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Now I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel wasn't their military size.
I'm going to put it on hold for another week. I'm going to tell you why. Last week we had the Lord's Supper, communion, whatever your non-plummeture is. And several people came up to me, and indeed some of the other pastors, and said, I can't take the Lord's Supper today after what you said.
And I started thinking about it, and they said, well, because you said that if you have unforgiveness in your heart for someone, you shouldn't take the Lord's Supper. Guys, it's a little bit more serious than that.
It's just a little bit more serious than that. I thought it would be beneficial for us to look at the idea of forgiveness today. Now, let me start off by saying what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not forgetting.
And I know some of you old Baptists are trying to find the book of Jeremiah right now, where it says, and the Lord will remember our sins no more. Once again, this is where good hermeneutics comes in, where that word does not mean an absence of memory.
It means a choice not to hold it against you. So when God forgives us, He chooses not to hold it against us. So forgiveness is not forgetting. I know in some arguments with those of the fairer sex, sometimes the statement will be, well, you've forgiven me, why are you bringing it up again?
That is a legitimate question. A legitimate question. You may remember it, but that doesn't mean you get to bring it up as an issue in an argument. Also, forgiveness is not apologizing. We in America have conflated very erroneously those two words.
You see, when I am seeking forgiveness, it sounds like this. Please forgive me, full stop, period. You can't say, please forgive me, but. Because see, here's the problem. You went from seeking forgiveness to an apology.
The Greek word is apologia. Some other lesser pastors pronounce it a different way, but apologia. It means to give a reason or a defense for an action. So if I kicked Christina Workman in the leg and said, please forgive me, I'm seeking forgiveness.
If I said, please forgive me, there was a spider crawling on your leg, that's the apology. Does that make sense? Mississippi folks, you get that? Brother, you got it? All right, good. Then everybody should.
So forgiveness is not forgiving. It's not apologizing. So what is it? And more to the point, what does it look like? I'm going to try to answer that from the Word of God today, because I believe that is the best answer.
And I want y 'all to read along with me. So this doesn't get into a topical isogenesis, but it stays exegetical. And I want you to start in verse 36 of Luke chapter 7. Verse 36 of Luke chapter 7. And it says this.
One of the Pharisees asked him, i .e. Jesus, to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the 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, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who was touching him, for she is a sinner.
Jesus answered, that character is the deity of the mighty nature of God. Jesus answered and said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he said, say it, teacher. A certain money lender had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii, and that's a day's wage, a denarii.
And the other 50, when they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will he love more? Simon answered, the one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt. And he said to him, you have judged rightly.
Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house, 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 from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.
You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has 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.
He said to her, your sins are forgiveness. And those who were sitting at the table with him, you can tell they were all from the first baptism. Those who were at the 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. Just for a second, I entice you to forget religion, sermons, forget all that crap. If I could for just a moment ask you to walk with faith in the word of God and not judge yourself or compare yourself, but maybe see this as a paradigm and maybe what's wrong in your life.
You say, oh, but pastor, nothing is wrong. Have you ever said this? I feel like God and me are this far apart. I don't feel close to the Lord right now. May I say to you that you can continue to try to do your devotions and still feel that way, but I promise you when the forgiveness of God Almighty shatters that cold stone heart and then when you in turn forgive others, there will be a closeness and peace that you have never experienced before.
Some of you in this room experienced that on the day of your conversion. Yet your heart has grown cold over many years. Maybe some of you many decades as you held on to your church attendance and your own self-righteousness, you've grown colder and further away from the peace of God that passes all understanding.
Could I ask you today maybe to simply take a break, maybe even to give up and maybe go to the feet of Christ again and experience what David asked for so fervently in his prayer. Father, restore in me the joy of my salvation.
Where is your heart this morning in seeking forgiveness? Where is your heart? We see here in verse 37, and behold a woman of the city. Now, I want you to understand that is not an indictment. That is actually defining where this woman was from.
So she was well-known in this city, but we know why she was well-known. She was well-known because it says she was a sinner. Now, you may say to yourself, oh but we're all sinners. Yeah, but this lady was notorious.
She was well-known, not for being a woman, not for being a resident of the city, sure her notoriety was because of her absolute grotesque in public sin. But I love her. When she learned that Jesus was reclining at a table, when she learned that, she bought an alabaster flask of wine.
