Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Luke

  • Our Hearts Burned

    Our Hearts Burned

    About this sermon

    On the road to Emmaus two downcast disciples talked with a stranger who asked why they were sad, and they told him their hopes had died with Jesus. The risen Jesus called them slow of heart and, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, interpreted to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures. They knew him in the breaking of bread, their hearts burned within them, and all of Scripture still points to the suffering and risen Savior.

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    Sermon transcript

    You may be seated. This evening, our text will come from Luke chapter 24. As you are turning there to Luke chapter 24, looking at verses 13 through 35. Remind you where this text is located. This is after the resurrection, but not everyone has heard about the resurrection. The women have heard, but most of the disciples, most of the followers of Jesus, even beyond the 12, were despondent and they were depressed in those days. We get an episode that is recorded here, an event after the resurrection, that is actually quite fascinating because the two men that Jesus appears to here after the resurrection were not part of the inner circle, part of the 11 of the 12 that were left. According to the Gospel of Luke, the first people to have interacted with Jesus after the resurrection were the women at the tomb and minor disciples. A fascinating point. Here we’re going to look at the account of the travelers on the road to Emmaus, beginning at verse 13.

    But first, before we read the text, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we confess this is your word. where it contains all that we need. for our justification and our sanctification, for edification, for the knowledge that we have of who you are and how it is that we should live our lives in light of that. Lord, we pray that the Holy Spirit who inspired these words to be recorded would also be present in the reading and expounding of these words. Lord, may we gain from your scriptures a greater understanding of who you are and what it is you require of us. And Lord, we pray that you would do this for the sake of the glory of your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Luke chapter 24, beginning in verse 13. Hear now the word of the Lord.

    That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

    But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, what is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad. Then one of them named Cleopas answered him, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days? And he said to them, what things?

    They said to him, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, the man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

    Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and they did not find his body. They came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said, but him they did not see. And he said to them, Oh, foolish ones. slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

    And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going further, but they urged him strongly, saying, Stay with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is not far spent. So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.

    And their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures. And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem and they found the 11 And those who were with them gathered together, saying, The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon. Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. The grass withers, and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever. Amen. There’s a lot here. There’s a lot that we could focus on.

    But as we look at this text, I just have this question. Have you ever had, I believe we’ve all felt those times of being down, being despondent, dark nights of the soul as Christians used to call it. I don’t think I actually need a whole lot of illustrations for what that is. Everybody here has likely known it if you’ve lived long enough.

    There may be many circumstances that spark it. Some of it may be physical in nature. It could be a sickness. It could be suffering. It could be a poor diet and lack of exercise. It could be genetic disposition. It could be relational in nature. It could be empathy for others in the midst of their loss and suffering. It could be hurt caused by others. It could be sin.

    You know, despondency, depression, sadness can come on us in so many different ways. It’s not uniform in nature. But spiritual despondency can also come on us unexpected, like clouds that cover the sun. And you know that there’s a sun behind the clouds, but you just can’t see it. This comes from a loss of hope. an inability to see where you’re going, how the road leads from here to where it is that you wanted to go. Loss of hope can come when something that you’ve hoped in fails and those hopes are dashed.

    Many of us have experienced that in many different venues. About every four years, it seems like half the country has this experience where they hope in the next person that is going to lead them that might become president. And they talk to their friends and all of their hopes are placed in this. And then lo and behold, they did not campaign enough in Ohio or Wisconsin or wherever, and their hopes are dashed and they have another four years until they can hope again. Some of our hopes though, are more serious.

    Many of us. have known our hopes dashed in the relationship that we may have with a parent or with a child when those hopes are dashed. When our child loses the thing that they were going for, whether it’s advancement in sports or college, or they walk away from the faith. Or we lose them because they get sick or they pass away. We can have a loss of hope and the hope that we placed within a marriage or for a parent and they pass away. A spouse and they pass away or disappoint.

    The sun is covered. It’s as night. We never think we’re going to see the light again. We’ve all known the death of hope in many ways. And what do we do? There’s many ways that people deal with a loss of hope. Some avoid the thought. Some dwell on it. When hope dies, we understand we don’t want to stay there. We can’t live there forever. It’ll be night for a time, but after a while, the soul starts to die.

    What are we to do? Why are we down? It’s because what we wanted more than anything else was thwarted. That’s why these men are despondent and depressed, isn’t it? They’re down on the road to Emmaus because their hopes were dashed. We thought that this would be the one. They placed their hopes in it. The minute the question is asked, they look sad. They see no silver lining. It’s a dark night of the soul. For them, why? What happened? Of course, the reasons that you can be down are so many. There’s physical, relational, spiritual, like I just outlined. But I think we can eliminate some of those reasons.

    It doesn’t seem to be a health problem with them. They can walk about seven miles. So they are obviously healthy and in good condition. They’re not like, I love the story of Elijah when he is despondent and he is complaining about life in 1 Kings 19. Basically, God tells him, why don’t you go to sleep for a while and gives him some cakes, which tells us that sometimes all we need is a snack and a nap in order to feel better. But what they are dealing with here is so much deeper, so much more of a loss of hope than a good walk can take care of. They’re dealing with this loss of hope, this trip of seven miles. If you’re going two or three miles an hour, this is a long time that they can just dwell on this, talk about what had happened as they are going.

    And they are two men, one of them Cleopas. Whoever that is, we’re not given any other details of another Cleopas. But what we do know is Luke likes to footnote. In a sense, this is a footnote. Cleopas may have been alive at the time, and he said, if you want to know more about this story, if you want to verify it, go and ask him.

    We’re not told who his companion was. There’s all these theories. It could be his wife. It could be just a friend. It could be Luke himself, and he’s being modest and humble about it. Either way, this is coming from someone’s account. This is how Luke writes his gospel as a historian from primary sources. just as we’re taught to write history today.

    And so what happened? These two men had been walking back from the experience of going to Jerusalem for the Passover and their hopes had been dashed, believing that Jesus was the Messiah. But how could that be? How could that be if he was executed? How could that be if he suffered? In fact, a hero, a savior, a Messiah cannot suffer, cannot die, cannot be defeated. They wonder if their hopes were misplaced. They’re despondent. They’re sad. And then this man shows up on the road.

    Now we know from the text immediately that this man is Jesus, but they don’t recognize him. I take a bit of a hope from the lack of recognition of Jesus. It seemed like his followers had a little bit of trouble recognizing him because he had a resurrection body. There was something different about this resurrection body. I don’t know about you, but when I get a new body, I hope that there are some revisions to that body. When Jesus appears to the disciples, those that knew him, Mary, Thomas, these men, they don’t quite recognize him. He’s different enough that it’s not immediate. So what does that man do?

    He says, did you not understand that the Messiah, the Christ, was to suffer? And in verse 27, he says, and beginning with Moses and all of the prophets, he interpreted to them all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Jesus showed from Moses, the Torah, the first five books, through all the prophets, that they were pointing towards him. They were pointing towards a suffering savior.

    Now, love, this was happening on Sunday. And of all the Sunday school lessons that I wish that I was at, isn’t this a Sunday school lesson that you would most want to be at? Jesus opening up the scriptures, interpreting them and saying how each of them point to himself. It’s so strange to think through Luke’s account of the growing up of Jesus, of how many people would have read the scriptures to Christ.

    The priests in the temple, right? And then he starts debating with them even as early as his childhood years with them. And Mary and Joseph, if they were following Deuteronomy 6, what were they doing? When they rise and when they went to bed, when they walked along the way, they were talking to him about the scriptures.

    And what was Jesus listening to the entire time? He was listening to, in a sense, his biography, his autobiography, even. He knew the stories because he knew them about himself, how they were all pointing to him, leading to him. He knew them in a way that no one else, up to that point, knew them. And when he opened up the scriptures to these two men, he did not take out his iPhone. He did not take out his leather-bound Bible. He knew them because they were about him and written on his heart. He was the Word made flesh, and so he knew the Word written.

    He could quote them. That’s perhaps something that we need to get to a point in which we can quote them. We can open them up with somebody without having to open up our physical Bible. How well do we note them? Not just, you know, the Bible says that God is good and he’s forgiving, but to actually be able to quote, to be able to open them up with somebody.

    Jesus had time to teach these things, beginning with Moses and the prophets. He’s opening up these scriptures. Seven miles he has. probably over two, maybe three hours, he could have taught them about all the scriptures and how he was the substance of the entire Bible. You ever wonder what it is that he taught in that three hour, two, three hour, seven mile Sunday school lesson? You know that we actually have, likely, much of the content of that talk, or at least the principles of what he taught.

    It’s called the New Testament. It is the part in the Bible that tells how everything else was leading to Christ. And we obviously don’t have the time together to go through the entire New Testament to wonder what it was that they were taught. There’s entire books people have written on this subject. Jesus on Every Page by David Murray, The Unfolding Mystery by Clowney, Look Unto the Rock by Moyer, Biblical Theology by Voss. There’s so many different ways that you can explain this, so much richness that’s in the New Testament.

    But I wonder if he quoted Genesis 3.15 and began there in the books of Moses, right? The seed of the woman that will crush the head of the seed of the serpent and how Paul will go on to tell us, you know what that’s talking about? That’s talking about Christ crushing and us in the church as his body crushing the head of the serpent in Romans 16. He could have gone to Abraham and talked about the seed, the promise to Abraham, and then gone and explained how that seed was pointing to him, just as Paul does in Galatians 3.

    He could have gone to Isaiah 53, as I did one time when I was working together with a Jewish friend of mine. We just sat there and read through Isaiah 53, and he wondered, why are you reading the New Testament to me? Don’t you know that I’m Jewish and I don’t believe that? And I said, no, that’s Isaiah 53. It’s so obvious when you read these things that Jesus is the New Testament.

    He’s in the New Testament as a fulfillment of all of these hopes of a better suffering servant, of a better prophet, priest, and king. Deuteronomy 18, right? The greater prophet that was to come that, in fact, they were looking for when Jesus encounters the woman at the well. We are waiting for this prophet. And I perceive that you are a prophet. Zechariah 3, the greater priest that’s to come that Hebrews tells us about. Second Samuel 7, the greater son of David that’s promised. My Lord that will sit at my right hand, right? From Psalm 110. And as we know, Jesus is crucified with a sign.

    This is what he was king. of the Jews. You could go to so many promises in the Old Testament, how the temple was pointing to Jesus, how lamb sacrifice was pointing, how the Passover was prefiguring him, the rock in the wilderness, deliverance from the waters in the Red Sea pointing to Christ’s work. Those are just some of the things that Paul lists in his letters. That’s all to say I would love to be at that Sunday school lesson, but brothers and sisters, we have the class notes. It’s called the New Testament. It’s something that we can open up and see how all scripture is pointing in the Old and New Testament to Christ. And Christ himself was opening it to these two men. What is the Bible about? In John 5, 39, Jesus explains how you can read the Bible but miss the main point when he says to the Pharisees, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.

    And it is they that bear witness about me. And you refuse to come to me that you may have life. When you see it, it’s exciting. And the men in the end, what do they say? When they realized all of this had always been pointing to Christ, it had always been pointing to the suffering servant, their hopes were not dashed. They say, did not our hearts burn within us? It was exciting for them to see.

    Did you ever have that moment in your early Christian life when you started to see how it all knit together in Christ, that you were excited about it? There was a joy that was produced about it. You couldn’t get enough of it. Remember my earliest Bible that I actually did reading of and didn’t just carry around because I was supposed to. It was a Scofield, a reference Bible. But the minute that I came to faith, I opened it up and I started underlining in the text. I was excited about, there’s grace here in John, there’s grace here in Paul, and there’s grace all over the place.

    Underlining each part that I got to. And for them, it was so exciting. It was joy producing. Their hearts burned. In fact, there’s this interesting image here. What do they do after this happens? They turn around and they walk seven miles back to Jerusalem. The word that’s used there is returned. It’s an image in a sense of repentance. They had a joy from hearing that, that fueled repentance.

    And I wonder if in reading our Bibles and finding Christ there, if it doesn’t end in joy and repentance, then we’re not doing it right. We will not have joy without Christ and without repentance. And when we have a hope that will not fail, that is greater than any of the hopes that we had placed in others, that we placed in people, our spouses, our parents. children in our careers that we have this advancement that we had placed in power or achieving this or that. All of those hopes could be dashed, but they found that hope that wasn’t dashed. Even when they thought it was, they found out, no, their hope was true in Christ. When we know our Savior, repentance and joy kiss in our hearts burned. The message there that Jesus preached, that Jesus taught them, resulted in joy and, in a sense, repentance as they returned to Jerusalem. They returned to the place where they thought their hopes were dashed, but actually they were realized.

    When I was converted, I feel like I have a story that I talk to other people about that is very similar. I lived in the New Testament, right? Everybody has their gospel. Mine was John, right? I was going through John, and I was underlining. I went through Paul’s letters. I felt like Augustine, who basically just sat in Paul when he was converted. And I loved those things. But let me tell you, when I had my Schofield reference Bible, I wasn’t finding any help with 2 thirds of my Bible. Two thirds of my Bible seemed to be closed. What was it about? What was two thirds of my Bible pointing towards?

    And then the words of Christ and John. Once I got there, it was amazing to say, you read the Bible, the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but it is they that testify to me. Then you can start to read the Bible and say, when I read through Job, how does Job testify to Christ? His longing for a mediator in chapter 10, his longing for resurrection in chapter 14, his longing for a redeemer later on. When you read Habakkuk, you can say, how does this judgment come? How does that point to Christ? How does that testify to Christ?

    You can read Genesis and say, how is this testifying to Christ, to the Savior of Abraham, the Savior of Jacob to the Savior, the hope of Noah, the seed of the woman. Every passage then becomes a picture of the one who saves and how he saves and the sufficiency of his salvation. It becomes a picture of the hope that does not disappoint. And as we read the Old Testament almost becomes a mystery novel. Where is Jesus here? How is he longed for here? How is he prefigured here? How is he predicted? How is he an answer to all of the questions that people are asking, but they don’t seem to quite have the answer for yet.

    It makes first Corinthians. 119 come alive where it says, for the son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you was not yes and no, but in him was always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in him. And that is why through him, we utter our amen to God for his glory. Career, family, fame, power, whatever.

    They’re not always yes. Our hopes are dashed. In every page of Scripture, though, there is a question that comes. When you read through Adam and Eve, their question comes, can it be fixed? This broken relationship through sin, this broken creation, can it be fixed? And we find out, and the answer in Christ is, yes, it can be fixed. We read through Adam or through Abraham, and we have the question, will God be with me here as well as over here?

    And in Christ, the answer is yes. In Jacob, we have the question, is it impossible to outrun God’s grace? And we find out yes, even Jacob could not outrun God’s grace. In Christ, the answer is yes. In Exodus, can God save us from slavery? And in Christ, the answer is yes. In Joshua, can God provide for us despite the sins of our father and the enemies all around us? And in Christ, the answer is yes. And judges, can God save us in the midst of sinful leaders?

    Is there a warrior that’s coming that is better? And in Christ, the answer is yes. Jesus was the one that was better than any of the deliverers of the Old Testament, better than Moses. He’s a better warrior than Joshua, a better king than David, a better priest than the Levites, a better savior of his people even than Esther.

    Every page is God saying yes. in Jesus Christ. Every page is a cell in his face. If you want to see the face of God, then see it in Jesus Christ and his scriptures. Read your Bible. There is joy, fuel for repentance and our Savior and a hope that does not disappoint. It’s the Sunday school lesson we get every time that we open up our scriptures and say, how does this point me to the hope that I can have in Christ that does not disappoint? It’s what we get to hear every every morning, Sunday morning and Sunday evening, when the Old Testament is open and we’re searching for him there, the New Testament is open and he’s revealed there every Sunday. And every time we open up our scriptures, we’re on the road to Emmaus, or more accurately, the road to Christ and his gospel and his joy and his new life there.

    Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, as we journey through our life, We ask that you would continue to show us how Christ answers every problem and question that we have. Lord, that he is the answer to how might we be reconciled to you? What must we do with our sins? Can a thing die and live again? Lord, direct us to Christ as our mediator, our redeemer, our prophet, our priest, our king. Lord, excite us about who he is and our Savior that we might take joy and that joy might be the fruit for our repentance. throughout this life, this new life you give to us in the spirit.

    Lord, only you can do this. Only a spirit who testifies to who Christ is as we open up the scriptures. Lord, help us to open them up for Moses and the prophets to see how all the scriptures were pointing to our suffering Savior. Lord, we pray this in the name of our Savior, your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. We’ll sing as a closing hymn, number 170, God in the Gospel of His Son. 170, would you stand as we sing this as our closing hymn.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Living Among the Dead

    Living Among the Dead

    About this sermon

    On the first day of the week the women found the stone rolled away, and two men asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” The account carries the marks of history, from women as the first witnesses to the disciples’ confusion and unbelief. Luke’s Gospel presses every reader to answer who Jesus is, and the risen Christ is the answer to the angels’ question.

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    Sermon transcript

    This evening we are going to be in the gospel according to Luke chapter 24. And as I have occasionally visited in the evenings, I have gone through various texts in Luke and had been quite heavily in chapter 23 recently. And I thought I couldn’t just skip to something else. We need to see how things turn out. We need chapter 24. And even to marvel at the existence of chapter 24 in Luke, The other I was reflecting about when I was looking through my bookshelf.

    I enjoy to read biographies. Half of my bookshelf is really filled with them. One that I really loved was John Adams by David McCullough. And I remember reading that. It’s 650-something pages. I remember reading it and wanting more. And as I got to page 651, I read the account of the death of John Adams.

    And turning the page, my heart sank, because that’s the last chapter. That was at the end of the book. There wasn’t any more to read. He was dead. We get the account of Christ’s death and crucifixion in chapter 23. And yet, there’s another chapter. There’s something beyond that. It’s the most unique biography in all of human history. We have a chapter 24 of Luke. see the account of when the women came to the tomb to prepare a dead body.

