Lon Solomon Ministries
People Jesus Met Part 13
Hey, I wonder what you would say if I were to ask you to name the greatest sports record of all time. Now, I don't know. Maybe some of us would say it was Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Or maybe some of us would say it was Will Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a single NBA game. Or perhaps Cy Young winning 511 victories in his pitching career. Maybe some of us might point to Michael Phelps winning 8 gold medals in one Olympics or to Tom Dempsey's 63-yard field goal. Here's one you could bet your mortgage on. Byron Nelson having 11 consecutive victories on the PGA Tour in 1945, the closest anyone has come to that is Tiger and the best he could do was 5 in a row. The point that I'm trying to make is that when you've got a lot of choices on a topic, picking out the one greatest choice is sometimes not so easy. And yet, when the Lord Jesus Christ was asked what the greatest thing that a human being can do in God's sight, what that was, he had absolutely no trouble immediately telling us what that is. Now, this is what we're going to talk about today as we continue in our series, People Jesus Met. We're going to talk today about Jesus meeting a prostitute. We're going to look and see what happened in that meeting. And then we're going to bring all of that forward and talk about, well, what difference does that make for you and me? So here we go Luke chapter 7 verse 36. Now one of the rabbis invited Jesus to have dinner with him. So Jesus went to the rabbis home. And as he was reclining at the table, there was a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town and she learned that he was there. Now folks, when the Bible says that this woman had lived a sinful life in his town that simply the Bible's gentle way of telling us that she was a prostitute verse 37. And she brought an alabaster jar of perfume and stood behind Jesus weeping. Then she began to wet his feet with her tears and she wiped them with her hair and she poured perfume on them. And when the rabbi who had invited Jesus to dinner, when he saw this he said, "If this man Jesus were truly a prophet, he would know who it is that's touching him and what sort of woman she is that she is a sinner." Now the rabbi had a deep and serious spiritual problem and we see it on display here very clearly. The problem is that he was able to say she is a sinner, but he was not able to say, "I am a sinner." He was able to understand that she had sins of the flesh, but he was not able to understand that he had sins of the heart, spiritual arrogance and spiritual pride and spiritual self-righteousness. And the hypocrisy of this rabbi upset Jesus so much that he decided to tell the rabbi a story, a parable, if you will. Here we go. And Jesus said, "Simon," by the way we learn the rabbi's name here, "Simon," he says, "I have something to say to you." And Simon said, "Well, say it, teacher." Jesus said, "Two men both owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denarii," which in today's money is about $165,000. And the other owed him 50 denarii, about $16,000. Neither of them had the money to pay the money lender back, so he graciously forgave the debt of both men. So Jesus asked the rabbi, "Which one of these men do you think will love the money lender more?" And Simon replied, "Well," he said, "I suppose it would be the one who had the biggest debt forgiven." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged correctly." Now let's stop for a moment before we go on and figure out who's who in this parable, shall we? The money lender that these two people owed debts to they couldn't pay, who do you think that is? Well, that's God. The two debtors that both owed him debts they couldn't pay, who do you think they are? Well, they're the prostitute and Rabbi Simon, exactly. And the point of the parable is simply this, listen now, the more a person realizes how big a sin debt they owe Almighty God and how utterly bankrupt they are to pay it, the more that person loves God when he graciously forgives them. And the really tragic thing here is that Rabbi Simon owed God just as big a sin debt as the prostitute. See, she understood she owed God $165,000. Rabbi Simon thought he only owed God $16,000 or maybe not even that much, but the tragic thing is he owed God just as much as she did and wasn't able to pay his debt any more than she was and because of his spiritual arrogance, he just couldn't see it. Verse 44, "Then Jesus turned to the woman and said to Simon, 'Do you see this woman?' He said, 'I entered your house and you gave me no water to wash my feet.' But she has wet them with her tears and washed them with her hair. You gave me no kiss at all. But she from the time I came in has not ceased kissing my feet, and you didn't even anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume. Jesus continued and said, 'Therefore I tell you, Simon, her many sins have been forgiven, and this is why she loves much, but he who has been forgiven little