Good morning. Sure.
It's no matter where you're joining us from.
If you braved the weather and maybe you have all-wheel drive,
you're hoping you can get out of here today.
Good to have you here. I'm I'm praying we don't have to
worry about that. I don't know.
It was like I came in this morning and and there was no
lines on the parking lot. So I hope everybody was able to
navigate that together, but so glad that you're here with us or
joining us online. Turn to Luke Chapter 7, verse
36. This is week number four of our
series Who is Jesus? And it is I just want to say
it's always a privilege to be able to preach.
It's always a privilege to spend time during the week to open up
God's word to learn, you know, the first person that a sermon
ever gets preached to is myself. Anything I ever say up here, if
it's worth listening to is something that the Holy Spirit
has been working on my heart in first and this series
especially, you know, every series I I get excited about,
but this series especially, like I, I don't even care what it's
been doing for you. It's because in my heart, man, I
get, I've been so excited every one of these weeks to just get
back in to the word of God, to start into a new weeks.
Because usually I come out of here and I'll be frank, I'm
exhausted on a Sunday and I want to have a nap.
But I find myself just wanted to get back in and see what we're
going to learn about Jesus next week.
To be reminded of just how incredible he is, how unique he
is. To be reminded of how much I
love him and how much he loves me.
And even though I am the one who designs these series, I have
every week just been like surprised to see what we're
going to see about Jesus. The goal every Sunday for me,
and I would say for all of us who have the privilege of
preaching at any of our sites at Forward Church is this, that we
together would see Jesus, that when we worship together, that
we would meet with God, that the Holy Spirit would help us to see
who God is a little bit more clearly.
And in order to do that, this Sunday as I was working through
and the Holy Spirit was working on me, prompting me as to how to
unpack this passage together, I just really felt the Holy Spirit
saying, hey, this Sunday needs to be a little bit different
than I would regularly preach. So what we're going to do is
we're going to take a lot of the time this morning to just really
live in this story. I, I want us to step into it.
I want us to put ourselves in the room to see what's going on
through the eyes of the characters that are there.
And then after we've gone through that and we've really
kind of been there, then we're going to unpack some
implications for us. So let me just pray that the God
would help us to see what he wants us to see about himself
and about us and to live in this story this morning.
God, as we open up your Word, we are grateful that you have chose
to reveal yourself to us through it, and that you've revealed to
chosen to reveal yourself to us through the Word made flesh who
dwelt among us through Jesus. Help us to see you for who you
are. Help us to see Jesus this
morning, to have fresh eyes as we look at this passage and to
be overcome by the reality of who Jesus is, who we are, what
you've done for us. I pray this in his mighty name,
Amen. All right, let's let's just
start reading verse 36. Then one of the Pharisees
invited him to eat with him. He entered the Pharisees house
and reclined at the table. So this is the setting.
There's a Pharisee, we're going to find out his name was Simon
and he has invited Jesus and we can assume some of Jesus's
closest disciples who are with him along over into the house.
Now I think it's probably important that we define some
words and some reality. Maybe you've been in church for
a long time and you you just automatically understand that
word Pharisee, what it means. But that's not true for many of
us. And So what is a Pharisee?
What does it mean that Jesus that Luke tells us there's a
Pharisee who invites Jesus over? Well, a Pharisee, that word
likely comes from the Hebrew word, which translates separate
because this is a, a group of people who believe that it is so
incredibly important that the Jewish people separate
themselves and distinguish themselves from the Gentile
culture, the Roman Greek culture around them and from the impact
of that culture and, and, and how it would sway them away from
faithfulness as Jews. They, they believed that the big
problem, and you can look back and you can see why they
understood this and they're not wrong in it.
That a huge problem in in Jewish culture throughout the totality
of it was that too much of foreign cultures, foreign gods,
foreign habits would creep in and move them away from
faithfulness to the one true God and faithfulness to the Torah,
to his law, which he had commanded them to follow.
And these particular, this particular psych, this
particular group believes that the law is encompassed not only
in the the Torah, the written word of God handed down through
the ages, that which we would now call the Old Testament, but
there it is always, it is also passed along through verbal and
oral laws and traditions that have been gathered up.
And they saw themselves then as the real Jews, the true Jews,
the faithful followers of God. Now he invites Simon the
Pharisee, who belongs to this group of people.
He invites Jesus over. And he could have invited Jesus
over for a couple of different reasons.
