The Transforming Power Of Forgiveness

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. You run into people who are unsaved and relative sinners and you'll say to them, hey, if you were going to ask God, God was going to ask you on what basis am I going to let you into my heaven after you die, what are you going to tell them? And they'll say, I'll tell them I was a pretty good person. I'll tell them that I never did any really trouble, never murdered anybody or anything. That's what I'll tell them.

What are they saying? I'm not that big a sinner. That's self-righteousness.

By the way, that can be fatal. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. One of the more perplexing thoughts that I've had after all these years of ministry is this. Why are some of you so on fire for Jesus Christ?

And others are barely lukewarm. Why are some of you all in? Some of you just barely in. Why are some of you so dramatically passionate for Christ and his agenda?

And others apparently indifferent. Open your Bibles first to Revelation chapter two to the angel of the Church of Ephesus, right? This the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this, I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance and that you cannot tolerate evil men and that you're put to test those who call themselves apostles and they are not.

And you found them to be false and he said, and you have perseverance and have endured, he says, for my name's sake, have not grown weary. He commends the church. It sounds a lot like our church. These are people who are doctrinally sound. They will not tolerate false teaching.

They seem to get about the business of doing the church and serving the Lord. But then he says something to them and perhaps to us. But I have this against you. You left your first love. The word love.

There is the word agape. And he says, you really don't love like you did. You've left it. Now, why?

How do you fix that? And the next verse, he says, Therefore, remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds that you did at first or else I am coming to you and remove you from the lampstand and out of its place unless you repent. And there's always a lot said about repenting. But there's something else in this verse that I think is a really important reminder to us.

He says, Therefore, remember from where you have fallen. You see, they forgot the depth of their past sins. Before Christ, they forgot about it. They just went on about their business. They were strong doctrinally.

They did church in a very good way, but they had lost their passion, their fire, their love for Christ because they had forgotten the depth of their past sins. Now turn just a page or two with me. The chapter three. Verse 14 to the angel of the church in Laodicea. Right. The Amen.

The faithful and true witness, the beginning of creation of God says this. I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.

So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth because you say I'm rich and I've become wealthy and have need of nothing. And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. In other words, they're talking about the present tense, not the past. The church of Laodicea forgot the depth of their current sins before the Lord.

They thought they were doing just fine. And that happens often to us. We forget about where we came from and what God's forgiveness meant to us. Or we forget just how important and how much we rely on God's forgiveness every day of our lives. There is a connection, a correlation between love for Jesus Christ, passion for Jesus Christ, and remembering and embracing the forgiveness of God.

There is a connection. So let's turn to the main text, Luke, chapter seven. Verse thirty six. Religious and self-righteous people, by the way, misunderstand or minimalize the forgiveness of God. That's where you're going to see in this little story in Luke seven.

Let's look at the circumstances. Verse thirty six. Now, one of the Pharisees was requesting him to dine with him and he entered the Pharisees house and he reclined at the table at the tables added. It's not in the text. Now, that sounds like a benign beginning of a story. A nice man, a Pharisee, invites Jesus to dinner.

There's nothing nice about this at all. The Pharisees had already made their mind up concerning Jesus Christ. It's very pointed that Jesus Christ accepted this. The word Pharisee means separatist. And the Pharisees were separatist.

There are probably a couple thousand of them in Judah at the time of Jesus Christ. They were laymen. They weren't priests. And what they did is they took the law of Moses and they enhanced it probably tenfold. And they practiced their religion with tremendous dedication and zeal. They were highly respected by the people, but not very respected by the Lord.

They were infinitely religious and abundantly self-righteous. Hold your place there with me and just looked at Chapter 18 of Luke in verse 10. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself. God, I thank you that I am not like other people.

Swindlers, unjust, adulterers. Or even, and he must have seen him out of his peripheral vision, even this tax gatherer. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get. That's self-righteousness. He's standing before God on the temple grounds.

Now, what's the insight into the tax gatherer? But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but beating his breath saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Now, notice one of them needs forgiveness.

And he clearly knows it. And he says to the Lord, I'm not even worthy, but I need to be forgiven. The other one, you can see, needs no forgiveness. He's just thankful to God that he's not like this terrible sinner beside him. That's the Pharisee. In fact, let's go back to Luke 7. The opinion of the Pharisees in verse 34 of Jesus. The son of man has come eating and drinking and you, the Pharisees say, behold a gluttonous man and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees are already in this stage of the Lord's life plotting to do away with the Lord.