loves little.' Now the truth is, Rabbi Simon loved Jesus zero, not little. He loved him zero because he had been forgiven zero. You say, 'Well, how can you make a statement like that?' Well, it's real simple, folks. In order to activate God's forgiveness, a person has to do three things. Number one, we have to realize that we're sinners. Number two, we have to realize that we owe God a sin debt that we can never pay. And finally, number three, we have to look to God's undeserved mercy as our only hope of forgiveness. All of this, the prostitute had done, and none of this, Simon had done. May I stop for just a moment and say that if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, there's a great message here for you. And that is, how do you activate God's forgiveness in our modern world? Well, friends, we activate it the same way people did 2,000 years ago. We don't activate God's forgiveness with good works or religious activity or trying hard to keep the Ten Commandments or anything else. We activate it by admitting we're sinners, and we have a debt to God we can never pay, and then throwing ourselves on the mercy of God that's undeserved as our only hope of forgiveness. And if you've never done that, then my hope is that you will seriously consider it. There is no other way to unlock and activate the forgiveness of God than this. Now, before we go on to our most important question of the morning, however, there is one other connection that we need to make here, and it's found in John chapter 11. If you remember, John chapter 11 is the chapter where the Lord Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, but the chapter begins like this, verse 1. Now a man in Bethany, the village of Mary and Martha named Lazarus, was sick. Verse 2, this Mary whose brother Lazarus lay sick watch was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. Very interesting. Look at this now. Watch, look at this. The Bible tells us that this prostitute we just met in Luke chapter 7 is none other than Mary, the sister of Lazarus and of Martha. Now you say, OK, Lon, so why is that important? Well, it's important, my friends, because of the amazing transformation that the Lord Jesus Christ performed in this woman's life. The Bible tells us that after Mary came to faith in Christ, Luke chapter 10, we talked about it on Mother's Day, she became a passionate student of God's Word, sitting at Jesus' feet. You remember, while Martha was running around making all the preparations, certainly she was one of the many women who ministered to Jesus, Matthew chapter 27, who not only cared for him during his public ministry, but even stood with him at the cross. And finally, according to church tradition, after the resurrection of Jesus, along with her brother Lazarus, Mary became a missionary living in Cyprus and going around the entire Eastern Mediterranean, preaching the gospel, hey, going from being a prostitute to being a missionary. You talk about a change in life, huh? But you know, this is what the Lord Jesus Christ does to every single human life that He takes over. He transforms us from the inside out. He makes us into people that we never knew we could be. He does things through us that we never knew we could do. And this is why the Bible says 2 Corinthians 5, 17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they become a new creature. All things pass away, or behold, all things become new." And you know what's really said is that Rabbi Simon, he can only see people through his own eyes, and our world system today so often sees people through the eyes of Rabbi Simon. He sees them just for what they are, and he pronounced them, Rabbi Simon did to this prostitute as a lost cause, who didn't deserve any time, any energy, any notice, ah, but you see my friends, God sees people differently. God sees people through the eyes of 2 Corinthians 5, 17. To put it another way, God really doesn't care how we look when He gets us because God is not going to leave us the way He found us. Praise the Lord for that. It reminds me of one of my favorite poems, which is important because I don't have very many poems that I like. But I love this one. Let me share it with you. It's called "The Touch of the Master's Hand." "Twas battered and scarred in the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth his while to waste his time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile. But am I bid good folks he cried, who start the bidding for me a dollar, a dollar, now two, only two, two dollars, and who'll make it three, three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three, but no. From the back of the room, a gray-haired man came forward and picked up the bow. Then wiping the dust from the old violin and tightening all of the strings, he played a melody pure and sweet as an angel sings. When the music ceased, the auctioneer with a voice that was quiet and low said, "What now am I bid for this whole violin?" And he held it up with the bow, a thousand dollars, and who'll make it two, two thousand, and