Luke 7:36-50 - Oh How I Love Jesus

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If you have your Bibles with you, please open up to Luke 7, and we'll be in verse 36 this morning, headed through the end of the chapter. We've been going through over the past four weeks or so this great chapter that is a little bit different than some of the other things we're used to, especially in Presbyterian churches.

We do a lot of high theology and a lot of systematics and things like that, and this has been a great passage on what it means to experience Jesus. And so rather than a narrative, it's more of experiential storytelling, which is really great what Luke does for us.

And he's introducing this revolutionary idea that we see on our slide up there. It's a news of great joy for all people, which is different.

We saw at the beginning when Ron preached on the faith of the centurion, the Pharisees didn't like the fact that he was going, Jesus was moving towards a Gentile. And we saw that great intimate story of Jesus with them.

And then Jesus travels to Nain, and he stood between death and us. You remember, he went and met the widow and her dead son on the way to burial, and he touched the son, and he was made alive again.

And he gave us that great hint of what is the end of the story. And Jesus is doing that throughout this. Last week, Will spoke on John the Baptist's struggle in prison.

And, you know, he dedicated his whole life to being the forebearer of the Christ, of the one to come. And then he finds himself in prison because his expectations had been dashed. And what did Jesus do?

He didn't run him down. He sent back word of his great miracles that he indeed was the Savior. And then he spoke highly of John, even in his doubt, because he had moved towards him and saved him.

So today we're in Luke chapter 7, verse 36 through 50, kind of a famous passage. We'll read through all of it, and then we'll pray. So hang with me if you do. One of the Pharisees had asked him, his Jesus, to eat with him.

And he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment.

And standing behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, Hey, if this man were really a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who's touching him, for she's a sinner.

And Jesus said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered, Say it, teacher. A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, and the other owed 50.

When they couldn't pay it, he canceled the debt of both. And which of them is going to love him more? And Simon answered, Well, the one I suppose for whom he canceled the larger debt. And Jesus said to him, You've judged rightly.

Then he turned his back on Simon to the woman and said, Do you see this woman? I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she's put up my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she's not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she's anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven.

For she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little. And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. And those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?

And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. God, we see stories like this on a random Sunday morning in March, and it's easy to gloss over it, and it's easy to see the parable in the middle and think, Yes, we've been forgiven much, but you've given all of this for us to have an experience with your word.

And we pray that your word would be active among us today through the Holy Spirit in each of us and amongst us. I pray that you would bless the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, that they would be pleasing unto you.

And we pray that we would see Jesus as bigger today than we did yesterday. Thank you. In Christ's name. Amen. So relationships are really hard work.

Yes? Yes. And this is not just marriage. It's friendships. It's any kind of relationship that you're into. Work relationships. Parent-child relationships.

If you think about it, none of them are very easy because we're all prone to do what? Well, what's a good fix to a relationship? What does everybody tell you? Well, your wife is arguing with you.

Well, you should really move towards her. Oh, your friend said something bad against you. You should go to them and talk to them, and you should. And so the motion that we're supposed to have for everything to do well in our relationships is this constant motion towards each other.

You constantly move towards each other. But we don't do that as humans, do we? I'm more likely to go into my recliner and read a book when I'm frustrated with my wife than I am to go towards her and say, honey, let's talk about this and work it out.

I'm more likely to be frustrated with my children and not treat them with patience and with kindness. My good friends, most of them aren't in Huntsville. I've only been here for nine months.

If somebody bothers me, I'm not going to reach out to them on the phone and try to do what needs to be done to correct those relationships and make them right. I back away. I move away. And that tends to be the way, if you're anything like me, I'm not going to presume you are, but if you're anything like me, that's the way that we approach things in our relationships.

In this passage, we see something kind of similar happening and kind of different happening. Because one of our issues as sinful people is our inability to see how ugly our sin is in the face of God.

We can't even see it in the face of each other. God doesn't tolerate things like that. And we see Jesus as this means to an end for us to feel better about being sinners.

There's things he does for us so I can go on living how I want to because I know he'll forgive me. The things he does for us become expectations rather than this incredible gift of grace that we see the woman talking about in this passage.

And we lose the beauty of who Jesus is in himself. And we forget our first love that we're warned about in Revelation 2 not to do. But the good news of all of this is that God doesn't leave us here.

Jeremy was talking about that earlier. He loves his creation and he sent his son to us so that we would know his love. Jesus has moved towards sinners. And we should love much because of that.

And we're going to look at this passage and see three ways that Jesus is moving. The first one is that Jesus moves towards the world. It's toward the world, by the way.

