Luke 7:36-50 Responding to Jesus

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Well, good morning, 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 God's Word with you.

Worship as the Right Response to Jesus

So if you don't mind, go ahead and grab your Bibles and open up to Luke chapter 7. We're going to be in verses 36 through 50 this morning. A little bit of an introduction, maybe an extended introduction, is to kind of highlight for you what I hope is, in prayer, in our coming into contact with God's Word this morning, is that we would see Jesus, truly and accurately, for who He really is, and us in right relationship with Jesus.

And as a result, we would authentically worship Him. And I think what brought me here is a struggle that I have with the church. And I mean big C church, global church, local church, Christians, and I include myself in that.

And that is that if what we believe is true, and we're here, and we do, hopefully, and what I mean by that is the Christian faith and its teachings are true and we believe them. I mean, like, we were born into this world with our eternity apart from God.

We had a date with death. All of us have death to look forward to. And after that, the judgment. 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. And as Christians, we believe that God sent His Son to die for our sins. It was something that we could not solve. It was a problem that we had no ability to resolve, and we had a destiny with eternity and hell.

If we believe that's true, and that we believe that Jesus saved us from that, and not only are eternities secure, but even now, that He's stepped into our lives, He's redeeming, fixing, healing our brokenness even now, that our lives and how we conduct ourselves would be different.

For example, a couple months ago in February, at Asbury University, there was a chapel service. 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.

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 from around the country were descending onto that campus. After two weeks, the university administration said, you guys, we can't have any more people here.

This is getting out of hand. That, to me, that seems consistent with our faith. 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.

But I think my struggle is with how we respond to God. 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. 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. 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.

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. I see an inconsistency in what we worship. And so, I'll just highlight maybe some illustrations that you're like, well, 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. And I'll give you that, because I think if we talk about emotions being that part of us that we really can't control, that sad, happy, fear, those things just happen without us.

We can't conjure those things. And how we express them, we can. I can govern them, because if the human range of expression of emotions is negative 10 to plus 10, I seem to operate in negative 1 to plus 1.

I can bottle things up pretty tight. I don't express a lot of emotions.

And so, I'll give you that.

Maybe it's just not our culture to express our emotions. But I will highlight a couple of observations I've seen in our culture where that might not hold true. A couple years ago, the University of Michigan played their arch rival, Ohio State Buckeyes, in Ann Arbor.

They had not beat their arch rival. Michigan had not beat them for a long, long time. Well, they finally did it. The game ended. And just to highlight, the public address announcer did not get on the speaker and say, Okay, now what 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. We're going to put some music on, and I want you to sing along. And just celebrate for as long as you want.

No.

That's what happened. 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, I think, we're wired to worship. And for me, what we do here is worship. We'll get to it later. But I think all of life can be worship. It should be worship, as long as it's not sin.

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 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.

That's for another therapy session. Things that happen that are good, including sports, 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...

I can see God show up on a feel of a game. And I can see, well, that's clearly 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.

I was a 12-year-old. Came home from school one March afternoon. It was a half day. I don't recall why it was a half day that day. My parents were working. I had two younger brothers. They were in school.

I came home, grabbed some lunch, turned on the TV, and basketball was on. College basketball was on. It was March Madness. I didn't know that that was a thing. Wasn't paying attention. I like basketball.

And just so you know, college basketball ends in a tournament. You win or you go home. 64 teams. So, on a Thursday afternoon in March, the tournament starts. 32 teams play. 16 games on Thursday. Friday, 32 teams.

The other 32 teams play. 16 more games. So, that's 32 games of college basketball. Every team, every player playing. Their season depends on this game, all in, all out. And I was just like, what is this?

This is a lot of fun. And I just got addicted to it early on. And so, I grew up on the other side of the state. I have family that had season tickets to the Michigan football. And so, I would get invited to some of the Michigan football games and became a Michigan fan.

That was my association. The next year, 1989, I followed Michigan basketball throughout the season. Michigan, if you didn't know, that year did something unconventional. 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.

They did.

But, as God would have it, they went all of their tournament games that year. So, this is my first year really following the tournament. My favorite team is now winning all the games, and they get to the final game against Seton Hall.

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. 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. He's shooting free throws. Clock stopped three seconds ago. If you don't know basketball, free throws, nobody's guarding you.

You get two shots, each worth one point. He makes them both, they win. Likely champions. Makes them both, likely go home. If you know the story, my boy, Rameel Robinson, buries them both. He turns around, pumps his fist.

There he is, Rameel Robinson. At that time, I'm down the hall in my parents' house, under a blanket, can't watch, can't even listen. My whole eternity, I thought, hung in the balance. But that wasn't a dopamine hit to my brain that I've been chasing ever since.

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. 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. And we'll play two, three days, just all day. Every hour, new games kick off.

Just basketball, basketball, basketball. 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.

Why?

I'm looking for a tight game. I've practiced this a lot of times, and it's still there. 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. 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 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. Maybe for you it's a Taylor Swift concert, or it's hunting, or food.