who'll make it three, three thousand once, three thousand twice, and going and gone said he and the people cheered. But some of them cried, "We do not quite understand what changed its worth." And the man replied, "Twas the touch of the master's hand." And many a person with life out of tune who's been battered and torn by sin is auctioned the cheap to the thoughtless crowd, much like this old violin, but the master comes and the foolish crowd can never quite understand the worth of a soul and the change that is wrought by the touch of the master's hand. You know, folks, you're looking at a living example of this poem and this truth and action at twenty-two years old, a world of Rabbi Simon's, saw me as an insecure drug using alcohol abusing narcissistic sociopathic, pretty much good for nothing, young man. But my friends, God saw me through the eyes of 2 Corinthians 5-17. God saw me for what I could become in Jesus Christ. And you know so many of us, we've got that very same testimony today. So many of us here can say, "Hey, you know what, I may not be all, I ought to be, but by the grace of God, I'm not what I used to be." Amen? Amen. Amen. And thank God for His amazing grace. Now that leads us to our most important question of the morning. And you know what it is, so I hope you're still awake, are we ready? We're ready. All right, nice and loud. Here we go, one, two, three. Y'all can do better than that. All right, come on now, I know you can. Here we go, one more time, one, two, three. Oh, that was good. You say, "Lon, all right, so what difference does this make to me?" I mean, so you can say a poem. So, I mean, what difference does any of this make to me? Well let's talk about that, shall we? And let's ask the question here in Luke chapter 7, what was it about this woman? What was it about this prostitute that so impressed the Lord Jesus? Well the answer is simple. What impressed him so much about her is very simply how much she loved him. Hey, you know, we need to understand that in ancient Israel at the time of Jesus, people wore open sandals and after walking all day in these sandals, their feet became filthy with dust and dung and germs and so it was customary when you went into someone's home as a guest that they offered you water to wash your feet. However, to wash somebody else's feet was the most degrading, the most humiliating, the most ignominious task that anyone could do for somebody else because it was the dirtiest part of your body. I mean, this is why in John 13 when the Lord Jesus went to wash Peter's feet, Peter reacted so vehemently and said, "Lord, you're never washing my feet." Now, would you notice that Rabbi Simon didn't even offer Jesus water to wash his own feet when he came to his house, but Mary washed Jesus's feet with her tears and then she wiped them with her hair and then she kissed his feet, the dirtiest part of his body over and over and over again and then anointed them with perfume, listen, you don't do this for somebody unless you love them much. And you see, this is what impressed the Lord Jesus. What impresses him is not how much we do for him, what impresses him is how much we love him. This reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 22. Matthew 22 verse 36, "Then an expert of the Old Testament law," asked Jesus, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?" In the whole Old Testament, pick one out, what is the greatest commandment, and oh, by the way, on top of the Old Testament, the rabbis had 613 more commandment saved come up with, so Jesus had lots of choices here. And notice, Jesus didn't even hesitate. He replied, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, watch this is the first and the greatest commandment." Now Jesus quotes here from the most enduring passage in the Old Testament to Jewish people, Deuteronomy chapter 6, "Shamai Yisraelat anoyelahinuat anoyachad," hero Israel. The Lord your God, the Lord is one, and the next verse says, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind." This reminds me of commandment number one of the 10 commandments where God says, "You shall have no other gods besides me, for I am a jealous God. I want a hundred percent of your love. I want a hundred percent of your devotion." Now just as an aside for a moment, I should point out that this greatest commandment Jesus talks about does teach us something very important about God. It teaches us that God is a personal being, not just some inanimate cosmic force of some kind. The reason I say that is, friends, you can't fall in love with an inanimate force. You can't fall in love with atomic energy or electromagnetism or karma. You can only fall in love with a person. And besides, electromagnetism can't be jealous of someone else if it doesn't get a hundred percent of your attention, only a person can do that. But let's get back to what we're talking about and ask the question as followers of Jesus Christ here this morning, how much do you and I really love Jesus Christ? That's the question of the morning. You