Repentance and Forgiveness — Luke 7

0:00 Good morning to all my fans. I don't know where the rock star nickname came from. But it's good to see you. It's good to it's good to speak because I can I can control the quick time then? And everybody knows I can tell time.

0:20 So at least when I'm in this position. I was working with a job this week, my old neighbor Harvey across the street, and he's he's a night owl, he sleeps in. And I say, Harvey, how about 10:30 tomorrow? He says, how about eleven? He calls me at 10:00 and says, how about noon?

0:41 So two can play that game. I showed up at two. I gotta find my notes. But we are in Luke still. And hearing that Doug Torok is coming back, I'm gonna tease him a bit because he always listens to these messages before he speaks.

1:03 And years ago, some of you maybe remember this and can substantiate it. He says, his method of preaching is just to study like crazy, let everything get crammed into his head, and then trust the holy spirit to draw it out. So... But unlike him, I do have an outline. So...

1:21 But before we start, I want to give some public service announcements and my book recommendation. You know, I usually give a book recommendation. The book I'm almost done with, and when I finish it, first come first serve could borrow it is Ruth Graham Bell's biography. Fascinating story. Obviously, she was married to Billy Graham, so you learn a lot about him reading this book.

1:50 Fascinating story. A lifelong story of a unrepentant Presbyterian, she was living with unashamed Baptist that he was. After the third try of trying to kill herself on a motorcycle, she gave it up. She... Not really trying to kill herself, but she thought it looked like fun, she got on a bike and she crashed three times.

2:15 Ran into a pond once, ran into off the road once, finally she decided this probably isn't a good idea. And of course you'll learn lots about her raising the children, might be some child rearing tips there. Also, forget what else, you'll have to read it. So first come first serve. Next is the, for many years, the Meng family was part of CCA, Christian Communicators of America.

2:42 And I'm trying to recruit some of you to observe or if you're an adult 18 and up, you could be a judge. You don't need to know anything to judge. Mason, you can come judge. That'd be fine. Just a clean slate.

2:58 No biases. But it's May 1011. Mason's a friend of mine. May 1011 at Malone College in Canton. And to Morris's amazing grandson grandson, Ian, Morris will be there.

3:13 He's competing and he's doing quite well. But seriously, if you want more information, talk to me and that would be great. They have a lot of different speech events that even just to watch would be interesting for for you guys. You wanna go down there for a couple hours, it'd be be worth it. Often, you know, the week before preaching, people wonder how your week was.

3:59 And I said, not really, which if you think about it, what kind of an answer is that? Not really. But we were boarding a car, a cow. And this cow, to our embarrassment, is smarter than us because he got out a number of times and he was standing right in route... State Route 83 looking for directions.

4:24 But the happy ending is that, the owners, smart enough to come and get them after getting out so many times, they finally took them away. So that's that's my good story of the week. So, but let's let's have a word of prayer then we're going to get started into the into the text. Father, we do thank you for bringing us here this morning. I believe you have a message for each of us, and I pray that, we might hear your voice, whatever whatever your word to us is, and whatever point of life we're at that we might, hear it and be encouraged and and seek you more and seek to learn more of you.

5:09 And we ask these things in our Lord Jesus name. Amen. Last week, those of you who were here heard Andy Hilton. And if you were not here, I suggest you get his message and listen to it. It was really a good word.

5:25 And I had given him permission to swerve into my half of the chapter, and he did a bit. And I might go back a little bit to his half of the chapter. Also, if you were here in March for when, for the Steve Price meetings, he spoke Sunday morning, and the bulk of his message was in this chapter as well. In fact, in the second half of the chapter where I will be. And if you haven't heard his message, which I believe was titled forgiveness, I would suggest you look it up and and listen to it.

5:54 You can pull all those down from the web from the web. Of course, the best part of speaking for me is the preparation of it. And... But like I said of Doug, I'm gonna try to have the good thoughts pop out. I'm gonna trust the Lord to bring out the good remarks.