    And they will be asked a question, a question that we also need to be asked as well as we encounter Christ as he is and as he was in the text. Lord, let us bring ourselves to a time of prayer first. Lord, we ask that you would be present by the means of your Holy Spirit. Be in the midst of the reading of your word and the expounding of your word. or teach us anew what it is that you have for us in the gospel, in the life, in the work, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior and Lord. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. Let’s look at chapter 24 together of the gospel according to Luke. Hear now the word of the Lord.

    But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb. taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

    Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise. And they remembered His words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the leavened and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna. and Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in, and he saw the linen clothes by themselves. And he went home marveling at what had happened.” Grass withers and the flower fades, but this is the word of our Lord, endorsed forever. Amen. We have an account here of the women going to the tomb. If you look previously in chapter 23, you will see that there was Joseph of Arimathea. We’re also told in other gospel accounts that Nicodemus helped him in preparing the body.

    But the women go back. Apparently, either they did not finish in time for the Sabbath to commence, And so they had to leave their work, or what I actually think was probably more likely, these two upper class men were trying to do a manual labor job. They made a mess of it. The women saw that, and they said, we are going to go back and do it right after the Sabbath. And when they come, they see the tomb is empty, and they are confused. They don’t understand what’s happening. Now let’s just pause for a minute, as we are very familiar with this account, but think about why Luke is including these details.

    Because these details seem like an embarrassment to everybody involved in this story, right? First off, this seems like an embarrassment because in the first century, you’ve probably heard, the testimony of women was often doubted, whether in the courts of the Jews or also in the courts of the Romans. What can you say? Many of the Romans in that time, in today’s standards, would be sexist. They didn’t believe a woman’s testimony over a man’s. Secondly, not just that, the women were said not to realize right away what had happened, but to be confused, to not understand what had happened.

    Remember the things that Jesus had said. If you go through Matthew’s account, three or four different times Jesus is telling them, I will die and on the third day rise again. He has told them this multiple times. And we’re given an account of the men at home cowering, afraid of what’s going to happen to them.

    This makes everybody either look a bit dense or a little cowardly. Why include these details then? Well, because that’s how it happened. History has this funny way of recording what happened and not what would sound good or look good to us. It’s not always the tidiest or the most flattering story to the people that are in it. This is not the version that you would make up.

    You see, the version that you would make up in that time would have the men arriving first. They would immediately realize what had happened. And you would probably have Peter or somebody saying that he rolled the stone away just by himself because he had been lifting weights and he was that strong. There would be things to brag about, things that would hold up in the court of law.

    But that is not what is there. You know a made-up story when you hear it, and this is a story that rings with history. That was back when C.S. Lewis said it. He read all of these Greek myths, and when he read the New Testament, he said, this is different. This is an account of history. This isn’t a myth.

    And the empty tomb didn’t happen in a way that was convenient to the legal system, convenient to history or to the reputations of these disciples or of these women. Life just happened that way, and it was recorded. by Luke, the one who is an historian.

    I think we need to realize this because as we read this, often we will have certain sections of scripture that we’ve heard over and over again. We read them, we almost read them like, like families may read towards the night before Christmas around a fire, right? To children on Christmas Eve. But Luke did not intend the story to be understood or read that way. If you go all the way back to Luke chapter one, how does Luke begin his gospel? He begins it this way.

    He says, in his months, as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past to write and orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught. My undergrad degree is in history. This is how you write history. You take eyewitness accounts, you take primary sources, you put them together in an orderly account. is acting as an historian here, as a first century historian. He’s gathering his gospel from eyewitnesses.

    That’s why he includes so many names that sometimes when you’re reading it, you have no reference for who they are. Who is Joanna? Who is this buried mother of James? Who are some of these names that are recorded in here? This is Luke’s version of footnoting, right? He is writing to people in a time in which many of these eyewitnesses are still alive. In a sense, he’s saying, I got this from Joanna. Go ask her, her account. I got this from Mary, the mother of James. Go ask her what her account was. This is completely unlike what you see in the rise of many cults. The rise of many cults, what do you have?

    You have a private experience, a private revelation that is only confirmed by one person, right? Joseph Smith, what did he say? I got these plates that nobody can read except for me with these special glasses, right? What was the account of Muhammad? I got the special revelation from an angel on a mountain. Nobody else heard it. It was just me. What is the account of these women? I was there with several other people. Everybody is confirming this. This was a public event. This wasn’t a private revelation. which presents us with something of an application question here. When we read the account of the resurrection, the question that we are asking is not merely, how does the resurrection story tell me how to love better or to make me feel better?

    The question is, where is the body of Jesus? Did he rise or did he not? And do you believe that he rose? Because if he didn’t rise, this is a story about telling lies. If he did rise, then this is a story about God’s power over death, over sin, the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, and the need to be made right with God. And that is a pretty hard contrast.

    Because if you don’t believe he rose, there’s not a whole lot that you can take from the ministry of Christ except a lesson not to make the wrong people mad because they will kill you. I don’t think there’s any lasting lesson from the life of Christ if he didn’t rise again. Because if he said he was not a mere teacher. He’s not something that we just have something to learn kindness from.

    He came as a son of God to take the sins of the son of men in his body on the cross, to crush the power of sin, to defeat death and to rise again. The resurrection, then, is the linchpin of the entire Gospel of Luke. We can’t skip chapter 24. The end of the story didn’t come just with the death of Christ on the cross.

    If it didn’t happen, we need to find a better use of our time than listening to the teachings of this man. But if it did happen, if Christ is not a liar and said he is who he said he is, this makes a claim on our life. We are, we are met with a choice. We need to take a side. Are we on the side of the tomb has Christ or that Christ has power over the tomb? Because Christ here confronts us in a risen form.

    And even I find this almost ironic in verse three, did you notice this? They said that they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. I find that a bit ironic because if the women were right in their assumptions that Christ was dead and in the tomb, then he is no Lord, right? Lord is a title of authority, something that has authority over you, and dead men do not have authority. For Christ’s words and his life and his person to have authority, he must be alive. For him to be Lord, he must be risen. He must be currently alive at the right hand of the Father. Does he have authority?

    Because if a dead man says, love your neighbor, or I forgive you for not loving your neighbor, which must come next, then they’re just words of a 2,000-year-old dead man if he did not rise again. There is this false idea in the world of a middle ground. Again, if I can to refer back to Lewis, he was right when he wrote this. He says, Christianity, if false, is of no importance. And if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. It’s one or the other. Either it’s true or it’s not. Either he rose or he did not. I was reminded of that stark contrast of the difference that the resurrection makes when I saw a news item a couple of months ago.

    This was from a minor celebrity. Some of you may have heard of him. His name is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s known for putting pithy statements on his social media. He was the host of a rebooted version of Cosmos. He’s gone on record as somebody who is attached to a scientific worldview, where he says he does not believe any divine powers behind the universe. And I appreciate his intellectual consistency when he posted a few months ago this message to people that were following him.

    He said, Quote, the universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our plans. Have a nice day. I thought the heaven I stayed was a nice touch to it, but if he’s right about God not existing, no divine universe, no resurrection, then in fact he’s right. The universe doesn’t care. It’s just an update of that poem in high school. Did you ever have to memorize that poem by Stephen Crane? A man said to the universe, sir, I exist.

    However, replied the universe, the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation. All that means is, if there is no God, then who cares? And the answer is no one. The universe isn’t personal. It wouldn’t care about your pains or your life. It wouldn’t care if you’re a nice person or a lying cheat. The reality would be that you live, you die, that’s it, fade to black, no meaning, no judgment. Some people like that. Have fun now, some pain, and then you die and that’s the end of it. And you know, if Christ is in the tomb somewhere. That is exactly right.

    And I can’t judge you for that belief because the universe wouldn’t care. One thing that we can’t do, though, if that is what we believe, is not be a believer because we think that the Bible is immoral. Nobody would care, right? The universe wouldn’t care. There would be no morality. There would be no meaning.

    The reason, then, that I believe what the scriptures have here. The reason that I believe the tomb is empty and Christ is risen is not mere pragmatism. It’s not because of feeling. It’s not merely because it makes me a better person, because what would that even mean if Christ is truly dead?

    The only reason that you should believe this is this, that it’s true. All of it. That is the only defensible reason to believe. To believe, in fact, that there is a God who is infinite and unbound by time or space or anything that made a creation of time and space. To believe that that creation is good.

    To believe that something went wrong, namely sin, in the original design of the creation, corrupted by evil and misery and now death. to believe that God revealed himself in human nature, in human history, culminating in a man who was God and man in one person, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life, died a death of propitiation for sin, and then on the third day rose again from the dead.

    We should not believe any of that just because we believe things easily. We should not believe any of that just for warm fuzzies or that it makes your life better. In fact, it doesn’t make me feel that my life is perfect. It reveals the places in which it’s not. It doesn’t give me, in fact, easier things to do, often harder things to do. The only reason to believe this is if it’s true.

    So when you read through the Gospel of Luke, When you read those 23 chapters of the account of Christ’s life and his death, when you get to the point at this place, you should have an answer to the question, who is Jesus? honest answer. Who is he? When you read through those 23 chapters, you can read through those 23 chapters. In my home church, I preached over 100 sermons on it. You want to listen to all those before you give your answer. I would suggest that, right? Take all of the information that you can about the life of Christ. John Owen once said, take what you know of him and what you have heard of him and answer this question. Who is he? What do you make of him? Who is he to you?

    Because good teacher, that moderately important, is not one of the options on the table. After reading all that he said and did, good teachers don’t claim to be God, don’t claim to forgive sins. Who does Jesus seem to you from the history that you have in your hands? Let me ask you, do you believe the women? Maybe you’re like the ancient people. Maybe you’re a little bit sexist. You don’t believe the testimony of women. I guess the universe wouldn’t judge you for that. What about Peter, though? What about the apostles?

    What about 11 men who gave their life on the testimony that we have seen him alive, right? Well, 10 out of the 11 are going to end up executed. John got off easy with life imprisonment, exile to an island, right? Would any of those men have testified to the resurrection just because it made their life better? No, it made their life harder. Would any of them have testified to that just because they wanted power? They didn’t get power. Instead, they got painful death. That is not helpful. But they died for that. Why? Because they believed it was true.

    Do you believe the testimony of witness after witness after witness that says he rose again from the dead. Do you believe the Jesus that you have access to in your scriptures to say the things that he taught, the things that he did, is he who he says he is?

    And if we come to the point in which we have the answer that is staring us in the face, that he was who he said he is, then we must answer the angel’s question. And that’s what I want to leave you with, is the angel’s question. Why do you seek the living among the dead? That’s a great question for us and for the women. You know, it was a survey that I was listening to a speaker.

    He was a Christian, a philosopher, and he was going through a quiz. And one of the questions on his quiz to a Christian audience was, who is the most influential and important person alive today? And when he was getting the answers back, he noticed that over half of them did not put Jesus. He says, is Jesus not alive? Shouldn’t he be the most important and influential person in your life? It was a realization that they didn’t think of Jesus as alive at the right hand of God the Father. Why do we seek the living among the dead? Why do we act as if he is not, in fact, alive?

    You know, if I asked you to come over to meet me at my office for lunch, the grounds of New Life has two different places. There’s a road in between the church offices, and then on the other side is a cemetery. If I asked you to meet me at noon, and I see you out there, and you were in the cemetery calling out to the ground, Jared, I’m here for lunch, I’m going to think that you’re a bit crazy, right? Why would you look for me, a living person, among the dead of the cemetery next door?

    Well, this is basically what the women were doing, right? They needed to be asked the question, why do you look for the living among the dead? What do you do then with the empty tomb? Is he risen or is he not? Why do we keep going to the tomb and expecting to get a response?

    And now this is also a question that we must answer in our own lives. And that is why do we keep searching for the living Christ, and the answers to questions only the living Christ can answer among the deadness in this world. Why do so many seek living and life among the philosophies of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson that say the universe doesn’t care and our world is just filled with dead things, things that don’t give life, things that don’t care, things that die. This is what happens every time we try to find meaning and fulfillment and ultimate purpose in a job or just in our kids or in our opinions and political party or in distracting entertainment. or the next high from some illegal drug just tempting death, or from the pursuit of all of these things, merely will end in death. Why do we seek a living meaning in the dead things of this world, and the dying things of this world? You know, our faith is often misunderstood by the world, isn’t it?

    You remember a couple of months ago, the big news that everybody was watching on TV as it happened, the burning of Notre Dame’s cathedral. Remember all the commentary that came out of it that said, this is the death of religion in France. This is the death of the Christian religion. There was interesting articles that came out that said this was the death of religion in France.

    And, you know, it made me think back to the fact that I’ve read somewhat extensively of two men who either were French or lived in France. Thomas Aquinas studied at the University of Paris, and John Calvin was French and lived his life in France and had traveled, at least at some point, to Paris. And I thought, I wonder what these men have written about Notre Dame, because it was in existence during their lifetime. And you can do searches, you can find these online databases of the works of John Calvin and the works of Thomas Aquinas.

    Do you know how many times they were mentioned by both men? Zero. the most important architectural wonder of their time in their country, the greatest achievement of their country. And what did they have to say about it? Nothing. It just wasn’t as interesting as writing about Christ and his life and his work. Tens of thousands of pages and not a mention of that. Why? Because Jesus was what would last and not Notre Dame. Jesus is alive while Notre Dame is in smoldering ruins right now. Each of them could have written about it. It just wasn’t as interesting as Christ.

    When we look at our life and what it is that we pursue, we can pursue many good things. But are there the things that will last? The things that will last when buildings fall down, when businesses fail, when kids are gone, when projects have ended and are forgotten. One thing lasts. One thing lasts. When we hear the words of the thief on the cross, Jesus, remember me when you enter into your kingdom. And when he replies today, you will be with me in paradise.

    Then we know that we have the living stone among the dying things of this world. Why do we seek the living among the dead? Life, joy, meaning, fulfillment, true life and forgiveness are not found among the dead. They are only found among the risen living Christ. Seek life from the living Christ.

    Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we are so guilty of acting as if Christ is still in the tomb, of seeking things that will pass away as our entire life’s duties and pursuits. Lord, convict us that, in fact, there is only one thing that lasts. That is you, your work through your Son, and the applying of that by your Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that we would love those things, that we would be joyous about those things, that we’d marvel at those things just as the women and Peter did when they saw that in fact Christ was risen.

    So this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Often is sung around the season of Resurrection Sunday, but we are going to sing it now because it’s still true now. It’s number 360. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow, this will be true, Jesus Christ is risen today. Would you stand as we sing number 360.

    Jesus our Lord is risen today Alleluia. Sons of men and angels sing Alleluia. Raise your joys and ♪ Rock of my life, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Sleep in heavenly quiet, hallelujah ♪ ♪ The dreaming bird is gone ♪ ♪ Fight the battle, Lord ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ ♪ The Son depleted, Lord ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ ♪ Holy Gents, his blood no more ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ The stone will wash the sea. Alleluia. Christ has washed the gates of hell. Alleluia. Tears will be washed in your eyes. Alleluia. I

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • How the Righteous One Suffered

    How the Righteous One Suffered

    About this sermon

    At noon darkness covered the land, the curtain of the temple was torn, and Jesus cried, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” The centurion saw how he died and praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.” Christ’s suffering teaches believers to trust the Father through their own suffering, to see his innocent death as a witness to the world, and to confess their own part in it with repentance.

    More sermons from Luke · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    You may be seated. This evening we are going to look at a passage from Luke chapter 23. It is a passage that we are invited to behold, and it is in fact a very serious and a somber one. It’s one of those passages that you almost feel as if you need to take off your shoes when you read. I’m not asking any of you to do that tonight, but I am suggesting that it is a passage that we ought to listen to. We ought to read and we ought to contemplate with a sense of reverence for what we see and we hear here. what the centurion originally saw and how the righteous one suffered. We are going to read Luke chapter 23 verses 44 to 49.

    But first, let’s go to Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have preserved it and that it is your infallible and errant word that speaks to us not merely words of truth, but words of comfort, words of love, words of edification. Lord, we pray that this evening your word would be heard and that your spirit would be present. As we confessed earlier with effectual calling, the spirit and the word work together to accomplish your purposes. Lord, we pray that you would illumine this text and we pray that we would have greater understanding and greater love for you through it. And this we pray in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    Luke 23, verses 44-49 It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

    And having said this, he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, certainly this man was innocent. And all the crowds that had assembled for the spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance, watching these things. Grass withers and the flower fades, but this is the word of our Lord, endorsed forever.

    Amen. The sixth hour in Jewish reckoning of time is around noon and it is dark. Some amateur authors and theologians have tried to theorize about the timings of eclipses to see if they coincide with this. But when the recent solar eclipse happened, I actually went down to Nashville to witness it. It lasted about two minutes. And it was like dusk. It was not completely dark. Something else is happening here in this moment, in this blackout. not merely poetic language. In fact, we are told literally the sun’s light failed.

    It brings to mind other times in the Old Testament, especially in Amos, when you hear words of judgment and descriptions of that, such as where it reads in 8 verse 9 to 10 in Amos. And on that day declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist and boldness on every head. I will make it like the morning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

    When you hear the description of the scene, it seems after witnessing all of this, everybody who came to see the spectacle, they realized this was different than what they came to see. Some of them came to see a comedy to mock, and instead they witnessed a tragedy. They thought it was entertainment. Instead, they saw horror. They watched an innocent man suffer. And what’s more, they watched grace in suffering, a grace directed toward people that knew that they did not deserve it. What did they see?

    The whole scene, as you can see in the previous passage, a few verses earlier, began with, Father, forgive them. and then they hear another cry beginning with father in verse 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice father into your hands I commit my spirit and having said that this he breathed his last between the two fathers on the lips of Christ, we have the purpose and the intent of the cross. Jesus began with, Father, forgive them.

