Responding to Jesus

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Zac Lloyd; Luke 7:36-50 Responding to Jesus

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Good morning,
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Recast. Good morning, church. I'm Zach Lloyd, one of the elders here, and Don's out on vacation again this week, so it's my delight and privilege to share
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God's Word with you. So if you don't mind, go ahead and grab your Bibles and open up to Luke 7. We're going to be in verses 36 through 50 this morning.
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A little bit of an introduction, maybe an extended introduction, is to kind of highlight for you what
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I hope is in prayer in our coming into contact with God's Word this morning is that we would see
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Jesus truly and accurately for who He really is, and us in right relationship with Jesus, and as a result, we would authentically worship
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Him. And I think what brought me here is a struggle that I have with the church.
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And I mean big C church, global church, local church, Christians, and I include myself in that.
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And that is that if we, if what we believe is true, and we're here, we do, hopefully, and what
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I mean by that is the Christian faith and its teachings are true, and we believe them, and I mean like we were born into this world with our eternity apart from God.
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We had a date with death, all of us have death to look forward to, and after that, the judgment.
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We entered this world with that. There's no amount of righteous deeds that we can do to remedy our problem, and every one of us humans are in this same boat.
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And as Christians, we believe that God sent His Son to die for our sins. It was something that we could not solve.
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It was a problem that we had no ability to resolve, and we had a destiny with eternity in hell.
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If we believe that's true, and that we believe that Jesus saved us from that, and not only are our eternities secure, but even now that He's stepped into our lives,
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He's redeeming, fixing, healing our brokenness even now, that our lives and how we conduct ourselves would be different.
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For example, a couple months ago in February, at Asbury University, there was a chapel service.
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The kids at that school, a Christian university, are required to come to chapel service. And at the end of the service, a couple of them got together and started praying together, confessing sins, repenting, and they just started singing together and rejoicing.
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And if you saw in the news, they called it a revival. They didn't stop. They kept going for days and days, and thousands of people throughout the country were descending onto that campus.
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After two weeks, the university administration said, you guys, we can't have any more people here.
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This is getting out of hand. That, to me, that seems consistent with our faith.
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That would be an appropriate response to how we interact with God. And I don't know if we're going to have slides here, but there was a photo of that.
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But I think my struggle is with how we respond to God.
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And just to highlight two things before we get into this. I'm not saying that we need to work on our worship. We don't need to raise our hands.
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We don't need to clap. It's not that how we worship. Because I believe that if we see ourselves rightly in light of Jesus, we will worship.
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We're wired. We're hardwired to worship. We worship something. And so it's not about how do we worship, but that we should worship and what are we worshiping.
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And second, I'm in the crosshairs this morning. I'm not saying it's you. I don't know if it's better for you, but us.
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I see an inconsistency in what we worship. And so I'll just highlight maybe some illustrations that you're like, well,
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I'm not that expressive. And in our culture, we're just not that expressive of our emotions, and that's why it doesn't look like worship oftentimes when we gather.
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And I'll give you that because I think in my, you know, if we talk about emotions being that part of us that we really can't control, that sad, happy, fear, those things just happen.
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Without us, we can't conjure those things. And how we express them, we can. I can govern them because it's like the human range of expression of emotions is negative 10 to plus 10.
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I seem to operate in like negative 1 to plus 1. That's what I can bottle things up pretty tight. I don't express a lot of emotions.
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And so I'll give you that maybe it's just not our culture to express our emotions. But I will highlight a couple observations
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I've seen in our culture where that might not hold true. A couple years ago, the
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University of Michigan played their arch rival, Ohio State Buckeyes, in Ann Arbor.
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They had not beat their arch rival. Michigan had not beat them for a long, long time. Well, they finally did it.
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The game ended. And just to highlight, the public address announcer did not get on the speaker and say, okay, now what
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I'd like everybody to do is go down on the field, and we want you to go down there and just high -five some strangers.
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We're going to put some music on and want you to sing along and just celebrate for as long as you want. No. That's what happened.
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There was no instruction. There was no liturgy. There was no protocol. This is how we want it. They just did it. And so that's an illustration of,
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I think, we're wired to worship. And for me, what we do here is worship.
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We'll get to that later. But I think all of life can be worship, should be worship, as long as it's not sin.
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Whatever we do or say, we should do all for the glory of God. And I think sports, for me, is a unique theater of humanity where we can see
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God step in. And I'm really prone to, I've had some sad things happen in my life, and I just can't hardly cry for sad things.
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That's for another therapy session. But things that happen that are good, including sports,
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I'll get emotional. So I express it, and I can't control it. And so sports, I feel like, is a way that we can see,
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I can see God show up on a feel of a game. And I can see, well, that's clearly
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God. And I watch a lot of games, and all of a sudden sometimes it's just different. And so just a brief biography of myself as a 12 -year -old.