They hate Christ. So this Pharisee invites Jesus, probably to try to trap him in some way as they had already began, and requesting him to dine with him. That part would not have been unusual. Jesus, when he went to a community, usually went to the synagogue, he usually stood up and taught. When he did, you could invite a visiting rabbi to your home. You'd invite him to your home and what you would do is that was called a special Sabbath meal. And that meal was a little bit different. You made, the formation for the meal was a U. And in the base of the U, right in the middle, would be the guest of honor.

And then everyone else would sort of lay facing that direction on one side. So there really wasn't a table involved. They weren't really sitting up at a table. The other thing about this type of meal that was unusual, when you had a visiting rabbi come, you let the door open and the people from the community could come in. And they could come in and as long as they stood against the walls and did not get engaged in the conversation at all, they could hear what's going on. Now remember, this is before the internet.

This is before even newspapers. If you wanted to find any kind of a scoop on anyone, you want any gossip, you want to know what's happening in Jerusalem, you see something like that, these people would come in and listen. So that's the scene that you have here. There's a second character though. There was a woman in the city who was a sinner, undoubtedly was a prostitute. And there's something else you need to know about her. She has already encountered Jesus Christ. She has heard Jesus Christ teach because we know she's already responded to his message of forgiveness.

And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner and when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought him an alabaster vial of perfume and standing behind him at his feet weeping and began to wet his feet with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with perfume. Now there's all kinds of stuff going on here, alarming stuff, especially from a religious or self-righteous point of view. Let's say, first of all, a woman was not allowed to touch an unrelated man in public at all. Not at all. A Jewish woman would never touch a man who's not related to her in public.

Secondly, a woman is never to enter the home where men are present by herself. She already violates both of those things. You see, there's something about her. Some people might say she has a lot of gall. I would say she has a lot of passion. She has a lot of love. She has a lot of gratitude.

She doesn't even care what people think. You ever remember that when you became a Christian? So much in love with Christ, I don't care what people think.

I love Jesus Christ. You see, somehow that goes away for us. Somehow that's not what it once was. This woman amazes me in what she does. There's something else that she does. She says that she brought an alabaster vial perfume.

Now, that's not real unusual. Alabaster is a marble-like stone imported from Egypt. Leather strap around her neck, a little cork-like in the top, narrow neck. Now, Jewish women wore that around their neck, but almost only domestically. Once in a while when they would go out, they'd wear it. Prostitutes wore it all the time. It was one of the tools of the trade. What she does is she, standing behind him at his feet, began weeping, and as she's weeping, she walks over, and the word says, and she wet his feet.

Not exactly. The word is brecco, wet. It's the word that's translated in the New Testament, rain. She rained on his feet. She's bawling so much that the water is just running off of her face onto the feet of Jesus, and then she does something that's unthinkable. She kept wiping them with the hair of her head. Jewish women never took their hair down in public, ever. If a Jewish woman would take her hair down in public, it was grounds for her husband to divorce her.

No woman put her hair down in public except the prostitute. And then it says she began kissing his feet. Now, you can imagine what the Pharisee thought of all this. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, kind of unusual, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him. She's a sinner. You see, the Pharisee goes, look, I'm a Pharisee.

I would never let a woman like that even touch me. If he were a prophet like everyone says he is, he'd already know that this woman should not touch him. Now, it's interesting, by the way, don't miss this. In 39 it says he said to himself. Now, it's an idiom. It usually means he thought this. He just said, you know, this guy, we're a prophet.

No, watch. Jesus answered him. He thought it and Jesus answers him. Now, you think then you think this guy's a prophet. I mean, I just thought this and he's responding to my thought, but he doesn't.

Religious people really struggle with the reality of Christ. Jesus answered him and said, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he replied, say it, teacher.

Now, this is really disrespectful. He doesn't say, say it, Rabboni. Say it, Rabbi.

He says, say it, Didache. That's just a common word for teacher. That's not a rabbi, a Jewish rabbi. Jesus is clearly a Jewish rabbi and often referred to as Rabboni or Rabbi. But he says, go ahead and say it. And now Jesus decides he's going to teach. You see, religious people and self-righteous people misunderstand and minimalize the forgiveness of God and people who embrace the forgiveness of God are overwhelmed by it. That's the two characters here.