Now, let me just explain to you a couple of things. First of all, it says he was reclining at a table. Back then, that's how they ate dinner. It was called a triclinium. And there were tables about that high off the ground.
And people would lay down beside them with their heads facing the table, their feet sticking out like this. That's why in John where it says, Jesus, John, at the Last Supper, John laid his head on the breast of Christ.
It's not as Da Vinci did it. They're all sitting in European chairs and he's doing it awkwardly like this. It literally means John was reclining at the table and he leaned back to speak to Christ. They're reclining at the table.
And it says she went and bought or brought an alabaster flask of wine. This is really cool. You see, this woman was different than others. This was an alabaster. It was in itself the vase or the container was as precious as the conference.
And to use it, it had a one-time use. It was absolutely sealed and the only way to use it was to break it. If that ain't a word picture of where this woman was. You know, as a broken and contrite heart before God, God always responds to you.
Always. There is never a time, I think of little Lena the other day. I got out, their parents brought them over, Joshua brought his son, brought Skyler, Jeremiah, brought Lena over, Bubba, and had these pink wafer dry rice cakes that they were giving those children for a snack.
And I'm not a child abuse teacher. Grandparents I know will agree with me everywhere, that is not a snack thing. It's my grandchild, or any grandchild. And I got very great popsicles. I forgot to ask the parents' permission.
And as the children were daintly, carefully, and cleanly eating said popsicles, the garage had popsicle on it, the sidewalk had popsicle. Notice that all of these things are outside where it was that they were doing the grandmas.
They also got all over them. And so naturally, logically, I got the water hose, turned it on, and I started spraying the sidewalk, the garage, and the children, because the children needed it too. Well, Lena did not like that at all.
She did not like that. It was so beautiful. She turned and ran and clocked up in her daddy's lap. What did he say? Yeah, he got sprayed too. He needs it. Guys, do you remember the day we were murdered?
I do. I'm talking about that moment. Guys, I'm just saying for everybody that, and I'll share with you just for a second. I felt like, remember, I didn't grow up in church or around the woods. I felt like, wow, I felt free.
But at the same time, right before that, I felt alone. You see, I'd reached the point where I was tired. And I didn't even know what I was searching for. I was exhausted and didn't even know why I was so tired.
I got sick and tired of hurt, of being angry, of being vindictive, of wrongs done to me, but feigned, imagined, and real. And I got tired and I gave up. Guys, I think that woman with that alabaster vase is a perfect example of a believer who already believed in their heart.
She sought Jesus out. And she came there and broke in her person. And she knew that Jesus Christ was her last and only hope. Now, I want you to note this woman's courage. If I could, and I know that sounds counterintuitive to a woman of such notoriety and sin, but if you note what this woman did, she was a prostitute, whatever you want to call it.
She was that. And it's not just a profession, the stigma attached to it. We read in Scripture where she was known for that sin. And to find Jesus, to find Jesus, she had to hear the search. But then she had to go where Jesus was.
And where was Jesus? At this moment, this is where Jesus was. He was at First Baptist. He was with the church. He was with the people who looked down on this woman. Who sat and said, she does not deserve to be.
And with reckless abandonment, she didn't care anymore what people said. She didn't care anymore about how ugly and sinful she was. She had one last hope to find peace in this world. And she knew it found only in Jesus Christ.
And no matter where he was, no matter what it cost her, she had reached a place of abandonment where no longer her efforts or the cares of this world mattered anymore. Where's your heart this morning?
May I dare contrast it? The man said, the Pharisee said, Jesus can't be a prophet for if he knew what kind of woman was touching him. They said, you know, my heart's hard and our hearts sometimes forgive the enemy because we forget how far down we really are.
We forget that there is no difference in us. That my failures are total. And that's what total depravity means. That doctrine of understanding. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But there is not one righteous.
No, not one. We all need to remember in seeking out forgiveness and at the same time forgiving others, remember that their actions against you are no more vile than yours against others. And I know there are some here today that try to live in the justification of the amount of pain that has been afflicted upon you in saying, oh no, I have never done this to anyone else.
And I understand there are heinous, heinous sins, heinous. Be careful. Be careful. You see, because the minute you start saying I would never do that, you forget that what you have done is equal in damnation and condemnation in the eyes of all.
