A Meal with Jesus

If you have your Bibles, you may want to turn to Luke chapter 7. We will be looking at verses 36 to 50 this evening.

I'll be reading these words from the English Standard Version. Hear now the word of the Lord. He who was standing 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, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

And he answered, Say it, teacher. A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both.

Now which of them will love him more? Simon answered, The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt. And he said to him, You have judged rightly. Then 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 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 is 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. This is God's word. Please be seated and join me in prayer. Father God, we come to you humbly now, and we ask that as you are in this place, you would give us a strong awareness of your presence with us. Jesus, you are the living word, and we ask that you would open this, your written word, to us this evening. Holy Spirit, speak to us.

Draw us near. And Lord, to you alone be all honor and glory. For it is in your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen. Well, as Doug said, my name is Rick Harper. I am so glad to be with you tonight. I'm a pastor in the same presbytery as your three pastors here at Grace. And our family has been worshiping now with you for a while. I've gotten to meet many of you. This is such a wonderful place, and you guys have great pastors here.

I told this to Eugene. It's rather intimidating stepping into Doug Agnew's pulpit. But your pastors, one thing I know about all of them, they're the real deal. And you're blessed to have them here. While I'm a pastor in the same presbytery as them, why am I worshiping with you? Because for now you are our home church, and we are in the process of being called overseas to a work in central Europe. I've been asked by Surge, which is a missions agency, to go and to mentor pastors there in several of the central Europe countries.

I can't fully, I don't have time in this moment, but would love to tell you about the exciting stuff God is doing in central Europe. It's blowing me away, and I'm excited to be part of it. The work, basically you can think of it this way, is they're asking me to come alongside other pastors, local pastors, to help them live out and thrive in the Gospel themselves.

So that their churches may flourish in the Gospel, and that their churches may take the Gospel into the dark world around them. It's an exciting thing, and God is doing some amazing things there. And we invite you to be part of it. We actually need a team of people, as Doug mentioned this morning, who would be willing to support us in prayer and financially if God so leads you. We have information if you would like to even just read anything about it. Or if you want to sign up for our mailing list, what we do is we send out monthly updates by email, some by video, and we also do video devotionals that if you sign up you'll get those. So, that's all for that.

Something before we begin. Doug told me I could choose anything to preach on tonight, and I hate that. Because there's always this pressure of you think you've got a certain passage nailed, or you think somebody really, Grace, needs to hear this passage.

And that's not the case at all. So, here's how I came to Luke 7, verses 36 to 50. He asked me one day, and then told me I could preach anything, so what I did was the next morning I use a lectionary and go through systematic readings of Scripture like you do in the services here. And Luke 7, 36 to 50 was the very first passage I read.

And I said, that's as good as any. And the fact that it was Jesus at a meal, and this happens to be Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, I thought, okay, maybe there can be some connection there. That's the only reason why, as I said, nothing about I think you guys need to hear this passage.

No agenda in it. It's just this was the very first one. And sometimes I get asked, what's your favorite passage of Scripture? And I always answer, it happens to be the one I'm studying today. So, this is my favorite passage of Scripture right now. And we're going to look at, I've got three main points, but don't get too excited because there's three sub-points to the second point. So, we've got six things we're going to look at tonight. The first is what we will consider as the propulsion of Grace, looking at verses 36 to 38.

Let me read that to you once again. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisees' 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 Pharisees' 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 ointment. Each gospel has an anointing passage in it. The other three gospels, it's all the same anointing. John tells us in that anointing, it happens to be Mary, and it happens right before Jesus' death. However, in Luke, this is a different anointing passage. It's a different woman, it's a different time much earlier in the life and the ministry of Jesus, and it's unique in how it's set apart from the other three accounts. Now Luke has made clear, if you read before these verses and the chapters preceding it, that large crowds have been following Jesus.

There's momentum and excitement surrounding this man. And somewhere, sometime, this woman has previously heard Jesus speak. We're not told where, we don't know exactly when, but sometime she has come into contact with Jesus prior to this dinner in Simon's house. We know that because she is not converted in this passage. This is not her salvation account. You see, at some point previously, she heard Jesus and trusted in Him.

And what we have in this passage is the outflow of her conversion. What we think of as private life in the Western world was not the case in this time period and context. Just so you can get in your mind the setting, this house would have been built around a central courtyard. Oftentimes, it was a garden, sometimes with a fountain in the center, and that is where people would host important dinners. That's what's going on in Simon's house. They're gathered around the central courtyard, and we have open floor plans in our homes, but never would we have an open house where if we're having people over for dinner, anyone from the neighborhood can just walk in.