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Came home from school one March afternoon. It was a half day. I don't recall why it was a half day that day.
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My parents were working. I had two younger brothers. They were in school. I came home, grabbed some lunch, turned on the
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TV, and basketball was on. College basketball was on. It was March Madness. I didn't know that that was a thing.
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I wasn't paying attention. I like basketball. And just so you know, college basketball ends in a tournament. You win or you go home.
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64 teams. So on a Thursday afternoon in March, the tournament starts.
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32 teams play. 16 games on Thursday. Friday, 32 teams. The other 32 teams play. 16 more games.
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So that's 32 games of college basketball. Every team, every player playing. Their season depends on this game all in, all out.
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And I was just like, what is this? This is a lot of fun. And I just got addicted to it early on.
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And so I grew up on the other side of the state. I have family that had season tickets to the Michigan football.
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And so I would get invited to some of the Michigan football games and became a Michigan fan. That was my association.
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The next year, 1989, I followed Michigan basketball throughout the season. Michigan, if you didn't know, that year did something unconventional.
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Right before the tournament started, at the end of the basketball season, they fired their head coach. Not a great strategy typically. Most teams, most programs don't employ that strategy.
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They did. But as God would have it, they went all of their tournament games that year.
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So this is my first year really following the tournament. And my favorite team is now winning all the games, and they get to the final game against Seton Hall.
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They play the whole game up and down. I'm hanging by a thread, still tied at the end of regulation. The whole season they've been playing, they get to the last game.
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At the end of the last game, it's still tied. They go overtime. Michigan, three seconds to go in the game, is down by one point, and their point guard gets fouled.
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He's shooting free throws. Clock stopped three seconds ago. If you don't know basketball, free throws, nobody's guarding you.
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You get two shots, each worth one point. You mix them both, they win. Likely champions. They mix them both, likely go home.
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If you know the story, my boy, Ramil Robinson, buries them both. He turns around, pumps his fist.
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There he is, Ramil Robinson. At that time, I'm down the hall in my parents' house under a blanket, can't watch, can't even listen.
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My whole eternity, I thought, hung in the balance. But that was a dopamine hit to my brain that I've been chasing ever since.
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That was an elation that I didn't know existed. And so degenerate am I in chasing this high that I now have three boys, 13, 15, and 17 -year -old, and they play basketball.
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And we go to these tournaments, and these tournaments are in venues where there's like eight, ten basketball courts going, all these kids playing basketball.
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And we'll play two, three days, just all day. Every hour, new games kick off, just basketball, basketball, basketball.
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And my kids aren't always playing. And so sometimes, I find when my kids aren't playing, I'm looking at the scoreboard, surveying all the scoreboards.
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Why? I'm looking for a tight game. I've practiced this a lot of times, and it's still there.
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Still some emotion that wants to come out because I want to see these 12 -year -olds hardly even basketball with the game tied, playing their hearts out, parents screaming, chuck it up, and it goes in.
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Their friends run out on the court. It's just God showing up, and I can just worship God through that. And so just to give you a theology of sports for a microcosm, that whatever we do or say, we should do it to worship
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God. And if it terminates with that event, whatever your thing is, maybe you don't identify with my college basketball or my basketball story.
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Maybe for you, it's a Taylor Swift concert or it's hunting or food. I hope you can identify there are certain things, you love them, and then it just gets like magic, like God has shown up in this, and you can worship
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God in and through that and give him thanks and praise. If it terminates in itself, and that's where you're finding your joy, that's called idolatry, and that's sin, and God hates it.
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But I found in sports, specifically, I can worship God. And I just love those magic moments, and I chase them.
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And just one more, I know you're like, we get it, Zach. It's enough with the basketball, but I got one more. 2008, college basketball again.
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University of Memphis, Memphis University, went undefeated in 2008. At that point, no team had ever gone undefeated and won the national title since Indiana did it in 76.
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So they're undefeated. 2008, I would have had a 4 -year -old, a 2 -year -old, and a newborn. My life didn't really lend itself to staying up all hours watching all of the tournament, but by the grace of God, there was a
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DVR. And so I got to watch it at other times. And so, 2008,
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Memphis wins all their games, and they get to the final game. They're still undefeated. All that pressure of the season, they're playing Kansas. They're favored,
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Memphis is. Comes to the end of the game, Memphis misses a key free throw. They're up by 3. 10 seconds to go,
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Kansas has the ball. And so you know, in basketball, the most points you can score in a single shot is 3. It's a long shot.