Be careful. And I'm going to tell you the worst part of why, or the reason why you need to be careful. Because in your resistance to give forgiveness, you by the fault of existing forgiveness, God is trying to forgive you.
Jesus said, if you do not forgive others, this is scary. I will not forgive you. Let's look at the actions of forgiveness. Where are your actions in seeking forgiveness? Well, let's look at this Pharisee.
Jesus pointed it out. He said, there's no service. There's no sacrifice. There was no offering to give. You see, when Jesus walked in this man's house, this man was intellectually interested in Jesus.
He invited Christ to his house. And you may say, oh wow, he's trying to serve the poor. The servants cooked the meal. The butlers served it at the table. The Pharisee was sitting sumptuously in the seat of honor and he wasn't looking to serve Christ.
He was looking to question Christ. Some of us in this room today are in that seat. Forgiveness eludes you both in the receiving and the giving because you are tepid in your seeking. Your actions show the reality of your heart that you were not willing to sacrifice to either give or receive forgiveness.
What do you mean, pastor? I mean this. We sometimes, now probably no one in here, but there are people, Christians even, who will remember an offense and use that offense as justification and or faith strength for the rest of their life.
You ever know anybody like that? You don't know what I mean. Your individual anecdotal evidence is irrelevant to the Word of the living God. Do you know the height of arrogance you must reach to think that your experience somehow trumps the living Word of God?
Just like that Pharisee. The living Word of God was sitting at his table and he rejected the dappish price of forgiveness. You see, your actions show your heart. The Word of God tells us in James chapter 2, faith without works is dead.
People say to me all the time, well I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. I'm a Christian as they say, but even though you still hold hatred and anger and unforgiveness in your heart towards somebody else.
Man, I ask you for you to take stock of your mind. Which one of those two people in this account do you most look like? The prostitute or the Pharisee? Do your actions show the grace of Almighty God? Did you come in here this morning expecting to be served?
Or did you come here this morning with a wild anticipation of washing a brother or sister's feet? Did you come in here this morning waiting to be emotionally disturbed by music? Or did you come in here wanting to pour out that gift that God has given you as a sweet ointment on the feet of a hurting brother or sister in Christ?
Who are your actions this morning? I think sometimes it's good for us to remember the depths of the gravity from which we come and the power, the grace it brought us into the adoption of childhood because it is a motivation for us to sacrifice and give more.
How many times the most precious thing we own is our own time. And it is not because we are so busy serving others. Let's be honest, most of our time is spent serving ourselves. And it's that which we don't want to sacrifice.
It's that which we don't want to give. This woman came and gave it all in her actions. And I want you to notice the pronouns. This might help some of us this morning. Pastor, I want to be motivated, but how do I get motivated to help Artie?
I mean, my gosh, I gave him three whole chickens from Kroger the other day and he ate them all. You know, I can't give Artie any more. I know it's a gracious appetite to feed such a Sasquatch, but I want you to look at the pronouns.
If you took verse 37, 38, please, look, let's focus on 38. Read with me. And standing behind him at his feet, wiping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head and kiss his feet and anointed them with the ointment.
Y 'all know what intimacy is? It's always amazing when I do marriage, I talk about intimacy and suddenly everybody starts I'm not talking about sex. If I was going to talk about sex, I would say sex. Sex and intimacy are two completely different things.
You say, oh, no, it's not. Okay. Okay. When you come out of Walt Disney World and realize that you're wrong, you and your spouse come see you because you're doing it. Intimacy and sex are totally different.
Totally, totally different. Can they coincide? Sure. Sure. But they don't walk hand in hand. Phonetically, you've heard it defined as intimacy. It's that vulnerability. It's that stripping away of our defenses and our masks.
See, that's what God wants. How many times in the Old Testament, he said, I'm sick of your religious services. I'm tired of your songs. I'm tired of your holidays and your shouting. This makes me so sick.
Is the only time you're intimate with God, emotional with God, is when your song was playing? Notice the pronouns. With a host of people. With a host of people sitting around. The only people in that room, in her mind and in his mind, are with each other.
You know how humiliating that was? I mean, think about it. Think about, there's George. Think about if all of a sudden, think about how awkward it would be. You know, I love making people feel awkward.
If I ran down there, pulled off George's shoes and started weeping over his feet, kissing them, and then, let's say, I don't have any hands, my feet would hurt, you know? It was awkward. It was awkward.