I hope you can unidentify. 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 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. But I found, in sports specifically, I can worship God. And I just love those magic moments, and I chase them.

And just one more. I know you're like, we get it, Zach. It's enough with the basketball. But I've got one more. 2008. College basketball again. 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. So they're undefeated. 2008, I would have had a four-year-old, a two-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 DVR. And so I got to watch it at other times. And so, 2008, 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. Memphis is. Comes to the end of the game. Memphis misses a key free throw.

They're up by three. Ten seconds to go. Kansas has the ball. And so you know, in basketball, the most points you can score in a single shot is three. It's a long shot. Memphis knows this. They'll do anything they can to make sure Kansas doesn't hit that three.

And sure enough, Mario Chalmers gets the ball. Three seconds to go. Every eye in the universe on him. His boyhood dream. He rises up. And there's a photo of it. Shoots. Three seconds to go. And he nails it.

Everybody's watching. They go berserk. They go to overtime. They roll Memphis in overtime with all that momentum. And I'm in Lawton, Michigan, on a treadmill at six in the morning, weeping. Yet, I can stand here or be with you guys here in this service, seeing Jesus at your feet.

The sound seems off. There's some disconnect. I find that I can authentically worship creation without trying. And it's not easy, but I find myself, 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 God.

And it will be a model. It will be an example. It will provoke us to see Jesus for who he really is and us for who we really are. And that we can truly worship Jesus authentically. 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 Luke 7, verses 36 through 50. This is God's word for us this morning. And, again, my prayer is that he would change us through this.

So 36 through 50. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. Him being Jesus. I mean, Jesus to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And, behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment.

And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped 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, This man were a prophet.

He would have known who and what sort of woman this is who's touching him, for she's a sinner. And Jesus answering, said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he answered, Say it, teacher.

A certain money lender who had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, and the other 50. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more? And Simon answered, The one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt.

And he said to him, You have rightly judged. Then, turning toward 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. And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?

And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Let's pray. Father, we want to worship you in spirit and truth. We're gathered here this morning. God, you would show up, reveal yourself, open our eyes to who you really are.

God, that as we sing these words, God, that they would be from a true and a contrite heart. God, that we would acknowledge our sin and know that we can do nothing to remedy our situation. God, we trust you to send your Holy Spirit to speak now.

God, that this time of worship would be worshipful to your ears. God, that this is why you created us, that we might worship you through song and music. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat.

Thank you, Dave, Susie, Elijah, Rob, Lee. Thanks for serving us by leading us in worship and music. We're going to be, again, in Luke 7, verses 36 -50. Walking through this text, looking at three characters.

Jesus, the woman we'll call the sinner, and then the Pharisee. Just to orient us a little bit, give a little bit of background, we're in one of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are the Gospels. When you come to those in the middle of Scripture, they're accounts of Jesus' life.

They're not biographies. That would be a misnomer. If they were biographies, they'd be woefully lacking. Why do 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?

Of all of Jesus' things that happened in his life, why this? According to that, what did 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?

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. 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. 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.

Nain is about 25 miles out of where Jesus normally operated. He comes there with his disciples and a big crowd. 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.

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. 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.

The young man arises, and they start talking. Jesus gives the young man to his mother. The text says, everybody feared God and glorified him, and then asked, a prophet has come, right? That's just happened.

Now we come to this text. If you want to go to the first verse, 7 -36, one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. A couple things there.

Pharisees, you guys are smarter than me and you probably know, but one discovery I had this week was I put Pharisees in this bucket of chief priests, scribes, Sadducees. These are the guys that Jesus hates.

These guys are the worst. Mainly true in the Gospels. That's right. Nicodemus gets a little bit of a pass, and this Simon seems to do okay, but usually they just catch fire from Jesus. 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.

Pharisees were just a sect of Judaism. So all walks of life, all strata of society were 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. But one thing you need to know is that they were on fire. They loved the law, the 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.

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 the most part. A lot of our jobs require us to sin.

But for them, it might be analogous to being Amish. It affects a lot of your life, being Amish. I think it was that same way for Pharisees. 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.

And that affected them in a lot of ways. And so we see him now ask Jesus to his home. That's weird. That's a stretch for him. He's going to catch flack from his sphere, from his boys. Jesus, just before this, is identified as a friend of sinners, a friend of tax collectors.

He's a drunkard. 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 Jewish-believing folks was that they believed and were really interested in the resurrection.

Sadducees didn't believe in it. Pharisees did. And what just happened? Jesus showed up and raised a young man from the grave that was dead. 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 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. 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. But you're reclined? And so I think there's a photo I found of maybe a I think this is a fairly accurate depiction of what it might have looked like.

Two things to note. Most scholars seem to agree. You lean on your left elbow, and you eat with your right hand. And the observation there is you're kind of in an intimate setting, and it would be pretty easy to offend the Pharisees' laws and to be interacting and touching them and rubbing up against them and making them unclean, sinning against them.