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Memphis knows this. They'll do anything they can to make sure Kansas doesn't hit that 3. And sure enough,
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Mario Chalmers gets the ball. 3 seconds to go. Every eye in the universe on him. His boyhood dream, he rises up, and there's a photo of it.
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Shoots, 3 seconds to go, and he nails it. Everybody's watching. They go berserk. They go to overtime. They roll
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Memphis in overtime with all that momentum. And I'm in Lawton, Michigan, on a treadmill at 6 in the morning, weeping.
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Yet, I can stand here, or be with you guys here in this service, seeing Jesus at your feet.
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The sound seems off. There's some disconnect.
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I find that I can authentically worship creation without trying. And it's not easy, but I find myself,
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I'm nervous that I'm faking worship, true worship. And so my desire and hope this morning is that we're going to see a sinful woman worship
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God. And it will be a model. It will be an example. It will provoke us to see
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Jesus for who he really is, and us for who we really are. And that we can truly worship Jesus authentically.
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And we don't have to fake it. It's real. Because we're wired to worship. That's how God created us. So let's read
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Luke 7, verses 36 -50. This is God's word for us this morning. And again, my prayer is that he would change us through this.
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So 36 -50. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him.
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Him being Jesus. I mean, Jesus to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table.
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And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the
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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 kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
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Now when the Pharisee, who had invited him, saw this, he said to himself, This man were a prophet.
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He would have known who and what sort of woman this is who's touching him, for she's a sinner. And Jesus answering, said to him,
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Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered, Say it, teacher. A certain moneylender who had two debtors.
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One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both.
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Now which of them will love him more? And Simon answered, The one I suppose for whom he canceled the larger debt.
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And he said to him, You have rightly judged. Then, turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?
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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.
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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.
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Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much, but he who is forgiven little, loves little.
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And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves,
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Who is this who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you.
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Go in peace. Let's pray. Father, we want to worship you in spirit and truth.
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We're gathered here this morning. God, you would show up, reveal yourself, open our eyes to who you really are.
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God, that as we sing these words, God, that they would be from a true and a contrite heart.
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God, that we would acknowledge our sin and know that we can do nothing to remedy our situation.
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God, we trust you to send your Holy Spirit to speak now. God, that this time of worship would be worshipful to your ears.
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God, that this is why you created us, that we might worship you through song and music. We ask these things in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. Thank you, Dave, Susie, Elijah, Rob, Lee.
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Thanks for serving us by leading us in worship and music. We're going to be, again, in Luke 7, verses 36 -50.
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Walking through this text, looking at three characters. Jesus, the woman we'll call the sinner, and then the
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Pharisee. Just to orient us a little bit, give a little bit of background, we're in one of the gospels.
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are the gospels. When you come to those in the middle of Scripture, they're accounts of Jesus' life.
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They're not biographies. That would be a misnomer. If they were biographies, they'd be woefully lacking. Why do
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I mention that? Because there's only a little bit written about Jesus. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you have to ask, why is this here?
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Of all of Jesus' things that happened in his life, why this? According to that, what did
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Luke just record prior to this? When you read the gospels, to interpret them, you need to know, why did he just write that and now this?
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There's usually a relationship. What I want to communicate to you is that what's just happened in Luke's account, in chapter 7, is that Jesus has come to this town of Nain.
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I guess I'll go all the way to the beginning of the chapter. He healed a centurion's servant from afar. The centurion's servant was sick, sick to death.
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He's like, yeah, he's okay. Sure enough, the servant was healed. What he's just done is come to this town of Nain.
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Nain is about 25 miles out of where Jesus normally operated. He comes there with his disciples and a big crowd.
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When they come to Nain, there's another big crowd already there. What's going on there is that there's a widow having a funeral.
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She's already lost her husband. Now she had one son, and the young man has died. Jesus has compassion on the woman, he says.
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He comes up, puts his hand on the beer or whatever, the thing that the body is on, and says to the young man, arise.
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The young man arises, and they start talking. Jesus gives the young man to his mother.
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The text says everybody feared God and glorified him, and then asked, a prophet has come, right?
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That's just happened. Now we come to this text. If you want to go to the first verse, 7 -36, one of the
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Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. A couple of things there.
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Pharisees, you guys are smarter than me and you probably know, but one discovery I had this week was I've put
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Pharisees in this bucket of chief priests, scribes, Sadducees. These are the guys that Jesus hates.
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These guys are the worst. Mainly true in the Gospels. That's right.
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Nicodemus gets a little bit of a pass, and this Simon seems to do okay, but usually they just catch fire from Jesus.
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But one thing to note, they're not like the super Pharisees, they're not like the super bureaucratic, aristocratic, buttoned up, like they had all the power and the money in the religious sector.