6:17 So my plan is to read the section in Luke. Luke seven verses 28 to 50, and then I'm gonna make some remarks. And then if we have time, I might reread and see what other thoughts pop out of my brain that are in there. And my approach this morning is sort of people watch. Look at the different personalities involved and see what we can learn from them or avoid from them.

6:48 You know, the very broad picture of Luke is that it's one of the gospels, and the gospels were the message of Jesus coming to Earth to to be the savior of the world. And John and his gospel says many things Jesus said and did, and if they were all written down, the world couldn't contain the book. So this is our portion today, just another snapshot of the life of Christ to try to teach us something about him and about us so that we can know him and understand that he is the way of salvation. He is the way of deliverance from our sin. So starting reading at verse 28.

7:28 I say to you, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. And when all the people and the tax gatherers heard this, they acknowledged God's justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves, not having been baptized by John. And then Jesus spoke in verse 31, which you see if you have the red letter editions.

8:01 Jesus said, to what then shall I compare the men of this generation and what are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, and they say, we played the flute for you, and you did not dance we sang a dirge, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, he has a demon. The son of man has come eating and drinking, and you say, behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax gatherers and sinners. Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.

8:42 Now one of the pharisees was requesting him to dine with him. And he, Jesus, entered the pharisee's house and reclined at the table. And behold, there was a woman in the city who was a sinner. And when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume. And standing behind him, Jesus at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, kissing the feet, anointing them with the perfume.

9:19 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner? And Jesus answered and said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he replied, say it, teacher. A certain money lender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii and the other 50.

9:49 When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. Which of them, therefore, will love him more? Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more. And he said to him, you have judged correctly. And turning toward the woman, he said...

10:08 And turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? 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. You gave me no kiss, but she has... But she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet.

10:30 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little loves little. And he said to her, your sins have been forgiven. And those who were reclining at the table with him began to say to themselves, who is this man who even forgives sin?

11:03 And he, Jesus, said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. So let's go back to the beginning and talk about some of the personalities or the people involved. And the first one is John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a unique person in the sense of his calling and his privilege, you might say, even though he's not a person that I would have wanted to be necessarily.

11:31 But let me read a couple of verses in John chapter one just to clarify who John the Baptist was. There came a man sent from God whose name was John. He came for a witness that he might bear witness of the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came that he might bear witness of the light. So John had a very special calling.

11:56 He was going to come to be the specific one to introduce the Messiah, who was also prophesied in Malachi three. It was kind of a dualistic prophecy where it spoke of John the Baptist coming to introduce Jesus. But notice the phrase that all might believe through him. And it wasn't belief in John, but the belief in the message he was preaching and the person he was proclaiming, the Lord Jesus. And then Jesus makes this interesting remark in verse 28.

13:00 The person of the new covenant, Jesus. So he was before the cross. But after the cross are those of us who have placed our faith in him and we're part of the kingdom. And the thought is that the blessings of being in the kingdom, the blessings of, the high position we have as believers in Christ after his death and resurrection and the giving of the spirit is greater than the calling of John the Baptist because we're in a sense the fruit of that. I think this chapter illustrates too that the woman the Baptist was in prison, and that is what inspired a lot of this chapter.

13:53 I think the story that Jesus told was his magnificent orchestration of events to make a point, and John the Baptist complained to his question, what am I doing in prison if I'm supposed to be... You know, he had some questions. And and this all flows... This chapter is because John asked a question and Jesus, even though he didn't answer in words, said, well, the work that I'm doing, the people that are responding, that is what's important. I found it interesting in my studies, one of the of the books made the point, one of the study books, John was...

14:36 It says specifically, born of born of woman. And he... And that phrase was contrasted with Paul the apostle's remark, born of a woman. And the grammar and the and the words used here in that statement in reference to John illustrates natural birth. Born of woman in the normal sense, a husband and a wife, a man and a woman.

15:05 And we know, most of us know, I'm sure, John the Baptist's miraculous birth, for lack of a better word, how his parents late in life were able to have a baby. But when Paul in his epistle says born of a woman, the grammar he uses is speaking of only a woman. There's no allowance for a man to be involved, and it's a grammatical indication in the... Or in a... Even a textual illustration in the original languages that Jesus was born of a virgin a virgin.