    And we see that in the previous passage, but that cry, that request came with a cost. It was a request that cost something. Many times our request will cost something. We could request something from somebody, but we have to know that there’s a corresponding cost. Many of us will watch sports much like a spectator, kind of like these people were watching for entertainment. When you watch, you see the products of what people have spent much time on. And I think, especially when I watch college sports, at one point, this player came to the coach and said, make me a great player.

    And what you don’t see is the cost of that request. It will be granted, but it’ll be granted in saying, now you must run these laps. Now you must do these drills. Now you must study these plays. Now you must memorize these things and practice these plays. Make Me a Great Player had a cost to it. It’s on a totally different level for us to understand. When Jesus said, Father, forgive them, there was a cost to his request. And Jesus asked for something fully knowing there was a cost.

    There was the three hours on the cross in full reception of the curse of the law. Jesus asked for your forgiveness and was prepared to pay the cost of his request with himself becoming a propitiation, as we were told elsewhere in scripture, the object, a substitute for the wrath against sin that God had. In other words, Jesus on the cross was enduring the fires of hell for three hours. He suffered more than any sinner had known.

    Not because of the nails, not because of the shame, but because to pay the price of sin is to receive the wages of sin. And the wages of sin is hell, what we call the final death. He did not descend into hell after the cross. That’s not what I’m saying.

    In fact, what he endured there on the cross, in fact was held. After the cross we know from the thief said he would be with him in paradise. Now there are sparse details here on the crucifixion physically because of what was happening in a different realm. of what he was experiencing there. Isn’t it fascinating that Luke, the physician, doesn’t have all of these gory details about what happened on the cross.

    In fact, he describes the physical part in just three words. They crucified him. That’s really it. You don’t get a description of what’s happening with the nails. You don’t get a description of what’s happening with his suffocating. None of that is on display there, although we sometimes focus on those things. No, because there’s something different that’s happening here. The suffering is different. It’s not mere physical. We are told in 1 John 2.

    Christ was a propitiation for our sins. We’re told in 2 Corinthians 5 that Christ became sin on our behalf. It’s described by hearing the words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In other words, the sufferings of Christ cannot be displayed on a picture. They cannot be displayed on the big screen because the cross was the location, but not the cause of the greatest suffering of Christ, our substitute.

    That is what is so amazing. is the fact that this suffering occurs in between two calls to his father. That’s what’s amazing about verse 46. When we think of Jesus enduring the wrath of God for our sins, we’re tempted, as some theologians have today, to charge divine child abuse. It’s been a popular charge in recent years. And it’s completely destroyed by what we see here in Luke. It’s completely destroyed by this verse. What do we consistently see throughout Scripture? Philippians 2 says that Christ emptied himself. In other words, became a servant is what it is talking about. In other words, he chose to do this. He chose to save us. Jesus was not picked as the best person on the earth, and then this was thrust upon him. No. Instead, he had chosen this.

    In the garden, Jesus picked up the cup, the cup of the wrath of God. of wrath of his own nature as fully God against what had happened in the first Adam. These This is happening in one person, Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man. There’s a deep mystery in the fact that one person ever had been the God-man, and in one person, the price for the enmity between God and man is being paid, and then God and man are being reconciled. It is pictured there in the curtain, torn in two. And these two that were separated now are united in Christ, His person, and after the sacrifice.

    The willingness is what we see here. The love of God mutually between father and son and son and father bound together by the Holy Spirit that begins with father forgive them and ends with father into your hands I commit my spirit. This entire time is happening in love and submission to his father. He begins in the love of his father in a request. a request that has a cost, and he ends this time of suffering, calling out to his Father one more time. What does that tell us? It tells us the entire time Christ was in control. He freely chose to pay for our sins on the cross. He freely chose to pay for the requests. Father, forgive them.

    Jesus commits his soul to the Father, and then the text actually puts it, as he breathed his last, using active verbs. showing us Christ was in control even when he departed. It was enough. He laid down his life just as John 10 had said when he said, I have authority to lay down my life and I have authority to pick it back up again. The language that Jesus uses here when he says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, you probably have heard at modern committal services. The statement at the graveside is not a prayer for the dead or a meritorious offering for the dead. It is a confession.

    We trust our Heavenly Father. That is what Jesus did the entire time on the cross. He trusted His Heavenly Father even during and after the suffering of the cross. He believed His Father was good. His Father was in control and worthy of that trust. That is how the righteous one suffered. What a model that is for us. After the greatest suffering that you could imagine, even in our hour of death, He is still worthy of our trust. He is still good. He is still sovereign. Christ begins and ends His time on the cross in conversation with His Father.

    May the same be said for us, because how often we don’t, right? When we go through times of suffering, how often we are found avoiding prayer. How often we are found avoiding God’s people and worship. How often we’re avoiding reading scripture, being in conversation with our Father.

    But Jesus began His suffering and ended it with the name Father on His lips. He is, in a sense, the perfection of Job’s suffering. Job suffered well, but not perfectly. But Christ suffered perfectly. Job is commended for his suffering, though. And I don’t know if you ever struggled with that. How is Job speaking rightly when many times Job is saying things where he’s questioning God. He’s saying, what is going on here? I don’t feel that I deserve this. Answer me. Give me an answer.

    But the one thing that you’ll find of Job, over and against his friends is this. His friends talk to Job and his friends talk about God, but Job is the only one who will be found addressing God. talking to God. He doesn’t just complain about God to his friends, he laments to God. Job directs his speech multiple times to God.

    And Jesus does this perfectly in his suffering, in conversation with his father, lamenting his feelings of being abandoned, directing his pains and requests to his father who heard him. Imagine seeing that, witnessing this display of the righteous one who suffered and how he suffered. Because that is what we’re told. In the midst of that suffering, who was watching? A Roman soldier. Not any Roman soldier. Not just somebody who happened to be there. A centurion. A commander of about a hundred men. at that time. And he was in charge of this execution.

    Do you know what that tells us? To become in charge of something, typically, you have to have done it and been under somebody else’s command for a while to work your way up to being in charge. In other words, he had seen this done before. Romans did executions a lot It was, of course, a hundred years earlier that the only time you really get a mention, anytime it kind of makes a blip on our history books, is when the Romans executed 6,000 slaves at one time. That’s when it made a blip on our radar. But what that tells us is it was fairly commonplace, except for there was a big number at that time. So what does that mean?

    There was a trickle all the time of people who were being executed, people who were on the cross. And this centurion had been there. He’d been in charge of many of them. He’d seen them year after year. He was an expert in their effective ends. But when he saw Jesus suffered, he said, this man was innocent. Indeed he was. He was the only innocent man who was completely innocent who ever suffered.

    In fact, we’re told in Matthew, he records one other sentence this centurion uttered. In Matthew 27, 54, it says, when the centurion and those who were with him, seeing, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the son of God. Truly, this was a son who was calling out the whole time to his father. He suffered and entrusted himself even in death to his father.

    He fell asleep in the arms of his father. That’s how we speak of death. That’s how we talk about the sting being gone. Even Paul will use this language of many have fallen asleep. It’s almost the image of one of my favorite things about having small children is how they fall asleep in the car when you’re driving somewhere. And sometimes when you get home, you go to your children that have fallen asleep, and you pick them up still asleep, and you take them and carry them into the home, into their room, lay them down for them to keep sleeping. That I think is perhaps one of the best pictures we have of when a believer passes away. The father comes, picks them up in his arms, takes them to the room that their elder brother Jesus has prepared for them.

    The centurion couldn’t help but notice the suffering of this man was unique. It was unique in that he suffered as a propitiation and how he was suffering was unique. It was a holy suffering. It was a suffering with grace to those even that were causing it. Holy suffering can be amazing testimony to an unbelieving world.

    Think of the story of Johnny Erickson Tada. You probably have heard her story before of someone who was paralyzed in a diving accident. She’s written many books on faith, on suffering, even given talks about suffering to share her faith in her good father. I was struck by the story of, as many Christians sometimes will like to do, going to Israel and seeing the pool of Bethesda. seeing where somebody was physically healed and hear her tell the story of how she looked there and realized that God had already healed her soul and she trusted him despite the fact that she was not healed of her paralysis.

    It’s enough to make you say, what sort of suffering is this? What sort of reaction is this to being crushed in the world? It is the unique and supernatural suffering of someone that trusts that they are carried in the arms of their father. Surely that is a son or daughter of God.

    Everyone watching this, then we are given this reaction in verse 48. And this is all the crowds that assembled for this spectacle, when they had saw what had taken place, returned home, beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.” If you read through the entire Gospel of Luke, the last time that you see somebody beating their chest, do you know when that is? back in the story of the tax collector and the Pharisee. The tax collector was beating his breast, saying, have mercy on me, a sinner.

    It was a sign in that time of repentance and of confession and of sorrow. And this was a common, this seemed to be a common reaction, that the man who had breathed his last here did not deserve what he received. This was a mourning by those who were realizing something. This is a morning to show that they’ve come to mock. They participated in this, and now they’re realizing exactly what had happened. I find it interesting, too, that in the text it mentions the women. In the end, there are the women watching these things, as most of the disciples are cowering in their hiding places. How brave Peter said that he was. Now, where is he?

    No, it’ll be women like Joanna and the Marys at the tomb. Magdalene, Coppice, and Salome. The women will be standing there ready to pick up the pieces, to do the work after everyone goes home, the collecting of the body. In fact, these were the coroners, watching and waiting until everything was done. And as the passage ends, there’s a sense of finality. He breathed his last. The people went home. The coroners are there. He is really and truly dead. These are the women that are there when the man ran away.

    It almost looks like the modern American church, doesn’t it? When you see the numbers, it’s something like 60-40 of women in the church or 70-30 today. It seems the case there with only John being told to be present there. And even though these women are there, they don’t seem to fully get it. They think this is the end. They think that they are just as surprised as anyone on Sunday morning.

    In fact, that there is another chapter to the life of Christ after chapter 23 and 24 that is going to tell the resurrection of Christ. When you look at this passage, it almost seems something of a downer to end at verse 49, but there’s so much to glean from this passage. I’d just like to conclude with three things that I think we should take away from this passage. Three things that we should take away first. what we see here in the trust in the Father, even as Christ is going through the pains that are likened to hell.

    There’s an old saying that’s attributed to Winston Churchill. He probably didn’t say it, but it’s a good saying still. The saying was, if you find yourself going through hell, keep going. There’s a sense in which when we find ourselves suffering, we don’t stop. We don’t wallow in it. Instead, when we find ourselves suffering in our lives, we keep calling out to our father.

    Christ began and ended his suffering with the father’s name on his lips. Isn’t it appropriate that when the disciples said, teach us to pray, teach us how it is that we are to speak to God in the midst of this suffering world, what were the first words out of his mouth? He says, pray like this, our father. We, our children, and our fathers know more than us. Like when they take us to doctors to get shots, when we have to practice and then to show up for soccer games, to trust in God as our father is to trust him, even lacking all the information, trusting his goodness and knowing that he is looking out for our good too, even in the midst of our suffering. The first thing we learn from this is to trust our father in between the beginning and end of suffering.

    Secondly, something we should take away from this passage is to glean the innocent suffering of Christ as a witness to the world. Grace in suffering is one of the most powerful witnesses to the gospel that the church provides the world. Think about it. It was this innocent, this graceful suffering that the thief on the cross saw, that the centurion saw. Though they were pagans, they came to embrace the work of the suffering one because it was supernatural. in its origin. We learn here that grace and suffering is a powerful witness to the world. And thirdly, we see the proper response to the cross is to see our part in it.

    The centurion realized he had killed an innocent man. The people who came for spectacle and mocking, and they came because they’d cried out, crucified, realized their part in the guilt And so they were beating their chests. They repented. They saw what they had done. When the apostles in the book of Acts will start preaching the good news, it begins with this Christ, you killed him. Repentance, confession of sin has to be the first step in the message of the cross.

    Not everyone there literally had pounded the nails. But the only reason that Christ was on the cross was because of their varied and diverse sins. They may not have literally been Herod, who had just looked to Christ for entertainment when he got bored with him and sent him away, but they were like him in their sins. They may not have literally been like the Sanhedrin in their self-righteousness, but they had self-righteousness of their own. They were literally Pilate, all of them, saying that they were innocent while they were guilty, but they had done so up till that point.

    It makes us ask the question, have we seen our parts in why Christ had to go to the cross? Is your sin so bad in your theology that it would take the second person of the Trinity paying for them in order for you to be right with God? Do we see it as that bad when we cry out, have mercy on me, sinner? Only if you were there as a guilty one whose sin put Christ on the cross will you be there on Sunday. when Christ rose in resurrection. As Romans 6, 5 says, for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a resurrection like his. But to be united to his death requires, as 1 Peter 2, 24 says, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. Makes us ask the question, were we there like the centurion realizing his innocence and our guilt? Were you there like the people beating their chest, confessing that their sin had put him there. And were you there to sing praise to the one who purposely and willingly laid down his life and had the power to pick it back up again, as well as our lives, as well as a result.

    Let us pray. Father, in seeing the suffering of Christ, Lord, may we take him both as an example of how to suffer well, but also confess that his suffering was unique, that his suffering is what our sins deserved and he took our place. Lord, grant us faith. Grant us faith to have your name on our lips in the midst of suffering and grant us faith in the one who took our place, who suffered the curse of the law on our behalf. Lord, we pray that as we see how the righteous one suffered, that would cause us to sing, that would cause us to love and to be changed people as a result, that we would go away beating our chests, but then soon to be rejoicing at the risen Lord. And so this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Our final hymn then together would be confessing that in fact, what we witnessed in the death of Christ is him paying all of it. Number 276 in your hymnals.

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  • The Criminal

    The Criminal

    About this sermon

    Jesus was crucified between two criminals, and while one joined the crowd in mocking him, the other rebuked him and confessed that Jesus had done nothing wrong. He asked, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Jesus answered, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The dying thief brought nothing but his need, and Christ received him by grace alone, as he receives every sinner who looks to him.

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    Sermon transcript

    evening we are going to be looking at a passage from Luke chapter 23 verses 32 to 43. Verses 32 to 43. As we look at this passage, we look at an ancient way of execution. And I want to just remind you, when we look at the sufferings of Christ, we’re looking at more than just mere physical suffering.

    Many people suffered the pain of crucifixion. Many felt the nails in their hands and feet. In fact, we are told in history about 100 years before this incident that the Romans executed as many as 6,000 men in a slave rebellion on the road from Capua to Rome so that the entire way along the road you would see one of these men who had been executed on this 120-mile road. I think it’s a little bit ironic that we see the Roman Empire in some ways as the height of civilization, when in fact they had perfected their methods of rule and justice in ways that were anything but civilized.

    They were very scientific in the weaponization of torture. And if anybody wished this sort of torture on you, if someone tried to subject you to it, I wonder how we would respond. Jesus was subjected to all the wrath and the evil that humanity had to offer. And what reaction would come from the one who had power to do something to stop it at any moment? Well, let’s look and find out here in verses 32 to 43. It also asks you to see this incident from the vantage point of one who was near him, the criminal.

    Before we do that, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, open up your word. We ask that your spirit would be present, not only in the reading, but in the hearing and the understanding and the expounding, but also may it not merely stay in these walls, but follow us in our minds and hearts as we go into the world, knowing what it is that is happening on the cross to hear the words of Christ from the cross. and to know what it is that he’s doing there. Know what his job and his work was there. Lord open up your word to us this evening and we pray this in the merciful and powerful name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. Luke chapter 23 beginning in verse 32. Hear now the word of the Lord.

    Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by watching.

    But the ruler scoffed at him, saying, he saved others. Let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him. This is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals were hanged, railed at him. saying, Are you not the Christ?

    Save yourself in us. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. Grass withers and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever. Amen.

    In the first three verses, we’re giving the scene. We see here the three crosses and the three men that are being executed. Two criminals on either side of Jesus. Likely these were Barabbas’s co-conspirators, where they had the same title given to them of a bandit or thief, depending on how you translate the word. But they were given the same word. They were likely all cohorts. Two of them there with the replacement for Barabbas, Jesus of Nazareth.

    And the first three verses of our section communicate this with One other detail, and that is that Jesus is using his limited breath to breathe out a word, a message for those who have murder in their eyes for him. I wonder if you’ve ever seen somebody who has a hostile, violent intent towards you, have murder in their eyes towards you. Have you ever looked at someone desiring your death, or could you even imagine that? Jesus knew this experience with many men before this. The Pharisees had tried to kill him. Sadducees and Roman soldiers and crowds of sinful men now were there at this moment with murder in their eyes towards him.

    Ever look at somebody who hates you, who obviously hates you, who wants to do the maximum amount of damage and harm to you as possible. And what do you say in that moment? What words do you have for such a person? Well, Jesus has some words. He lifts up his head, takes a pained breath to say with a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

    And he belts out, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now, before we look at those who are crucified with Christ, I think we have to pause and reflect on just how bizarre these words were to the ears of those that were there. Jesus’ Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now, they very well lacked the knowledge and understanding that this, in fact, was the Christ, the Son of God.

    They did not, maybe they probably did not know the history of Genesis 3.15 to Malachi 4 to put that together. But in another aspect, they knew exactly what they were doing. And the fact that they knew that they were murdering this man, they fully knew that they were killing him. Those are the people that Jesus looks at and says, Father, forgive them.

    Look at that moment and you realize that that is not a natural response. I wonder how many executions these people had seen before. This was not an uncommon sight in Roman occupied territory. In fact, they liked to publicize their executions, put them on public roads so that everybody saw what happened to a rebel against Roman rule. This scene would have played out over and over again. They probably had seen the full textbook of reactions to this being done to them. Natural terror from the victims. Reactions of rage to the people that were doing this, or just rage at whoever is nearby.