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Pharisees were just a sect of Judaism. So all walks of life, all strata of society were
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Pharisees. You could just have everyday Joe Pharisee, a guy that owned a business in town, just regular Joe Pharisees, and I think that's what this guy is.
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But one thing you need to know is that they were on fire. They loved the law, the
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Mosaic law. That was their jam, that was what they loved. And they not only did that, they would keep that law, and they added a bunch of oral law, oral traditions.
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That was what they loved. And so maybe an analogy would be like, we're Christians, and so we can operate in society pretty much, it doesn't affect what we do in most part.
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A lot of our jobs require us to sin, but for them it might be analogous to being Amish.
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It affects a lot of your life, being Amish. I think it was that same way for Pharisees.
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They had a lot of rules. Their whole goal was to separate from sinners, be pretty legit about staying clean and not sinning, and not violating any of the law.
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And that affected them in a lot of ways. And so we see him now ask Jesus to his home.
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That's weird. That's a stretch for him. He's going to catch flack from his sphere, from his boys.
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Jesus, just before this, is identified as a friend of sinners, a friend of tax collectors. He's a drunkard.
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That's going to be a problem for you, you're violating. But why would he do that? Because the one thing about Pharisees that kind of differentiated them from other
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Jewish -believing folks was that they believed and were really interested in the resurrection. Sadducees didn't believe in it,
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Pharisees did. And what's just happened? Jesus showed up and raised a young man from the grave that was dead.
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They're like, well, I can bend a little bit of the laws. I'll have Jesus over and see what this guy's about. So he has
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Jesus into his home, and he eats with him. And again, that's a stretch. It's outside of his normal. And so it says, reclined at table.
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And it's hard for us, at least for me, to picture. What does it mean to recline at a table? I spent time overseas, and it's not uncommon to eat on the floor.
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But you're reclined? And so I think there's a photo I found. I think this is a fairly accurate depiction of what it might have looked like.
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Two things to note. Most scholars seem to agree. You lean on your left elbow, and you eat with your right hand.
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And the observation there is you're kind of in an intimate setting, and it'd be pretty easy to offend the
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Pharisees' laws and to be interacting and touching them and rubbing up against them and making them unclean, sinning against them.
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So it's awkward. But also, you'll see later, this woman is standing at Jesus' feet.
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So that they're not on the floor. They're elevated. I don't know if you call it a couch, a bed, or whatever, but they're off the floor.
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So just to kind of give you a picture of what this scene might look like. And so Luke then goes to the next verse, and he jumps in right away.
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He says, and behold. I like the way Don translates it. He said, whenever you see behold in the text, it's like, check this out.
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So not only is this weird for a Pharisee to have Jesus into his home, he says, a woman in the city who is a sinner.
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In case you didn't know what a woman in the city is, she's a sinner. In the dictionary for Pharisee, the antonym is a woman of the city.
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There's just no reason, it wasn't on her calendar that morning, I'm going to stop by Simon's house.
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They would not have associated, they wouldn't have been over. She's uninvited, at least. I think for Simon to have one of his boys stop by for this meal, uninvited, would have been like, yeah, cool, but I only have so much room around the table.
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I guess you can stay. That would have been weird. Her to show up is way outside of, he's like, check this out.
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You think that's weird? Check this out. And so we'll go through her, what she does, but just notice she learned that Jesus was in town.
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And what does that say about she learned, and she goes there. Nobody's welcoming her. Nobody wants her there.
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God showed up in her village, and she says, I got to go there. She responds against all social pressures, against all, whatever people thought about her, she did that.
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And so there's a little picture of what it might look like, but we'll go ahead and just skip through that, and identify the verbs, like what do we actually see her doing?
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If you want to go to the next slide. That's not it. So it says, behold, the woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at a table in the
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Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster of flasks, she brought an alabaster of flasks of ointment. So standing at his feet, weeping.
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Says she was weeping. Now some people will say weeping was like, broken over her sin, the bad choices she made.
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She's just really coming to grips with them. I don't think that, I think the text kind of shows a different posture of her, and I think
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I can relate to the weeping tears. God's in her presence. What did she do to deserve him coming there?
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And she just wants to worship him, and so she's weeping. I don't do a lot of weeping, but I know when
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I have, if I don't have a Kleenex, I don't have a tissue, it just turns into a mess fast. Like it just doesn't go anywhere.
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You try to wipe it, it's just not going anywhere. And that's what's happening. She's just covering his feet, weeping on his feet.
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And what else does she do? She says, wiped his feet with the hair of her head.
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I don't know, maybe you guys, that's a common thing, but if you've ever had a mess in the house, and like, can you just wipe that up with your hair? Like that's just not, who has ever used hair to wipe up anything?
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But what you need to know, she's a woman of the city. They're in a village. She's a woman from the city. She's a sinner.
