn't clean Jesus' feet.

He doesn't have a servant come and wash his feet.

He doesn't greet.

So if you're a peer in this culture, what you do is you would kiss um, you'd kiss the person on their cheek, and if you had, if they were a superior, you'd kiss them on their hand.

And and Simon evidently doesn't do that with Jesus as he comes in.

And and this meal is taking place in an open courtyard, probably.

It was a horseshoe type arrangement, and maybe not so much a table as just the food is arranged as a horseshoe, and then people would prop themselves up on one side to eat, and their feet were sticking out uh the back.

And so um it gave opportunity, it was it was pretty easy for these um for this woman to kind of slip in to this particular setting.

Um and here she is, she's crying, and she's just it almost makes you feel uncomfortable, right?

As she's sitting there and she's like weeping, and she's washing um Jesus' feet with her hair and pouring perfume on his feet, it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Makes me feel uncomfortable as we're looking at it.

And it and and what we see is Simon is judgmentally, he's like, if Jesus really knew who this was, then he wouldn't let this woman touch him.

This is inappropriate, right?

That's that is the setting that we have.

The key verse in here is 47 and 48.

Verse 47 and 48 says, Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown.

But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.

Then Jesus said to her, Your sins are forgiven.

There are three points.

The first one is up here on this text.

The first point is this we are with Simon, the Pharisee, in his mistake.

The second mis the second point I want to make is that sin is very real.

And the third point is that forgiveness is real.

Let's look at this next slide here.

We're with Simon in his mistake.

Here's what's going on with Simon.

Simon has this mathematical equation in his head, right?

It goes like this.

If that person there truly knew, they were truly good, if they were truly good, they would do X.

And since they don't do that, I feel morally superior, right?

That's basically if you boil down Simon's place at where he's at, he's condescending to Jesus.

This is God, right?

God in the flesh.

And here is the Pharisee saying, I am more righteous than you.

And we make this mistake in our life.

We can easily fall into this place where we think, look, if you were really good, you would do this, and since you don't do that, uh, I'm better than you.

And it's a way of us propping ourselves up in self-righteousness.

It could be like this: a person could say, if you are truly good, then you will adopt animals rather than buying the ones that are bred.

Uh, and since you don't, I am morally superior than you.

Or it could be like this: a person would say, if you're truly good, you would eat the paleo diet instead of being a vegan.

And since you don't, I am morally superior than you.

The third one could be if uh uh it's like my eight-year-old sister, if she was truly a good person, she would know how to win at Minecraft.

And since she doesn't, I am morally superior to her.

Or we could look at a homeless person and say, go get a job.

And if they don't go get a job, well, therefore I am morally superior.

You see, we we can approach life in the same way that Simon does, where we look down our nose at people and say, if you are truly good, then you would do X.

And since you don't, and I can identify that you're not doing that thing, then I am better than you.

A critical spirit flows from a specific belief about oneself.

To be critical of others, you have to have, first of all, a sensed need for moral standing or approval, a need for righteousness.

Why are we critical of others?

Well, it's because internally we feel like there is a need for righteousness, for the world to be right.

We need to be right.

We need to be righteous in God's eyes.

We need to have this moral standing.

The second thing that goes into the recipe is that we need to possess a very low view of our own sin.

Right?

We need to see ourselves as morally superior, and the things that we do, oh psh, God doesn't care about those things.

You know, he sweeps those under the carpet.

He doesn't really care.

And the third aspect of having a critical spirit is that you have a belief that by being able to identify other people's sin, you are in some way improving on your own moral status.

Somehow, it's by us being able to criticize others, we feel like, oh, since I can identify that person's weakness or sin, therefore I am better.

Amen.

You've been there before?

It's like this.

It sounds like this.

I know what you're doing.

I know what you are doing is wrong, and by me being able to identify that, I am a better person than you.

And it is as if a person becomes better by identifying other people's wrongdoing.

Let me show you this quote very quickly.

This is by Ernst Kassman.

He says, the gospel does not establish a new religion for those who want to be pious, but salvation for the ungodly, and Christians are not pious people.