It's not specified, although I think we're going to see as we
walk into this story, a little bit of what the heart of Simon
likely was in this. But the first reason he just
could have been curious about Jesus.
Jesus had obviously made a name for himself through what he was
doing, through both his teaching and his healings and his
miracles. And Simon probably at least to
some extent, wants to find out more about this Jesus.
And so has he's in the area. He invites Jesus to come on over
for supper. He also, and I think this is
probably also likely part of what's going on.
He's probably looking for some additional evidence that Jesus
is not all who he claims to be. You know, we've already had
encounters in the book of Luke. If you've been tracking whether
you can go back to Luke 521, a group of these Pharisees already
decided this Jesus guy, he's a heretic, he's a blasphemer.
Remember back in Luke 521, they're aghast because Jesus has
said to a paralyzed man not just get up and walk, but your sins
are forgiven. And so my best guess that what
is going on here and what I think we see in the passage is
that this is a guy who is skeptical of Jesus but also
wants to appear to have an open mind.
Maybe you've encountered people like this before.
One of the things that I thought about is, you know, I have some
people in my life who would, and some of you will understand
this, fit the typical mold of a diligent Toronto Star reader who
also occasionally go to the dark side and read Rebel News so that
they can say that they're looking at both sides of
something. And I also have people who fit
the definition the other way. They are regular Rebel News
readers who occasionally go to the dark side and read the
Toronto Star. Most of the time those people go
to one side or the other just to find some arguments to prove
what they already believe. Deep down, I think this guy is
thinking, man, this guy, he's a blasphemer.
And he's, as we saw last week, a group of Pharisees say he's a no
good friend of tax collectors and sinners.
But I'm going to prove that for myself.
So Jesus, come on over. And so it says that it's
evening, they've gathered together and they're reclining
at the table. And, and I need you to, to, to
see this, to picture this, OK, because, because you need to see
the, the way the room would have been.
So there would have been a table laid out here with the food on
it, probably, you know, maybe knee high and you would have had
some raised beds, cushions around this table.
And, and, and the meal would have had these individuals,
probably some of Simon's friends, some of Jesus's
disciples, but Jesus and Simon in particular with candlelight
in the room. It's dark in the evening, food
on the table. And they're leaning when it says
they're reclining at the table. Their feet are back towards the
edges of the room and they're in the center of the room leaning
in and leaning on an elbow and eating off the table.
Because remember, it's dusty and gross.
There's not showers and everything, and so you want to
keep your dirty feet as far from the table as possible.
Plus these guys, when they have a meal, it's an event.
Now, the fullers are very fast eaters.
I am the fastest of the fullers. I know this, like you can put a
meal down for me sometimes when we're at the restaurant, you
know how like 5 minutes later, the waiter waitress comes back
around to ask how your meal is for me.
They're asking how was your meal?
It's done. So this is foreign to me.
But when I've been in the Middle East, I know this.
I'm prepared for an event. We're going to spend a long time
sitting around chatting and eating.
And especially in a time where there's no electronics, right?
There's, there's no phones, there's no televisions, there's
no screen. This is what is going to occupy
your even in fact, this might be the most interesting thing you
get to do for a month. You have a visiting rabbi and
teacher in. And so the doors of the home,
because you're going to wonder in a second, how does this other
character enter in? The doors of the home would have
been left wide open with this person of interest in the
community. Simon would have left his doors
wide open to allow people to filter in and hear the
conversation that's taking place over the course of the evening.
This is a public conversation with the visiting teacher.
It is both education and entertainment.
It's edutainment. OK, so they're sitting there,
they're discussing by candlelight, they're having
their meal, people are filtering into the room, others are
joining them. And Luke is now going to
introduce us to one particular person who enters the room,
verse 37, and a woman in the town who was a Sinner found out
that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisees house.
Luke tells us there's an intruder into the edges of the
room steps a woman. And not just any woman.
He tells us exactly who this woman is.
It's a woman who Simon would have never formally himself
invited into the house. There is no way that if Simon
knew she was going to be coming, he would keep the door open for
her because this woman was a Sinner.
In fact, the Greek word here that starts and in Greek would
actually read more like and behold, because what what Luke
wants us to see is that what is about to happen is startling.
It's shocking. He wants to emphasize that a
Sinner someone someone who polite society would rightfully
recognize as disgraceful and shameful, and for a Pharisee to
have somebody who was that unclean enter the house would be
to make their house unclean. Never could they be associated
with this person. Most likely.