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Her hair is her allurement. This is one of her talents that God has given her. This is part of her beauty.
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And the scholars would say that this is really weird for her to have her hair down. Like it's making a big scene.
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I hate to mention, but they even speculate that this would be akin to her being topless. Like this is way outside of their cultural norms for her to take her hair down.
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She doesn't have anything to wipe his feet up, but she uses her hair. This is the thing that she has. This is part of her being.
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It's what she's been using for dishonored use to glorify herself. Now she's going to serve God. She's going to love
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Jesus with her hair to wipe up these tears. So she wipes his feet and kisses his feet.
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And so obviously I can't really relate to wiping anybody, using my hair to do anything. But I have a wife and a daughter, and they would not want to use their hair for anything.
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I know that. Particularly my daughter. She's big into her hair. That's not it. I don't know why
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I said that. Anyways, but kissing. I've kissed things. I know what that's about.
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Kissing feet? Like we have pets, and I like pets. We have cats, dogs. Cool. I'll pet them, because I can go wash my hands.
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It's over. Some of the people in my family and others like to kiss the pets. It's like I can't do that.
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It's like putting the whole animal right in my mouth. I can't. I don't love Giardia as much as the next person.
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I don't want to get sick. But it's, granted, her germ theory.
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She might not have taken microbiology. She may not have known that. But she uses the instrument, the part of her body, to worship him.
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She does not care. And just so you know, you probably do. He's walking around the desert 25 miles outside where he normally operates.
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Animals are on the roads, defecating. His feet are not clean. We find out later in the passage that he hasn't washed his feet. She's kissing his feet.
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That's just a, she does not care. She's doing whatever she can, whatever she has, to worship
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God. I think that says something about who she is, how she sees herself, and how she sees
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God who's in her presence. And then it says she anoints his feet with oil. And so, some people will say she would have worn the oil around her neck.
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And that wouldn't have been, most people didn't have oil. That would have been a thing of value. But it's also a thing of the trade, as a woman of the city.
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That would have been used by her to do her job. It made her better at her job.
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But also knowing that this is expensive. So she had to have been doing pretty good at her job to even buy that. Just to kind of characterize her a little bit.
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But she uses this thing, probably one of the most valuable things to her in her life. She's anointing his feet.
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And you can just see the picture that that is for us. Using her hair, crying these tears, anointing his feet with whatever she has.
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She's giving it to him. But note, Jesus hasn't looked at her. He certainly didn't request any of this.
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She's just doing it. I think there's something for us to learn from her action.
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But contrast that now to what the Pharisee says in the next verse, in verse 39.
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Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he says to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is and who is touching him.
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For she is a sinner. And so that kind of helps us understand who this Simon is.
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And why did he invite Jesus into his home? He didn't see him as God. But maybe he's a prophet.
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Everybody just kind of called him a prophet. Elijah was a prophet in that area, was raising people from the dead.
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Maybe he's a prophet. So he doesn't see Jesus clearly. And he concludes, he's not a prophet.
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Because if he were a prophet, he wouldn't associate with a sinner. Or he's not a prophet because he doesn't even know she's not a sinner.
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And that might give us a little bit more of a picture of what it would have been like for this woman of the city. Like a 12 -year -old in the room wouldn't have known she was a sinner.
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You had to have a little bit of knowledge of culture or even supernatural knowledge to know she's a sinner. And he's like, he doesn't even get it.
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Or if he does, he's okay with it. Either way, I've taken a big risk and I regret it.
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Why did I have Jesus into my home? He's not even a prophet. So he's just, his boys are there.
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This is a big mistake. And so Jesus then, it says he says it to himself, but he says Jesus answers him.
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And I don't know what that looked like. That was some supernatural knowledge or he heard it. He says, Simon, I have something to say to you. So just to picture that scene, there's all these
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Pharisees. Jesus is invited. This is weird. We're all hanging out. And now this woman shows up doing weird stuff.
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They're saying to themselves, like, is she gone yet? Should we get out of here? What are we going to do? I don't know.
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We'll give her another minute or two. Jesus doesn't seem to be addressing this. And so then Jesus speaks.
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And I can just see the room, the air going out of the room like, oh, he's going to say something.
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He could have just started talking. He says, Simon, I have something to say to you. And everybody's like, oh, this is it. This is why we came.
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Jesus is going to do something. He says, I have something to say to you. You can see, wasn't the
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Pharisees saw him as God? Nope. Saw him as a prophet? Nope. Addresses him as teacher.
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We'll say it, teacher. You're not a prophet. And it reminds me what Don identified with Judas.
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Judas never called Jesus Lord. Always called him rabbi or teacher. And I think that's common of humans.
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Most humans agree that there was a man named Jesus at some point in time in our human history. We like to call him, they call him a teacher.