say, "Well, Law, and that's a good question, but how in the world could you possibly answer that? How could you possibly quantify that and come up with a grade for yourself? Oh, I'm so glad you asked." Because we're going to take a little test this morning, a little test. You grade yourself and I've come up with five characteristics of how people act when they love someone and what we're going to do, I'm going to walk you through the five of them very quickly and I'm going to ask you to grade yourself one to ten. One means you're absolutely perfect, impeccable, superb on this and one means you stink. Okay. You understand how you do this. All right. So here we go. You grade yourself. Here we go. Five of these. Number one, when you love someone, number one, you yearn to be with them. I mean, how many young couples in love are satisfied if they only get to be together every other Tuesday and Thursday? No, no, no. When you love someone, you want to be with them every moment of every day. Well, God reveals Himself to us in the Word of God, in prayer, in meditation. And so we can tell, number one, how much we love God, by how much we yearn to spend time with God, in prayer, in studying the Word, in spiritual meditation, grade yourself on that. How do you do? One to ten. All right. When you love somebody, number two, you want to please them. For example, gentlemen, I mean, when it comes to our girlfriends or our fiances or our wives, I mean, you know, you know what we do? We try to learn what our favorite restaurant is and what our favorite flowers are and her favorite vacation spot and, you know, her favorite activities. We try to help out around the home and help out with chores and we try desperately to remember birthdays and anniversaries and Mother's Day and Valentine's Day and the day we went on our first date and the day we got engaged and the day her cat had kittens and the whole thing. Why do we put ourselves through this agony? Well, because we love her and we know this makes her happy. And when you love somebody, you want to make them happy. Well, number two, listen, God tells us in the Bible what makes Him happy. On chapter 14, verse 15, if you love me, He said, you will keep my commandments. So second of all, we can tell how much we love God by how deeply we are committed to biblical obedience every moment of every day in every detail of our life because this pleases God. Grate yourself. How'd you do on that one? One to 10. Number three, if you love somebody, number three, you're loyal to them. The Apostle Paul said Acts chapter 21, he said, "For I am prepared not only to be imprisoned but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus." And number three, folks, we can tell how much we love God by how we react when we are given the chance to take a stand for Him with our neighbors, with our family at the office at school, whether we're willing to step out of the shadows and take our place and Jesus aside, whatever the cost, and we're ultimately loyal to Him. Grate yourself on that, one to 10. Number four, when we love somebody, number four, we're anxious to tell other people about them. Have you ever met somebody who's convinced that they've just encountered their love of their life, their soul made, their absolute compliment? Have you ever met somebody like that? All they want to do is talk about that person, they won't shut up. It's like, oh, she or her, her, or him, him, him, and it's like, could we talk about something else? No, no, we've got to talk about her, why? Because when you love somebody, you want to talk about them. Well, David said, "I will extol the Lord at all times, His praise will always be on my lips." David said, "I love God, and therefore, I love talking about Him." So number four, we can tell how much we love God, number four, by how anxious we are to talk about Him and tell other people about Him. Finally, number five, if we love somebody, number five, that person becomes the central focus of our life. Hey, think about it for a moment. If your fiance or your husband or your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your children were suddenly just yanked out of your life, would that make any difference in your weekly schedule? Would it make any difference in the way you spend your money? Would it make any difference in the way you use your time and your energy? Well, of course it would. Because these people that you love, well, you've built your whole life around them. Of course it would. Folks, hey, if God were suddenly yanked out of your life, would it make any real difference in how you spend your time and how you spend your energy and what your daily schedule is? How you spend your money? Hey, we can tell how much we love God by how much of a central focus He is of our life. All right, time to total it up. Grate yourself on that last one. Here we go. Total it up. How many people got a 50? Raise your hand. 49, 48, 47, 46? Okay. I didn't even. I didn't even. He said, "Well, this is wonderful. I'm so glad I came today. I'm thoroughly