    And in fact, I think that’s mostly what you’re seeing there in the reaction of the mocking criminal in verses 35 to 39. He’s doing this in the context of a crowd that has various verbs that are used for the reactions towards Jesus. In verse 35, we’re told that the rulers scoffed at him. used in 36 is the soldiers mocked him. And in verse 39, one of the criminals joins in and it said, this is a strong word to say that he’s railing at him.

    He is throwing abuse at him. It almost makes you wonder why Jesus, why was he the object of his wrath? Suffering can produce a reaction. people of anger and rage. And Jesus was the closest target. He was the one that was a target of others. And so the focus was off of him, off of his shame and his pain. And so he’s just the nearest person nearby in which to have violence by words.

    Sometimes we hear that saying as a child, sticks and stones break bones, but words will never hurt you. That’s one of the most untrue things I think you ever hear as a child. Words reach where hands cannot. Words are often the sharpest swords that we have. I’ve heard it said that the tongue is a deadly weapon by some, perhaps even in scripture.

    And that is a natural reaction of natural fallen man. And that is one that you observe by those who are in suffering. Many of us can have one of two reactions to getting hurt physically or relationally. I observe it in my children. You know, some will get hurt and they’ll be in tears and in self pity at the hurt. While others will stub a toe or get hurt somehow and they get mad and they want others to know the hurt that they feel and they yell or they hit in their pain.

    And this man on the cross, the first thief, feels pain, and the reaction is to give out what he has been given. It’s a natural reaction to give an eye for an eye here. This criminal has been mocked, and so he will mocked in return. Now, he did not know who he mocked at that point, and yet he still might have mocked if he knew this was God incarnate.

    You see, when we hurt, We often will stab at others around us. And sometimes we stab upward towards God. Sometimes our questions of why are not looking for a response. They’re just interested in stabbing up to God with questions. We think of God sometimes in our pain as a tyrant or sadist or an uncaring monster. And we want to punish God for our pain. So we withhold our prayers and our worship. We declare our doubts with anybody who’s around us, all the while trying to punish God with the deadliest weapon that we have, our words.

    And still, in the midst of scoffing, mocking, and railing, are the words of Jesus, Father, forgive them. And both criminals hear this. But something significant happens to the other criminal. In verses 40 and 41, we have this reaction, which is worth hearing again. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.” In that moment, he makes his confession. We are guilty, and he is not.

    Now, first, something that makes this moment a little bit more dramatic is this detail that we find in Matthew 27, 44. We’re actually told that at one point, both of the thieves on the cross, both of the criminals were mocking Christ. That’s what we’re told in Matthew’s gospel, which means that at some point, this criminal had to turn from mocking Christ to defending and declaring his guilt and the innocence of Christ.

    What caused that change? I don’t think we can necessarily put our finger on it for sure, but think about what he saw. He saw the suffering of the unique one. And when he saw the suffering of his friend, and he saw the suffering of this unique one, he saw a unique sort of suffering. On the one hand, he saw rage from his friend, and that’s natural. In fact, that’s what he felt too. But when he saw Jesus, what did he see? Something supernatural. a unique suffering that under suffering spit out forgiveness rather than rage. Have you ever seen someone suffer with grace? It is a rare sight, I think, even among faithful.

    I don’t know if some of you are readers of history. I was a history major in college and so I love to read biographies and histories. I was struck in reading the book that perhaps many of you have read, Unbroken. This was a story of an Olympic athlete, runner, Louis Zamperini.

    In World War II, he became enlisted in the Air Force, was shot down in the Pacific, and then was a prisoner of war, and was put into a Japanese prisoner of war camp and suffered great torture, things that left him physically affected for the rest of his life.

    And in fact, the main person that was doing this was somebody that gave the nickname The Bird. And in fact, towards the beginning of 1945, he and his fellow prisoners began to circle around and plot. Even if it meant their death, how would they kill this man who had put them to such torture? They were desperate for any opportunity they had to dish out what they had gotten. But they were stopped in their plans by the end of World War II. They went home.

    And Louis Zamperini married. and then sunk into alcoholism, didn’t know how to deal with his pain, with his suffering, with his rage that he still felt until one day his wife forced him, as wives are known to do sometimes with their husbands, forced him to go to hear the gospel.

    He heard the gospel, became a Christian, had a Billy Graham crusade. And then what he did after that was not natural. He decided he was going to go back to Japan. And he was going to seek out the people who had tortured him, the guards that had been responsible for his torture. And he found one, actually, in a war camp that was in there for war crimes. And he went and visited them. And the guards were confused, thinking that perhaps he would come to them to mock the fact that they were in prison and he was free, perhaps to add to their imprisonment or torture.

    But Luis Zamperini visited every soldier he could find to forgive them. so bizarre to them, they’d ask why. And Louis would explain, it’s because that’s exactly what Jesus did to me. Because Jesus was the first here to do that. He forgives his torturers.

    And that is a bizarre sound and image to them. It is supernatural. So when the other thief saw this, a unique suffering, that the sufferer would give grace. It’s after that, that we see the thief rebuke his friend. confess his sins, that we are getting what we deserve, and then say to Jesus, remember me. Grace, especially grace in suffering, can melt hearts. It’s a picture of the gospel whenever you see grace in suffering.

    Now, when the thief said this, when he said, remember me when you enter your kingdom, we can take stabs at what he meant by that. We don’t know the theology of the thief in that moment. In fact, maybe when he said, when you enter your kingdom, he thought some distant future. I believe you have some kingdom, but maybe it’s way out in the future.

    Or maybe he thought that when they were separated, he’s just asking for a fond thought of him. If somebody, one person can have a fond thought of him. Or maybe he thought kind of like the prodigal son. Remember the story of the prodigal son when after he has spent all of his money, he thinks, I’ll go back to my father and I’ll be a servant in his house. I’ll serve him.

    Maybe he thought there’d be some offer of you can work this off. Maybe he thought he’d be in a different place. Maybe he thought he’d be in purgatory to burn off or work off his sins. But the response that Jesus gives to him betrayed his highest hopes.

    It’s beyond that. Because Jesus says, today. Not the distant future. Not after some time in purgatory. No, Jesus says today, because both of them would be off of the earth by the time that the sun set. That was the end of the day. And they’d already passed noon. From noon to three is the suffering of Christ. They’d already passed that point. But Jesus says today, before the sun sets in a sense, I’ll be stabbed in the side. You will have your legs broken.

    We both will be off of this earth and today you will be with me. in paradise. The thief would not get a fond thought of remembrance. He would not be a slave in the fields of the kingdom of heaven. In fact, he would be in paradise with Jesus. And this is such a horrifying thought to some. especially in the unbelieving world. A man who may have been a murderer, undeniably a thief and a rebel, would be promised heaven without any penance. There’s no community work that Jesus says he has to do first, no cleaning up trash on the side of the road, no payments to the families of victims.

    You know, I have in my study an entire shelf that’s just dedicated, that shelf, to the writings of atheists attacking Christianity. You want to know what they’re arguing. You know what’s surprising to me, an argument that comes up so often against Christianity, is the thief on the cross. Christopher Hitchens, the late famous opponent of all things religious, said that he hated above all the idea of forgiveness apart from personal repayment of debt.

    He called it vicarious redemption, we know of it as vicarious atonement. The idea that you could be a sinner for your life and throw your sins onto a substitute, he said, quote, destroys responsibility and morality. Ultimately, the objection is the story of the thief on the cross is not fair or moral. You see, the true carrying out of justice, he said, would be the death of the rebel, the upholding of personal responsibility, and even as Hitchens says, quote, a rejection of loving your enemy. Beyond that, there are some that are horrified by this thought because they think that even while you have forgiveness, that there has to be some sort of repayment, either in another world, in purgatory or something like that.

    But it doesn’t work when Jesus says, today, I will see you in paradise. Not in purgatory, not after some time paying it off, but today I will see you in paradise. You know what? For both of those groups of people, it’s just not fair. And thank God, fairness is justice, and justice calls for a condemnation. You remember the story of Cain and Abel? Do you remember after Cain kills Abel, what God says to him?

    He says, the blood of your brother cries out from the ground. What word do you think that that blood is crying out for? It’s crying out for justice, for his condemnation. Think about Hebrews 12, 24. which is one of my favorite short summaries that’s packed with theological significance in all the Bible, where it says, Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Our deeds call out for our condemnation. The blood of those that we spilled, the ones that the thief probably had killed, called out for his condemnation.

    But there was one bleeding for him And His blood called out for His forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, do not look to the cross if you want to hear cries merely of justice, because when you look at the cross, you will hear one who was on it say, Father, forgive them. Jesus proclaims in loud and gracious words from the cross in that moment, salvation is by no other means than by grace alone, given by the work of Christ alone, received by faith alone.

    There was no baptism for the thief on the cross. The substance of salvation would have to be there without the sign. There was no good deeds from the cross, no tithes or attendants that he could pay for his ticket. There was no love of his neighbor in the actions of feeding the needy or clothing the naked or sheltering the homeless. He had nothing in his hands to give. All the thief had was sin and debt and immorality. The only thing that possibly could have paid his ticket to heaven was Jesus and his work and his words.

    And Christ hung and bled there for the sins of a rebel, of a murderer, of a thief, physically for Barabbas, whose spot he took, and spiritually for the thief next to him. And that’s because Jesus’ suffering was unique, like no other in history. In essence, since he was unique as God and man in one person, but also as you look at the next few verses, in 42 and 43. There is where we had read when he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. When you collect the words that Christ said and thoughts for his mother and her care.

    In the midst of suffering, this also, these words of grace to the thief, were sufferings of Christ, because he was giving grace. To give grace is to suffer. It is to suffer loss. Why don’t more people give grace and act with grace? Because grace is expensive, costly, and often painful to give, because grace suffers loss to give forgives the damage done to let someone have something for free. We need to realize this.

    We love grace because when it’s given to us, grace is literally a gift. We love being given a gift because it’s free to us, but it would be very ignorant to think that the gift given to us did not cost the one who gave that gift a price. This is why gifts are often measured by their cost.

    The cost of giving something to someone may be measured by the cost of how much it took you to give. We were given a quilt for our wedding. And part of the cost of that was the hours that went into it. Often, people will measure the engagement ring that you buy for your betrothed by how many months’ wages it was for the ring. You see, the giver suffers loss in obtaining and giving the gift. Loss of effort. in it, payment to give it, work to give it.

    The gospel is news of both free and costly grace, not costly to us, completely free for us, but costly for the giver. The minute Christ said, Father, forgive them, he knew that he was going to have to pay for his request with his blood. And yet he asked for it fully knowing that Christ suffered loss. loss of comfort, loss of the physical toll on him and loss in spiritual terms, the broken communion with the father when he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Christ suffered the loss of it all, as we’re told in the scriptures, emptied himself by becoming a servant, by taking on human nature in a body, being fully God and yet fully man, losing his comfort in heaven in order to pay for sinful men. was cheap or a cheat.

    It was costly and lawful. It was costly to Christ, for Christ was the lawful federal head to pay that price. But it is true that it wasn’t fair. It’s better than fair. It’s grace, free and clear to a man who couldn’t pay it back in the slightest. And that’s exactly as it’s offered to us. And looking at these two thieves, we have to ask, What is our reaction to the suffering that we encounter in this world? Is it rage against the Creator?

    Or do we hear the One offer a gospel of forgive them and we confess our guilt and confess that our just condemnation would be bearing that penalty and then we see Christ pay for us. If only we would look to the One paying the price, trust His work, trust Christ than today, we could be with him in paradise.

    Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord convict us of the fact that when we look at the cross, we see what we deserve, even as we confess Christ as our substitute. Lord, may we confess not only our guilt, but the grace that is offered to us in Christ is one that is beyond our comprehension. It is supernatural. It is, in fact, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Lord, cause us to have faith to receive and to spread that.

    And Lord, I pray that you would do this to your glory in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. We are going to sing a song before partaking of the Lord’s Supper. number 340 in your hymnals. There is a fountain filled with blood. Draw your attention to the presence of our dying thief within verse 2. But let’s stand as we sing this as our hymn before we partake of communion. Number 340. There is a fountain filled with blood. so There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. ♪ And the year is past when he can find ♪ ♪ Those other guilty stains ♪ ♪ But I can’t wait for you to speak that loud again ♪ ♪ And there am I as child I speak ♪ ♪ Watch all my sins away ♪ was the

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Lost and Found

    Lost and Found

    About this sermon

    Tax collectors and sinners drew near to Jesus, and the Pharisees grumbled that he received sinners and ate with them. Jesus answered with the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, in which the owner searches until he finds what was lost and calls others to rejoice. Heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents, and the church shares the Good Shepherd’s heart as it proclaims the gospel to all people.

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    Sermon transcript

    This evening we are going to be in the gospel according to Luke chapter 15 We will be looking at verses 1 through 10 To remind you this comes after a section in which Jesus has been teaching about many things including hospitality he has received hospitality and he is also teaching about God’s hospitality and And he’s going to tell a story here.

    Now he’s going to tell a story that involves somebody that has a profession that today we perhaps have a romanticized view of. But if someone were to tell you a story that involved, say, a pig farmer. I grew up on a pig farm, so I can say that. Or a sewer worker. Perhaps we would think of something that is not a profession we would necessarily want to associate with, have, or perhaps even have in social polite society. Well, that was the context for this parable he tells of a shepherd. But the Pharisees, we’ll see in the beginning of this passage, are starting to grumble about Jesus’ teaching about hospitality. And so to illustrate good hospitality, he uses somebody that they would never associate with.

    And let’s look at this passage to see just what Jesus is teaching us, what our Lord is teaching us in this section. But first, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for the day that you’ve given to us. We thank you for the Lord’s day and time to rest in the work of Christ. We pray that this word that has been inspired by your Holy Spirit would also have the Spirit accompanying it this evening as it is read and expounded may The Spirit who superintended these words also write them on our hearts, that we might love them and walk in them by His power. And so, Lord, we pray that you would illuminate this text for us this evening in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Luke chapter 15, beginning in verse 1, we will read until verse 10.

    Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. So he told them this parable. What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost? until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.

    Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I have lost. Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God. over one sinner who repents.

    The grass may wither and the flower may fade, but this the word of our Lord endures forever.” I want us to look at this passage this evening in three different parts and what it is that Jesus is teaching us about his attitude towards the lost and what we should learn about that from his teaching. So we’re going to look at this in three parts beginning with the first two verses and I think what frames these first two verses is I was delighted to discover that your version of the Trinity Hymnal has the hymn in it, There Were Ninety and Nine. That hymn begins this way.

    It says, There were ninety and nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold, but one was out on the hills away, far off from the gates of gold, away on the mountains wild and bare, away from the tender shepherd’s care. What is our attitude towards the lost and the wandering sheath? That is really the question if you are reading through Luke that occupies all of chapter 15. What is the attitude? that God has and also that we should have towards the lost.

    This chapter begins with the Pharisees grumbling about Jesus and his actions that Jesus talks to, receives, associates, even eats with sinners. Eats with sinners is the phrase that was used there. It means Jesus was not only willing to receive hospitality from the Pharisees. He did that in chapter 14. But he would be willing to receive hospitality from people like Levi, the tax collector, from sinners, from people they would not associate with. You see, table fellowship, who you would eat with, was a big deal in those days. And many of the Pharisees based this off of their understanding of the Old Testament.

    If you look at Daniel, they would look at a story such as Daniel in Chapter 1, and the fact that they would not eat from the king’s table, and they took that as a principle that you should not eat with anyone that is not in their status, whether they are Jews or not to eat with Gentiles.

    In fact, they would expand that to say you shouldn’t even eat with anybody that can’t go into the inner courts of the temple, the lame or disabled or diseased. Now, If you read Daniel 1, what in reality is happening there is not a disassociation that they would never have table fellowship with a sinner. What’s happening there is also not some sort of a special diet that you can try to. What is happening there is likely what was on the table were things that were forbidden for them to eat in their dietary standards that they were given. It would be a violation of the Mosaic Covenant, so they didn’t eat those things.

    But the Pharisees took that as a principle that you should not eat with anybody that wouldn’t be included in the inner courts of the temple. Now, neglected, of course, by the Pharisees might have been another story that you can find in the Old Testament.

    If we remember from 2 Samuel 9, where David receives who at his table? Someone from the house of Saul, Mephibosheth. He receives him, even though, if you remember, he was lame. He was disabled. Perhaps he could not come into the inner courts of the temple, but he was welcome at the king’s table. In fact, that’s why he invited him. He wanted to find somebody to show grace and kindness to that wasn’t in his house, but in Saul’s house. So maybe the Pharisees didn’t have that text in their Bible, but we can never know. Jesus knows that they’re grumbling about this though. They’re grumbling about who he would share a table with, who he would socialize with.

    Not just any sinners, but notorious sinners, those who were known for being women of the night, and even worse, IRS agents. Tax collectors, right? I knew a man in a PCA church once that he loved to joke around that when he introduced himself and you asked what he did, he said, well, sometimes if what he really did was he was an IRS agent, but if he didn’t want to be thought badly of in polite society, he would tell them he was a drug dealer. Well, today, that’s something of a joke, but in that day, tax collectors were known to be thieves, right? You really did not want to associate with them, not just because you didn’t like paying taxes, but because you know they stole from you.

    And the attitude of the Pharisees is, that is a class of people we want nothing to do with. We don’t want to talk to them. We want them far off, right? We don’t want them in our synagogues. We don’t want them in our temple. We don’t want them in our house at our table.

    In fact, there was a way of speaking of those who were in and those who were out in those days that you see in scripture, in Ezekiel 22 or in Acts 2, where they would identify those who were near and those who were far off. It was a way of speaking. Peter even uses it, that the promises for those who are near And those who are far off were those that are in the house of Israel, but also those that are Gentiles outside. But the Pharisees turned this into a literal principle that they would do.