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So he says, say it, teacher. And everybody's like, go ahead, say it, teacher. And so what does he say? He says, starts with this transparent parable.
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He says, a certain money lender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii and the other 50.
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And when they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. A lot of Jesus' parables were not so obvious.
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But there's two people there. There's the sinning woman and there's the Pharisee. Both regard themselves as sinners. One just differently.
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They have a different understanding of their sin nature. It says like, it's a tenfold difference. 50 versus 500.
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Some would say that's a month's wage versus a year wage. Two months versus two years. That isn't the point. The point is, what could they do about it?
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They could not pay. Neither one of them. They both had a problem that they could not resolve. And it says he canceled the debt of both.
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And I like what Tim Keller says about the canceling of our sin. Like, whenever there's a debt, it's not that problem solved.
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It's gone. If you take out a mortgage, the bank pays the person you bought from the home.
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The bank has paid them. And you can't pay. You default on a loan. It doesn't just go away. There was a payment.
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And it is the same way with our sin. Like, sometimes we might think of our sin like, Jesus forgave my sin. It just never happened.
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He solved it. No, he paid for our sin. We had this problem. We sinned against an almighty, infinite
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God. That's an infinite sin that there's just nothing we could do about it. And he paid for that sin.
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So that's kind of this wrinkle of how do we see ourselves. But he invites him in. He says, now, which of them will love him more?
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And I think that just invites him in. But that's sort of an easy question, right?
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If you go to the next verse, what does he say? Simon answered. He said, well, the one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt.
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And he said, you've judged rightly. So, Jesus is kind to him. You've rightly judged. But I'm positive that if I went back to the four - and five -year -old and I told this parable, they would get it.
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Who would love him more, the one with the little debt or the big debt? This is not some Christian ethic, weird, yeah, it's going to take a lot of wisdom and judgment.
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This is obvious. And he draws him in. And it annoys me.
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Why would he say, I suppose? I feel like his posture is like, I suppose, can you just go?
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This is a big mistake. Can you get her out of here and you go? And so it reminds me a little bit of the
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Mario Chalmers shot. So if we go back to that photo, there's a great photo in Sports Illustrated. Mario Chalmers, three seconds left in the game to tie the game.
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He rises up, he shoots it, and he makes it. Now, just so you know, this is the last game of the season. The whole season revolves around this shot, whether or not it goes in or out.
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And he makes it. And I would argue that's the biggest shot in college basketball history up until that point. Now, I know some of you might say
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Chris Jenkins' Villanova shot over North Carolina was bigger, but at that time, that was the biggest shot. There's something that sticks out to me.
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There's a girl on the baseline. I don't know if you see her there. I don't know what it's like.
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I would love to be at that game, anywhere in that game. I don't know how much you have to pay to get courtside seats.
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I can't afford it. But to be there in that specific moment, she's sitting inches from the baseline.
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She's the closest person in the arena to the action. Three seconds to go in the game.
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This is annoying. I've got to get out of here. I mean,
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I saw that in Sports Illustrated at the time, and it stuck with me. I don't like her. You spoiled little girl.
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What did she possibly do to be there? I can't conceive. She didn't pay, or nobody paid for her.
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That's not a seat that they sell. She doesn't get it. And so it is with this
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Pharisee. God has come into his home, is sitting at his table. I suppose.
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Can you leave? I've got things to worry about. Jesus told a parable comparing our faith to the sowing of seeds.
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Some seed falls on fertile soil, and other grows up and gets choked out by the thorns.
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He explains that parable. That's the cares of this world. I like another preacher.
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He doesn't talk about choking out. He puts it in the MMA terms. Our faith gets choked out by the cares of this world.
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I think that the Pharisee, this girl, are pictures of we have access to God, but we're annoyed.
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We've got to get out of here. I've got things to do this afternoon. So I don't like him.
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You little grain of sand. You have plans. God's here in your home. But then
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I see myself. I'm that guy. I'm annoyed at my circumstances.
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I'm annoyed. Where is God? He's not here. He couldn't be here. He doesn't see my situation.
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But Jesus, I want Jesus to float up and just bring the thunder on him, but he is gracious and kind like he is with us.
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He said, you've judged rightly. And so he contrasts. He's like, for the first time, he turns to the woman, even acknowledges her.
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You just got to see the scene. Some people say Jesus is a teacher. What human would allow this woman to come in there crying over his feet, wiping your feet with her hair, anointing them with oil, kissing them, and be like, yeah, that makes sense.
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I'm just a human. That's fine. That's what people usually do. Unless you're God. It only makes sense if you're
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God to allow this woman to do that. But he's kind to her. But he contrasts.