Best guess, and what tradition tells us, is that this woman was
a local prostitute. But whatever it was, the idea
that she was a Sinner is to say this is who everyone saw her to
be. That is her identity.
If you were to look at her, the first thing that everybody in
town, every local would know is she's a Sinner.
It is not hidden. It is her public identity.
She's notorious and she brought an alabaster jar of perfume.
She stood behind him, that is Jesus at his feet, weeping,
began to wash his feet with her tears.
She wiped his feet with her hair, kissing them and anointing
them with the perfume. The intruder now leads to the
scandal of the moment. This unwelcome, unclean woman
slips in amidst the shadows again.
I want you to picture this because we don't think this way.
But there is no electricity. The only light in the room
likely would have been those lights from the candles on the
table for those who are participating in the meal.
And so it's dark outside. It's supper.
The nights got long. And so in the evenings, as
people have crept in, it's easy to kind of slide in anonymously
into the shadows. This woman has slipped in, and
she's been brought with her an alabaster jar of perfume.
It says, now, alabaster. What is alabaster?
It was a very expensive form of marble from Egypt.
And within this marble vase was perfume, which tells us this is
a very expensive item, a luxury item.
And she had come to see this Jesus.
But I think it's going to be obvious from the story as we
move forward. She comes to see Jesus not
because she doesn't know who Jesus is, because she does.
She's met Jesus before. She'd come to bring him a gift
to honor him, not so that he would do something for her, but
because she was convinced he already had.
She'd heard him. She had been one of those
amongst the crowds that Jesus continually drew amongst
himself, who listened to him preach, who listened to the
gospel that he shared, and who believed what he said, who
repented. And in her gratitude towards
Jesus and what she believed Jesus had already done for her,
she had resolved herself to overcome what must have been
terrifying. Again, she knows whose house
she's going into. She knows how people see
herself, and she has decided that despite her fear and
despite her shame, despite the fact that she would be the most
unwelcome of guests, she needed to honor Jesus, to see Jesus so
much that she would bear all that to come in and bring him
this precious gift. And so she comes in and when she
sees the Jesus whom she is so grateful for, she can't stop
herself. I, I love the fact that my wife
was up here and just had this moment of being overcome.
It's a small glimpse into what this woman experiences when she
meets Jesus again, when she sees and when she sees the count one
that she's come to honor, she's just completely overcome.
It says that she began to wash his feet with her tears.
What Luke is telling us is that her tears just start raining out
of her eyes. She starts bawling.
She starts sobbing is literally in the Greek text.
It's the idea like that faucets have been opened and, and I
don't know if you know this. I know this because I'm an
expert at making messes. My wife is laughing over there
dust and water. They create a mess.
And so she she can't help her.
So she starts crying. But remember, she's crying on
his dusty, dirty feet because as we're going to see in a moment,
Simon didn't do anything to clean up his feet.
So his feet are filthy. The water's pouring out now.
It's making a mess. It's getting all muddy and
yucky. And so she just responds by just
taking her hair and washing those feet.
And then she takes that perfume that she's brought and she just
pours it on his feet. It is absolutely in every way
completely undignified. It says she keeps kissing his
feet. This idea of I mean, again to in
Middle Eastern culture to this day, it is a deep sign of
affection. Her heart is overcome with love
and affection for Jesus and she doesn't care.
She doesn't care how it looks. She doesn't care how undignified
it is. She doesn't care that,
especially given how many see her in this room, it's going to
be viewed as completely immoral. It's become an absolute
spectacle and scandal in the room and everybody begins to
notice. And then we read when the
Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, this
man, if he were a prophet, would know what kind of woman this is
who is touching him. She's a Sinner.
The scandal leads Simon to an accusation.
Jesus can't possibly be who he claims to be, who others say he.
He can't possibly claim to speak for God.
If he had any of the type of connection that he claims he has
to God, he would never allow this woman to do this.
Now, there's two things I think you need to notice in this
moment. First, this is not necessarily
probably the accusation that you and I would expect to be
levelled about someone who has a prostitute kissing their feet in
public, pouring out perfume onto them.
I think it speaks volumes to the character of Jesus just in
general, that Simon wasn't thinking there's something going
on between these two. There's something happening
here. Instead we see this.
Simon Says, no, he can't be a prophet.
He can't be a problem because he he doesn't know who she is.
Not he does know who she is. He doesn't know who she is.
The second thing you need to see is this, Simon said to himself.