That is exactly how it was in this situation. It was normal for people at these kinds of dinners to come and to go from them. Those eating dinner, it was a low table. They would recline, leaning into it with their arm on the table, their left arm, and they would eat with their right hand, and their feet would be behind them. So you can imagine, there's a table in this courtyard. Simon is invited, Jesus is an honored guest, and all kinds of other important people to rub shoulders with this fascinating figure, and they're all reclining at the table. And all the guests who aren't actually invited to the meal, they're standing behind the feet of all the people reclining at the table.

And the purpose was so that those who walked in can hear the dialogue and listen and be part of it all. Behind the feet is where the woman was, as with all the other uninvited guests. Now this woman is not named, but she is known by her reputation to everyone in Simon's house. She's a woman with a notorious reputation.

Most commentators believe that based on the word that is used about her, she was most likely a prostitute. And though this gathering is open to the public, it was understood this was not meant for her kind. It may be open, but not to her.

Not to people like her. And she comes anyway prepared to face down the stairs of contempt. She comes to be despised for the sake of what she's about to do. She stoops at the feet of Christ to do for him what Simon failed to do. And a lot of commentators believe that maybe she was even prompted because she was so upset at seeing the discourtesy of Simon towards Jesus that she had to make it right. There's nothing in here to suggest that the tears she was shedding were planned. A lot of commentators think she probably planned to anoint him if she had the opportunity.

But there's a big problem here. She's overcome by emotion. The anointing she wanted to do, but her emotions get in the way. You see, she cannot contain herself as she gets near to Jesus.

You can imagine. She's wanted to do this, but now her hands are quivering. Her makeup is running down her face. She is a mess. And she's actually creating a mess of a scene. And the dust is being splattered up by the profuse amount of tears rolling down her face. The text tells us that literally the tears are hitting the dust and Jesus' feet are getting dirty because there's so much coming down.

And notice this. No one said a word. The whole text to this point, there's not one bit of dialogue. The woman, before she can anoint Jesus' feet, she has to dry the tears and the dust off. She doesn't have a towel.

So what does she do? She takes down her hair. And when she did this, everyone in the room is scandalized. We don't have this, but in that culture, no woman was allowed to let down her hair in the presence of men. Only in front of your husband. In fact, the Talmud allowed Jews to divorce their wives if a husband ever caught his wife letting her hair down in front of another man.

The whole crowd would have been scandalized. Of course it's a prostitute letting her hair down. How dare she? She shouldn't be here in the first place. And she bends down and starts taking her hair and wiping Jesus' feet, cleaning them off, drying them. She breaks every social taboo in doing this. And she is a self-forgetful mess. It's like she doesn't care about what anyone else in the room is thinking.

And what's going on here? This is why I call this section the propulsion of grace. It's that grace has propelled her into action for her Savior. What does she want to do? She wants to show Him her love. She wants to serve Jesus because she has experienced the love of Christ in her life. Her actions are all evidence of her adoration. It's her love for Jesus that allows her to show up in this hostile crowd in the first place. And despite her sad past, this woman is brimming with spiritual life. And consider Jesus in this.

The people looking on are scandalized and shocked. But Jesus gives no indication of desiring to move away from her, of trying to distance Himself from her. He gives no indication that He even wants to push her away from Him. When she came to Jesus, we have no sense of any judgmentalism in Jesus. Jesus did not do what so many people do, which is condemn the outward sins while ignoring the inward sins. Jesus freely received her to Himself as He does all sinners who come to Him. You see, one of the important things to understand about this text is this woman did not do these things in order to receive grace. She did these things because she had already received grace. Jesus makes this point clear at the very end of the chapter.

And the point is this. Grace that has been received always propels the recipient into some kind of action. You see, grace changes us. Grace impacts our worship. It causes us to love Christ and love His church well and deeply. Grace is what propels us into action to share our faith even when we may be mocked for doing so. Grace is what allows us to deny ourself for the sake of Christ. Grace is what prompts acts of service. It generates true generosity in our giving.

It allows us to sacrifice all for the one who saves us. Do you know of William Whiting Borden? He was the heir of the famous Borden family. He was 25 years old. He had already graduated from both Yale and Princeton. And he was heir to the vast Borden estate.

Palatial houses, a family income that was estimated in today's dollars would be about $750 million. And William Whiting Borden, because of his faith in Jesus Christ, was propelled to give his life away in service to the one who saved him. You know what he did? He became a missionary to Muslims.

And everyone thought he was insane. William Whiting Borden died a few years into his ministry to the Muslims. And when people found his Bible, they found written in large letters in the back, no reserve, no retreats, and no regret. You see, Borden was propelled by grace to give his life away for the king who saved his life. Grace always propels God's people into action for the kingdom. And that's what this woman is doing in this passage.

She is serving and loving her king because of the grace she's received. The second thing from this passage, I want us to consider the destructive power of self-righteousness. There's three aspects to this, and these won't show up on the slide, but the first is self-righteousness blinds us. Look at verses 39. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. Can you hear the contempt in this Pharisee's mind?

