Well, good morning and greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is good to be with you. And I bring you greetings from our congregation in Emanuel that I'm glad that I was able to help out because I got a call late this week of needing a minister of the word this morning. And I just stepped off rotation for our morning services. So the Lord orchestrated things nicely. We're thankful to partner with you in the gospel here in our Sacramento region and continue to pray for you and for all the churches here that call on the Lord Jesus in truth. And we're glad to be among that number with you. Let us begin this morning by looking at God's Word. I want us to turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 7. We'll read verses 36 through 50. The encounter of the Lord Jesus with Simon and the sinful woman. Luke, chapter 7, beginning in verse 36. It is written, And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meet. And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meet in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bitted him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee, and he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors, the one owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she hath washed my feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace." This is the Word of the Lord. Let me lead us in prayer as we consider His Word together. Our Father, we thank You for the clarity we get from Your Word and by the power of Your Spirit is brought home to our hearts. We pray you might help the one who expounds it, that he might be bold and clear as you intend, and that you would give us all ears to hear and hearts to believe. We ask this for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. To the church in Ephesus in Revelation, the Lord Jesus exhorted them and admonished them, thou hast left thy first love. That's something I as a pastor have been meditating and thinking upon in the last few months. Certainly, I don't know about you, March 2020 has been the longest month of my life. And if you're like my congregation, there's lots of evidence that the lack of rhythm that the Lord intends us to have in life, being thrown out of sync with that has had its impact. the rhythms of work and rest, of fellowship and ministry, have borne out in our lives often with relationships being more tense, anger being closer to the surface, fellowship often being more tenuous, and even commitment to Christ and His church seem a little more frayed. How do we regain the love that we had at first? How do we rekindle or seek from the Lord a revival of our affections for Christ and His Church? What would you say to another brother or sister that you perceived was shrinking from their first love and needed encouragement? What I want us to do in this encounter the Lord Jesus had in the Gospel of Luke is consider that question as we consider this passage and think about how love for Christ is kindled at all in anyone. I want us to look at this Gospel and identify not with the Lord Jesus. You notice often how when we read the Gospels or hear them preached, we tend to identify with the heroes. We'll identify with Peter until he says something rash and foolish, of course, then we stand with the apostles against him. And we might be tempted in this passage to identify with our Lord Jesus and with the compassion and the right disposition he had towards this woman, but I want us to identify and think at different levels of identifying with the Pharisee, and then with this sinful woman. And I want us to consider how the majestic grace of the Lord Jesus Christ draws forth love for Him. That it is the grace of God in Jesus that kindles and sparks our love and service for Christ. And I want us to look at four lenses, look at this passage through four lenses. I want us to look at a self-righteous Pharisee, Think of a selfless sinner, a servant by faith, and a Savior's forgiveness. We must consider these four lenses as we walk through this passage together. Let's look at first a self-righteous Pharisee. If you notice in the reading, especially in verses 36 and 37, Luke does not want us to miss that a sinner has entered a Pharisee's house. He repeats it twice. It's stunning to read. A sinner has entered a Pharisee's home. Now, this was the Pharisee's big problem with Jesus. They could not deny the miracles. They couldn't deny the power. But he did not care for their rules and traditions that they had put on top of the Word of God. And they also had took great umbrage at the fact that he had no problem associating with sinners. In fact, just before our passage, the Lord Jesus represents the accusations that were brought against Him in verse 34 of this chapter as Him being a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. Sinners were those people out there that the Pharisees would not want to be tainted with by any association, let alone having them under your house or touching you. So our friend Simon has invited the Lord over for a meal, not in kindness, but to interrogate him a bit more. Who is this friend of sinners? Now, such an event would have been a bit different than gathering around your dining room table this afternoon for lunch. It would have been a public event. It most likely would have happened in a courtyard with an open gate. People would have come and gone. In fact, it is likely that the Lord Jesus, being a teacher and a rabbi, would have been invited to speak prior to this, prior to the meal, and people would have listened to his teachings. So you want to imagine something more like an open picnic, people coming and going, a public event. The Lord Jesus taught, we don't know what He was taught, but maybe it was like what He taught in Luke 5, when Levi, Matthew, threw a feast and invited all his friends. And the Lord Jesus there in verse 32 taught, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Maybe he repeated that