depressed." Now, wait a minute. The point of this is not to depress us. You know, the great news of the Bible is that as His children in Jesus Christ, God doesn't love us because we love Him the way we should. God loves us for no good reason at all and He always will. Praise the Lord for that. But it does leave us with the question, how can you and I improve our score? How can you and I grow in our love for the Lord Jesus Christ? Well I've got two suggestions and we're done for today. Suggestion number one, want to grow in your love for the Lord Jesus Christ. The number one, ask God to show you how sinful you really are. Hey, this is David's prayer, Psalm 139. He said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me. Show me God what's really down inside me." Now I've got to tell you, it takes a lot of courage to pray this prayer because the more God answers this prayer, the uglier it gets. Listen, friends, we may be followers of Jesus and our sins may be forgiven and we may be on our way to heaven and we may be covered by the blood of Christ, but don't kid yourself, you and I are still rotten to the core the way we've always been, don't kid yourself. And the more God shows that to us, the uglier it gets. The picture's not pretty. You say, "Well then why in the world would you ever ask God to do this?" Because remember what Jesus said about this woman, He said, "The more we realize what we are and the more we realize what God has really forgiven us of, the more we'll love Jesus." That's what He said. John Newton, the infamous slave trader who became a pastor after his conversion once said this and I quote, "He said the purpose of God in showing us the evil of our own hearts is to make us prize more highly the unconditional love of Jesus." Boy, is that true. You want to love God more? Let Him show you who you really are. And so often in my daily life, I'll just talk to the Lord and say, "Lord, you and I both know what I really am and you know what, Lord, it ain't pretty. You know what? It's a good thing to know that because you appreciate Jesus more and His love. Number two, want to grow in your love for God?" Then my second suggestion is get to know Him better. Get closer to Him. My mom used to always say, "Familiarity breathes contempt." It took me decades to understand what that thing means. What it means is the more you get to know a person, the easier it is to dislike them. Because people are imperfect, because people are flawed and the closer we get to people, the more we see these flaws. "Well, but the situation with Almighty God, my friends, is completely different. God is perfect. He is impeccable in His love, His beauty, His goodness, His faithfulness, His mercy, His compassion, and the closer we get to Him, the more we get to know Him, the more we can help but love Him. Not feel contempt for Him, but love Him." You say, "Well, on, how do I get to know God better? How do I get closer to Him?" Well, we already said it. God reveals Himself to us in the written Word of God, here in the Bible. We need to be students of the Word. We need to be studying it and reading it and meditating on it. Listen here. Look here. Not so we can grow in our appreciation of theology, but so that we can grow in our appreciation of who God is. Hey, listen, you get into the Word and get to know who God is, and I promise you, the more you get to know Him, the more you'll love Him, it just has to be. Well, let's conclude and say this. The purpose of my message today was not to depress anybody. The purpose of my message today was to inspire us to cultivate a deeper love for the Lord Jesus in our lives than we have presently. The purpose was to inspire us to pursue a purer love and a higher love and a deeper love for the Lord Jesus Christ because of everything else, this is what He said is the greatest thing a human being can do. This is what He said and presses Him the most. And so my friends, I urge you today, whatever you scored on the test, make it your goal that the next time we take this test, you are going to score higher. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thanks for speaking to us today about how much you prize, how much you value our love and our devotion. And so Lord Jesus, my prayer is that as we look at what we can offer you, what we can give back to you for all that you've done for us, Lord, help us to remember what you consider to be the major thing. And the major thing is that we love you. And if we love you, all these other things will flow out naturally from our life. Lord Jesus, show us what we really are and cause this as a result to appreciate your forgiveness all the more, reveal yourself to us, Lord, that we might understand your amazing beauty and be drawn to love you all the much more. Thank you for talking to us today, Lord. Change the way we live because we were here today. Change the way we love you because we were here today. And we pray these things in Jesus' name and what do God's people say? Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]