To me, I love this. Luke is like a master artist in this passage because here, still, in verse 39, no word has been spoken. Simon doesn't say this out loud.

He's just thinking this. And he's thinking Jesus can't be a prophet because of what he's allowing. And what does Jesus do? He shows he knows exactly what Simon's thinking. He proves he's a prophet by answering directly Simon's very thoughts.

It's wonderful. Jesus is not just a prophet. He's the Messiah.

He's the hope of Israel. And here's the point. Simon missed out on the fact that the Messiah was reclining at his table in his household. And he missed it because his self-righteousness has put blinders over his eyes. Simon's not only blind to Jesus. He's also blind to the woman. And that's why Jesus says to him in verse 44, Simon, do you see this woman?

What does Simon see when he looked at this woman? In his smug self-righteousness, all she was was her sin. No longer is this person a person of worth and value, a person made in the image of God.

All she is is sin. She's contemptible to him. His self-righteousness allowed him to treat her with disdain. And he actually felt justified in his contempt.

Here's the sad fact of the matter. Self-righteousness will do the same within us. It will always blind us to our Savior and it will blind us to those around us. The second aspect of self-righteousness is that self-righteousness breaks fellowship.

Look at verses 44 to 46. Jesus says to Simon, 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. Simon's self-righteousness is not some private spiritual problem. Our self-righteousness is never some private spiritual problem.

Why? Because self-righteousness manifests itself in broken relationships all the time. Simon shows he has a broken relationship with his guest of honor. Because normally what the host would have done for a guest like Jesus, Jesus walks in, Simon would immediately have put his hand on his shoulder and welcomed him.

He would have kissed him on both sides of the cheek with a blessing of shalom. He would have arranged for the guest to have his feet washed with water. Sometimes the host would have done it himself. Sometimes he would have had a slave do it. But you would wash their dirty feet of the open sandal. And then you would usually get some kind of olive oil mixed with spices and ointment, and you would anoint their head. It was a perfumed thing.

It was all customary signs of honoring a guest. You see, Simon's self-righteousness caused him from the very beginning to break fellowship with Jesus in ignoring what he should have done from the start. None of those things had taken place. And here's the great contrast. All of them were done by the sinful woman. All of the things Simon should have done and even more were done. What a contrast.

Dan Doriani, a great scholar and teacher, writes this. How often do we treat Jesus the same way? We have invited him into our hearts, but there's far more hospitality for us to give. The honor of our worship, the greeting of our prayer, if we have neglected these privileges, remaining indifferent to the presence of Jesus in our lives, then we have treated the Son of God with shocking contempt. You see, it's not limited to Pharisees. We can do it easily in our Sunday worship by just mouthing the words of the song. Our self-righteousness, though, causes broken fellowship in the church, too.

And you guys know this. In Luke's Gospel, this is a constant theme. Grace creates community. Self-righteousness destroys community.

Let me ask you this. When you see sin, real sin, in other people, when their sin smacks you in the face, how do you respond? I love that somebody said ow.

I love that. When their sin smacks you in the face, yeah, ow. How do you respond? Do we respond like Simon? And we treat them as not even made in the image of God?

Do we reject them out of hand? One of my professors from Reformed Theological Seminary used to say, and he still does all the time, we Presbyterians believe in the doctrine of total depravity. But oh, when we find any of it in the church, we kick the person out. His point is that self-righteousness breaks fellowship.

What do you do? What is your heart towards someone? Usually what we do is this. If they sin like us, we're okay with them. But if they sin differently than us, we judge them.

We need to be careful because the spirit of Simon can creep in to churches so easily. The third aspect of self-righteousness is that self-righteousness condemns us. Look at verses 41 to 43. A certain moneylender 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's answer here, the commentators all agree, it's very begrudging to Jesus, the one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt. And Jesus says, you have judged rightly. Now notice, Jesus' parable here does not deal with the amount of sin in a person's life. What it's about is whether or not the person has awareness of their sin.

You see, Jesus actually shares this very short parable genuinely to try and show Simon his problem. There's a wide variety of sinners out there. There's a wide variety of sinners in this room tonight. Some of us are reprobate sinners. Some of us are respectable sinners. Here's the point of Jesus' parable. All sinners, reprobate and respectable, are dead in their sins. Everyone is equally bankrupt before a holy God. And we all stand in desperate need of his grace. You see, in Simon's economy, the woman is beyond the grace of God, and Simon in his self-righteousness doesn't need the grace of God. You see, Simon's self-righteousness has so blinded him to himself and his own need, he stands condemned before the Savior. You see, the high-class moralist has the same problem as the low-class prostitute.