    They were far off and they want to keep them there. It reminds me of that line from The Fiddler on the Roof, right? When they asked the rabbi if he has a blessing for the Tsar, and he says, yes, may the Lord bless and keep the Tsar far away from us. He wants them far away. But what does that attitude do? The attitude basically says, we want them far away, we want them cursed, and we want them to stay that way. They want them to stay far off. That’s what the Pharisees did by their actions. Bless and keep them far away from us. Now let me be clear.

    The difference here with Jesus is that he ate with sinners, but he did not sin with sinners. Jesus was in the presence of those who stole, tax collectors, those who acted immorally, those who had bad reputations, but Jesus never stole or acted in those immoral ways. As Jesus was said to have in Luke 7, Jesus drank wine, but he was never drunk with the drunkards. Jesus ate with sinners, but he never sinned with sinners.

    And we need to keep that straight. That’s what’s happening here. He is in table fellowship, he is eating with, he’s receiving hospitality with people, but he is not joining in to their lifestyle. And if you look at the last few verses of chapter 14, that was important to understand. Salt should not lose its saltiness, right? Jesus came to justify sinners, not to justify sin. Here’s the real contrast. Not that Jesus joined in with sinners, but that he did not reject the lost as others did. He did not keep them far away from himself. He was distinct and yet was around them.

    In some ways, Luke 15 continues the teaching on hospitality that Jesus began in Luke 14. The Christian life involves this hospitality for evangelism. It is the means that Jesus often is using to reach the lost. And it’s often the thing that we neglect the most, isn’t it? Hospitality in our culture is something that has fallen by the wayside. How often do we have someone at our dinner table that’s not our immediate family, and if not our immediate family, somebody that is lost, that is coming in and observing our Christian home, that is hearing us pray, that is involved in our conversation, that at some point will lead to conversations about the things of God. Not so that they can invite us into their lifestyle, but so that we can invite them to commune with Christ.

    And so the parable that Jesus tells here in verses three to seven is a second section we’ll look at. This is a parable about seeking the lost. You see, Jesus is in the business not of rejecting or keeping the lost far away, but seeking them. If you look at those verses, it brings to mind another verse from there were 99 that reads this.

    Lord, thou hast here thy ninety and nine. Are they not enough for thee? But the shepherd made answer, this of mine has wandered away from me. And although the road be rough and steep, I go to the desert to find my sheep.” He has a story about a parable of the shepherd leaving the 99 to seek the lost sheep. And why would he do that? There’s a question that seems to be there. Why would you leave the good 99 there and leave and go seek the one that has wandered off?

    Because there’s a difference here in the Pharisees’ attitude towards the lost, which is rejection, shunning them completely, and Jesus’ attitude towards the lost, which is pursuit. Not to follow them, but to lead them home. Not to just love them where they are, but to lead them to where he is so that where he is, they may be also.

    And the image of sheep here is important. Sheep are, you probably know, creatures that are stubborn, creatures of habit. Some call them dumb, but let’s just call them slow learners. I’ve been reading a little bit about shepherds and their take on Psalm 23, and the one thing that I see coming up so many different times is sheep have one-track minds. They see grass, they like grass, and they go to grass. That’s really the thought process of a sheep.

    The fact that the grass might be on the side of a cliff doesn’t deter them. The fact that it’s on the other side of the fence, not in the shepherd’s pasture, that doesn’t deter them either. They just say, hey, there’s some grass. I like grass. Why don’t I go eat that grass?

    And you know that’s a pretty good description of how the human heart often works, right? There’s some pleasure over there. I like pleasure. I’m going to pursue that. Even though it might be on the cliff of a slavery to lust. Even if it might be in the thorns of addiction. The human heart is desperately evil and wants to go after the things that it wants to go after.

    Our heart often is not much smarter than a sheep. Even if those things are not in the shepherd’s pasture, we go in and go after them. Never thinking, you know, maybe there’s a purpose for the shepherd keeping us here. Maybe there’s a purpose in the shepherd’s fence.

    The next verse of there were 99 says, but none of the ransom ever knew how deep were the waters crossed. How dark was the night that the Lord passed through, ere he found his sheep that was lost. Out in the desert, he heard its cry to sick and helpless and ready to die. The hymn kind of reads a little bit between the lines of what’s going on in the story.

    What we hear from scripture is that there were 99 in the open country. And he was to go after the one that is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, what was read into when he has found it there, right? When he has found it, what does he do? He lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, rejoice with me. I found my sheep.

    We are given the picture though, that the station of the sheep was desperate. left to its own devices, it was not going to find the pasture again. And there’s a sense in which the Pharisees say, let him die. That’s what they say to the lost when they don’t go after them, when they don’t pursue them, when they don’t want them anywhere near their group. Look at the difference in reaction than between the Pharisees who sneer at sinners that are in their presence versus the shepherd’s response of joy in finding that sheep or the woman’s response of joy when she finds the coin. There’s an attitude there, especially see that in the last section that goes along with this parable of joy in finding the lost.

    If you look at 8 to 10 there, the story of the woman Having 10 silver coins, she loses one, and she desperately looks for that coin, doesn’t she? Now, I don’t know what the value of these coins were. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of dropping a penny, looking down and saying, I don’t know if that’s even worth bending over to pick up. But all she has here are these 10 silver coins. This might have been her dowry. This was a tenth of what she had. And if you had 10 $100 bills and you lost one, you’re probably going to go looking for that $100 bill, aren’t you?

    And when she finds it, there’s communicated here such joy in finding it, such relief, that what happens? She calls her friends and neighbors over. The Greek here is the cases in feminine. So this is as if she’s calling all of her girlfriends over for a girls’ night in party that I have found the coin that I lost. She has to celebrate.

    And we’re told there in verse 10, just so I tell you that there is more, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. There’s gladness. There is joy. Rejoice. He has found his sheep. Rejoice. He has found the one who was lost. There is a party in a sense in heaven.

    When the lost come through the door of the church, when the lost confesses their sin, When the lost come into the fold by baptism and by confession of faith, there is a party among the heavenly host. I wonder what their melody is, what their joy is like in those moments. And often that would shame us in our response when we see the lost come to faith. Do we have a joy about that? Do we long to see it to the point of where the lost is found? We want to throw a celebration for it. What is our reaction to the lost and their being found? Our reaction, I think, is determined by who it is that we think we are in this story.

    Because in verse seven, it said something much the same as verse 10, but what did it say? It said, just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous person who need no repentance. struggle with that verse a little bit.

    I do. Are there 99 people on this entire earth right now that don’t need repentance? Jesus has a way of speaking here. He’s done this before back in Luke 5 verses 31 to 32. He said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. What was he saying there? Well, the rest of Scripture can give us a clue.

    Romans 3.10 says what? There is none righteous, no, not one. Also, Isaiah 53 6 says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. Now, if we’re looking at those words, none and all in those verses, they have very expansive meanings saying that there’s a group of those who are righteous and it includes none.

    That word none means zero. It’s a null set. None. It’s actually not a hard word, right? Sometimes linguistics is hard, this time it’s easy. There is none righteous. When it says, all we like sheep have gone astray, you know what that word all means there? It could mean something different in different contexts, but there it actually means inclusive of every single person, everyone, all.

    So let me ask, are there 99 righteous persons in Jesus’ time or now that do not need to repent? Well, the answer is there’s many more than that that think. that they have no need of repentance. Think that they have no need of a shepherd going out to find them. Jesus has this way of communicating over and over again.

    You think that you’re well, but you’re not. You think that you are righteous, but you are sinners. And if you want me to stop hanging out with sinners, in a sense, he could say, then stop inviting me over to your house. You are the sinners. That is why I’m there at your table, Pharisees, because I’m evangelizing you. That’s why I’m here in the houses of sinners.

    But in a very real sense, the tax collectors, those that were notorious sinners of the day, women of the night, they had an advantage over the Pharisees. What was their advantage? I was just talking at a General Assembly with somebody who was doing prison ministry. And in the work of his prison ministry, he said something that I thought was very telling. He says, often those in prison are better off than us because they often know their guilt while all of us out here think that we are innocent. I think the same thing was going on with the tax collectors and the sinners versus the Pharisees.

    And we have to ask ourselves that in application of this as we read these stories and say, who are we in these parables? Are you a sinner? Now, I’m not talking about your Forensic status as we call it. I’m not talking about in the in the doctrine of justification Of course, if you have faith in Christ, you were declared righteous in before God in the court of heaven But throughout our lives, we still compositionally, constitutionally, what are we?

    We still sin. If you have breath in your lungs, you are still somebody who is prone to sin. You still have indwelling sin. When Luther said that we are both saints and sinners, he meant we are saints in declaration. We are sinners in our constitution. So are you a sinner constitutionally, compositionally? Do you still sin? If the answer to that is yes, can you confess that? More than confessing that, do we believe that? And do we have the humility that comes with understanding that we are a sinner in need of a Savior?

    I heard a story about a visiting preacher visiting a pulpit in Scotland. And after the sermon, the parish minister commented to him that it was a fine sermon, but it was misdirected. When the visiting minister asked what he meant by that, he said, well, that sermon was a gospel sinner. And when he further inquired, well, what was wrong with that? He says, well, gospel sermons are for sinners, implying that’s not what we have here in our congregation. And the visiting minister commented that that was such an unfortunate response, because we all still have need of hearing the good news that there’s forgiveness for sinners.

    You see, when we talk about Jesus as our Savior, as our Good Shepherd, this wasn’t one thing He did once in saving us. It’s not something that was just in our past. It’s something that’s also in our present. He is presently saving us from the power of sin. Not only from the guilt of sin in the past, but from the power of sin now. He will save us from the presence of sin in the future. We still need a Savior and a Good Shepherd that seeks lost sheep.

    You know what the key is to understanding this parable of the 99 and the 1? Here’s the key to it. There really are no 99 that need no repentance. There’s only the lost sheep. And if you think that you’re the 99, then you’re going to be grumbling about the gospel and Jesus seeking the lost sheep, not realizing that you at one point had to be that lost sheep that Jesus went after. You have to answer the question, do we, do we need a savior? Not only from our past guilt of sin, but from our present struggling with sin and from the future to have a, an absence of the presence of sin. Because when you understand that, then you understand verse seven and verse 10, the joy in heaven over one who repents. Until you see that you are the lost sheep there, you’ll never know the joy that comes in seeing a lost person be found by the Good Shepherd.

    What is your attitude towards the lost? Does it resemble the Pharisees who think that they do not need a Savior? Do you dare not have such a one as that in your conversations with them or even at your table in your home? Do you have an attitude towards rejecting the lost? Do you have a Christian home, not to be sheltered from the lost, but to invite the lost in to be found? Do you have a church not to retreat from and condemn the world, but to invite them into the fold of the sheep pen? How do you react to the lost?

    In reading through the section, we can either have a reaction like the Pharisees, who didn’t want any association with them, or one that was like Jesus. that did not find the lost, those that we should join in with, but also didn’t see them as those that were unneeding of the gospel, those that we should go after, those that we have been the objects of Christ pursuing us.

    Just as we sang earlier, Jesus sought me when a stranger, what? Wandering from the fold of God. If we can sing that song, then we can have more of an attitude towards the lost. that Jesus communicates here as well. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that when we were wandering, that we, the sheep, had gone astray, that you came after us. That you pursued us. That when we were a stranger wandering from the fold of God, you pursued us.

    Lord, have us have a different attitude towards those that need to hear the gospel. Lord, may we see your work as that which goes and proclaims it to all people, to proclaim the gospel as the Belgic Confession says, promiscuously to all people, that they may hear, that they may be pursued by the Good Shepherd. Lord, we pray that you would give us this attitude and this mind of Christ through the work of your Holy Spirit. And so we pray this all in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. We’re going to then sing from the hymn that I probably quoted too much, 137. I love this hymn so much and I’m so glad that you have it in your hymnal. We don’t in our church. So would we sing this as our closing hymn?

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Holy Hospitality

    Holy Hospitality

    About this sermon

    At a Pharisee’s dinner Jesus taught the guests to take the lowest place and taught the host to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, who cannot repay. In the parable of the great banquet those first invited made excuses, and the master filled his house with the poor and outcasts. Biblical hospitality is received with humility and given as an act of grace, mirroring God’s invitation to sinners to the wedding feast of the Lamb.

    More sermons from Luke · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    You may be seated, please. It’s a good choice. That’s one of my favorites too. I’m going to invite you in just a moment to turn to Luke chapter 14. We are going to be reading from Luke chapter 14 starting in verse 7 all the way through verse 24. Our subject tonight is a topic that perhaps is not as in vogue to talk about today and is actually something that I think has probably fallen out of practice in many of our Christian homes, and yet is something that is essential to our faith, something that’s essential to our Christian life, something I might even say is essential to the survival of the church in America today, and that is the topic of hospitality. We’re going to look here at a large section. I’m not going to get to the depths of everything that is here that would take about three or four sermons. However, I would like to highlight some things that Jesus is going to tell us.

    Our Lord is going to instruct us about the practice of hospitality, but first let’s go to Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we come before you this morning or this evening. And we, we confess that this is your word, that your Holy spirit inspired it to be written down, superintended the words and Lord this morning, we are unable to understand. and unable to apply it without the work of the Holy Spirit as well. So we pray that the Spirit would be giving us illumination of this text, giving us strength in order to apply it and be present in the midst of its reading and proclamation this evening. And this we pray in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

    Luke chapter 14, just to summarize verses one through six, we see that Jesus is in the house of a Pharisee on the Lord’s day, enjoying hospitality. And the question has come up about what it is that you do on the Lord’s day. How do you spend your Lord’s day? What is your time devoted to? And Jesus has taught again, that it is for works of mercy. It is for works of healing. And that is what he has done in the first section here, but he goes on to say this, starting in verse seven. Hear now the word of the Lord.

    Now he told the parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him.

    And he who invited you both will come and say to you, give your place to this person. And then you will begin with shame to take the lower place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher. Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted.

    He said also to the man who had invited him, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do you invite your friends or your brothers or do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you must be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

    When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat the bread in the kingdom of God. But he said to him, a man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who have been invited, come for everything is now ready.

    But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. Another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

    So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry. and said to his servant, go quickly, go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. And the servant said, sir, what you have commanded has been done and still there is room. And the master said to the servant, go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”

    Grass withers and flower fades. This, the word of our Lord, endures forever. Jesus, here in this passage on the Lord’s Day, is enjoying hospitality in the house of a Pharisee, perhaps showing that we don’t merely accept the invitations to hospitality from those that are the ones that we want to spend the most time with and that we like and are most like us.

    Jesus is there in the home, probably between services, between morning worship and evening worship. This is in fact, if you ever read about daily life in Puritan New England, I recently was reading that, and they actually had this as a practice that after morning worship, often beginning around 9am and then ending around lunchtime, they would have houses that would open, the local public house would open and and people would take their picnic lunches in there and they would eat especially if they come out of town or they would go into people’s homes and those in the community would host the ones that are the farmers out in the fields and from lunch onward until evening worship would be a time of open hospitality in everyone’s home. There was of course nothing that was open, no work to attend to, no children’s games to attend, no events No concerts to go to. They gave themselves entirely in that time to discussion of what they had heard in the morning worship. and to other conversation, what they’ve been praying for them about, or other things, other readings of scriptures. And Jesus finds himself in probably a very similar situation in ancient Judea. After the morning worship, he would be in someone’s home that had invited him for hospitality, invite him in.

    And this is how Jesus would spend a part of his Lord’s day receiving But he has some comments on those that are giving hospitality, on how it is that one ought to give hospitality. So in looking at biblical hospitality here, we have three things here to learn and then to apply. And the first thing that we learn in verses 7 to 11 is how we should receive hospitality. And the dominant word here in receiving hospitality is it’s to be received in humility. It is to be received in humility. And this was not how hospitality was received in this day.

    Everybody was very concerned about being honored, being recognized when they walked into the door and when the seats were given out. In fact, this probably was one of the main reasons Jesus was asked in was that he was considered somebody that was notable. And you would see everybody else was jockeying for a position when they were invited in. There was a sense of entitlement. In the midst of hospitality, you were entitled to this. You were entitled to all of this focus. The invitation to hospitality was all about me.

    And Jesus instructs instead to receive hospitality with humility. The whole discussion about not taking the highest place is to display that if you accept hospitality with pride, You may find yourself humiliated. If you exalt yourself, you will be humiliated in the midst of that.

    You will perhaps, you almost have the image of going into a wedding feast and somebody starts to sit at the family table and they’re going, they’re had to be told, no, this is for the family and distinguished guests. You have to go down there. Don’t assume that the place of honor is always for you. Why? Well, hospitality is always to be seen as an act of grace. It’s an act of grace, and so when you receive it, you’re not entitled to it, or else it’s not a grace.

    In fact, we may actually have some struggles with this with ourself. I don’t know your attitude when you go to a cookout, a party, some other sort of gathering. I’ve known some, in fact, struggled with myself with this passage in terms of stewing over people not fussing about me, right? They’re not coming up to me and talking to me. They’re not being hospitable enough. I’ve received the invitation, but they’re not talking to me enough. Is this an attitude that you have, or do you seek out others? Do you actively engage? in that social situation? Or is it just to see who the important people are and just talk to them and leave out everybody else? And that can be hard. I know with myself, I have some introverted tendencies. I don’t know about you, but often in that situation, my pride may not have me seek out the important people, but to go off in the corner by myself and hope that nobody talks to me.

    I used to actually be known for taking books to gatherings. I’d be invited to a cookout when I was in college and I would take a book with me because I preferred to spend that time with myself. That was my pride. Now today, everybody has their phone and they’re tempted to do that too, right? Just to spend time with me. And the whole event is just about whether or not I’m being entertained. It’s not received as an act of grace and received in humility. And Jesus was noticing that in his day. And it is a problem also in our day.

    How do you receive hospitality? And that’s going to be important for the image of hospitality that we see later and what that says about how we understand grace. So the first point that’s to be made here is that hospitality is to be received in humility and gratitude. And this is also because of the second point that he’s going to make, not merely in receiving hospitality, but what is biblical hospitality when it is given?