So it's awkward. But also, you'll see later, this woman is standing at Jesus' feet 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.

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. 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.

So not only is this weird for a Pharisee to have a Jesus into his home, he says, a woman of the city who is a sinner. In case you didn't know what a woman of the city is, she's a sinner. In the dictionary for Pharisee, the antonym is a woman of the city.

There's just no reason. It wasn't on her calendar that morning. I'm going to stop by Simon's house. 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.

I guess you can stay. That would have been weird. Her to show up is way outside of.

He's like, check this out.

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. And what does that say about she learned, and she goes there. Nobody's welcoming her.

Nobody wants her there. 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. 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? 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 Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster of flask. So standing at his feet, weeping. It says she was weeping.

Now some people will say weeping was like broken over her sin, the bad choices she made. She's just really coming to grips with them. I think the text kind of shows a different posture of her, and I think I can relate to the weeping tears.

God's in her presence. What did she do to deserve him coming there? And she just wants to worship him, and so she's weeping. I don't do a lot of weeping, but I know when 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. 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. And what else does she do? She says, wiped his feet with the hair of her head.

I don't know.

Maybe you guys, it's a common thing, but have you ever had a mess in the house? Can you just wipe that up with your hair? Who has ever used hair to wipe up anything? 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. Her hair is her allurement. This is one of her talents that God has given her. This is part of her beauty. And the scholars would say that this is really weird for her to have her hair down.

Like it's making a big scene. 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. 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. This is what she's been using for dishonored use to glorify herself. Now, she's going to serve God. She's going to love Jesus with her hair to wipe up these tears.

So she wipes his feet and kisses his feet. 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.

I know that, particularly my daughter. She's big into her hair. That's not a discernible reason. Anyways, but kissing. I've kissed things. I know what that's about. 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.

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. 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. I don't want to get sick. But it's, granted, her germ theory. 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.

She does not care. And just so you know, you probably do. Like he's walking around the desert 25 miles outside where he normally operates. Animals are on the roads, defecating. Like his feet are not clean.

We find out later in the passage that he hasn't washed his feet. And so she's kissing his feet. Like that's just a, she does not care. She's doing whatever she can, whatever she has, to worship God. I think that says something about who she is, how she sees herself, and how she sees 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. 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. That would have been used by her to do her job. It made her better at her job. 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. But she uses this thing, probably one of the most valuable things to her in her life. She's anointing his feet. 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. She's giving it to him. But note, Jesus hasn't looked at her. He certainly didn't request any of this. She's just doing it.

I think there's something for us to learn from her action. But contrast that now to what the Pharisee says in the next verse, in verse 39. 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. For she is a sinner. And so that kind of helps us understand who this Simon is. And why did he invite Jesus into his home? He didn't see him as God. But maybe he's a prophet. Everybody just kind of called him a prophet.

Elijah was a prophet in that area. Was raising people from the dead. Maybe he's a prophet. So he doesn't see Jesus clearly. And he concludes, he's not a prophet. 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. 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.

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. Or if he does, he's okay with it. Either way, I've taken a big risk and I regret it.

Why did I have Jesus into my home? He's not even a prophet. So he's just, his boys are there. This is a big mistake. And so Jesus then, it says he says it to himself. But he says Jesus answers him. 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 Pharisees. Jesus is invited.

This is weird.

We're all hanging out. And now this woman shows up doing weird stuff. 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.

We'll give her another minute or two. Jesus doesn't seem to be addressing this.

And so then Jesus speaks.

And I can just see the room, the air going out of the room like, oh, he's going to say something. 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. Jesus is going to do something. He says, I have something to say to you. You can see it wasn't the Pharisees. Saw him as God?

Nope.

Saw him as a prophet?

Nope.

Addresses him as teacher. We'll say it, teacher. You're not a prophet. And it reminds me what Don identified with Judas. Judas never called Jesus Lord. Always called him rabbi or teacher. And I think that's common of humans.

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.

So he says, say it, teacher.

And everybody's like, go ahead. Go ahead and say it, teacher. And so what does he say? He says, starts with this transparent parable. He says, a certain money lender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii and the other 50.

And when they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. A lot of Jesus' parables were not so obvious. But there's two people there. There's the sinning woman and there's the Pharisee. Both regard themselves as sinners.

One just differently. They have a different understanding of their sin nature. It says like, it's a tenfold difference. 50 versus 500. 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? 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. 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.

It's gone.

If you take out a mortgage, the bank pays the person you bought from the home. 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. 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. He solved it. No, he paid for our sin. We had this problem. We sinned against an almighty, infinite God. That's an infinite sin that there's just nothing we could do about it.

And he paid for that sin. 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? And I think that just invites him in. But that's sort of an easy question, right?

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. 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.

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. This is obvious. And he draws him in. And it annoys me. Why would he say, I suppose?

I feel like his posture is like, I suppose, can you just go? 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 Mario Chalmers shot. So, if we go back to that photo, there's a great photo in Sports Illustrated.