You probably have heard of this. The countess of Huntington was a great supporter of John Wesley and George Whitefield, and she invited a duchess to come and hear Whitefield preach one evening. And the duchess wrote back to the countess these words. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the face of the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting to me. Self-righteousness condemns you. And you know what? It's not just twitty duchesses that can have that attitude. Everyone, everyone stands in the need of grace.

Why? Because as Paul tells us, all have sinned and fall short of the righteousness of God. All. And we can learn from the apostle Paul in this regard. In 1 Timothy 1.15, here's what he says.

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. This is Paul. I am the worst of sinners.

What is that? Is that some pious statement by the apostle? Not at all. This is a heart that has been sensitized to the reality of sin by walking with Jesus. You see, the longer we walk with Jesus, the bigger our sin appears to us because the more we see it for what it really is.

And it's bad. And we all stand condemned because of it. And without Jesus, we are helpless and hopeless. You see, what this passage forces us to ask, are we more like Simon or more like the woman? It forces us to ask, what kind of a person will we be? What kind of a person are we becoming? Sometimes, Christians, thinking that I'm quite all right, we become much more like Simon than we do like the woman who recognizes her sin. If Christians fail to live in humble repentance, we will look more like Simon than this woman.

And that's part of the purpose of this passage. Who are we in this narrative account? We're certainly not Jesus. You are great.

You are great. Finally, look at the blessing of forgiveness, verses 48 to 50. And He said to her, I love this, Jesus looks at the woman, 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. Jesus says this so all may hear it.

He says it for the benefit of Simon and all the onlookers, because He is making the point to them, I have the authority to forgive sins. I am not just a prophet. I am the Son of God.

I am the hoped for Messiah. And I have all authority to pronounce forgiveness of sins. Jesus makes that clear to everyone. But He also says these words for the benefit of a woman. You see, sometimes sinners, sometimes I, have trouble believing that God really has grace for me.

Have you ever felt that way? You see, if she had any doubt that evening, Jesus looks into her eyes and with love and compassion and grace, the living Word speaks life, your sins are forgiven. Now Jesus isn't here physically to do that to us, but God's Word does it. It's one of the reasons I believe John wrote in one of his letters, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from some unrighteousness.

No, all unrighteousness. Sometimes sinners need to hear those words. How wonderful. As we sing, my sin, not in part but the whole, has been nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. When you sing those words, I hope you well up with the love and the emotion and the truth of them.

Bear with me one more minute because I don't want to miss this one point. I thought it was kind of cool. Jesus says to the woman at the end, go in peace. In the Greek, literally it is go into peace and you may not care about this, but I liked it. You rabbis thought that go in peace was a statement you would say to the dead. But if you say it to the living, you say go into peace. And Jesus says to the woman here, go into peace.

Step fully into the shalom of God, the flourishing of God in every way in your life. The sinful woman, step into the flourishing of God in every way. This is the blessing of forgiveness. Isn't it wonderful that Jesus allows sinners to draw near to him? You know, Jesus didn't just come to save people who skip their morning devotions. He came for real, ugly sinners. He did come for those who skip morning devotions. He came for those who lie about not skipping morning devotions. Jesus came for those caught up in squalid choices. He came for those living with failed dreams. He came for you and he came for me. You see, we are really good at sinning. But our Savior is really good at forgiving. What a match.

What a match. And here's the good news. Jesus still eats and drinks with sinners. The next time we have communion here at Grace, remember that. It's a meal with Jesus. And Jesus welcomes sinners into his presence. The bad news is really bad, but the good news is far better.

God's grace is greater than all of our sin. This Thanksgiving, it may be a tough one. I know, it's tough for many reasons.

Some people can't travel. Some people, this is your first Thanksgiving without a loved one. Maybe it's a tough Thanksgiving because of some of the things in this passage. Perhaps you've been carrying a load of guilt and shame. What Luke 7 tells us is draw near to Jesus because he will not turn you away. Maybe you've been living under the condemnation of a self-righteous twit in your life. Fix your eyes on Jesus because he will set you free.

You don't have to worry. When Jesus says you are pure and holy and acceptable, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. His love will set you free. Maybe you've been a self-righteous twit. See your sin, your great need of grace, and turn to him in humble repentance.

And here's what you'll find. His grace is sufficient for everything. Doing these things could help us to experience the love and the joy that flow from Christ this Thanksgiving.

And oh, what a meal we might have wherever we have it on Thursday. Let's pray. Jesus, we praise you and we thank you. We are not here tonight because we are somehow good enough.

Not one of us has earned anything. You have done it all. Lord, thank you that you welcome sinners close to you. You don't push us away.

You draw us near. Father of God, thank you that because of the perfect work of your son, we can call you Father. And because of him and him alone, we stand pure and holy in your sight. May we walk in the freedom and the joy and the true life that is ours in Jesus Christ tonight and always as you propel us forth to share the good news. In your holy name we pray. Amen.