Andrew Fountain - Forgiveness of Sin - the Woman who Loved Jesus
- Artist: Andrew Fountain
- Title: Forgiveness of Sin - the Woman who Loved Jesus
- Album: Newlife Church, Toronto
- Genre: Gospel
- Year: 2009-09-06
- Length: 39:11 minutes (14.2 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 50Kbps (VBR)
Read Scriptures: Luke 7:36-50
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What did she know of him?
- Different Story
- different occasion to Mary
- This beautiful story is a different occasion to that recorded in the other three gospels where Mary, just before Jesus was crucified, anointed his head with precious ointment.
- This was much earlier in Jesus’ ministry. It seems that this woman already knew Jesus. Obviously she had already been forgiven.
- different occasion to Mary
- What did she know of him?
- If we turn back in Luke we can see that she could have heard the gospel that Jesus was preaching, either directly, or through other people.
- Luke 4:18
- Jesus preached in the synagogue, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...
- You can imagine her saying, “Yes, this is me. I am poor. I am broken-hearted. I am the one who is captive to sin and he has come. He is the one who has come to free me.”
- She probably heard about the time when he healed all that were brought to him (Luke 4:40).
- She had seen the beautiful compassion of this man, who healed all, who never turned any away, the man who had
- an unclean leper come to him (5:12)
- who fell on his face and implored him saying, “Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean.”
- Jesus put out his hand and touched this leprous, polluted man and said, “I am willing, be cleansed,” and immediately the leprosy left him.
- Maybe she had heard of the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof on his bed by his friends.
- The Pharisees all around were criticizing, but Jesus spoke gently to this man and said, “Your sins are forgiven you,” and healed the man.
- Probably she had heard about Matthew the tax collector (5:27)
- a traitor to his country, who would have to hang his head in shame when he walked by his own people,
- whom Jesus forgave and told him to follow him.
- Jesus said in Matthew 5:31
- “Those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
- Maybe she had heard Jesus saying, “It is for sinners that I have come.”
- She might have heard about him healing the man with the withered hand
- even though he risked the anger of the people all around him who were filled with rage when he healed on the Sabbath.
- Jesus preached in the synagogue, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...
- Luke 6:17-19
- And how even later that day, a multitude came to him and he healed them all. None of them he turned away (6:19).
- In Luke 6:20-21 He said, “Blessed are you poor... “
- She was one who wept. She was one who was poor, who was hungry.
- She heard him speak and heard his wonderful promises. These invitations brought her to him.
- Maybe she heard how he healed the widow of Nain
- who had lost her only son.
- Jesus had compassion on her and said “Do not weep,” and brought this man up from the dead.
- Luke 7:21-23
- Maybe she was there when John the Baptist’s disciples came to Jesus
- to ask if he was the One, and Jesus responded, “Go and tell John...
- Maybe she was there when John the Baptist’s disciples came to Jesus
How much did she love him?
- You can see by her behaviour how much she loved Jesus.
- She wept from the time she came in.
- Her tears of joy and thankfulness were pouring down.
- Have you ever thought how many tears it takes to actually wash somebody’s feet?
- She came to these foul, dirty feet still covered with the pollution and sewage of the street. She washed them with her hands and her tears. And her hair, her glory, she let down, and used it to wipe his feet, to sponge off the mud and the filth, and to wipe them clean.
- And she kisses them
- She smothers his feet with her kisses.
- She loves him
- She loves this man because he has forgiven her.
- He cleansed her.
- Her sin and filth he has washed away.
- He has accepted her: —Other people didn’t accept her.
- This Pharisee didn’t accept her. This Pharisee regarded her as scum,
- but Jesus, this pure, godly, spotless man, accepted her.
- So she pours out the precious ointment on him.
Why did she love him?
- She loved him because she was an outcast.
- She was hated.
- She was the scum of society.
- She was considered worthless,
- but this man, who was God himself,
- took an interest in her.