same message, and this sinner comes in and enters the court. But with such a guest of honor as the Lord Jesus, such a distinguished and popular rabbi, it would have been accustomed that there was a certain etiquette that Simon the host would have followed. And the Lord pointed out later in our passage, beginning in verse 44, he should have had his feet washed, greeted with a kiss of hospitality, anointed with pleasing oil. But Simon didn't invite Jesus to honor him. He invited him to interrogate him. And all his prejudice against the Lord seems confirmed when he noticed that a sinner is touching him. He can't be a prophet or else he'd recoil. He'd reject her. He'd kick her away. Simon can't believe that Jesus would allow a sinner to associate him. What Simon has never stopped to ask is whether or not the Lord Jesus should be associated with him at all. You see, this woman's sin put her in another category of humanity for Simon. And I want us to have a moment of honesty for a bit, and to be honest that we might like to think we'd welcome her differently, but consider a bit about it. You know that quiet self-confidence you have when you think about those people? Now, those people are different for each one of us. It might be a group of different education, economics, Maybe even ethnicity. Whatever it is, whatever comes to mind, when you think of those people, you think quietly, I'm better. And it may be true that you're wiser. It may be true you make better decisions. It may be true that in God's kindness you come from a better background and by His mercies pursue a better and wiser course of life. But how often does the recognition of distinctions in that way come into separating ourselves as though we're in another class of humanity entirely? The truth is that self-righteousness and legalism are still present with us. By nature, we're Pharisees deep down in remaining sin. We often don't tend to recognize it today, invisible Christianity, because it doesn't show up the same way as it did in the first century. It doesn't look like the Pharisees any longer. It's packaged differently. Legalism, I like to say, often just comes nicer today. And so it's less recognized. It might be a short sermon series on how to be a good neighbor, or transform your culture, We don't think of these things as legalism because they come with Hawaiian shirts and peppy music and smiles. But step back and consider what's being shared. Being a Christian means being nice, transforming your world, becoming a different person. What are these? These are rules. These are grounds for acceptance before God. These are what identify you and mark you out from the world. And let me ask, have any of us met them? How is transforming Sacramento going for you? Probably the same as it's going for me. Our legalism can often be packaged in nicer packages, or what we may recognize also legalism today can be packaged in self-pity and victimization, nurturing the identity of one who's hurt, And using that as how that can easily become a means of justifying ourselves in any manner of behavior because of how we've been offended. But whatever the example, and we can multiply them, those are just two. Legalism is still around. And the issue with it, the issue as it was, the same for us as it was with Simon, is that no form of legalism takes seriously what Anselm famously said to Boso in Cur Deus Homo, you have not yet considered the great weight of sin. But this woman had. And so I want us to consider, secondly, not just a self-righteous Pharisee, but a selfless sinner. We're told about this woman in verse 37. She was a woman of the city, a sinner. Now, we don't know exactly what she's guilty of, but we can imagine. We know that Jesus says later in verse 47 and affirms that her sins were many. She was guilty of heinous, scandalous sin. She was likely something along the lines of a prostitute or something at that level. And by entering into the Pharisee's home, this woman is breaking all convention. Everything her culture and society would have assumed was acceptable and appropriate, she is disregarding. She learned in verse 37 that Jesus was there, so she went. She went and pursued Him. Now this woman we see here had already heard from the Lord Jesus the offer of forgiveness by faith in Him. And by Jesus' reasoning later in the passage in verses 47 and 48, He's pointing that her love demonstrates the proof of prior forgiveness. We could make even just a little footnote and note here in these verses on the language. It would be better rendered along with other English translations that she has been forgiven. Her love is demonstrating a forgiveness that has already been transacted. And from her prior forgiveness, maybe even at that feast before which Jesus spoke, or maybe earlier in one of his teachings, her love had sprang forth. And so she pursues the Lord who had forgiven her. Now consider the courage that it took for this woman to do what she did. She entered a Pharisee's house. with the guarantee that she would be insulted, scorned, and ostracized further. That was a given. She knew it. She would be reminded again of the guilt and shame of her sin, what had already been forgiven but would be brought up certainly. She would be reminded that you are unwelcome here. You don't belong with us. But her devotion to Christ conquered all of those obstacles. And in fact, her devotion to Jesus makes it even worse. Luke says in v. 38 that she's standing at His feet weeping. And the Greek verb Luke uses for weeping is used for rain elsewhere. She is sobbing at His feet with enough that she can clean His feet with her tears. And as she's standing over His feet with ugly cry face, sobbing, she undoes the hair of her head. Women didn't loose their hair in public, it was unbecoming. She is literally making a fool of herself by the standards of her society. And to make it worse, she is doing the actions of a menial slave, washing his feet and then