I had to Google that. It's not towards. That is not accurate. And I apologize that your bulletin has everything condensed. But I think we'll be able to work through that. So Jesus moves towards the world.

How does he do that? Well, it's pretty obvious. There's the incarnation, right? This is a pretty big deal. We gloss over it. Jesus became man. We just celebrated this at Christmastime. The son of God, God of very God, as we said in the Nicene Creed, moves towards us.

He comes to the world and takes on an earthly body. He subjects himself to this misery. If you read the meditation before the service, Chrysostom was talking about how he didn't need anything because he's so great, he wanted to show that human vanity was not something that he desired because there's something so much more than all of that.

So he moves towards us in his incarnation. He comes. We hear a lot about word and deed. He's preaching. He's going around letting people experience him, see him for who he is, right?

And he's doing deeds. He's healing people. He's blessing people. He's raising people from the dead. I just said he's healing people and he's raising people from the dead.

That's insane. Think about that. This is the story that we're in right now. God became man. Let me move into this passage specifically.

And he comes to dinner and the context is pretty important here. What we see from what Will preached on last week in the previous passage starting in 729. When all the people had heard this and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John.

But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. To what then shall I compare? This is Jesus talking. To what then shall I compare the people of this generation and what are they like?

They're like children sitting in the marketplace calling to one another. We played the flute for you and you didn't dance. We sang a dirge and you didn't weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine.

And he said, well, he's got a demon. And then I've come eating and drinking. And you say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard. And a friend of tax collectors and sinners. It's amazing to see that passage right before because we have no reason to believe that Jesus isn't still in Nain right now.

Which is the town that he walked to when he raised the widow's son. No time break happens. So he's probably still in Nain. That's where John's disciples came and saw him. And now here he is right after that interaction with the Pharisees.

And what's the very next verse in Luke 36? That's 736. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. And what did he do? He went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table.

These people who were hardening their hearts against God actively, not wanting to be around them. And Jesus comes in and goes, yeah, I'll come over to dinner.

Absolutely. I'll keep moving towards you even though you're trying to move away from me. It's a pretty funny story that I saw. It's actually from last year.

Chris Bryant is the third baseman for the Chicago Cubs. That was for Vanit. He's the third baseman for the Chicago Cubs. And Mesa Community College in Arizona is a powerhouse in junior college sports.

And their baseball team is really exceptional. And last year, in the middle of the season, trying to keep his guys up, the coach of Mesa Community College brings in Chris Bryant. But he tells his team that there's a European transfer student coming in who's really going to help our team out.

So you're talking about high-level junior college players. Most of these guys are going to try to win a championship there and then go play at a big school. Maybe try to make it to the major leagues. That's what's on these guys' mind. That's the caliber of athlete. And so we're bringing a guy in and I guarantee you that some people are going to lose their jobs.

And the time is going to be split because he's going to help us out that much. And so the video is hilarious. Don't YouTube it now, but YouTube it later. He comes walking around the corner and one of the guys goes, that's not a kid.

That's a man. And he walks in and he's kind of left on his own. And then he gets in the batting cage and something that's interesting about stories you hear about major leaguers.

You've heard about Bo Jackson and people like that. The sound the ball makes off the bat is just different. And so Chris Bryant goes into the batting tent and starts hitting and is just cracking the ball all over the ballpark.

And everybody stops because they hear the sound the contact is making. And you see this response from the players happening because there are some guys who are going, oh, this is awesome.

I can't believe this guy's on our team. And you've got some other guys who are going, I have no idea how I'm going to fit into this because clearly this guy's awesome and I don't know what I'm going to do.

But if you pay attention to the faces, I watched the video a couple times again last night. If you pay attention to the faces of most of the people there, those guys were mad. They were mad that this guy had been brought in.

They were mad that the team was going to get disrupted. And they were mad that their expectations were going to get taken over or were going to be depleted and taken over by this guy. So it was this mix of disdain and curiosity.

And I can't help but when I watched that, I was thinking, man, this has to be kind of what was happening as Jesus was going around. These people had, you know, largely in these Jewish communities especially, they've had this long expected Savior who was supposed to come to them.

And then he shows up looking nothing like what they thought. doing things not in the order that they thought that he was going to be doing them. And so the guys who were most entrenched, the lawmakers and the Pharisees, the off-duty priests essentially and the Pharisees, man, they're hardening their hearts towards it.

They don't want anything to do with it. They're really, really frustrated by it. And then you see Gentiles in the mix. No, he didn't come for the Gentiles. He came to save us, not them.

Right? And it's a really difficult situation for some of them to begin going through. This text doesn't only show us how Jesus has moved towards the world, but it also shows how Jesus is moving towards the wondering.