He said to himself, Simon's accusation is never verbalized
out loud, it's internal. And that's what makes what
happens next so so astonishing and actually self defeating to
Simon's original accusation. Because Jesus is about to show
not only does he know the thoughts of God, he knows the
thoughts of Simon. Jesus replied to him.
In response to Simon's thoughts, Jesus speaks, because Jesus
knows what's in the the mind and the heart of Simon without him
ever having to say it. He said Simon, I have something
to say to you. He said say it teacher.
A creditor had two debtors, 1 owed 500 denarii, the other 50,
and since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them
both. So which of them will love him
more? Simon answered.
And I think he's kind of hedging his bets here because he doesn't
want to get tricked by Jesus. I suppose the one he forgave
more. You have judged correctly, he
told him. Here we get the response, the
response to Simon's internal accusation.
Jesus tells Simon something that we call a parable.
A parable is simply this. It's a an earthly and earthy
story that's meant to communicate a heavenly, eternal
truth. He says, you know, there was a
an individual who was owed money by two people whom he had lent
money out to. One person he lent money out to,
they owed him what would be today the equivalent of about a
year and a half's wages for the average worker.
The other still owed a significant chunk.
It was approximately 2 months wages.
And this man forgives both the people who owed him money, not
because of anything they did. They weren't entitled to any
type of forgiveness. He out of his grace bore the
cost and forgave them. Let me ask you something, Simon.
Which of those two, the one who had a year and a half's worth of
wages, or the one who had two months worth of wages which,
which one do you think had a greater love for the one who
forgave them, who paid their debts?
Which one do you think had greater gratitude in their
hearts? The answer, of course, was that
it was the one who had been forgiven more.
Simon knew that and he pointed out and Jesus said, you got it
right, Simon, absolutely. I'm not trying to trick you.
Just think about that. That's a simple principle.
The greater the forgiveness, Jesus says, the greater the
love, the more it is understood the extent of what has been
forgiven, the more a heart would be moved.
And so now Jesus is going to take this and he's going to
apply this truth to the current situation that's going on in the
home with both Simon and the woman.
Turning to 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 with her tears has washed my feet and wiped them
with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she
hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I came in.
You didn't anoint my head with olive oil, but she is anointed
my feet with perfume. Therefore, I tell you her many
sins have been forgiven. That's why she loved much.
But the one who's forgiven little loves little.
Simon may have invited Jesus to come over to his house out of a
sense of curiosity or duty. Whatever it was, he definitely
gives no sign that he's grateful that Jesus has come.
He hasn't even done what would be expected in having an honored
guest into your house. A guest you would have respected
would have had his feet washed when he walked in, a guess that
you had any type of affection and welcome for that you wanted
people to know. I'm glad he's in my home.
You would receive him with a kiss.
A guest who was honored in any way in that setting, in that
time would have had some olive oil placed on his head to anoint
him. See, Simon didn't just forget to
honor Jesus when he came. It wasn't like, oh man, forgot
about that. Now he he withheld it, he
withheld it on purpose. And then Jesus says in
comparison, this woman, she comes in, she doesn't have any
water. It's not her home.
She washes his feet with her tears.
She doesn't have a towel at the door to clean off his feet.
So she uses her hair, doesn't put olive oil on it.
She goes to the to the the most disgusting part of the body in
that day, the feet, and she pours out the most expensive
gift she could bring to anoint him.
She esteemed him so much. She had such affection for him.
Her heart was so moved by him that she couldn't keep herself
from kissing his feet. There was a world of difference
in how these two people saw Jesus, and Jesus is saying,
because there's a world of difference in how you see me and
see yourself. The difference boiled down to
what they believed about what Jesus had done by being present,
what they believed, what Jesus would do or had done for them,
and what they believed about themselves.
The difference was not in their need for forgiveness.
This is really important. They both needed forgiveness to
equal measure. Simon was every bit in need of
forgiveness is the Sinner. The difference is that this
Sinner, a woman, knew who she was.
She recognized the need and because of that, she had come to
a point where she had received the forgiveness that Jesus
offers. In receiving forgiveness, the
proof that she had previously been forgiven shows up by the
fact that she comes and she loves him.
She loves Jesus because she understands the magnitude of
what Jesus had done for her. Simon, on the other hand, when
Jesus comes in, displays little love for Jesus because he had
never come to a point of receiving forgiveness from
Jesus. Then he said to her, your sins
are forgiven. Those who are at the table with
him began to say amongst themselves, who is this man who
even forgive sins? We've actually gone from a
scandal to an even greater scandal.