Jesus says this. He said a moneylender had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii, he said, and the other 50. Now, a denarii is one day's wages. So one about two months and one about two years' worth of work. They both have substantial debt.

I mean, there's no doubt about that. But clearly, one is 10 times what the other one is. And they owed it to a moneylender. And when they were unable to repay... Now, right there, the Pharisee goes, I know I get the answer to this. When they're unable to repay, they only have two options. They can become an indentured servant till they pay it all off. It could take them the rest of their life. It could take them months, years. Or they can be put in debtor's prison. That's it.

I know the answer to this. But Jesus doesn't go there. He says that when they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. Moneylenders don't do that. You see, do moneylenders do that?

Ah, never mind. They'll take that. But there's something else that goes on here. The heart of forgiveness is substitution. The offended pays the offender for the offender.

You see, the offender goes free. But the offended one pays. You see, who had to take the debt? The lender.

Remember, that's real money, real denarii, real dollars. And it's on him now. He had to take it. You see, at the heart of forgiveness is always substitution.

Always. Someone pays. What's the cost of our forgiveness? You see, what did I owe God?

What was the debt? The wages of sin is what? Death. Separation from God.

Eternity. Someone paid. Boy, that's a lot more than 50 or 500 denarii.

So don't you think you should be just a wee bit excited about that? You see, this woman is. This woman is beside herself.

This woman is overwhelmed with gratitude and love. Here's the second twist. He says, so they were unable to repay. He graciously forgave them both. And then he says this to the Pharisee. So which of them will love him more?

And you didn't expect that. You want to say, well, which of them would be more grateful? Jesus said, no, which of them would love him more? See, Jesus is trying to do something.

He is definitely attaching something here. With great forgiveness, there is gratitude, but there's great love. Now, the Pharisee realizes, wait a minute, he's asking me a question in public. He has seen Jesus in action before. How do the Pharisees make out when they usually have an inner dialogue with Jesus in public?

Inevitably, they always start out well for the Pharisees or the scribes, but it turns out terrible for them. So he's thinking, wait a minute, he set me up. He set me up with this. I know him. I know how he works. You've got to give him credit. Simon answered and said, I suppose. I love that.

OK, I'll play along with this. I suppose the one whom he forgave more. That's all Jesus wanted to hear. Jesus said to him, you have judged correctly. So Simon probably thought, hey, you got it right. But that's not the way it is with Jesus. You've judged this correctly.

I'm going to use your judgment here to make my point. So turning to the woman, he said, do you see this woman? He said, I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet.

None. By the way, what did we learn from the upper room? You see, in that day and age, and I've said this before, they had all the sewage was thrown out into the streets. And they were mostly dirt.

Some stone, but mostly dirt. And so all the shoes you wore were like open sandals. So if you walked in open sandals on dirty streets where all the sewage is thrown out, how do you think your feet are doing?

No, especially, by the way, if you're going to a mill where you're all going to recline. Because see, where my head is, your feet are. Where my feet are, and the next guy's head is. So what you do is you take the lowest servant in the group, whatever household it is, and he washes their feet. So when Jesus got to the upper room, what did he do? He washed the disciples' feet. He's teaching them what?

Humility and service. He said, this is the way I want you to be, like I am. But in this case, the Pharisee didn't even give Jesus that common courtesy. No one washed Jesus' feet. Then he says, she wet my feet with her tears and she wiped them with her hair. You didn't even provide her with a towel. He says, you gave me no kiss.

Whenever you greet someone, especially someone important like a rabbi, the custom, we shake hands, they would kiss on the cheek. He said, you gave me no kiss. He says, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. See, this wasn't just one little kiss. This lady's all over his feet. See, would you do that to someone in public?

Maybe if you realized what he had done for you by forgiving her sins. You see, she did. He said, you did not anoint my head with oil. Normally with customary, they take a little bit of oil, they put it on your head.

It's a grooming idea to show that you're welcome. He didn't do that. See, he doesn't care much for Jesus. He says, but she anointed my feet with perfume. And by the way, likely it was nard.

Really expensive stuff. So you can imagine the scene. You see, the funny part to me is the religious person here, the Pharisee and the others, I'm sure they were invited, they weren't astounded by the woman. They were astounded that Jesus let the woman do it.