And this is kind of an amazing thing. We'll read about him and then we'll talk about him. Starting in verse 39, Simon the Pharisee, he says, Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this guy were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this woman is touching him because she's a sinner.

And Jesus said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered respectfully. He said, say it, teacher. And he told him the parable there about he who loves much.

And he gives him credit. He said, hey, you judge rightly, Simon. And then he turns towards the woman and he begins talking about her and comparing what she has done with what Simon has done.

And in this story, the reality is Simon shouldn't be hosting this party. This should not be happening. On the heels of the context that we saw earlier, Simon the Pharisee should be standing with his brothers, hardening his heart towards Jesus and who Jesus is and what he represents.

But I think this story really represents Simon not as this evil figure, but actually somebody that we can sympathize with. Because he's curious. He's wondering. Who is this guy? These dinner parties were time for people to come over.

And they literally are reclining at a table on their left side, feet out behind them, around a table. And they eat. And they talk. And they have a chance to ask Jesus all these sorts of questions and hear his answers to them in more of a public setting.

And Jesus makes himself available to that. Seeing all of this happening. But Simon shouldn't have been there. He shouldn't have been in this position. And the second thing Simon does is he then in his heart starts to question who Jesus is.

And put yourself in Simon's shoes for a minute. This woman, we don't really know what her situation was as a sinner. But you can assume there's some perhaps sexual sin, adultery, prostitution, something like that.

And she's walked into a Pharisee's house and defiled the Pharisee's house with her presence. And not only that, but has gone and touched the guest of honor. And then the guest of honor who should have been like, whoa, wait a second.

No, he's embracing. He's letting it happen. And it's, I mean, you know, that kind of white knuckling. I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to say about this. And then Jesus starts to gently redirect him.

Before he has to do anything about it in the story, Jesus says, hey, Simon, I got something to say to you. And Simon goes, oh, good.

Say it. And he tells him this great story that began to possibly open Simon's heart and eyes to what's actually going on in his own heart. You see this woman over here?

Yeah, she's sinful. But if she's forgiven, then she is loved and she's loved much. What about you? Seems to be the tone.

Then he goes on to compare what she does to what he's done. And there was no expectation for Simon to do any of these things.

I think it's tempting to read a passage like this and think, oh, well, they must have usually anointed the guest of honor's head. And they must have usually done the kissing. There's nothing that said that that had to happen. But Jesus begins to enter in with Simon and move gently towards him and redirect him to, do you see what happened here?

Do you see this? And Simon, hopefully, we don't know. We don't get the answer from Simon, do we? He's a sympathetic figure, but we don't know how he responds to this.

But Jesus doesn't come at him, you know, angrily and turning him over. No, he gently begins to redirect him and allow Simon to experience the very thing that Jesus has allowed this woman to experience with him.

I don't know if you've ever been a part of an intervention or witnessed one. But they're terribly difficult situations. And generally speaking, when one of them happens, there's a pretense to why the person receiving the intervention is coming.

And they have a set of something on their mind, like most of us do when we walk into a situation. Very few of us walk absentmindedly into a situation. And so there's usually some reason, some logic.

There's been some pretense, maybe a football game or something like that, that has been discussed as the reason why they're coming. And so they have this entire expectation as they walk in.

And then it happens, right? The people in the room begin to tell their stories to them one by one. And everything that they expected to be happening gets turned on its ear.

And then how they respond to that intervention is really the key to what happens next and how things go after that, right? And I thought of that illustration for this because these people are moving towards Jesus.

And we'll think of Simon specifically here with curiosity. And there's reason. And there's history, right? The assumption of history Simon's coming with being a Pharisee.

His logic on his side. And most of all, realism. He's not like these other people who are fawning all over themselves for Jesus. He's going to be balanced about it. Kind of feels way through the situation.

See, does this fit with me? Does this fit with you? Let's see how this works. And Jesus meets him in this situation and goes, Actually, Simon, let me reveal to you who I am.

Let me reveal to you who you're not. And he begins an intervention of sorts in Simon in that moment. And we don't know.

We're left without an answer. Just like last passage, we don't know how John the Baptist answered. But we see Jesus moving towards him as a wondering man.

Not a wondering man. But a wondering man about who Jesus is. And remember that as you think about this passage and see it in the future. Don't be so quick to condemn Simon. He's probably more of a sympathetic figure than we realize as we look at a passage like this.

So we've seen Jesus move towards the world and towards the wondering. And finally, we're going to see him move towards the, this is a word we don't like to hear, the wretched. Jesus moves towards the wretched.