pouring expensive ointment upon Jesus. We might say this is embarrassing devotion. It is scandalous service. She's already a social outcast, but here she's become completely oblivious to the opinion of others. All that mattered was the Lord Jesus and serving Him. This woman, I would suggest to you, is a picture of what it looks like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow the Lord Jesus. Is it possible to be cool, relevant, applauded by polite society, and faithfully devote ourselves to the Lord as He calls us? Not usually. That's not usually how it works. But how often can our love and obedience to the Lord be squeezed out by the simple fear of what other people will think and what they will say? And again and again, just as we are here, we are reminded in Scripture that following Christ and loving Him has always been inconvenient. It's always been scandalous. It's always been difficult. It's always even been a bit embarrassing. to love the Lord Jesus to the full measure of devotion that He deserves. Denying yourself to follow Christ often simply means denying your reputation in the minds and hearts of others to serve Him. Dying to what people think of you in following Jesus. But the question for us in such selfless service is how is this produced? Where does this love come from? And that's what we see thirdly in a servant by faith. We want to look at this woman again and think of a servant by faith. Now verses 39 and 40 are there as somewhat, if you forgive me, comic relief. Simon says to himself, this man can't be a prophet or he would know a sinner is touching him. And then Jesus answers his thoughts, which is already the answer to Simon's question. Yep, you're talking to a prophet. He just told you what you're thinking. But notice not only that, but the Lord Jesus answers and engages Simon. Notice the peerless, perfect love of the Lord. He writes off nobody. He did not write off the scandalous woman, nor did he angrily kick out Simon and ignore him. He engages him where he was at. The Lord Jesus has come for the self-righteous and for the despairing, for every kind of sinner. And that's actually the point of his parable. He tells this story to help Simon see that though he may be different in many ways from this woman, he's not different fundamentally. It's a fairly simple story and by the really wide disparity in wages that the Lord is using here, it's obvious he's talking about something else. This is not just a quaint tale about people who owed some money. You have a money lender and two debtors. And you have one that owes ten times more than the other. Now a pence or a denarii, as it might be rendered, was a day's wage. So you essentially have here, speaking generally, you have someone who owes about two months wages versus someone who owes two years. So whatever that is for you, calculate those sums and think about what kind of large amounts this Lord is talking about. But really the crux of the story and the main point is verse 42. In verse 42, the Lord Jesus says, both the one who owed two months and the one who owed two years, they had nothing to pay. Neither one of them could pay back their debts. Not the one who owed two months, and certainly not the one who owed two years. The crux of his story is that both faced an impossible, unpayable debt. That's the key. But the question that the Lord Jesus wants to give in inciting self-reflection, especially for the Pharisee and for us in self-righteousness, is who is going to feel their debt more? Who's going to have more impact in their mind and heart about their debt? Obviously, it's going to be the one who owes 500, the one who owes two years of wages. the other one who owes two months or fifty what's he tempted to think gonna think about his death he's gonna be tempted to think about is that as though it's not that bad I can do this. It's not that bad, certainly. It's that guy over there, it was two years, that guy is hopeless. There's no hope for him. Well, we're not in the same category. If the wife and I, we put in some austerity measures in our budget, we get some little cheaper hummus this time at the grocery store, we work things on two months, we could pull this off. We could pay it off. But Jesus says that the brute facts were neither one of them could pay. And think about it, when you have an unpayable debt, does it really matter how much it is at the end of the day? It doesn't. It doesn't really matter. Ranking the level of debt, of indebtedness, doesn't matter if at the end of the day you're both off to debtor's prison because neither one of you can settle your account. You're still a debtor, just like the guy who owes 10 times more than you. Now friend, if you ever wonder what the Bible means when it says we're all sinners, this is what it means. It's that every single man, woman, and child on the face of the earth in Adam owes a debt they cannot pay. It does not mean that everyone is as bad as they could be, nor does it mean that there are sinners that sin worse than others. There certainly are. Some of them are incarcerated this morning. Others of us are not. But at the end of the day, fundamentally, every single person in Adam, every single person outside the Lord Jesus owes a debt they cannot pay. Clearly, this woman had sinned more than Simon the Pharisee. If you were a landlord and you were choosing tenants, you would go with Simon, not with this woman, guaranteed. You don't want her associations in your home. You're gonna go with him. But to be a sinner does not mean these distinctions are real. What to be a sinner means is that we fail basically at the most fundamental responsibility we have as creatures of our great and holy creator, to love and obey Him perfectly and exactly and perpetually all our days. Who has done that? No one. Not even the most religious among us. Even Simon. Simon was exacting, but Simon didn't even love the Lord when he came over to his house for lunch. He didn't even greet him with basic hospitality that he would have done with his other Pharisee buddies. The reality is, is that you and I are no different than anyone else at the root of the matter. All of us. Have our God we know who is near us and in us, in him we live and move and have our being, we enjoy his gifts, our life, our family, our friends, all his mercies, but he is not the motive of every single action and preoccupation of our heart and minds. Loving God, we haven't even gotten close to the standard of what God requires to love him. Scripture is clear. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone has failed to achieve the status of glory that God has given because we have failed in sin. And the point that Jesus wants us to grasp, that he wanted Simon to grasp, that the difference between you and I and a scandalous sinner or some other person is one of degree, not of kind. We're all in the same category, we're all sinners, and none of us can pay that debt. That's the point of the story. That's the entire point for Simon, but the second major point in verse 42 is that the creditor frankly forgave them both, or he graced them both. He canceled their debts. Now clearly, Jesus is talking about something else because there is no creditor on earth that just cancels someone who owes him two years worth of wages. And even his use of the language of grace, the Lord is talking about something else. He wants us to think about spiritual things. And also the surprise at the end of verse 42, Jesus asks Simon the question of which of them will love him most. Notice he doesn't ask which of them will be more thankful. He doesn't ask which of them will be more indebted to Him or who will be more relieved. He uses the word love. Do you ever think about creditors with the word love? I don't. He is thinking about something different. He is talking about the Lord. He is talking about His Father. He's talking about Himself. Where does love for God come from? And the point of the points is to see the spiritual reality of this story that Jesus hodens in on, beginning in verse 47, that this woman loved much because she had been forgiven much. It's the overflow of forgiveness that brought forth her love. the immense burden of her sin that she never deluded herself in. She knew, unlike Simon, my debt's unpayable. There's no way. And like sin so often does, forces us into shame, into dark corners, into guilt, away from the Lord, just like that liar and murderer Satan wants it to do. But in steps the Lord Jesus, who forgives even scandalous sinners. And so just as her immense burden of sin is lifted, immense devotion pours forth from her life. In verses 44 to 46, she's wiping with tears and her hair, his feet, he's kissing them, she's pouring ointment on him. And all of this elaborate, embarrassing, expensive devotion comes from the simple fact that her unpayable debt has been canceled. Her sin has been forgiven. She loves the Lord because He's forgiven her. Her love and devotion come from the same place as it did for the psalmist. In Psalm 130 verse 4, Where does the fear of the Lord come from? Where does absolute reverence and devotion to the Lord come from? His forgiving grace. His elaborate, extravagant grace. It's realizing that you are pardoned. You are justified in Christ. You are accepted by God. Your judge has become your Father without anything you have done. That's what motivates service and devotion like this woman. And it's proven by the opposite in Simon. Jesus goes on to say to Simon, in verse 47, that he loves little because he's been forgiven little. Now, the Lord's not trying to play down the real serious sin that self-righteous Simon is committed. He's doing as he often did, addressing him on his own categories, just as Jesus would often refer to the Pharisees as the righteous or the well. He's not attending to giving credence to their own understanding, but he's working on their own terms. Simon saw himself as someone who needed little to no forgiveness. And Jesus says, well, yeah, that's why you show little to no love for me. That's why you show little to no love for the God you claim to devote yourself to. The thing about legalism is it has nothing to do with God at all. It's just following rules to get God off your back. Simon doesn't want to be devoted to the Lord when he shows up in his living room. And yet this woman with such a scandalous past is an example of a selfless, devoted Christian because of how much the grace of God has landed in her hearts and driven her life. Christian beloved do you understand that the source and motivation of our love of our denial of our sacrifice and our devotion to the Savior is in the fact of cancelled sin and acceptance with God through the Lord Jesus Christ free and final and full grace we serve and love our God not to be accepted by him but because we already have been and because He's our Father and made His children by His grace. And it is that vision of sheer grace that motivates all our ambitions for Him. And I'm convinced for my own congregation, as I'm sure is likely the same for many of you this morning, we need to hear this again and again and again. It's something desperately I think the church in America needs to hear. I recently saw a church sign that said, it's simple really, love God, love others. I wanted to go inside and gather a meeting and ask about that. Love God, love others. Simple? How's that going for you? Perfectly loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Every thinking, willing, acting moment of your life, is it done in pure love for God? And loving others like yourself, Calvin said, there's no more violent love than self-love. That same violence do you give in energy to love others? Love God, love others, it's not that simple, is it, actually? It's actually really hard because of the fact of sin. We all fail in it. When we were only given the commands of the law, we will respond