- He accepted her.
- He loved her.
- He showed her compassion.
- He cared about her.
- And he forgave her.
- Of course she loved him!
What does forgiveness mean?
- In Psalm 103:10 we read about forgiveness
- How far is the east from the west?
- They are not places, but directions. There is no limit to the distance. This is a picture, a metaphor to emphasize that our sins are removed for good.
- How far is the east from the west?
- In Isaiah 1:18 we read,
- “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
- When I was in high school, I used to play rugby. I would bring my kit home and my bright yellow rugby shirt would be covered and caked in mud, but when it came out of the washing machine the mud was gone. It was clean, it was pure. You couldn’t see any stain. No trace. That is what it is like to be forgiven, there is no trace of our sin.
- “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
- God is ready to forgive us.
- In Psalm 86:1-5 David prays:
- “Bow down your ear O Lord. Hear me, for I am poor and needy... For You, O Lord, are good and ready to forgive and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You.”
- I once offended a person and later apologized to her.
- I thought the matter was all resolved, but a year later she brought the matter again. I apologized again and said, “Look, do you forgive me?” “Yes,” she said, “I forgive you.” So I said, “Will you promise never to bring this matter up again?” And she said, “Okay, I promise. I will never bring this matter up again.”
- That is what forgiveness is, isn’t it?
- Your sin is gone, forgotten, completely wiped away. God truly forgives.
- God’s forgiveness is more than that.
- It is not a neutral forgiveness.
- Suppose your daughter is murdered in a senseless shooting.
- they catch the man who did it, and he serves a twenty-year prison sentence and eventually is released. According to the law, they have done their time, and in some sense they are forgiven. But can you demand the relatives of the people who were mutilated or killed to throw their arms around the killers after they have served their prison sentence and say, “You are forgiven now because you have done your time”? You can’t expect that, can you?
- God’s forgiveness is more than that.
- God’s forgiveness is to be welcomed into his arms,
- like the parable where the father welcomed the lost son who had sinned so much against him. The father threw his arms around him and kissed him and said, “My son who was lost is found.”
- God’s forgiveness is to be welcomed into his arms,
- That is the forgiveness that Jesus has.
- A forgiveness that welcomes us,
- a forgiveness that puts its arms around us and hugs us and kisses us and says, “You were lost and you are found.
- You are forgiven.
- I have cleansed you.
- You are accepted. I accept you for who you are.
- Everything that you have ever done wrong is gone.
- Every failure that you have committed is gone.
- Every stain is gone.
- Every mistake, every piece of nastiness you have conceived in your heart is gone.”
What were you forgiven?
- If you are a Christian, what has Jesus forgiven you?
- What are the worst sins?
- Some people say, “All sins are just as bad,” but that is not true.
- It is true is that we cannot judge sins because we cannot see the heart, but God says that some sins are worse than others.
- The sins he hates the most are pride and unbelief.
- A friend of mine was to give his testimony at a meeting.
- The previous testimony was of salvation from depravity and vile open sin. My friend got up to give his testimony and began, “You know, my sins were worse than those you have just heard.” Everybody was thinking, “Worse than that?” “Yes,” he said, “I was proud!” Why is it so hateful to God when we are proud? Because God is so pure and so high and so far above us, that to see one of us trying to exalt ourselves above another when we are so worthless is abhorrent to him. The great king Nebuchadnezzar walked out on his rooftop and looked over Babylon and said “I have built this city. I am a great king.” God was so angered by his pride that he struck the king down, so that he became like an animal.
- God hates pride. But God has forgiven your pride.
- If Jesus is your Saviour, God has forgiven your unbelief.
- God said that unbelief is a worse sin than the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. When Capernaum saw the miracles done and they didn’t believe Jesus, God said that it would be worse for them than for Sodom and Gomorrah. Maybe you were brought up with Christian parents or Christian relatives and you didn’t believe the gospel. For many years your heart was hard. God has forgiven that.