Picture, just for a second, I want you to picture the only thing you hear is this woman's song. It's dead silent. All you hear is her crying. The thoughts of the Pharisee, I promise you, were not unique.
In fact, I would say, I think we can make this, I would say that in every other line, people were thinking, oh my God, is she going to do that right now? Oh, this is so awkward. I am feeling vicariously bad for her and this.
You know how hard he worked to prepare this meal? Oh my gosh, this should have been on Sunday during church, not right here at a dinner party. But I said a word until Jesus spoke. Some of you in this room need to receive forgiveness from God and then forgive others.
You're saying, no, I just need to forgive so-and-so. If you can't forgive them, the only way you're going to be able to, let me tell you this, when it's silent, you're worried about what other people would think or say, notice what happened.
Then Jesus spoke. The intimacy in that moment, though witnessed by a lot of people in the neighborhood. After all the philosophers, the counselors, the psychiatrists, the pastors, the best friends, after all the voices went silent on trying to help this woman, Jesus opened his mouth to speak.
And I promise you, the same words he said to her, your sins are forgiven. Apply to you this family. Oh, pastor, you don't know what I've done. No, the problem is you don't know the power of what Christ has done.
Amen. Though your sins were scarlet hair and white as snow, that is the work of the living God. The law cannot undo the grace of God. Your failure time and time and time and time again will never exhaust the love and grace of almighty God.
Oh, but pastor, I prayed Jesus in my heart and I said I would never do this again and I failed and I did it again. I say you grace remains. That's right. And I say it's even more powerful than it was before because it will stretch, it will grow, and the more it gets hit, the more it is.
I'm going to go to heaven, not based on what I've done here, not based on what I've done in my life. You're going to go to heaven because of the forgiveness and grace of almighty God. Amen. And if you're in this room, I promise you that the awkwardness and the silence of your guilty conscious at night and feeling you're not even worthy of the praise of God, if you listen carefully, you will still hear the word of God when it says your sins are forgiven.
Pray to me, cry to me, call to me, and I will answer you and show you the great and mighty things which you know are not. This morning, our actions, I promise you, they will be motivated by the action of Christ.
And then the last thing today is this, where is God in all of this forgiving? I want you to note something, please. Please note this. God sees the heart. God sees the heart. Man, Pastor Jeff is in such need of forgiveness.
I really am. You say, oh yes, Pastor, you know you were a violent, drug-addicted man. I'm talking about yesterday. I'm talking about yesterday. Heck, I'm talking about this morning. Just as our testimonies should have stretched back 20 years ago, neither should our understanding of the need of forgiveness.
See, that self-righteousness will guide you. Remember this. God sees our heart, and I want you to wrap your head around this. God saw your heart before the foundation of the world. Before you chose good or evil, God chose you.
You see, God loves us so much that He gave His only Son. But you forget that the gift of God's only Son was not given premeditatedly on what we would do with that gift. You see, that would no longer be grace.
That would be worse. Grace is simply this, unmerited favor, unearned love. It's not amazing love. The words still, as beautiful as they are, pale in comparison to that sovereign gift of God that before He said, let there be light, He said, George will be my Son.
And there's absolutely the world's Savior, and George himself can't do anything about it. That's how much I love God. That's how much I love Shane. That's how much I love the Lord. That's how much I love Bill.
And even through Bill's doubts and fears and failures, even though Bill might doubt the very grace that I'm giving him, it doesn't matter. I still choose Bill. Now, let there be light. When you see it in that perspective, and that is not my perspective.
That is not a Baptist perspective. That's the Word of the living God. When you see, you see how powerful the heart of God is to forgive. He says that He wishes none would perish. That Jesus's blood was not just the propitiation of our sins, but the propitiation of the sin of the entire world.
Man, that's love. That's powerful. That is forgiveness. And just as the voice of Christ broke the silence in that awkward moment, the Word of God breaks that silence in your heart with grace and forgiveness.
If you're in this room and you feel distant, I promise you it's just a feeling for the Word of God trumps your feelings. If you feel unforgivable, I promise you this, your unforgiveness is only in your brain, not in the heart of Almighty God.
For the precious blood of Christ, I promise you, trumps all that you worry about. It's not easy for us to blot out our past. I admit that. I'm gonna be honest, I still remember, I don't know if you do this, I'll be taking a shower or riding in the truck and I won't even be thinking about this and something I've done will pop in my head and I will literally be this, oh I can't believe I did that.