Let's see, when he first, we first see the woman in verse 37 and 38. I'm pretty sure you're about to see 27 and 28. And that's not what I meant to have. So listen to me or follow along in your Bible.

And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table at the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment. And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.

And wiped them with the hair of her head. And she kissed his feet. And she anointed them with the ointment. And a few amazing things are happening here, but we'll go on to 44 through 50.

Then 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's wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

The word for tears there is not like a subtle dripping. It's the same word that's used elsewhere to indicate like a deluge.

A significant amount of water. This woman is weeping over Jesus. And she wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she's not ceased to kiss my feet.

There's a sign of greeting to kiss on the cheek. It's a sign of deep respect to kiss on the feet. This is the comparison that's happening. You didn't anoint my head with oil.

And the word for oil there is like an olive oil. A general greeting. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. This woman, this sinner, has brought this substantial something to me and is anointing my feet with it.

Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much. And then he said to her at the end, Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace. I don't always like the word wretched. But as we've talked about in this, because if you're a child of God, wretched doesn't describe you.

Wretched does not describe you. But an acknowledgment of your sin and what they are in the face of perfect holiness, that can describe you.

And that can describe you as being wretched. And what seems to be happening here with this woman, this is some kind of a response to some kind of an encounter she had with Jesus before this. This is not the first time she's seen Jesus.

Clearly, he's already forgiven her sins. And she's coming into this place because she understands that the paradigm has shifted. The flop has happened.

She's been embraced by Jesus, by the person. And his deeds came second to her. He was so beautiful to her that she got it.

And she grasped it. And she moved towards him. And I thought it was so beautiful at the end of this. He says, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Can you imagine being her?

You're this whatever kind of sinner that you know everybody's looking at you as you're in this place and you don't care because you know where you're supposed to be. And then the Pharisee comes and he starts talking to Jesus about you right beside you as you're doing all of these things.

Can you imagine the confusion that might have been going through her head as she was dealing with that? She's listening to Jesus and Simon talking back and forth. And Jesus has forgiven her sins.

And this is just a response of a wretched person to the glory of God manifest in front of her. She loves him. She loves him that much for who he is.

And she knows that whatever he is is so much greater than her good or her bad that if she is with him, that's beautiful and that's perfect. And she shows him the honor and respect that she shows him in this.

Overcome with weeping. Anointing his feet and kissing him with oil. All of these things which may have actually been a part of whatever got her in trouble in the first place have now been reclaimed to honor Jesus.

These intimate actions towards Jesus' body. But she's listening to this thing play out and the confusion she could be feeling in her own mind about, wow, this is real.

Wait a second. How am I? Is this real? Did my sins get forgiven? Are they not? And Jesus turns his back to the one who's curious and wondering, wondering.

And he looks at her and assures her of her salvation. He tells her of how much he loves her. And he told her to go forth. Your sins have been forgiven.

And she can move forward in that way. And we know that it's not because of anything she did. Her faith has saved her, but it wasn't because she did something to move in that direction.

And we saw that from the parable. She owed 500 denarii. And it was forgiven. A debt that she could never pay to the eternal God of heaven.

This wretched sinner violating the laws of Israel and wandering the streets of that town. And her sins have been forgiven. Jesus moved towards her in that way.

Certain cultures in America treat pastors with an unreal amount of respect. I've experienced this once on my own, but I've heard more and more stories.

And when you walk in to cultures, especially those who are, you know, first or second generation American, life can stop in that house. Not because Peter walked in or Will or Ron walked in.

No, by no means that. But because the representative of God has walked into this house. The one who dedicates their life to preaching the word and to prayer has walked into our house.

Somebody from God is here. And the family comes in the room and they gather around and food comes out on the table. And they're just there to be present with you out of respect and out of reverence.

And it's a really, especially if you're from here where you guys probably wouldn't appreciate me walking into your house at 5.15 just to see what's going on. It's a different experience.

It's a really different experience. And the humility that is shown there, the respect, the reverence towards God is really, it's unique, it's admirable.

Obviously, it's remarkable. And I see in what this woman is doing something of that, that acknowledgement of who she is, but more importantly, that acknowledgement of who Jesus is, who God is, the shifted paradigm, the acceptance of a new reality.

she's there and she's brought to her knees to tears with what that means and the implications of that, not only for her, but for what it means going forward.

So where are you today? This is a story that, man, I love it. Ron said something so great that we tend to flatten things like this out.

But these are such beautiful, intimate interactions with Jesus. This is what Luke put in his letter to send to someone else to tell them about who Jesus is.

He could have said the morals of the story. He could have put it into a systematic set of doctrines. But he said, no, experience Jesus the way that these people experienced Jesus.