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And he finally looks at her, but he's still talking to Simon. He said, do you see this contrast? He says, you gave me no water for my feet.
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You gave me no kiss. You did not anoint my head with oil. Again, Jesus doesn't need that from anybody.
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It's not a cultural expectation. It wasn't required. But he contrasts his behavior with hers.
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Since the time I came in here, she has not ceased to kiss my feet, but she's anointed my feet with ointment.
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So he contrasts that. And go to the next verse in 47, where he says, therefore, I tell you. So again, talking to Simon, her sins, which are many, are forgiven.
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For she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little. So this isn't some cute teaching. You cannot regard
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Jesus in this passage as just being a teacher with some good lesson. Therefore, we need to go about our days, and we need to forgive more people.
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I don't know what you can interpret. This is about Jesus. He is God, because he says, your sins, her sins, which are many, are forgiven.
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But how does he characterize her actions? He says she loved much. It's not that he forgave her sins because she did all this activity and served him.
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She did it out of love, out of compassion, out of just a genuine worship of Jesus and what he did.
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She regards him as God, and it provokes her to tears and to loving him.
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And I think it reminds me of, like, how do we love Jesus? Jesus gave us clearance. He said, whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did to me.
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When I had no clothing, you clothed me. When I was naked, you clothed me. When I was hungry, you fed me.
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When I was thirsty, you gave me water. That's how we love Jesus. We don't serve the poor.
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We don't serve the needy in our midst to get the love of Jesus. We do it out of worship and love and affection for him.
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So the next verse, verse 48, he says he said to her, finally speaks to her. We never see her name. Your sins are forgiven.
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And in verse 49, this is where he's kind of like, look, you don't get it. I'll show you.
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Like, they're like, this guy's casting out demons. He's healing the sick. He's raising from the dead. And they said to themselves, who is this?
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He even forgives sins. They don't get it, but they're wrestling with it.
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They see the facts. Even though he's doing all the things, it's not enough. But who are the sins against?
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They're against God. Who can forgive the sins against God? Only God. That's the only way.
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And so he's displaying, like, look, I am God. And then lastly, he speaks to the woman.
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He says to her, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. I think it might take away from this message.
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Our worship should be this emotional. This should be this big demonstration. I think our Christian lives should be characterized by worship.
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He says, go in peace. We should have peace. That should separate us from a world that we live in.
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That should be different. No matter what's happening in our life, we know that our eternity is secure. We know that God is on his throne. We know he's in control.
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Tells her, your sins are forgiven. Go in peace. And that's a peace that no one else has. We all have struggles, hurts, sorrows.
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We have our sins forgiven, our eternity secure. We can go in eternal peace.
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And so, close with a couple applications. One is from a book the elders were going through by Carl Truman called
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A Strange New World. And it was kind of a discouraging read because it tried to trace, or it did trace the thought of humanity for the last couple hundred years, at least in the
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West, of how we got to the point where we are now, where it seems like humans are ultimately in authorities on everything.
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You cannot argue with somebody. If I say I'm a cat in a man's body, like, I'm sorry. I'll give humanity credit for having compassion on somebody, but my thought is like, no, there's got to be some truth to this situation.
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And there needs to be apologetics and some argumentation that needs to happen here. But what he did say that is helpful is that's not the church's role.
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Apologetics and education, not necessarily. So the quote that I like, he says, a large part of the church's witness to the world is simply being the church in worship.
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When an unbeliever accidentally turns up at a church service, he should be struck by the otherworldly holiness of what is going on.
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Our worship should be different. Now, I'll stand by it. I think we can worship God through sports. Anything we do in life should be worship.
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And it's good and right. But even college basketball, as great as it is, as you see, I like it, it's their sin baked in.
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There's violence, there's aggression, there's pride, there's arrogance, there's sin always in it.
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But what we do here, when we gather, we're out in the world, we're taking
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L's in our marriages, in our parenting, in our jobs. It's a struggle. We come in here.
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This is what we were created to do, to worship God. This is a taste of what eternity is like, what we do here.
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This is a sanctuary. We hear from God. We praise him out of a response to him.
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This is as holy and as pure as it can get. And so he uses that word holy. We should be struck by the otherworldly.
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This isn't from this world. I don't see this anywhere else in society. Society loves to worship stuff, but this is different.
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And I think that's what we're called to. And so the rub for me, and maybe you're seeing this, well, how do
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I see myself rightly? Because it just seems like this, I become bored with it. I get excited about a song.
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I can beat a song to death better than anybody. I'll play the same song over and over. Two weeks later, I don't want to hear it again.
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Songs are like this deep. And so we say, well, Jesus died for my sins. Sweet, Jesus died for my sins.
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Awesome. Over and over. You become bored. But that's infinite.