Does anybody else in here feel that way? Okay, good. Hi, I'm Jeff. I was getting concerned. It's hard to forget our past. It's not easy to blot out those thoughts. It's not easy to free us from our own prejudice and our own indictment of our own lives and our hearts.
And it results from the knowledge of our past that we were there and we actively, knowing even what we did was wrong, we did it anyway. God did it. He forgives and it's not a forgiveness that is unrighteous or unlawful.
You see, He can forgive us, not just by overlooking in some codependent enabling way. He can forgive us because justly and rightly Jesus Christ was our vicarious atonement. The wrath of God was not spared.
Oh no, the wrath of God was poured out fully upon the head of Christ in my stead. And in that justified way, Christ can forgive us. Why is it truly so hard for you to know the forgiveness of God? I'll be honest with you, there have been often times that I had to be persuaded of it.
I don't know about you, but I think sometimes I'm too guilty. I can't believe I did that even after I was a Christian. I pray to God that I don't have to be persuaded by the tongues of men, but by the Holy Spirit of God and that powerful work of God, which is like a two-edged sword reaching and ripping through the guilt in my life.
I close with this. You know, in chapter 7, Jesus did some amazing things. He healed sickness, the security in the servant, you know. He restored life. He restored life to the widow's son. But what's amazing is those works were not permanent.
You see, that centurion servant is going to physically die. The widow's son, though raised again, is going to, what did suffer death through the infliction of that human body. His greatest work is one that's eternal.
When he looked at that woman, he said, your sins are forgiven. And then he said this, okay, look at the last verse here, let's read it together. Look at that last verse in verse 80. And he said to the woman, your faith has saved you.
I'm going to ask these people to come up. I have been counseling people for 34 years.
Very important.
Because we're always very hairy. A lot of people come in convinced by their own philosophies of that intellectual belief of the internet, who are convinced of something, and then I show them the Word of God.
And with contempt and familiarity, they dismiss it because they want to be in the pain that they're in because they believe that's what they deserve. I actually have people who do not understand the grace of God because they do not feel like they deserve it.
Let me let you in on a secret. The minute you deserve grace, you've never found it. You cannot find it. Grace found you. You'll never deserve it. That's why it's called grace. Guys, in those 34 years, every single person that's come into my office, we do about 50-something people a week.
Every person that comes here, they might be coming here for marital issues. They may be coming here for drug addiction issues. They may be coming here for abuse issues or theological issues. But the one thing that they're all searching for, that's the bottom line.
Jesus, as people were clamoring about him, that he had done something religiously wrong. Who is this man? Who does he think he is that he can forgive sins? He ignores them all. And once again, in another intimate moment, no matter what everyone else is saying, he is looking directly at her.
And her eyes pierce his soul. And he says, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. It's not her church membership that saved her. It's not her anointing Jesus' feet that saved her. It's not that moment of intimacy that saved her.
It's her faith.
You see, everything she did followed in action the originality of the faith that was in her heart.
You're in this room.
A, you are having a hard time understanding God's forgiveness. May I say this to you today? You are in need of that peace more than most others. Because you can't be a child of God and be at peace and not be in the power of God's grace.
And even though you may feel it sometimes here in this music, that's not peace. That's joy. And joy, I promise you, even though it is the strength of the Lord, is not what you're looking for. If you don't know the peace of God, I would ask you this morning, let's me and you look in the scripture, and let's find it together.
Number two.
If you're in this room and you're still holding something against somebody, and you don't understand why your maturity in Christ is so stunted,.
That's the problem.
That's the rotten tea that you can't handle. How egregious is that sin the person committed against you? And I tell you, there are some egregious ones out there. Maybe something that happened to you as a child.
You understand, son?
As egregious as that is, I'm going to ask you this morning to consider relying on the grace of God instead of the justice you feel needs to be paid out. Because, friends, the minute you start screaming for justice is the minute you just indicted yourself.
That's the immediate power that you indict yourself. And I know, and we will, as a church family, walk with you in trying to help you in that hurt. And I don't discount it. I'm telling you, it's not the key to freedom.
The key to freedom from being released is you choosing your own grace and forgiving others as Christ forgave you. Father, forgive us of our trespasses, even though we trespass against you.