He then says this. For this reason, I say to you, her sins, which are many. Now, he's playing along to the preconceived notion of the Pharisee. Do you think Jesus believed that she was a much worse sinner than the Pharisee? I mean, clearly, her sins were much more socially unacceptable. There's no doubt that if she was a prostitute, that's sin. But didn't Jesus tell a group, including Pharisees, that you say, thou shall not commit adultery, but I say, if you've ever looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery? So how many times do you think this Pharisee committed adultery? See, Jesus isn't talking about the fact that she just has more. He's using the numbers that the Pharisee believes this woman is a much worse sinner than I am.

Thank God I am not like this woman, who is a sinner or a prostitute. So Jesus plays on that, and he says, For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much. In other words, his point is this, when you understand that you have a lot of sin and what the consequences of that sin are, then you have a phenomenal amount of gratitude and love for Christ for bearing your sins on the cross. You see, you're filled with love and gratitude. She's aware that she's a sinner. The problem here is, he is not. He says, but he, notice the pronoun change, he who is forgiven little, loves little.

Let me put it this way. She believed, with all of her heart, that she owed God a million dollars' worth of sin. The Pharisee believed, with all his heart, he owed God a buck and a half. There are a lot of people like that. I used to remember teaching a Bible study in Pennsylvania, and a woman actually said during the Bible study, I was in the book of Romans, Are you insinuating that I'm a sinner? And I said, I'm really sorry. I'm insinuating that I'm telling you are.

She was offended. I'm a sinner? Yeah, you are. There's none righteous, no, not one. All sin and fall short of the glory of God. You see, to be guilty of one part of the law is to be guilty of the whole law.

That's the whole point. There aren't relative sinners. You run into people who are unsaved and relative sinners, and you'll say to them, Hey, if you were going to ask God, God was going to ask you on what basis am I going to let you into my heaven after you die? What are you going to tell him? And they'll say, I'll tell him I was a pretty good person. I'll tell him that I never did any really trouble, never murdered anybody or anything. That's what I'll tell them.

What are they saying? I'm not that big a sinner. That's self-righteousness.

By the way, that can be fatal. The Pharisee, it clearly is. So Jesus says, look, you just love me a little.

Jesus knows he doesn't love Jesus at all. Then he says to the woman, your sins have been forgiven. Wait a minute. You see, wait a minute. Those reclining at the table with him, those reclining with him, mostly Pharisees and friends of Pharisees are like, wait a minute.

You can't say that. They began to say to themselves, who is this that can forgive sins? Because only God can forgive sins. And Jesus says, bingo. You see, you got it.

That's it. Only God can forgive sins. That's why I said your sins are forgiven. Of course, that just made him hate him all the more. He said to the woman then, your faith has saved you. He needed to go in peace. Normally what he says is, go and sin no more.

You see, the story is an interesting one. Great sinners in their own eyes know that they need great forgiveness. Whenever you receive great forgiveness, you see, whenever you receive great forgiveness, there's great gratitude and great love.

What about you? Is that how you feel? You see, you're like the Ephesians, and you kind of forgot the depth of your sins before you came to Christ. You're like the Laodiceans. You forget about the depth of your sin today, yesterday, last week, last month. You forget about it. But Jesus says, look, you know how that plays itself out?

You love little. You see, there's a tremendous correlation between forgiveness and love. There is a transforming power to embracing the forgiveness of God.

The final question is simple. Does your love for Christ reveal someone who fully embraces the forgiveness of God in your life? You see, you can't hide this. You really can't. When you really, really love someone, you can't hide it. Think of anything or anyone you really love.

You can't hide it. Remember those dating days? No excuse was out of bounds to just spend some time together. Why did you do that? Because you were in love. You see, you're in love. You see, you can't hide what you love.

You can't. By the way, some of you love just peace and quieting. You'll spend the rest of the week alone in your room. And you're happy doing it because you love that. Love is always demonstrated. So the question is, shouldn't it be true if you love Jesus Christ?

Shouldn't that be as clear as possible? Are you in love with Jesus Christ or have you forgotten the depth of your past sins like the Ephesians? Are you on fire for Jesus Christ or forgotten the depth of your present sins like the Laodiceans? Are you overwhelmed with the forgiveness of God like the woman who was a sinner?

Or are you like the Pharisee that thank God that you only need a little bit of forgiveness from Him and therefore you love Him a little? Never, ever forget the transforming power of embracing the forgiveness of God. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for you can listen online or if you prefer you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. .