Uh, and Christian, uh, and Christians are not pious people resting safely on grace, but we are an ungodly people standing under grace.

Do you see that?

We often, it's easy to see and meet Christians who think that I've got the grace of God.

I'm in the grace of God.

I'm not an ungodly person.

God loves me.

But the truth about us as Christians is that no, we are not a better people, we are a forgiven people.

We are a people who have no deserving right to get God's righteousness, and yet because of Jesus' work on the cross, we are considered righteous.

Now, Jesus is not, he's not saying, and the church is not saying we don't deal with sin in the New Testament.

The church does address sin in Galatians 6 and 1 Corinthians 5, we have two accounts of where sin is specifically addressed.

We are a church that will address sin, right?

We are calling.

We're as if you're a member of our church, then that means there's a commitment to one another that we're saying, hey, if you see sin in me, you can correct me, right?

And and I'm giving you permission uh to correct me, and you have and I have permission to correct you, right?

In love towards one another.

We're helping each other to grow in our Christ-likeness.

But the correction of this passage is this the correction of this passage is targeted at an attitude of self-righteousness based upon an ability to identify other people's sin.

And Jesus is calling Simon to look at the situation through new eyes.

He's calling Simon.

He says, Do you see, do you see in the text there he says, he says to Simon, Do you see her?

Do you see this woman?

Do you see who she is?

Man.

If you've been on the the uh the other end of a critical spirit, you know how uh just how deadly it is and how crushing it is.

Just a couple of weeks ago we were in that passage where where Jesus says, look, before you go around and start pulling things out of people's eyes, look at the log that's hanging out of your own eye.

Jesus really, he encourages his people to not be focused on sin, but to be a humble people, a forgiving people.

Let's look at the second, the second point here, which is that sin is substantially real.

There are three verses here that that deal with sin.

There's actually five times that sin is talked about, but three that I want you to see.

Luke 737.

You see here it says, a woman in that town who lived a sinful life.

It describes this woman as a sinner.

And then, second, we've lost our screen.

I don't know what we did, but somehow we managed to lose it.

Do you have a screen back there?

That's weird.

Okay.

Well, the second verse is Luke 737.

And it says this, or 739.

It says, The Pharisee who had invited him saw this.

He said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him, what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner.

The Pharisee looks at her and says, She's a sinner.

And then in verse 47, it says, Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven as her great love has shown.

But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.

So this passage is clearly talking about sin, right?

It's addressing the issue of sin.

And we're introduced to the theme of sin in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Remember in Genesis chapter 3, that's the original sin.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And what is what takes place there?

The woman is tempted by Satan to eat the fruit.

To eat the fruit.

And it's at that point that the woman takes the fruit, eats it, and then offers it to her husband Adam.

The world becomes sinful.

And in fact, in Romans chapter 3, it says that all have sinned.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

Everyone ever born has sinned.

There's varying degrees of sin, there's different kinds of sin, but everyone born is guilty of sin.

Sin is a universal disease that has affected every part of our lives.

So let me give you five ways it's affected us.

First of all, it has alienated humanity from the original design of the universe.

It has alienated humanity from the original design of the universe.

The second way that sin has affected the world is that it has affected every human relationship.

Third, sin affects our physical bodies and puts us on a trajectory for death.

Sin has affected our work and our play, and sin has affected the good things God made for us.

The good world that we're intended to enjoy has become warped by sin.

In this story, the sin is an identity.

Do you see that?

This woman is called a sinner.

Everybody sins, but this woman is identified as a sinner.

Her culture gave her this identity.

Don't you find that interesting?

Her culture, her society said, You are a sinner.

I don't know what I think about that.

What do you think about that?

What do you think about the fact that the culture, you think that was helpful?

It could have been helpful.

It could have helped her get to the point where she's at, but it also could have been oppressive.

I don't know how to make heads or tails of it, but we know that the Pharisee says she is a sinner.

Even Lucas says she lived a sinful life.