You thought it was scandalous to have a prostitute washing the
feet of Jesus with her tears and her hair and kissing them and
pouring perfume on them. You want to know something more
scandalous? When a man claims to forgive
sins, when Jesus says your sins are forgiven, he is claiming
something that only one person has the authority to do.
God, God and God alone has the ability and the prerogative and
the purview to forgive sins. So Jesus making a very clear
declaration of who he understands himself to be.
And when Jesus says your sins are forgiven, he's confirming
again, I need you to connect this and see this.
What had already taken place, right?
Jesus already said her many sins had been forgiven.
She came to the house forgiven already.
She responded with love and affection towards Jesus, not in
order to get her sins forgiven. She responded out of the the
reality that she already knew and understood that her sins had
been forgiven. Jesus is just making known the
truth to this whole room with this woman already knew in her
heart she'd been forgiven. Now he's making it clear I
already forgave her. And then Luke ends this
encounter with a final statement by Jesus.
He said to the woman, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace. It wasn't the sacrifice made to
Jesus that saves her. It was her faith in what Jesus
had already done for her, right? Your faith has saved you because
you already believed that you were forgiven.
And your faith is proven by the fact that you came here to honor
me in this way. The faith that she had been
forgiven was evidenced by the deep love that she had for the
one who had forgiven her. That's what Jesus wants us to
see here. And the result of that is
salvation, because salvation is received through faith, not by
what we do, but faith in what Jesus has already done.
And that faith leads to peace, the assurance that she is saved,
the absence of the shame that she has lived so much of her
life with the confidence of knowing both of those things.
She is saved, she is forgiven, she is redeemed, and she has no
shame. So what does that mean for us?
Two things. One, Jesus can and will forgive
your sins. There.
Is this the point of this story? If you get nothing else to know
this, there is no sin and no Sinner that is beyond the grace
of Jesus Christ, beyond His ability to forgive.
In fact, if you need to know one thing, if I was to ask you what
is the most dangerous sin one could commit, you probably come
up with a whole different list of things.
I think what Jesus would say to us through the story is the most
dangerous sin that anyone could commit is the sin of self
righteousness because that's the sin of Simon.
It's the sin that keeps you from believing that you need a
savior. It's the sin that keeps you from
believing that you need forgiveness.
And the Sinner that fails to see their need for forgiveness can
never be forgiven. In his parable to Simon, Jesus
said since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave
them. Paul uses that same word that is
translated here as graciously forgave in Romans 832.
Zach same word. He uses it to describe what what
God does for us through Jesus. Where he says he did not spare
his own son but gave him up for us all graciously forgave and
gave him up. Zach, same word in the Greek.
It's just the context of how the sentence works that allows us to
translate. But Paul knows what he's doing
as he shares this. God can graciously forgive us
because Jesus willingly gave himself up for us on the cross
so that everything that we have done and all the sins that we
have committed were paid for and credited to the to him.
So any debtor can be forgiven because there is no length or
amount of sin that Jesus blood doesn't cover.
Jesus, who alone does not deserve death, who alone lived a
perfect and holy life, dies on the cross, the death that
sinners deserve, so that any Sinner can be forgiven.
That's the gospel. That's the good news.
Forgiveness is available for all who have faith in this reality,
who believe it to be true that Jesus died to forgive me.
Have you trusted in Jesus and in Jesus alone for the forgiveness
of your sins? Not Jesus plus anything else
that you've done. Not Jesus plus your resume,
Jesus plus the good things that you've done, Jesus plus your
religious activities, The death of Jesus alone.
The blood of Jesus alone saves. And it is the only thing that
can save. Because here's the promise.
It's the same promise that was there for this woman.
This Sinner is the same promise that's true for all of us
sinners. If you call out to him in this
very moment, not just you can be saved, but you will be saved.
Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven.
Go in peace. You now get to walk with the
confidence of knowing you're forgiven.
The shame, the things that anybody and everybody else can't
forget about, you have been forgiven by Jesus Christ.
Wash clean. The second thing is this, the
proof that we have been forgiven is a love for Jesus.
The proof that you actually have been forgiven, that you get
this, that you believe this, that your faith is there, not
just some intellectual ascent, but that your heart knows this
to be true. The people often ask me, how can
I know that I've been forgiven? Well, the first answer is, if
you've called out to Jesus for forgiveness of sins, you're
forgiven. The way that you know that you
have received that forgiveness is it results in a heart that is
moved towards love. Jesus says this himself in John
1415. If you love me, if your heart is
moved towards me, if you've understood forgiveness in your
life, you will obey my commandments.