in one of two ways. We will respond like Simon in self-righteous deception, or we will respond like this woman before meeting Jesus in despair and hopeless shame. It's neither are the good news. The good news and the hinge of everything in the Christian life is the fact of God's grace and acceptance in Him is prior to all our acting and motion and serving and obeying Him. That is the great difference between biblical Christianity and everything else, even Roman Catholicism. We don't disagree with Roman Catholics that the Christian life should look like a Christian life and that there should be works and there should be devotion. We disagree with where it begins. As Calvin said, the teaching that love is prior to faith and hope is madness. It is faith alone that first engenders love. And Calvin got that from passages just like this. And that means for us, congregation, that our love and devotion, when it lapses, when it wanes, we need to ask if we've remembered the great forgiveness and acceptance we've received from God. He loves us. He is for us. We are His children. We are welcomed apart from anything we've done because of the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, and it's all ours by faith alone. We see here this servant as an example for us as a servant by faith, just by faith in the free offer of the gospel. But fourthly and finally, we want to consider, as we conclude, a Savior's forgiveness. As Jesus turns at the end of this encounter, He turns to the woman to make public what He's interacted with, so that all who can hear, He declares to her in verse 48, the I sins are forgiven. Now truly, even in how he says this, the Lord Jesus is more than a prophet because he doesn't use a prophet's formula even in this pronouncement. He doesn't say, the Lord says, or the word of the Lord has come to me, or something like that. We'd see the prophets in scripture. He says with unilateral authority, the Lord Jesus is walking around like he owns the place and gives direct pronouncements. Your sins are forgiven. It's over. Now, of course, from this, in verse 49, the debate breaks out among the Pharisees. And let me say, their question is a good question. Who is this? Who can say such things? That is the great question. In fact, it's the question that Jesus wants them to ask, that the Lord wants every single one of us to ask about Him. The Pharisees are not wrong that the right to forgive sins belongs with God alone. So there's only one of two options. Either Jesus is guilty of inexcusable blasphemy, which means that He is off the table as a good teacher, because good teachers don't blaspheme. Or, he actually has the authority of God to forgive sins. He actually can declare forgiveness. And that means he's not just a man, he is God's Son in the flesh, and can forgive the sins of those who have faith in Him. As he says in verse 50, thy faith has saved thee. Those who have faith, or those who have trust or rest in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who rely on Him, are rescued from God's judgment and her sin. are rescued from what they deserve. This is Jesus' message as Luke goes on into chapter 8 verse 1 and describes Jesus going around preaching the good news of the kingdom. This is that good news. The gospel, the announcement that's heralded. That there is life in Christ because of his righteous life and his substitutionary death. All who trust in Jesus are forgiven, are declared right before God, and accepted by Him as their Father. Listen as Robert Trail, an old Puritan, takes us through this in five steps. Trail said this, there can be no justification without a righteousness. That is, we can't be right with God unless we're right with God. So he goes on, secondly, no righteousness can suffice but that which answers fully and perfectly the holy law of God. You don't get right before God by altering his law. There must be a righteousness that meets it. And so thirdly, Traill says, no righteousness can be performed but by a divine person. If you need the righteousness of God, God himself is gonna have to step into humanity to do it. Fourthly then, no benefit can come to a sinner by it unless it is in some way his, applied to him. How do you get the righteousness of Jesus to belong to you? Finally, no application can be made of this but by faith in Jesus. And that is the wonderful truth of the Gospel. That by resting in the Lord Jesus, we have been united to Him. His righteousness is ours. The judgment we deserve is His on the cross. We are accepted by God. That's the answer to the question of who is this? This is the Savior and the mediator between God and man. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is God's Son who forgives sins. God's Son who must forgive our sins if we're to be rescued. Most of us here have probably sinned less than many others, I'm sure. But none of us are sinless. How will you pay your debt? Only by faith in the Lord Jesus is that debt reckoned and paid by His righteous life and His substitutionary death. That brings us back to the question with which we opened. How do we rekindle our affections for Christ in this church? Or what would you say to someone who you noticed their love was wavering? What about verse 47 and 48? Your sins are forgiven by faith in Christ. You're welcomed. You're loved. God is your father. He is yours and you are his. There's a lot before us in the years ahead, I imagine, as Christians seeking to be faithful to our Savior, and we may have given a lot up till now, we may have to give more. But before we do anything, and before we will be able to the task that whatever the Lord would providentially bring to us, we need greater and fresher appropriations of this wonder. that our holy God forgives us by faith in Christ alone. You are His and you are loved in Jesus. And with that as our North Star, it is a wonder what the Spirit of God will produce in our love and service to Him. Amen. Let's pray.