What that means is that she didn't just step over the limits of her conscience, but she also ran through cultural boundaries and the social pressure associated with this particular sin.

All have sinned, but not all are identified by society as sinners.

The cultural concept of sin is an interesting idea.

Sometimes there are taboos in culture that are align with God's moral law.

So in our culture, it's wrong to murder, right?

Or it's wrong to steal.

And God's law agrees with that.

But then there are other instances, there are other occasions where our culture is approving of a particular Act, but God's law is not approving.

Ultimately, humans are accountable to God and not culture.

Culture can participate with God in that accountability process or it can inoculate members from God's conviction.

The problem is a society can be approving of things that are immoral, and that can ultimately lead to a person not sensing the conviction that God wants them to feel.

But no matter how culture handles sin, sin is very real.

It's real in this passage.

And Jesus tells a parable to illustrate the poignancy of sin.

It's about these two debtors.

He illustrates this point to Simon the Pharisee by saying there are these two debtors who have the inability to repay the debt.

One has uh it's the equivalency of a debt equal to 500 days of pay, and another one has a debt equal to 50 days of pay.

And both are forgiven of this debt.

The idea here is that sin is analogous to a debt.

This debt, though, of sin can never be paid off.

Imagine if Under Armour had a$3 billion debt, right?

And Kevin Planck decided that he was going to start a bunch of charities around Baltimore to try to get out of debt.

Does that work?

Come on, some of you guys know the balance sheets.

That doesn't work, does it?

Your charities will not get you out of debt.

But people like Pharisees who try to make up for their spiritual debt through good works is like Kevin Plank starting charities to get out of his debt.

It doesn't go together.

You see, the opposite of sin is not virtue, the opposite of sin is faith.

That is what Jesus is trying to pull out of Simon.

He's trying to provoke Simon to turn to God in faith.

Sin is a very real problem, and we see it here in this moment.

And here's the interesting thing.

Here's the interesting thing.

Culture has said that you, woman, are a sinner.

We don't know what she did.

People guess, but we don't we don't know what the sin was.

She just says has a sinful lifestyle.

Culture says you're a sinner, but she steps out of the cultural courtroom and she steps into God's courtroom.

Do you see how she, with abandonment, leaves aside what is socially and culturally appropriate?

She barges in to Emile.

She's crying at his feet and wiping his feet with her tears.

Complete disregard for what is appropriate, to the point that even 2,000 years later we feel uncomfortable with what she was doing.

It's like, what is going on?

But this is because this woman, she doesn't care about culture any longer.

She cares about her account with God.

And here's what I believe.

I believe this woman is already forgiven, and that's why she's acting like we don't know what other encounters she's had with God, but she is demonstrating, even in the parable, Jesus said, Who loves more?

The one who's forgiven.

Here she is.

She is loving more than Simon.

In fact, this woman is taking the role of a good host.

Right?

Simon should have been a good host to Jesus, but this woman comes in and she is being a good host.

It's amazing, just the this there's so much here, but we've got to go on to the third point.

And that is that forgiveness is substantial.

Forgiveness is not just an Oprah theme that happens over 55 minutes in one particular scenario.

No, that may reflect forgiveness, but forgiveness is a real thing that has to come from heaven.

And that is a part, that's what we see peeking through here.

Do you see that what these people say, well, look at look at uh 742 really quickly.

Neither of them had money.

This is right in the middle of this parable.

This is the first time we see the word forgave or forgiveness.

Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts.

And then one more reference to forgiveness, and that's in verse 49.

The other guests began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?

Do you see this word?

Even?

Who is this that even forgives sins?

It is as if, it is as if the miracles that Jesus did was one level, but man, when you go to forgiveness, it's like next level God stuff.

These, the the culture, as they're looking here at Jesus, the the general population, there, they're seeing Jesus say, your sins are forgiven you, it has this shock value to this culture.

They knew that God is the one, only God is the one that can forgive sins in a true way.

We first come across forgiveness in Genesis 50, verse 17.

Genesis 50:17

You know Genesis 50?