15:39 He had no human father, which as we were looking a little bit in Romans five, anybody born as a human being has that sin from Adam. So I digress. So let me get back to my my notes. So John was very special, but those of us who come to faith are considered even greater than John the Baptist. Tax gatherers and the people, we see in verse 29, actually accepted John's baptism and in a sense received his praise.

16:14 But we see in verse 30, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected rejected the baptism of John and in fact rejected Jesus. They did not care for either. Neither of them cared for each other. John the Baptist had referred to the Pharisees as brood of vipers. That's that's not very...

16:38 That's not complimentary at all. Jesus referred to them as whitewashed tombs, and and, in John's gospel, sons of the devil, the pharisees considered John mad, out of his mind that he had a demon. And they considered, as one commentator put it, considered Jesus as vulgar because he he hung out with... He had... He was a friend of tax collectors and sinners as the text says.

17:11 They were quite aloof from John or Jesus, and that's what this... I think this... These remarks in verses 32 are about. Like children that refusing to join in with the with the events, either a mock marriage or a mock funeral in the marketplace. Except for...

17:32 Despite their strong personalities, Jesus and John were not acting. So no matter what Jesus did, the Pharisees took exception to it, especially that they were sinners that needed needed Jesus. So this is, within the gospels, another account of Jesus' life where he meets a variety of needs to demonstrate that he really is who he said he was, the son of God who came to be the savior of the world. There's no circumstance beyond his saving grace. The pharisees and the lawyers simply rejected his testimony.

18:14 Simplest way to describe it is unbelief. They had they had no faith. And as you maybe recall from last week, the first story in this chapter is about the centurion who Jesus praises having great faith. And we'll see that that's how this chapter ends to a woman who had faith despite the uniqueness of the situation. Verse 35, wisdom is vindicated by our children.

18:42 I don't have a whole lot to say about that other than that, the cause and effect principle, the sowing, you know, the sowing and the reaping, the sowing of the gospel brings salvation. So the ministries of John and Jesus were authenticated by the results. People confessed their sin, people were saved. So this last section in verses 36 to 50, I think is a is an indie... Is a illustrates the...

19:43 What the law demands of him, and he would have been very careful to follow the rules, but also completely incapable of understanding that sometimes the law of love, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself, is more important than all the prescribed observances and the finer points of the law. That's what the lawyers the lawyers and the pharisees. The lawyers were experts in the law, and they were supposed to explain how it applied to everybody else. They they themselves did not follow it. They were just kinda like lawyers who are hired to tell you what it means for you, but it was not applied to them.

20:23 So... And we're gonna sort of sweep through this pretty quickly as, well, as I exam... As I talk about Simon the Pharisee. The woman comes in and she's at Jesus' feet and he's... Simon's thinking to himself, Jesus doesn't know who this woman is because if he did, he wouldn't be he wouldn't be letting her do what she's doing.

20:51 But this woman apparently already understood who Jesus was and had put her faith in him. There's some missing pieces in this story from our perspective, but they're all there. We just can't see them. And now she's in this house with Simon and the others, and she's identifying with him in service and worship, washing his feet and anointing them and and sacrificially surrendering a very valuable commodity that the oil to to honor him with. And the...

21:25 Again, the grammar here suggests it was an act of utmost respect, submission, and affection. So even though we all have in our mind probably what her sin was, it doesn't matter. There's none righteous. No, not one as the scripture say. God knows everything about us.

21:45 We can't hide it just as Simon couldn't hide his thought from the from the Lord. And we can't even when we honestly admit it, fix it. Only Jesus can do that. I was recalling the story in Acts 16 of Paul and Silas being in prison and, the earthquake occurring and there... The jailer was afraid that everybody was going to escape, and the penalty for not doing your job and that that culture was death.