And that the key to being more obedient is to understand in
greater and greater measure the love that Jesus has for you.
It's not to try harder. It's to believe more that you
are so loved and so forgiven. And a love for God, Jesus tells
us, is inextricably linked with the love for others.
The way our love for God works itself out is that we love
others. I just want to put a plug for
our Just Open the Door women's study.
If Jesus, if you believe Jesus welcomes you in with
hospitality, if he greets you and accepts you as you are and
brings you in not just into his home but into the family of God,
the result would be that you in greater and greater measure will
be a person of hospitality. You will invite people in.
You will bring them in not just into your home for a dinner, but
into your life. And the more that you think that
you don't need that, the deeper your need for it is.
Listen, we have to be people who are shaped by love.
The more we understand the love that Jesus had for us, the more
we understand that forgiveness, the more we understand that
welcome, The more we understand that grace.
It moves us to forgiveness and grace and welcome, because the
more you understand grace, the more gratitude grows.
Why is she so overcome? She's so overcome because she
knows how great the forgiveness is.
Is your heart moved to grace? Is it moved to gratitude?
Is it moved to love? Is it moved to mercy?
Is it moved to forgiveness? I'm so sick of looking at
Christians who are angry and bitter, who are unwelcoming, who
hate the stranger and the foreigner.
You are not a follower of Jesus. That is not the way of Jesus.
We have all sorts of different conversations about how this all
works itself out in the political sphere.
That's not for me to determine. But if your heart is cold
towards people created in the image of God, you've got a
problem in your heart. You need Jesus to step into it.
There's a reason that you have never, and I have never written
a thank you letter to a landlord or a bank when you've paid a
bill on time because you've just gotten what you deserved.
When they pay off your bill or allow you to stay in the home.
But how would you respond if someone came up to you today and
told you your entire mortgage was paid off, your rent was
covered for life, your credit card bills were wiped clean and
could never be racked up again? What would your heart do?
How would you see that person? I want us to take some time here
just at the end, and I want us to respond.
I want you to just again, let's, let's just close our eyes, see
you and God. I want you to 1st think about
this. Where do you need to receive the
forgiveness Jesus offers? This is something in your past
you haven't been able to let go yourself.
You're holding yourself to a standard refusing to forgive
yourself of something that Jesus has died on the cross to forgive
you of. If Jesus has forgiven you, if he
set you free, you are free indeed.
Don't carry that burden anymore. Don't carry that shame.
Is there something maybe even today where you just recognize,
hey, I wasn't walking in the way of Jesus, my heart wasn't
aligned? This is the great news.
Jesus forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives.
The entirety of what he does is he forgives us and he never runs
out of forgiveness. Maybe it's the sin of self
righteousness in your life today.
I know there's been lots of times in my life where I've
talked about the other, that person, the person who's done
things that need Jesus forgiveness more than I do.
Repent to that you need. There is no hope for you apart
from the blood of Jesus. There's no hope for anybody.
The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
As you take that to Jesus, He's saying, I forgive you, you're
forgiven, you're washed clean, go in peace.
Now here's what I want you to do.
I just want you to cry out to God with thanks for the
forgiveness that you've received.
He did not owe it to you. Nothing that you have ever done
has earned his forgiveness. He loved you so much that he
died so that you could be forgiven of everything, all of
it. What type of love would do such
a thing? What type of gratitude and love
which should we have for someone who has done such a thing?
Father, I just confessed. There's so many times in my life
where I have failed to receive the forgiveness that you've
offered. And I've carried a burden that
was no longer mine to carry, carried shame that wasn't mine
to carry. It's been lots of other times,
Father, where I felt like I could just kind of pay you back
for what I had done. Just work a little harder, try
and be a little better instead of just taking it to you and
knowing this is a debt I can't repay and receiving the
forgiveness that was given God. There's been other times where
I've looked at somebody around me and felt in some way that I
was superior to them, better to better than them, less in need
than them. Of your grace and mercy and
forgiveness in my life. God, I'm so sorry for being
Simon. I want to have the heart of the
woman. I'm a Sinner.
Want to wash your feet with my tears?
Break our hearts, God, break our hearts.
And then help us to hear what you said to her.
Our sins are forgiven. Go in peace.
Let's sing to God together. Let's raise our voices to him
together. Praise the one who forgives what
others can't forget the one who brings us back to life.