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And so I really like this book by Paul Tripp called New Morning Mercies. I encourage anybody to get it.
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This is a daily devotional, but he points us to the gospel. Tons of great quotes, and this one I really like. He says, human beings who were created to live in awe of God are in grave danger when familiarity causes them to be bored with God.
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I think we get bored. And why do we become bored with God? We don't see Him in the room. We're distracted by,
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I'm just saying, we're distracted by the cares of this world. It might be a reason. Maybe we don't believe in God. We don't trust Him. I know that I'm not going to give any parenting tips.
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John did a great job last week helping us with parenting and giving some useful tips. One thing
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I know, I have four teenagers, 13, 15, 17, and 19, that they will see my hypocrisy, my fake worship from a mile away.
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They get it. We can't fake it. And so how do we have true worship? How do we not be bored with God?
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And I think it starts with the right theology. Just some fundamentals of our faith and using those to leverage whatever comes into our world, whatever comes into our experience.
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So, like, number one, do we have the Word of God? Do we know what God said?
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Most of us would agree, but if you don't, you're skeptical. I invite you. I'd love to interact with you just from a scientific perspective to wrestle with, does this text stand up to any kind of historical scrutiny?
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It does. And I'd love to walk with you through that and just see that this is the Word of God. But then that's still a supernatural event that you trust that this is the
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Word of God. So we have what God said. And then, what does it say? And does God love me?
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Does God love me? I'll say it again. Does God love me? This woman loved him, loved
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Jesus. And it reminds me at the end of John's Gospel, before he ascends, he gets raised from the dead, however you want to say that, conquers sin and death, comes back to earth, and he's with the disciples.
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And before he goes back up, he says to Peter, he says, do you love me? Do you love me? Three times he asks him, do you love me?
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Jesus wants our love and affection, but does he love us? And so if you read the Scriptures, you know it says that he loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son.
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He does love us. Any of you that are parents would not, it's, I can say, I wouldn't give my child for anybody.
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Just zero. It's just not even on the table, let alone an enemy. That's how much he loved us.
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So we have what he said. We know what God said. We know that he loves us. Is he all -powerful? Is there anything outside of his control?
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So these are the big building blocks that we can build our faith on. And if any of these are shaken, things start to fall apart.
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And so does the text say that God is all -powerful? Can a sparrow fall and die?
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A little sparrow, that doesn't hardly mean anything compared to human value. Can it die without his will? It says no.
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He knows every hair on our head. In Job's account, Satan comes before God, and God says to Job, or says to Satan, have you considered my servant
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Job? Or Satan says to God, well he only loves you because you protect him and give him good things.
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So God says to him, you can do whatever you want to him, just don't take his life. God's in control of everything.
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Even the things that we would not want in our lives. And so you have to ask yourself, why?
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Why is this in my life? These cares of this world, the things in this world. I'll just ask you this question.
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He loves you this morning, how? How is he loving you? Look at your relationships, look at the circumstances that you're in.
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Is God in control? Is he loving? Those are the building blocks of our faith, and you can use those to leverage and come to an answer on that.
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And you can see God's hand. Just like sports or everything, you can see God showing up and you can see him.
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His mercies are new every day, and you can see in unique ways how God's loving you. It might not make any sense to you, but you'll see the hand of God in your everyday life.
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And that's where there's an infinity, there's an infinite depth to the gospel in our lives, and how he's transforming, how he's working all things together for our good.
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So this is a call to worship. So we're going to close our time with communion. We do this every week at Recast.
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It's a call to remembrance of what Jesus did on the cross for us. Just logistically, we have tables, four corners, and there's two in the back.
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So if you haven't been here before, that's how we're going to do it. But stay with me. What I invite you to do this morning, it's a celebration of what
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Jesus did for us. We're remembering it, but I want you to put it on the ground for you today. How does it affect your, what is it,
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April 30th? How does it affect your April 30th, your Sunday morning? What's different because Jesus died for you today?
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Because I think there's true worship for us. There's an opportunity for us to not be bored with God. We get it, you're all powerful, you died for our sins.
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No, there's a million different, billions of different iterations and facets to what
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God has done for us. So that's my call to us, that we worship God because we see him clearly, we see ourselves in light of that correctly, and we can see his hands on our life.
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Let's pray. Father God, thank you for being
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God. Thank you for being in control. Thank you for loving us so much that you gave your only son.
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Now this problem that we have, this sin that we had to answer for, the judgment was imminent, is imminent, it's going to come, inevitable.
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And we can stand before you, before your holy throne in Christ's shed blood. So as we partake in the
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Lord's Supper this morning, remembering that God, you sent your son, he gave his body for us on the cross, he shed his blood to pay that penalty, pay that price that we could not pay.