22:17 And he was gonna take his life. And Paul said, stop. And he realized from the observation of that whole event that there was something bigger than him. He realized Paul and Silas had a faith that he didn't have and he said to them, what must I do to be saved? And their reply was believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

22:40 And somehow through the observation of Jesus' ministry, I believe the woman came to that same point and even though we don't have the details of her conversion, she had placed her faith in Jesus. But getting back to the story of Simon, Jesus knew what he was thinking and respectfully and courageously makes a statement to engage Simon in a little conversation. He gives the illustration of the two debtors. And then he of course asks Simon which one would appreciate the forgiveness more. And Simon's answer was self condemning.

23:21 He he answered correctly. The Lord said correctly, but it was also condemning for Simon because he, among other things, had neglected the customs of the day. We had read in the text that... Well, here in verse 44, do you see this woman? I entered your house.

23:40 You gave me no water for my feet. That was Simon's first neglect of custom. And then in that culture, that day, the roads were dirt and people came in with dirty feet and that was what you did for your guests. You washed their feet or at least had provision for it. You gave me no kiss.

24:01 They would greet each other as is still common in The Middle East with a kiss on the cheek. And third, even there was a symbolic anointing of oil on the head and he didn't do any of that. And that was contrasted with the actions of the woman. And then as I was reading, I noticed again, he was... He looked at the woman, but he was talking to Simon.

24:39 To which would have made a quite an impression, I think, on on on both of them. He was he was rebuking. He rebuked him in the in these text... In these verses. And so verse 47.

24:55 Even though Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah in this portion per se, he was demonstrating it. For this reason, I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven. For she loved much, but he who was forgiven little loves much. Simon as a pharisee would have acknowledged God in a very superficial way, but not in a not in a what we might call a real way. He really didn't understand the, that he was a sinner.

25:26 He had rejected the baptism of repentance that that John the Baptist was that was his ministry, but he didn't realize he himself needed the Lord as a savior. And that's the point that we must all come to. For me, I think it was, during the Christmas program in the local church where I grew up in, as a five year old, I was co reciting with one of my Sunday school classmates, John three sixteen. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And I realized that even as a five year old kid, I was a sinner.

27:01 Probably some possibly some of his peers and they had a they had a problem. They said, who is this who is this man who even forgives sins? And I'd like to share another remark from Bill McDonald, and which is the natural heart hates grace. The natural heart hates grace. So we had some great thoughts this morning on grace in our remembrance meeting.

27:30 And I can imagine that being true of the Pharisees. They were all about the law, keeping the letter of the law, not going to left or the right, criticizing Jesus for doing miracles on the Sabbath. The natural heart hates grace. And then in verse 50, one of the wonderful words here. Your faith has saved you.

27:55 Go in peace. Again, there's missing pieces here to our eyes, but we see at the beginning of the chapter where the centurion had had a faith that was commended by the Lord Jesus, and here at the end of the chapter we see another person who has that same condemnation. Now the centurion would have been a Gentile who had done many good works. He had built a synagogue I understand for the Jewish people. So he would have, you know, if anybody had a standing of merit, he might have thought it was him.

28:31 But the Lord praised him for his great faith. And here, clearly, at the end of the chapter, we see this woman who would have had no praise for her for her own efforts because, as the text says, a woman who was a sinner. But she knew she was a sinner, and she could find deliverance from that because she was willing to admit it and to seek the Lord. So my closing remarks is that we need to have the faith of both of them and also the adoration and the affection that the woman had for the Lord Jesus Christ. So any questions?

29:19 I'm not good at drawing them out, but anyways, let's close in prayer. Father, we do thank you for another glimpse of the Lord Jesus here in Luke chapter seven that he he has a plan. He's had a plan from all eternity. The scripture show, and he's working it. And thank you that we are...

29:45 We can be part of it, the happy side of it, when we come to understand not only who he is, but that we have a need for him, for we all need a savior. And Jesus alone is the one who can save. And we pray that you'll just help us all to grow in our appreciation of him. And if we have not yet come to know him personally, that we might come to understand more of who he is and how he alone saves. And we pray in our lord Jesus name.

30:15 Amen.