    And he states here, starting in verse 12, that it’s to be given, not merely to who you know, your family, your friends, but it’s to be given to the needy. Biblical hospitality is a hospitality that should be given to the needy. And then you see there, he gives that in a didactical form, very quick, very simple to understand.

    And then somebody blurts out in verse 15, right? Blessed be the one who eats and drinks, who eats bread in the kingdom of heaven. It’s interesting trying to interpret what was this guy saying here? Was he agreeing with Jesus? Was he being sarcastic about the people that were enjoying that feast that it’s not people he’d want to be around? Was he trying to change the subject because Jesus had started talking about this and it had become very awkward? All sorts of thoughts are put there. But what you see is Jesus doesn’t stop in this teaching. He doesn’t change the subject. He actually illustrates it with a parable. What he says didactically in 12 to 14, he now will illustrate with a parable.

    The parable is this twofold invitation and that day you would invite people and say there’s going to be this feast coming up Set aside some time and then once the feast was ready after everything had been prepared you’d send out the second invitation It’s ready now. You’re able to come and so these people had probably pre-invitation pre-approved, pre-said that they were going to come, RSVP’d, but then when the second invitation comes, it’s ready, everybody has an excuse, right? And it all has the same form, if you notice it. There’s three excuses, but they all have the same form.

    It is this. I have done this, so now I am obligated to this, and therefore I cannot come. Whether that’s inspecting a field, or the oxen, or I have been married. I have done this. I’ve gotten married. Therefore, I have these other obligations. I cannot come. And what is this really saying? I have something better to do. To this banquet that has come, and they said, yes, I will set aside this time for this. But when the time comes, everybody responds with these excuses.

    And so then the host of the banquet sends out a new set of invitations to the needy. Those who will not respond, I have something better to do, but who would jump at the chance to go to a banquet. Those that are not typically invited, the lame, often based on Leviticus, people would not merely not have them in a certain temple court, but not have them in their homes. But he is inviting the lame to this banquet, the poor, the homeless.

    I think of Mephiboseth, I can never pronounce that name right. But David goes and tries to find someone to show kindness to in the house of Saul. You remember this? And who does he find? He finds somebody that was lame to come and invite to his table that could not repay him in order for him to show hospitality to him. And it really reminds me of that scene in 2 Samuel. And this rich man in this parable though, when he has this banquet, what is he going to do? Well, at these sorts of banquets, the rich man would then come and sit at the banquet with everybody on the level playing field of the table of the banquet, which I think is notable here because this was not a soup kitchen. This was a banquet.

    I don’t know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to serve in a soup kitchen. Before, I used to work with youth quite a bit, and I would take them to a soup kitchen. I thought it would be a great experience for them. But if you ever notice the pattern at a soup kitchen, it can often be, here, I’m taking this food.

    I’m putting it onto a plate. Here’s your food and drink. Now you go sit over there while I’m serving you, acting in a place of superiority. That wasn’t until one time we went and served, and then after we were done handing out the food, they said, now go take a plate and go sit. with the people that you just served.

    I thought, this is what we should have been doing the entire time, right? We should have been sitting and listening and on a level playing field, even though we had served them and been providing hospitality, we were to eat with them. I’m convicted by this passage that our practice of hospitality, though an act of grace, should be done at a level table.

    And the ultimate example of that, of course, is Jesus. Jesus didn’t come in any place in the Bible that he opened a soup kitchen where he served and didn’t sit with the people. He enjoyed hospitality with people. In fact, he enjoyed hospitality with the lowest of the low. I don’t think that the Pharisees realize that he is stepping down from his social status to eat with the lowest of the low. the religious people here, or the self-thought of religious people here. Because what is Jesus’s social class? He should be at table with God the Father and God the Spirit, right?

    But he has stepped down in order to enjoy hospitality, accept hospitality here. There is no table high enough to honor Christ at this table. He is stepping down. He is actually doing what he is teaching them in this teaching in 7 to 11 and also here.

    But these were people who had used religion, not in the way that James says, true religion, honoring and helping the widow and the orphan, but they thought of it as a badge of honor, some sort of a place of status to show that off. But Christ has lowered himself, in a sense, to accept hospitality here. And when we sit with the stranger, with the one who is in hospitality with us, we are to sit with them and not necessarily approve of them, not necessarily say, I agree with everything that you believe and have to say, because Jesus obviously did not with this Pharisee, but he cared about their souls. He cared about discussing the things of God with them or else he would have kept his mouth shut and never told this parable here.

    You see, hospitality is to be received in humility. It’s to be given to the needy because of what it symbolizes here. This is the third thing we learn here is that true hospitality, I’ve said it before, but true hospitality is an act of grace. And of course, when we read this parable. We all realize who the host is, who the one sending out the invitation is.

    It is God himself. The image of the table and of the feast are all throughout scripture. And of course is the ultimate end of what scripture is heading towards, right? Isaiah 25. Isaiah 65, Revelation 19, the wedding feast at the end. What is that? That is the ultimate host and invitation of God’s people to the banquet of heaven. And so it should be obvious in this parable, the man putting on the banquet here is a picture of who God himself is in inviting humanity. But what happens? The invitation goes out and those that feel themselves well off, The culture, the busy, they do not respond. They have excuses. They have better things to do. Who does respond?

    The crippled, the blind, the poor, the needy, the ones that know their need. What is hospitality here? It is the humble receiving hospitality. It is the host giving to the needy because hospitality is an act of grace. And brothers and sisters, we are to give hospitality. This is not merely a picture of what God does for us, but we are also commanded to give hospitality. Romans 12, 13, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. First Peter 4, 9, show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

    Hebrews 13.2, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for some have thereby entertained angels unaware.

    Matthew 25.35, what does Jesus say?

    For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. What do you think of when you think of hospitality? You think of the time that you have your friends over, or do you think of the time that you have your family over? You see what Jesus is teaching here is that what we might call biblical hospitality is first and foremost not entertaining or performing for friends or family.

    It is instead loving the stranger. That’s the root of the word there, actually, is philia xenia. That is kind of the opposite of xenophobia, if you ever heard that term, right? Fear of the stranger or the foreigner. This is what you’re commanded to love the stranger, the one who is not from among your ranks, your family, and your group of friends. Who is the stranger? Of course, you’re the one that’s not known. And they’re often the unbeliever. Today’s society. Who is the stranger? It seems to be everybody, isn’t it?

    Many of us do not know even our neighbors. We live in an age in which you may have hundreds of Facebook friends, and yet if you ever ask anybody about their deep friendships, they maybe can count them on one hand, if at all. Our relationships today are razor thin in terms of their depth.

    There is a book that Someone wrote that was called The Art of Neighboring, and he had this activity that might be interesting for you to do. And that is to draw a little house to represent your house, wherever it is that you live, and then draw a tic-tac-toe around it. And then start filling out information about your neighbors. First off, their name. That would be A. B would be, what do they do for a living? C would be any other intimate details that you know, their family life. Are they some sort of a sports fan? What is it that they like to do with hobbies? And then D, something that is even more of an intimate detail, something they struggle with, something that they’ve gone through that’s a hard time lately.

    And many of us would struggle just to fill out category A in knowing the names of the neighbors that are around us. Oftentimes, when we’re told to love our neighbor, today, that’s also loving the stranger. Your neighbor is often a stranger. to us. Hospitality is meant to be a way, a means of knowing the unknown and thereby carrying the gospel to the unchurched by inviting them to our dinner table.

    I’ve had many discussions here, I think it was even one here, it has been in our church, about many remember fondly the Evangelism Explosion program. Anybody remember that? It was a program of going door-to-door with the gospel and had some really great diagnostic questions. I still use that main diagnostic question when people are being interviewed for membership at our church. The question about if you were to die tonight, and God would ask you, why should I let you into my kingdom? Well, how would you respond?

    However, some have lamented the fact that it doesn’t seem to have as much effectiveness today. First off, you have to convince them that you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon on their doorstep. And secondly, many people don’t want to have those conversations on their front porch or hear that sort of sales pitch.

    But here we see hospitality. is more dominant throughout the course of Scripture and even in the Gospels than some sort of door-to-door evangelism is. And in fact, door-to-door evangelism was never the dominant model for evangelism in the Bible. It seems with Jesus, the dominant model is, I’m coming to your house today. The dominant model was of hospitality, and often this would reach the people, Zacchaeus, or these Pharisees that were considered unreachable, perhaps, in our mind. Perhaps some of you have heard the story of somebody who was reached by hospitality by the name of Rosaria Butterfield.

    She was an atheist professor of gay and lesbian studies at Syracuse University in New York. who after she wrote an article attacking Christians, I think during the time of the promise keepers in the local paper. She received lots of letters back, and she would put them into different categories. And one box was for hate mail, the other was for fan mail. And she got one letter that she couldn’t decide where to put it.

    It was a letter from a local Christian, a local, actually, pastor, that didn’t attack her, but asked if she wanted to talk about her article with an actual, real-life Christian, and invited her to his house for dinner. that letter sat on her table at her desk, not knowing what to do with it until she decided she would respond, because at least she would have more research that she would be able to use in more writing.

    She was invited into this Christian home. A husband and a wife welcomed her, asked her in. He prayed before the meal. He was explicitly Christian, but never gave a formulaic invitation to the gospel the whole time, just talked to her about what they believed, and talked to her also about what she enjoyed, and treated her actually as a human being. You see, at the end of the meal, she noticed that the person didn’t even share the sinner’s prayer with her and didn’t have even an invitation to church that time, because he asked her instead to come back next week and actually meant it. And this started in a way of life, of hospitality for this person, that they were invited into a Christian home to talk to a real Christian person, not on the internet, not on cable, but a real actual Christian. to share their faith with them.

    She wasn’t attacked as a category, she was treated as a person. Over the course of two years of meals happened before she first set foot in a church. And when she set foot in the church, she was asked to others’ homes. And she saw the gospel at play in these people’s lives personally and up close. And this was in New York State. This wasn’t Southern hospitality. This wasn’t even blue-collar Yinzer hospitality. This was biblical hospitality in this little Reformed Presbyterian church in Syracuse, New York.

    Today, she’s a professing Christian. married to a man who became a Reformed Presbyterian minister himself. And she’s written a bit about this. She just has a new book that came out about the gospel presented to her through hospitality, where she was introduced to real living Christianity and where she was treated as a human made in the image of God. She learned about Christ’s love personally through hospitality. She wrote in her book, the gospel comes with a house key. that this was radical ordinary Christian hospitality.

    And she explains it this way, radically ordinary hospitality is this, using your Christian home in a way that seeks to make strangers neighbors and neighbors the family of God. It brings glory to God, serves others and lives out the gospel in word and deed. The purpose of radically ordinary hospitality is to build focus, deepen and strengthen the family of God, pointing others to the Bible-believing local church, and being earthly and spiritual good to everyone we know.

    The ultimate example of this, of course, is Christ. This is how he evangelized. This is how he discussed the gospel, often over a table. Tim Chester noted that Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. and notes that if we are regularly eating meals and talking about Christ and the passion for him, this will happen as well. Others will hear the gospel message and those will resonate powerfully with what we are saying when we show them that we also believe this in our daily lives, not just at church, not just at a doorstep.

    This, of course, when you think back over it throughout the course of scripture, is a dominant image throughout scripture, isn’t it? Think of Abraham with the three visitors, right? What is shared in that story? What’s shared in that story is a coming judgment to save his nephew from and rescue that is offered. What about the Passover meal in Exodus? The coming judgment and a way of escape. Rahab invited the spies in and heard about coming judgment and a way of escape.

    Hospitality throughout scripture is at the heart of and as a picture of the gospel, the message of judgment and a way of escape. And hospitality is the call of all Christians as a primary means of introducing them to real Christianity, to introducing the stranger to real Christianity. And I know there are, there are objections to practicing hospitality, doing it more and doing it in the biblical way that Jesus has called us to do it.

    And one of those, of course, is that it’s kind of scary, right? To actually talk to our neighbors, not through social media, but over the fence, to invite them into our homes. But is it scary if we’re inviting them into our homes for a meal or even just to eat while watching their sporting game that we found out that they like, whether it’s hockey, can’t do that right now, but baseball or something like that throughout the week, for a birthday party? For a neighborhood cookout, my wife and I decided once that we would do a neighborhood cookout when we lived in Illinois to meet our neighbors and to try to practice hospitality.

    And what we discovered is when we invited a few people that lived a few houses down into our yard, people who had lived in the same houses for 20 years met each other for the first time in our backyard. There’s so many relationships that we just leave out there that we’ve never encountered them. We’ve never introduced ourselves to them because we’ve never had opportunity. What about inviting them over to enjoy hospitality, if not on our dinner table in our backyard? It’s not scary just to invite somebody over for the first time once we get into the habit of it.

    And others may say, though, I don’t have the money for that. It’s too expensive. You know, there are cheap alternatives to having a fancy dinner party for hospitality. That’s not what is being talked about here. Hot dogs are really cheap. Frozen pizzas are very cheap. You can get those Jack’s pizzas or whatever they are. They’re like $2 each, right? It can be very cheap to do hospitality.

    But even if it’s a sacrifice for us, what is it a sacrifice for? It’s a sacrifice for the biblical spreading of the gospel and inviting them in to our local church to experience the message of Christ. Many times it’ll take many meals like Rosario Butterfield had to have before they’ll accept an invitation to our church to hear about the gospel.

    Some may say, yes, my wife really needs to hear about this and do this. But it’s interesting if you look through the qualifications of elders, and we all believe in male eldership, right? One of the qualifications for these male elders is hospitable, hospitality. It’s talked about first and foremost with males first. So it’s not just about whether or not the wives are hospitable. Men need to hear this message too.

    And others still may say, well, I just don’t have the time. But when was Jesus doing this? The Lord’s day. You have time, you have a day that’s to be set aside for it. And if we don’t have the time in that day set aside for it, well, perhaps we need to do one step backwards and think about our use of the Lord’s day. We can do this. We ought to do this. We are commanded to do this.

    Jesus used the Lord’s day and we’re familiar with the three categories, right? As Presbyterians for worship, for necessity, for mercy. And yet, you almost want to add a fourth category in there, hospitality. Really, you can put that into private terms of worship, but you see Jesus doing this. It’s a necessary work. It gives mercy to others, and it introduces people to the worship of God. It transcends all those categories.

    And that’s what the Lord’s Day was used for, by Jesus. And we are commanded to be hospitable, and what better day to do that than on the Lord’s Day? And if you do that, I promise you, especially if you do that on the Lord’s day, Isaiah 58 promises, right? If you call the Sabbath a delight, and that’s part of delighting in the Sabbath. If you call the Sabbath a delight, he will cause us to ride on the heavens, right? He will bless our work in doing that.

    This idea of biblical holy hospitality is not a burden, another burden for us to do. In fact, it’s a picture of the gospel. It’s what God has already done with us. In Christ, Christ did not count equality with God as something to be grasped onto and maintained, but instead he took on the form of a servant.

    And part of that was in means of hospitality with us. In the parable, God is calling us to the banquet. The invitation has gone out to us, the poor, crippled, the blind, the needy. He has compelled us to come in by the work of his Holy Spirit. Has he not? He has been the ultimate host, giving us gracious hospitality, not that we deserved and received in pride, but that we were humbled in order to receive. It was an act of pure grace. And if we’ve received that from God, how can we not be changed by it?

    To turn around and give that hospitality to those that are around us. to give it to strangers, even that that might become known neighbors and they might be invited into the family of God. We who have received hospitality ought to be known in our communities as those whose houses are open, whose tables are welcome for the needy spiritually and physically, because we were needy too. Would you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we thank you that you sent out your servant, Christ, with the invitations that you compelled us by your servant and the Holy Spirit to come to the banquet, that we might enjoy the fellowship of the triune God, that we might enjoy being at the wedding feast.

    In the end, we will experience that as we experience an act of grace. Lord, give us the power that we need in order to respond to this command. Lord, command what you wish, what you will. and will what you command. And Lord, we pray that you give us grateful hearts in order to respond to this. And this we pray in the name of the one who came seeking us with the invitation to the banquet, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Our final hymn this evening will be, if I can find it in the directory, number This is a wonderful hem if you pay the price.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • When Bad Things Happen

    When Bad Things Happen

    About this sermon

    Some told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, and Jesus warned that unless they repented they would all likewise perish. Tragedies and disasters do not single out worse sinners, and they call every hearer to repentance, which Luther called the whole life of the believer. The parable of the barren fig tree shows the Lord’s patience, and Psalm 130 points to the redemption and forgiveness found in Christ.

    More sermons from Luke · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    evening we’re going to be reading in a moment from Luke chapter 13 starting in verse 1. I was with you about six weeks ago, I think, and actually I’m picking up with the next verse. So hopefully your memory is good and remembering what it is that we were covering.

    Back then it was the end of chapter 12, which was some may say a fiery chapter, a challenging message that Jesus had given to the people about him being the dividing line, about needing to side either with him or against him. And this brings us to a question, as we prepare to read, of what we do with a challenging message.

    Is it something that we hear and think, I know somebody that needs to hear this? Is a challenging or convicting message one that we hear and we say, good, the culture really needs to hear this. Others need to hear this. My spouse, my children, my parents, they really need to hear this. Well, at the end, of chapter 13, the people have just heard this message and how are they going to respond? What are they thinking about? How is their heart responding to this message? And that is what we will see here in chapter 13. We’ll be reading from verses one to nine. But first, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me?

    Heavenly Father, Lord, we confess that this is your perfect, inerrant, infallible word. And Lord, we pray that as we confess that your Holy Spirit is the one who ultimately is the author of these words, inspiring your servant Luke to record them. We pray that that same Holy Spirit would be involved and intervene in the reading and the expositing of this word. We pray that the Spirit would be illuminating our hearts, illuminating our minds, that we might understand what you have for us here. Not only understanding it, but that we would love your word, that we’d react and repentance for the ways in which we do not match what this word tells us to do, and that you would impress it upon our souls so that we would not walk away unchanged, but that your word would accomplish that which you sent it for. And so we pray that you would do that this evening. And we pray this in the name of our covenant head, Jesus Christ. Amen. Luke chapter 13, verses one to nine, hear now the word of the Lord.