And see what happens there. So where are you today? Who do you identify with in this story? Maybe you're, maybe you're not even a believer.

I know it's cool to come to church in the South and that's what we do. But maybe you're not a believer. Maybe this stuff has never touched your heart. How do you listen to a story like this?

How do you see who Jesus is? Who is this man that can forgive even sins? Because I think this can work out in one of two ways for someone who is not following Jesus, who doesn't see him as Lord.

There's that one thing that is you acknowledge your wretchedness and you begin to see, wow, I really am sinful in the face of a perfect and holy God.

And Jesus can get a hold of you like that. He will. He's gotten a hold of me like that. But I think more often than not, it's that thing that begins to fill the gaps that you can't put your finger on.

And that's what I feel like we see from this woman in this passage is a sinner. Maybe her sins were too many to count. Maybe your sins are too many to count. And maybe you don't even know what a sin is, but you know when you think about Jesus and you think about God, you don't have a place there because you're too far gone.

Whatever that means. Your wretchedness has overtaken you. That's the story of Jesus moving towards us in the incarnation.

Towards people who wonder, who are curious. And towards us when we start to acknowledge our wretchedness in the face of who he is. your wretchedness, your emptiness, your longing, your wondering, your not good enoughness is absolutely nothing.

Nothing in the eyes of a God who loves you so much. That's what Jesus came to do. He's so big. Jesus the person.

Jesus the person. So big. What he can do for you. Absolutely. But Jesus is so beautiful and so big. Meditate on that.

Think about that. He's moved towards us in that way. Maybe you've slid from an understanding of your wretchedness towards more of a position of curiosity and of wondering.

and you begin to negotiate with God. A lot of us go through a lot of hurts and pains in our lives. There are reasons that push us away.

Sometimes we're just cold. Sometimes we don't care. What does it look like for you to remember the grace that you've experienced?

We talk about that here, right? We experience and we express grace. This picture of this woman is a picture of the experience of grace. What does it look like for those of us who are wondering?

More often in a state of that. Sometimes we call it cold. Sometimes we call it dry in our spiritual lives. We call it a lot of things. Is this experience of grace something that you keep inside of you?

Or is it something that you think you should express to other people? Was it really this miraculous thing that took hold of your heart and transformed you into somebody that Jesus loves and therefore you love much like this woman?

You think back on that time. One of my brothers this morning shared a great story. Yesterday was his anniversary of coming to Christ. 31 years. I remember the day. I remember the whole story. Do you? Do you remember the story?

Maybe your story is like mine. You grew up with parents who loved Jesus. Grandparents who loved Jesus and they all kept you around it. That's no less miraculous. That's no less incredible.

So what do you do with it? God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to other people. In our words we experience grace so that we can express grace.

And if you're wretched and you know it don't clap your hands but look to Jesus in faith. Lift up your head.

Your sins may be many and ugly and they probably are but you serve a beautiful king and he wants to assure you of his love for you and of your place with him for all eternity.

And I hope that if you can think back to that moment where you were curled up and you had that Thomas my Lord and my God moment that you can remember that because it's just as true today as it ever was then.

And God continues to work in you and through you today much like he did then. Which brings us back to our relationship thought at the beginning because we don't want to move towards Jesus we're just not people that do that.

Any inclination to go that way is something that has been brought on us by him. Which means when you find yourself in a state of either actively moving away from Jesus or knowing that you're not going towards him I've got great news for you he's coming towards you.

Jesus is moving toward you in love because he wants you. Your wretchedness your sin all of that stuff may be great and it may be ugly but it's nothing compared to the love of the Father and the Son for us.

And the absurdity of the love that God shows us in Christ is that he's always moving toward us and we're never moving toward him. He moves all of the way it's not the hitch thing it's not the 80-20 thing if you've ever seen that movie.

Even when we move away from him he makes up that ground too. So question the title of the sermon was Oh How I Love Jesus I was trying to talk myself into that as I was thinking through all this.

It's a question to leave us all with. Do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Let's pray. Father thank you for the honor of gathering together as brothers and sisters in Christ to open your word to see your truth revealed to us.

We say things like that a lot but we read a story like this from Luke that's so detailed and so passionate and so provocative and we're really thankful this morning that these things exist for us to think about and to meditate on.

We're thankful that you love us in ways that we could never know. We're thankful that you move towards us in times that we would never want to move toward you and we're thankful that you give us your son and your spirit so that not only are we right before you but we can move back towards you through his power and through your love.

Bless us all as we move from this place today. In Christ's name Amen. For more information visit us online at southwood.org