- Maybe you heard the gospel many times and you turned your back on Jesus Christ. God has forgiven that.
- In Proverbs 6, God lists seven sins that he particularly hates,
- beginning with pride and ending with one who stirs up trouble among friends.
- I am sure you have said things behind peoples’ backs, but God has forgiven you for that.
- Doesn’t it feel good to moan about somebody to somebody else? They agree with you and the gossip feels so sweet. This is the sweetness of sin, but it is an abomination to God.
- Yet God has wiped it away. Not a stain is there.
- But what of the sins since you became a Christian?
- The sins you have committed this week,
- the sins that you have committed today.
- Jesus didn’t say to this woman
- “Your sins up to the point when I forgave you have been forgiven.” No. he said in verse 47, “Your sins are forgiven.” In verse 48 he said, “Your sins are forgiven.” We know that they were already forgiven before this time because Jesus said to Simon, “She loves much because she has been forgiven much.” The love the woman showed to Jesus from the moment she walked in the room must have been from an earlier occasion when Jesus forgave her. Yet her sins didn’t stop at that time, and Jesus continued to forgive her sins.
- Right now, if you are a Christian, your sins are forgiven.
- Right now God’s love is smiling on you.
- He accepts you for who you are.
- He accepts the fact that even now you are tempted and often give in
- He accepts you right where you are.
- He delights in you, just as Christ delighted in this woman.
- Jesus delights in you at this moment.
- He surrounds you with his love.
- His arms of love are around you right now because he forgives you.
What did it cost for this forgiveness?
- God just can’t say “I forgive you,” like that.
- God’s justice demands that someone pays.
- In the story that Jesus told, when the moneylender forgave men who owed money he had to make up the difference himself
- Similarly when Jesus forgave, he paid the price himself.
- He paid it with his blood.
- He paid it with a pain so great and so intense that even he himself shrank from the cost. A thousand times more suffering than you can imagine was the sea of pain through which Jesus swam for our forgiveness.
- He did it because he loved you and me.
How are we to be forgiven?
- Maybe you are not forgiven today.
- What can you do?
- It wasn’t this woman’s love that saved her.
- It is no good trying to work up a lot of love for Jesus so he will save you.
- It wasn’t her reformed life that saved her.
- It wasn’t that she changed her life and so he decided to forgive her.
- It was her trust in Jesus
- Jesus said, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
What was her faith?
- She simply threw herself on Christ’s mercy.
- She just looked to him and said,
- “I am going to trust you.
- I am going to give myself to you.
- I am going to throw myself on your mercy.”
- Faith is to put your trust in something.
- A few years ago I climbed up a mountain on Vancouver Island called Mount Klitsa.
- Coming down was very steep and in one place, the whole slope had collapsed. But somebody had fixed a rope so that it was possible to climb down. At one particular point you had to take a step off the firm ground at the top and hold onto the rope, slithering down the very steep slope.
- That was a step of faith
- moving from where you are trusting in yourself, to trusting in something else
- Faith is a movement.
- A few years ago I climbed up a mountain on Vancouver Island called Mount Klitsa.
- The woman had to move
- from trusting in her own sinful lifestyle
- to trusting in Jesus
- She had to decide whether to follow the old or whether to follow the new
- She didn’t even have the power to change her lifestyle
- but had to trust him even for the strength to turn away from that sin
- But as soon as she looked to Jesus, and grabbed hold of that ‘rope’ in faith
- then he provided the strength to turn from her life of sin.
If you want to be forgiven, Jesus is standing there with open arms.
- He is ready to forgive you.
- He says “Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
- Ask him to forgive you. He is ready.
- Start to follow him. Trust him.
- He is ready today to forgive you. He delights to forgive
- He accepts you exactly where you are
- All you have to do is to come to him, to trust him, to ask him and to turn to him
Updated on 2009-09-06 by Andrew Fountain
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