    There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower And Shalom fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

    And he told this parable, a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, look for three years now, I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then it should bear fruit next year well and good. But if not, you can cut it down. The grass withers and the flower fades, but this is the word of our Lord, endorsed forever. Amen.

    After Jesus had chided the crowd in chapter 12 about not being able to read the sign of the times. The crowd starts bringing up some of these things from current events. They brought up, we know explicitly, this group of Galileans who had been killed by Pilate as they were supposedly, or it seems, in the temple. Perhaps another one that had been brought up was a tower that had fallen in this town of Shalom. He at least knew that it was on their mind. And so they started thinking through these things. And there may, in fact, be a connection there with the sign of the times and their thinking of these things. of these events.

    In fact, they seem to be thinking after Jesus has delivered this fiery message about not seeing the sign of the times, the reaction actually seems to say, Amen. Other people, they can’t see the sign of the times, can they? Like when the tower fell on Shalom, like when the Galileans were killed by Pilate in the temple, they couldn’t see the current events. They couldn’t see the sign of the times.

    That seems to be their reaction. Many commentators will at least say that that was at least one. way to take their words of why they reacted in such a way. They were reading, it wouldn’t be the CNN of their times or the Jerusalem Times, but they would have heard this by word of mouth. They would have heard this by those that were spreading the news.

    And they would think, you know, all the signs that we were told about in the prophets and Daniel and Ezekiel, other people don’t know how to read those signs, huh, Jesus? Not like us. We know how to read the sign of the times. Now, have we ever been guilty of doing something like that? Hearing a challenging or fiery message and applying it to other people, thinking others need to hear it, others need to wake up. But in this section here, I think this is so instructional to us. How we sometimes can hear a challenging or fiery message and think that message is for other people. Outside of these walls, not in here, we have our reactions right, right?

    And it makes you start to think about how they were viewing those events, how they were viewing those tragedies, because there’s a lot of ways that you could view some of those current events that they were looking at. We can have mixed reactions. I remember, and in fact, many of you are old enough to remember the events of September 11th and what your reactions were. There was great sadness over the loss of life. There was also this feeling of dread that seemed to hang over the tragedy. There also could be reactions of fear. Just remember in recent times, reading about the shootings that happened in schools in Florida, and a reaction of many people was fear, fear for their children, fear for their grandchildren in schools. And yet, there also was another seemingly universal reaction when tragedy occurs, and that’s blame, isn’t it?

    What is to blame? Who is to blame? Who was responsible for 9-11, whether it was Al-Qaeda or whether people were blaming the Bush administration or the Clinton administration or some conspiracy theory? That was where people’s mind wanted to go. That was their first reaction. Who to blame?

    In our times of looking at the shootings, that was the first question everybody asked, right? Who was to blame? the shooter, the parents of the shooter, the NRA, this political group or that political group, culture, bad parenting, video games, everybody was asking who is to blame. We all become experts on everybody else’s sin when tragedy strikes, don’t we? I think about the time that Jesus was asked about the man born blind.

    What did they ask? Did he sin? Or did his parents sin? Why is this man blind? Who is to blame? Whose fault is it? Inquiring minds want to know who is to blame. Whose sin is at the root of this consequence that we see here? And we draw a line from sin. to misery as cause and effect. When bad things happen, we seek someone to blame. We draw that line and that’s not entirely wrong. We confess, if we were to go a little bit further in our shorter catechism recitations, we would confess that why is there sin and misery in the world? It’s because of the sin of our first parents. We can’t actually draw a line from the sin of Adam to all the misery that comes later. Though there becomes some difficulty sometimes in drawing a line from one person’s sin to a tragedy that occurs to them.

    Sometimes it’s pretty easy though, right? If you know somebody who’s ever gone out and fought for fun, that they’re going to hurt dogs, and they get bit and attacked by dogs, it’s pretty easy to draw the line there from sin to consequence, right? Somebody that you know that has abused substances, and when the substances abuse them back, it’s pretty easy to draw that line, that straight line from sin to suffering. But this passage seems to ask, is that true of every Can you draw the line, as it were, backwards? You see the tragedy and you draw it back to the person and their suffering.

    Of course, there’s an entire book that you can read in which people are engaged in. This is a book of Job, right? Job’s friends are sitting there as they see that Job has lost his family, lost his fortune, lost his health. And Job’s friends have to conclude, well, we’re going to draw the line backwards. You must have done something, Job. What is it? You must know. What is it that you did? They keep hammering on him. You did something. What was it?

    Now, here’s one thing that the friends of Job never did. They never drew the line from Job’s suffering to their own sin. Not saying that they caused the suffering of Job, at least in the past, they did, of course, when they were badgering him. But they never took that opportunity to go from Job’s suffering to be a time of reflection on their own sin, their own lack of love for neighbor, their own lack of devotion to God. No, they said, this is Job’s problem. This is Job’s application.

    He has to learn something from this because the suffering happened to him. It’s a cause for him to reflect, not for me. But what does Jesus tell them to do? This suffering that happens to others that you’re bringing up, This is an occasion for you to draw a line from their suffering to your own reflection.

    He asked them, do you think that the Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? Now, of course, the direct answer to do they believe that? The answer is yes, they do believe they were the worst sinners. They had to be worse sinners because that happened to them. Do you think that the people who suffered in the falling of the tower in Shalom, that they were worse sinners? Of course, they think that, but what does Jesus answer? No, that wasn’t why they suffered. And just today, we can start to do that, right?

    You see a tragedy that happens elsewhere and you say, that’s because of New Yorkers, right? New Yorkers must be worse sinners than us. When the tragedies happen in Connecticut or Florida with school shootings, they say, well, their politics or their whatever, their sins, that must be why that happened to them. They’re worse sinners than us. They must be. But what does Jesus say? They are no worse sinners than you. Do you think that they are any more sinners than you? No. In fact, they’re just like you.

    And Jesus in a sense is unveiling this not so well-veiled self-righteousness. When people see a tragedy far away and decide that it’s because those people over there, they just aren’t as good as us. That’s why they suffer because they deserve it. But of course we don’t. When we react in such a way, we display that we don’t really understand fully the mercy of God.

    Instead of saying, they got what was coming to them, we should think, Jesus is prompting us to think, they got what I deserve. What would be coming to me if I got exactly what I deserved? But not only that, but also we don’t deserve the good things that we have right now.

    That’s the other side of the coin, is to have a time of reflection that all that we have, our protection in this moment is a gift of God. This new day that we were given, this day to worship the Lord, we didn’t earn it. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us to rejoice in it. It’s a gift, the air that you breathe, the body that you occupy, that family, that house, that car, that opportunity or job, they are all grace. They’re not merit. That’s the two sides of the coin. Every day is an act of God’s grace and mercy. It is a point of reflection for us. Do we really believe that, that all of life is in a sense sitting on the lap of God’s grace and God’s mercy? It’s not our natural mentality. The natural man does not think that. I can prove that even within our own culture.

    What is the best-selling book for when tragedy happens? What is the best-selling book on tragedy that people always want to read when something bad happens? What’s the name of it? When bad things happen to good people. Because if we experience the tragedy, well, that line becomes frayed, doesn’t it? It didn’t happen to us because we deserve it, right? If a tower falls on us, if we experience violence or misfortune, then we say, why do bad things happen to good people, good people like me? Why would this happen to me?

    You know, on the other side of that, if you were to write a book about the experience of Christianity, of the Christian life, you could actually have the opposite title, right? When good things happen to bad people. That’s the experience of every Christian, right? When grace is given to bad, sinful people like us.

    Why is the world, a world in which there are tragedies and a fallen world, Why would I feel thankful with nobody to be thankful to? That’s a mystery to those who do not know the one who is speaking here in this passage, the one who do not know truly who it is that is inviting reflection here. That’s the mystery. Not why do good bad things happen to good people, but why do good things happen to bad people?

    The only answer can be God’s grace and God’s mercy. And if that’s true, There should be a certain response to that, to all of that grace and mercy. What’s the response? What’s the godly response? The response to that should be what Jesus says to do here, which is repent, literally turn.

    We know this is turning from our sins, but it’s also turning from just looking at ourself, our self focus, to turn away from our unloving ways, to turn away from our selfish focus, to turn away from our self-righteousness that says that they are sinners and we are not.

    They got what they deserve, but I deserve so much better. It’s to turn away from all of that to a mentality that says that life and salvation are all a gift, all unearned. We don’t deserve life and salvation. We merited the wages of sin, which is death, but what the free gift of God is eternal life. The occasion of tragedy should be an occasion for us to say, but for the grace of God.

    And also to say, if all of our sin really deserves that, should I be messing with it? Should I be delighting in sin? Should I be devoting my life and my finances to it? Now, of course, there’s other reactions that we should have when tragedy strikes.

    We’re also told in scripture to mourn with those who mourn, to bear one another’s burdens, to give water to the thirsty and food to the hungry. We are to have compassion on others. And yet it seems like all of that has root here in what Jesus is teaching, because we should do all of that from true sympathy, not from mere pity. And true sympathy is only possible if you realize you are the same as those who are suffering. We are not worse. They are not worse sinners than we are. You are a sinner too.

    And therefore we act as one sinner who has received grace, giving to one another sinner that needs to know about the grace of God. But in acknowledging that you are a sinner, our Lord instructs us to take the opportunity to reflect on the nature of our life and to take the opportunity to repent of our sin in our lives.

    And that’s the context of how this passage ends with verses six to nine. This analogy that Jesus uses of a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and what you do with it. A fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit. What do you do? with a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit because actually all of these people right now are not bearing fruit. So what is going to happen?

    Well, you have a couple of choices if you want to get fruit from a tree. You have a couple of choices in that matter. You can either cut it down and start with a different tree, or you can try to rehabilitate that tree. You can try to fertilize it, give it every opportunity, prune it.

    This especially stood out to me because we moved to the area a little over four years ago. And in our yard, we had an apple tree and a pear tree. And we basically did both of those options. The apple tree, we gave up on. We cut it down. The pear tree, we put down fertilizer. We pruned it up. and basically told the tree, we’re going to give you one more year. And if you don’t repent, if you don’t give us some fruits, you’re going to end up like the apple tree.

    Well, Jesus seems to be saying that to Israel here. This is your opportunity. Three years. Think about the length of Jesus’s ministry. Three years. You’re being given this opportunity now. to repent. You will be given special grace. You’ve been given the Lord himself, God and man in one, the Messiah walking around and giving you this instruction. How much more prompting do you need? And what you need to do is bear fruit. And what does that mean in Scripture when you see that? Well, I think of the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3, right? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You see that parallel, the crowd is given a little bit of patience, but not for no purpose.

    Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3.9, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise that some counts loneliness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any of you should perish, but that you should reach repentance. And here is why Jesus is saying this. He says, look, the ax is angled just right. And right now you should not be thinking, I wish so and so was here to hear this message, because this message is for you. This message is to you that you need to repent. Not just to point to others, you do. And this is a message even for us, as fellow believers.

    You know that repentance is a lifelong endeavor. That was the first of Luther’s 95 theses, that when Jesus said repent, he meant for the entire life of a Christian to be one of repentance. It’s interesting, sometimes we’ll have conversations about conversion. But did you know that in the Bible, conversion and repentance are the same word? Conversion is just your first repentance.

    And then the rest of your life are the repentances that follow. It’s the same word. It’s the same action that we keep doing throughout our lives. We keep needing to hear the message, repent, not to delight in the things that lead us away from our Lord.

    Unless we look at our sins, rather than just looking at others, we will, if we don’t look at our own sins, we’re going to just start playing the blame game. They’re to blame. And then when you can’t find the blame there, where do you turn eventually, as you see with With Adam and Eve in the garden, where did their blame ultimately turn? To God, right? If you didn’t send the woman, this wouldn’t have happened. If you didn’t send the snake, this wouldn’t have happened. Obviously, this is your fault.

    And that is where the relationship starts to break down, is that once we start blaming God for everything, rather than looking to ourselves. There’s a Christian counselor named Paul Tripp, who, when he counsels married couples, He says the number one problem in marriage failure is not that couples fall out of love, it’s that they fall out of repentance. So to the couple that always says it’s the other person’s fault and they can never see their own faults, eventually they will drift away because they always see their problems as somebody else needing to repent and not themselves. And with God, people don’t just backslide and neglect the faith because of something that God did, that he wronged in the relationship. No, we fall into backsliding when we fail to take seriously this command to repent.

    This time of reflection, even when tragedy strikes to say, but for the grace of God, go I. What do I have in my own life that shows me that I deserve just that sort of fate too? And you know what else Jesus came to do, not only to give that message, but also as he’s showing with this parable, the manifest to show the patience of God. He is patient with them. Three years he’s been ministering and still more time he has given to them.

    What we are, we are not. ones that have no time and no grace that’s given to us. No, we are the ones that are on the lap of God’s mercy and grace. And yet we find ourselves to be that child that, have you ever seen a child that is put onto their parents lap and they slap the face of God. Van Til would say that this is the picture of what we do. We sit on the lap of God’s grace and we slap him in the face. And yet, have you ever seen a parent that is patient with that child, gives him grace and instruction. This is God towards us. God’s patience is mercy.

    But the one speaking these words in Luke 13 also came to suffer. He came to take those consequences of our sins in a fate that was worse than the tower falling in Shalom and a fate that was worse than the Galileans that fell by the sword. You know, we can draw another straight line from sin to suffering, but from our sin to Christ’s suffering. Then the axe is laid at the root of Jesse and the axe is laid at the root of the cross that Jesus will bear because Jesus we see is more willing to bear these miseries that we deserve than we are even to admit our guilt.

    Why do bad things happen to good people? I think it was R.C. Sproul that said it only happened once and he volunteered. That is to say bad things happen to the only truly and perfectly good person in Christ that good things might happen to bad people like us.

    When bad things happen, especially to others or in the news, don’t think that they are greater sinners than you. In fact, if you have been given the Holy Spirit, the worst sinner that you know is yourself. I’m the only one that knows all of the sins that I’ve committed. And even then I don’t know them as well as my Lord does.

    I have a, I have a daily counter, but we are told even in Psalm 130 that God doesn’t count if we’re found in Christ by faith. I just want to end our time together by reading Psalm 130 here, and let this be our cry and our application as we are ending our time together. There we read, the psalmist say, out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

    If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel. from all his iniquities. Let us pray.

    Heavenly Father, Lord, change, change our hearts that we might acknowledge your graciousness, that we might acknowledge all the graces that you’ve given to us, and that we might also, when we see tragedy, not merely point the finger away, but use it as a reflection to say they were no worse sinners than I am. Oh, what amazing grace that causes us to stand, that is patient with us, that if you were to mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand. But Lord, we are thankful that in Jesus Christ, in the true Israel, that we have redemption. We have salvation and forgiveness, grace and mercy that’s been shown to us that we didn’t earn, but that he earned for us. Lord, we thank you for this. apply this truth to our lives. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. We’re going to sing a hymn. I don’t think it got printed near Bolton, but 421 is where we’ll go. This is the hymn, Rock of Ages. Cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy riven side, which flowed

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Greatly Forgiven, Greatly Love

    Greatly Forgiven, Greatly Love

    About this sermon

    A sinful woman came to Simon the Pharisee’s house, wept at Jesus’ feet, and anointed them, and Simon judged both her and Jesus. Jesus answered with a parable of two debtors and declared that her many sins were forgiven, for she loved much, while the one who is forgiven little loves little. Those who see the depth of their sin, enough to require the Son of God to die for it, receive great forgiveness and respond with great love.

    More sermons from Luke · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Well, good evening. I send greetings from fellow believers in Hopewell at New Life Presbyterian Church. We are going to be opening up God’s Word this evening to hear from Luke chapter 7. We’re going to be in the latter part of that chapter starting in verse 36. But first, I wanted to set up the text before we before we read it. I wonder if you have ever had the occasion of going to a block party before or if they have that in Western Pennsylvania. I’m originally from Illinois, and they had that sometimes within your block.

    You would invite anybody over from who happened to live nearby you to have a cookout. And as we’re going to read this passage, it’s a very similar sort of situation here in which there may be a few people that you particularly invited over, but it was it was open for all. And so it’s a good time just to to grab some food and go over and get some free burgers. Right. Here in this text, there’s an open invitation because of Christ, because of Jesus who is going around and is a traveling rabbi of sorts. And so there’s an open invitation to meet him. It’s kind of an open house for him.

    But you know how if you ever have a open invitation, sometimes that one person shows up that you would rather not have had shown up. And this text is, in fact, that person that probably the host of the party would rather not have had shown up shows up. Yet in reading this text, I want for at the end of this for you to have somebody to emulate, and it’s not the respectable host. but the unexpected visitor. This person that comes will have an awkwardness that sets in because of the scene, but it’s more because of the wrongdoing of the host than it is the person that showed up. So let’s look at the story of this uninvited guest or unintended guest here in Luke chapter seven.

    But first let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, As we go to open your word and read from it, Lord, we confess that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of this text recorded by human hands. And so we pray that the same Holy Spirit that inspired this text to be written would be present as it is read and expounded this evening, that there might be understanding from this text, that we also might understand it from the author, from the Holy Spirit. We pray that this would be done in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Luke chapter 7, starting in verse 36 to the end of the chapter, verse 50. Hear now the word of the Lord.

    One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, When she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, 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 money lender had two debtors, One owed 500 denarii, the other 50. When they both could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will love him more? Simon answered, the one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt. And he said to him, you have judged rightly. Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman?

    I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

    Therefore, I tell you her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little. And he said to her, your sins are forgiven. Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, who is this? Who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. The grass withers and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever.