It's right in the end, it's right at the end of the story of Joseph.

Joseph, the one who's betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt.

He's he's you know, he's slandered by Potiphar's wife, he's forgotten in jail by the butler, right?

It's a terrible place that all the things that Joseph has gone through, and his brothers come back at the end of his life, and he encounters his brothers, and then his dad dies, and the brothers are freaked out because they are afraid that Joseph is now gonna pay back all of the evil that the brothers had attributed and put on Joseph.

And so they say this this is the message that's supposed to go to Joseph.

I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.

Now please forgive the sins of your servants, of the God of your father.

When the message came to him, he wept.

He wept because in his heart he had already forgiven them.

And he kind of chides them and he said, and then he he treats them well after this, and he says, You're forgiven.

God has turned what was meant by you for evil, he has turned it for good.

That's the first time we encounter the word forgiveness in the Bible.

And then as you go on through scripture, you get into the Levitical priesthood and how God establishes the nation of Israel.

And he and a major part of their worship is the sacrifice and then these offerings for the forgiveness of sins.

And uh, it's a beautiful, beautiful picture of how God is even foreshadowing the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross way back in Old Testament history.

He's showing that God wants to forgive his people's sins.

Ultimately, when we get over to Jeremiah 31, 33 through 34, there's this promise of a new covenant.

The promise of the new covenant, it says this right in the middle.

Just look in verse 34, somewhere in the middle of 34.

No longer will they teach their neighbor to say to one another, know the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

This is the promise that Jesus makes to his disciples the night before he is crucified.

When he gives an communion, he inaugurates the Eucharist.

It is this very promise, this covenant of God that Jesus is speaking of.

This is the covenant that God makes with his people.

It is at its root a covenant of forgiveness.

We are a forgiven people.

And here Jesus is dealing with this woman, saying, Woman, your sins are forgiven you.

Your sins are forgiven you.

The metaphor that is used, the metaphor that's used is again this financial one.

I don't know if you've ever been in debt.

I've been in debt, and I've paid off some debts.

And when you pay off the debt, that is a unique feeling.

When you get out of debt and you have that freedom of like, that's not hanging over me anymore, Jesus says, that is what it's like to be forgiven.

And the problem with Simon was that he did not recognize his sinfulness.

He was measuring his sinfulness off of this woman.

He's like, I didn't do what she did.

I'm not as bad as her.

I don't need as much forgiveness, right?

And yet Jesus is using this woman to really bring to the surface the indebtedness, right?

Do you see there's two parties indebted?

There's two parties indebted.

And that's what Romans 3.23 says.

It says we've all sinned.

We've fallen short of the glory of God.

We are an indebted people in need of the forgiveness of God.

So we talked about three things self-righteous pride, sin, and forgiveness.

To be an emotionally healthy individual, you have to get these three things right.

And God is the one who can help us get these things right.

The mission statement of our church says that we are a church that loves Jesus and preaches the gospel.

Those are two, the two first two parts of our mission statement.

We love Jesus like this woman loved Jesus because we are a people whose debts have been forgiven.

And we preach the gospel because it is a message of forgiveness.

It points to our sin and it says you need to be forgiven, and then it offers us forgiveness of sins.

If you've never trusted in Jesus as your payment for sin of guilt of that debt, I'd encourage you to do it.

The gospel convicts us of our sin and brings us to Jesus so that we will repent and receive his gift of forgiveness.

Jesus wants to put away our sin, he wants us to be a forgiven people.

And I want that for you as well.

Let's pray.

God, we just thank you.

We thank you so much for your forgiveness in our life.

We are a sinful people, God, and you still love us.

Lord, the debts, the debt of our sin, Lord, is just so unfortunate.

But yet you are merciful and merciful and merciful to us.

Forgive us for the sins of this past week, Lord.

Give us mercy.

Give us mercy, Lord.

Pour out your mercy upon us.

We thank you for the promise of your new covenant, that it's a promise of forgiven sin.

And thank you that you hold this woman up as a trophy of your great grace.

Do that, Lord, in our life.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.