    Simon in this story, the Pharisee who is throwing this party, likely had a large estate, likely some sort of an open courtyard that was indicating to people that they should come in. I don’t know if he had special lighting for this, but there was an indication that all were invited in for this. It was an open house for people to come in.

    And the reason for the party, was Jesus, this traveling rabbi who had been going around teaching these things that he was getting some publicity and popularity for. And in fact, people were starting to say perhaps he was more than just a rabbi, a teacher. Perhaps he was the prophet, even the prophet that Moses had spoken of in Deuteronomy. Perhaps he was more than that, even the anointed one that had been spoken of in the prophets.

    And so Simon invites Jesus over for this get to know you session with the community, even invites Jesus to be at the head table to talk with him. But Simon was skeptical about Jesus, even perhaps suspecting him of not being the one that people were talking about him being. Do you know you can tell that in the text?

    You can tell that because Simon doesn’t extend the usual courtesies of an honored guest to him. At a party like this, it would be traditional for a servant to be at the door when people are coming in to make sure that the sandals were taken off and the feet were cleaned and washed their feet. Imagine going to somebody’s block party and you go and you say, thank you for inviting me and you’re greeted with a grunt. Or you’re greeted just with a, yeah, your seat’s over there. That’s kind of the greeting that he was given, not the traditional greeting that you would expect. One that seems to appear that Simon is in fact preparing to perhaps embarrass Jesus or wanting to expose him as a fraud.

    And in the midst of all this happening at that table, A woman comes in. It doesn’t look like she got a specific invite. She had heard that he was going to be there. She saw the open gate, perhaps heard that Jesus was going to be there, and then comes in. And she comes in and finds Jesus who was reclined at table.

    Now, the situation for what happens next, you probably have to know what reclined at table means. They did not have a table set up with different chairs that were seated around it. You had a table that was closer to the floor. And to be reclined at table meant that you were sitting on one of your hips, so that you probably had an elbow on the table, your hip was on the ground, and your feet were sprawled behind you. Jewish mothers at that point were not telling their kids not to put their elbows on the table. That’s just what you had to do. You had to put your elbow on the table and lean in and then you’d have that conversation that is going on there with your feet outstretched behind you.

    And that’s when she comes in and the narrative seems to present it as she sees Jesus and then It just says the tears basically are present in the text, and they’re falling on his feet. You can almost imagine her seeing Christ, seeing the one that she came to see, and the tears start falling, and she sees that they’re falling on his feet. And what does she do? She takes down her hair, which would have been up or hidden in that culture, and starts to wipe his feet, which is a big no-no in Middle Eastern culture then, just as it is now.

    But Simon, by reputation, knows who this is and what’s happening here. This was, as we would say delicately, a lady of the night. Somebody of a dishonorable profession that is there. And this is when Simon thinks, aha. This is the proof, this is what I’ve been waiting for, that Jesus is not a prophet, because if he was, he would know who she is. He would know who it is that is touching him at that point.

    Now, as we are reading this, if you’ve been reading Luke up to this point, this is the first time that you encounter this woman, but this is probably not the first meeting between this woman and Jesus. some hints in the verbiage in which he’s using that he has met her before, that this is in fact a follow-up meeting, that she had seen him and knew who he was and was coming to him to have more of a second encounter or to meet him again. In fact, there’s not a lot of the original greetings that are usually there for when Jesus meets somebody for a first time. None of that dialogue is present there. And so most commentators think that Jesus has probably met her before. This was a second meeting in which she’s coming and finding this woman, which would mean that Jesus, in fact, knew this woman. And Simon, the host of the party who thought that he knew this woman, really didn’t in reality.

    We’ll see how that is the case. Here’s what I mean. By this parable that Jesus is going to tell when he says, listen to me, I have something to say to you. And Simon says, say it, teacher. He tells this parable. And this parable is of these workers who were in debt to a moneylender.

    Now, this also was a no-no in that culture. You typically didn’t just go to the bank and get a loan from somebody. People who were doing this were usually disreputably billed. Don’t think of walking into PNC. Think about a loan shark or a mobster type. This would be something that was under the table. And if you didn’t repay a debt in those days, you didn’t go through the court system, usually you just had somebody rough you up, or something would happen to you in which they would take things from you. This was usually outside of the legal system here.

    And he has this analogy, this story, and he says, there’s these two people who owe a debt. And one of these people owe what’s probably the equivalent of about two months’ pay. And the other one has nearly two years’ pay that they owe. And then neither can pay.

    And what do you expect? At that moment, you expect that the heat is going to be put on, threats are going to be had, perhaps some roughing up is going to happen. But in the story, he has an act of grace, an act of forgiveness. the money lender then forgives this debt one forgiven about two months pay the other forgiven about two years pay and he asks Simon so which of these would have loved him more which would have been more appreciative of this act and Simon in his answer betrays that he’s a little insulted by this sort of a question. This is almost like getting the question, so what is two plus two? And they wait for you to answer, as if they’re not quite sure if you’re going to answer correctly. Simon says, the one I suppose, you typically would say that if you were saying, I’m a little insulted by this. This is elementary, this is basic stuff. I suppose the one that was forgiven more. they would have the greater affection. And then I love that next verse that comes in.

    If you see, if you still have your Bibles open, in verse 44, it says, then, him turning towards the woman, he says to Simon, he’s directing attention towards her, and he’s saying to Simon, do you see this woman? Have you noticed her? Do you know who this is? As if to say, you obviously don’t know who this woman is.

    He’s, in a sense, turning the tables on Simon’s assumptions there because Simon only knew who she was and by reputation, but Jesus knew who she was at that moment and what her future state would be. She is forgiven presently. if there’s this encounter that happened earlier, that most think she had been forgiven, she was coming to show her gratitude. And in fact, Jesus identifies that in her tears, as the fact that she is loving because of the forgiveness that she has found. She loves now because she’s already been forgiven. And Jesus explains this by way of her actions.

    Simon didn’t do that traditional greeting. But she is doing something that is beyond that traditional greeting. This woman is in a sense going overboard. Simon didn’t have the foot washing when you come in, which was traditional. He didn’t have the oil waiting for him.

    But she is using her tears and an ointment. Now, to us, oil, ointment, they sound pretty similar, but just to put an exclamation point on this, there is a difference between oil and ointment in the words that are used here in verse 46. The way that these words are typically used in the Bible is basically the difference between an oily salve and things like myrrh. James says, use oil when you’re anointing somebody for a prayer for healing. It was associated with healing there.

    The Good Samaritan, when he finds a man who’s been beat up alongside of the road, do you remember? He applies oil to his wounds. That’s the same sort of word that’s used there. And you can imagine somebody coming in with cracked feet, tired from the journey over to the house. Oil would be put on their feet.

    This was something that was usually associated with a good feeling or with healing. On the other hand, ointment was something a little different. Jewish women often would have some sort of a small vial filled with an ointment, some sort of small alabaster jar that would be filled with an oil mixed with myrrh.

    Small enough to carry around, in fact, It’s legendary, of course, the Pharisees had all of these rules for what you could not do on the Sabbath. One thing that they allowed was actually for women to carry this around because they wouldn’t want to leave it at home.

    There was too much of a fear of it getting stolen because it was worth a lot of money. It could be used even in an emergency situation for emergency money. And so the woman isn’t carrying ordinary oil, but ointment. likely mixed with myrrh, expensive oil, and she’s wasting it. This is the emergency reserve. This was something that should have been precious. Many months, if not years worth of wages, and she’s wasting it. She’s not moderate with her use here. Now, here’s the strange thing in the ministry of Christ. This keeps happening to him. There’s at least one other instance in which we see this in Matthew chapter 26 and John 12. That is the Monday before Christ’s crucifixion. Remember, Mary anoints Jesus with myrrh and Bethany as well.

    That’s the story in which Judas is upset, remember, because he said, we could have used this money for the poor, but really he was taking some of the money for himself, so he wanted it to enrich himself. And he was upset about it. But what does Jesus say?

    He says, this was a good thing that she did. because she was preparing me for burial. That’s what you used myrrh for. You would put that on a body that had died waiting for burial. So this woman in Luke 7 and Mary and what is coming up before the crucifixion, they seem to know something, don’t they?

    They seem to know something that Simon doesn’t pick up on. They seem to know something even that the disciples were missing at that point. Remember Peter, when he’s asked for a confession of who Christ is, he will follow it up. When Jesus says that he must go and be crucified and rise three days later, Peter says, no, that’s not part of your ministry. That’s not part of what you are all about. And here these women are preparing Jesus for burial. They know. They know that they need Christ’s death as part of his ministry. They know that he came to die.

    And Peter, the disciple, Simon, the Pharisee, they were sinful too, but they just never seemed to be able to admit it, that their sin was that bad. that what they needed was the death of Christ. They needed His blood in order to cover up those sins. They seem to not be able to confess, not only am I a sinner, a little sinner, not only do I make mistakes, do I mess up, but my sin is so bad, it requires the second person of the Trinity to come down, take on my nature, and be sacrificed for my sins. That’s how bad it is. They don’t seem to be able to confess that, where these women, by their actions, are confessing that.

    Now, who are we in this story? Are we Simon at the head, at the table, speaking with Christ face-to-face on equal footing? Or are we like the woman here anointing his feet with oil? Now, I know the obvious answer to that. Simon is a Pharisee. Pharisees are bad. Therefore, I shouldn’t be like Simon, right?

    But think about it. What is your attitude towards Jesus? Is he a prophet, a teller of good things for us to learn from? Is he someone perhaps we would want to invite to the table and have a conversation, exchange ideas on equal footing, mind to mind with him? Here’s another test.

    When you speak with God, when you’re in prayer, when you go to God and you talk through Christ, through his mediation, do you go to God as an equal exchanging ideas? Do you go to God to focus? When you focus on sin, is it mostly the sins of other people? Remember, that’s the Pharisee’s prayer, right?

    When he goes to the temple, I thank you that I’m not like other people. When you go to God, you just talk to God as a victim. Look at what everybody has done to me. Woe is me. You know, that’s Cain’s prayer in Genesis 4. He just focuses on the fact that he’s a victim and I can’t bear this. Or do you go to God in prayer as a sinner, humble, needing mercy? In other words, do your prayers have the fragrance of myrrh mixed in them?

    Are they prayers laced with burial ointment, knowing that in order for us to have this conversation, in order for the mediation of Christ to bring my prayers to God, he had to die to be that mediator and that intercessor? In order for me to be forgiven of these sins, Christ had to die. His blood had to cover my sins, to save me from my sins. That was the price that had to be paid. Do you come to Christ sometimes amazed that the Lord of the universe, the agent of creation, would even give you the time of day, let alone bring your prayers to the Father?

    Do our prayers have the fragrance of myrrh mixed with them? Have there ever been tears that have been associated with your prayers? This woman has tears in her eyes as she’s going to Christ in gratitude. And I wonder how often we have had tears about our sin in prayer. If we’ve never had any kind of emotional reaction about our sins, you have to wonder, do I truly understand them? Have you ever been overwhelmed by your unloving attitude in a situation, of a critical spirit, a complaining spirit, a judging of others unjustly, of your rebellion and disobedience against God, the Lord of the universe, the author of love, a rebellion against him, has that ever overwhelmed you to the point of sorrow? Have you ever wept in prayer? If not, we should wonder, do we have the true sorrow over our sins?

    Now that might sound a little bit overboard to some. I know a lot of people are not those that cry all the time. I am not a frequent crier myself. I probably would be more of the stereotypical male that keeps it in and cries just a few times a year, usually about sports or something like that. I remember listening to the study that was done in which they had tried the same technique with teenage boys and teenage girls in which they were going through a hard time and they would just ask them, talk about your feelings. And most of the women after this study would say that it helped them feel better. But one of the quotes from the teen boys that they shared was when he was asked if it made him feel better to discuss his emotions, he said, no, and it’s weird.

    But men do cry. We’re just kind of a little embarrassed about it, right? I know in 2014 and 2015, there were many tears across Pittsburgh when the Pirates lost the wild card game, right? Now, we’re among friends. I know it might be a hard subject for you even today. But to think that tears have been cried over the loss of a sports team, which isn’t necessarily bad, but how much more should we have sorrow over offending a holy God than just what some sports team did? Men cry. They do. But do they cry over appropriate things? Do they cry over something that is that weighty? Over something that warrants tears?

    That is far more important. Even tears of joy are not weird, are not strange. The joy of realizing that such a debt has been forgiven. I wonder if those men in the story, if Jesus was describing something that actually happened, had tears over being forgiven two years wages. to know that that had been lifted off of them, to know ourselves, that Christ has forgiven us, that He would suffer in order for us to be forgiven of that, that He would even rather suffer hell than to leave us unforgiven of our sins.

    He would suffer that hell on the cross. Tears over that only seem weird or strange to the Simons of the world that don’t understand forgiveness, don’t understand who Jesus is. What this woman did with tears was not inappropriate, it was appropriate. What Simon did was inappropriate. He didn’t honor the one in his presence that was able to forgive all of his sins, sins of all who have faith. But Simon had no love because Simon didn’t come to Christ as one who needed his debts forgiven.

    He came to Christ as an equal, to talk in conversation, just to have an intellectual discourse with. Why did this woman love Christ so much? Why was her reaction so different? It was gratitude that she had great sins, but a greater Savior. And you know, and some of us look at the scene in Scripture and we’re unmoved by it. But that’s not a problem with the text. That may be a problem within our own hearts. Why are we cold sometimes in our affections toward God? Why are we cold in our prayers? Why is there an absence of the love for God and neighbor in our lives? Where does that come from? It comes from a lack of knowledge of who we are, and it comes from a lack of knowledge of who Christ is.

    Those who love much are those that understand that they are great sinners. Those who love much are those that understand that Christ is a great Savior. And you might say, sure, I sin, I mess up. I confess that I’m a sinner, but I have this little problem with sin. Well, if you have a little problem with sin, you have a little Savior. If you have a moderate problem with sin, if you confess that you just have a moderate problem with sin, well then maybe you have a moderate Savior.

    Who are we? Are we those that have a little Savior? Are we those that have a great Savior? Do we believe, in fact, that we don’t owe to God two weeks’ wages, two years’ wages, but our entire life, do we believe the verse that says, the wages of sin is death? Do we owe our entire life to Christ? Do we believe that? for ourselves, we can confess, my sins deserve that. We say, like with Peter, I am the chief of sinners because we, if you think about yourself, you are the greatest sinner that you know because you know more of your sins than the sins your neighbor has chosen to present to you. Have you ever confessed your sins to God in that way? We sang earlier that great hymn, right?

    Amazing Grace. Many of you may know at the end of John Newton’s life, he suffered from a loss of sight and he was probably suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s. He was forgetting a lot of things. And in one conversation, they were asking him what he remembers. And John Newton replied, this author of Amazing Grace, he says, I only really remember two things, that I am a great sinner, but that Jesus is a greater savior.

    So in the story, where are you? Are you at the table, just having a conversation with Christ? Are you at His feet, overwhelmed with the sins that He has forgiven by His work, by His life, by His death, by His resurrection? Do we have a small, little Savior, or do we have a great Savior? That depends on how we see our own sins and what the wages of our sins are. Let’s conclude with this thought, and that is that Simon actually didn’t know this woman. He just knew her past. He just knew her reputation. She did not know who she is and will be. Jesus knew this woman.

    This was a woman who was transformed, forgiven, regenerated, born again, pure and holy that he had made and he had redeemed. She was the object of his grace, the object of his mercy, and the object of his forgiveness. Your status, in fact, after you meet Christ, after you have been forgiven, your status is no longer sinner. You have sin that still indwells, but that is no longer your status. Your status is forgiven, saint, holy, reconciled, adopted one, sanctified one, son or daughter of God, brother or sister to Christ, temple of the Holy Spirit.

    Jesus knew who this woman was. And if you’ve confessed that you are a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior, then Jesus knows who you are too. You are his. And it doesn’t matter what the Simons of the world think, or if the world doesn’t know who you are, they just know who you were. It only matters that our great Savior, Jesus Christ, knows us. He knows who is at his feet.

    Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we approach you, we confess the sin of approaching you as an equal. Lord, may we always approach you on our knees, in our hearts. May we always approach you as those that know that you are a great savior and know our great sin. Lord, may we approach you in worship with a humble attitude. Lord, we thank you for the doctrines of your scriptures, the depth of them, but that they speak of the depth of our need of you and the depth of the salvation that has been won for us by the work of Jesus Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit. Lord, may we approach you in that way, as our Savior, as one who is a great Savior through Jesus Christ, and as one that has remade us through your Holy Spirit. May we approach you in worship, and Lord, may we do so even now. And we pray this all in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. you would take out your hymnals. I believe it’s 432. We are going to be singing together 432. That is Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners. And you can stand as we sing this as our hymn of response. ♪ Jesus, one of grateful sinners ♪ ♪ Jesus, Father of my soul ♪ ♪ Friends may fail me ♪ He, my Savior, makes me whole.

    Alleluia! What a Savior! Alleluia! What a friend! Savior, help me keep Him. Alleluia! Jesus Christ, Lord at Thy birth. O’er the giant stones I’m standing, Be my strength, my victory win! Alleluia! Saving, helping, keeping, loving, it is with me to the end. She’s not one, Alleluia. Saving, helping, healing, loving, He is with me till the end. Jesus, what a guide and healer, What a tender Savior, ♪ For it’s around me that your takes me ♪ ♪ In my quiet years I cry ♪ ♪ Alleluia one, alleluia two ♪ Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He is with me to the end.

    Jesus, I do now receive. He hath granted me forgiveness, I am his, and he is mine. Help me, help me, keep me, love me, He is with me today. Our benediction tonight will be taken from a few verses in 1 Timothy after, in a section that Paul said was a trustworthy and deserving saying of full acceptance. He said this, and this will be our benediction.

    Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the chief of sinners, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. yeah yeah yeah

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