Our wives are given by the Lord
to keep us humble, aren't they? Appreciate you being here. We
thank you for your hospitality. I'm so thankful to this congregation
for providing the opportunity for all of us in so much of the
rest of the world to love and appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ
that's preached in this place by your pastor. And so we love
him in Australia, but we very rarely get the opportunity to
thank all of you people for looking after him. So trust it continues. It's lovely to be here. It's
lovely to have such a simple story about such a glorious,
glorious God. to speak about this evening.
It's extraordinary to think, isn't it, the wonder of God's
wisdom, the wonder of God's love, the wonder of God's justifying
grace seen in such a simple, simple story that speaks so powerfully. So turn back with me in your
Bibles to Luke chapter 7. I just, I really, really do love
these pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ and his bride. I love the fact that the Lord
Jesus Christ, God almighty in human flesh, so lived in this
world that sinners like this lady and sinners like us could
come to him, could touch him, could be touched by him. And may it be that we might hear
him say to us tonight, thy sins are forgiven. Thy faith has saved
thee. Go in peace. One old writer wrote,
I have at last arrived at a degree of certainty as to two points
in religion. I'm old enough now to say these
sorts of things and to repeat them. He says, first of all,
I'm altogether a sinner, loaded with unworthiness, a fit companion
every moment of my life for the poor publican or the poor woman
that was a sinner. I look upon the ground on which
they stood often with no small degree of delight. With them
I would wish to spend my days as they did. So should I upon
that ground conquer all my guilt, sin, the world and the devil. I am convinced that it is the
only ground on which we can conquer and thrive. The second point
of which I'm certain is that God receives sinners as such
and that therefore as such I may go to him. This last point is
the very life of the little religion that I have. I think that's sweet
and I think this story is a special story. I just love, I love to
think of how these women represent the church and these women are
those for whom the Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven's glory
and suffered, and suffered the humiliation of men like the Pharisee
who invited him to this dinner. But I love the fact that this
story begins in a sense in verse 35 and it says, but wisdom, but
wisdom, is justified of all her children.'
And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him.
And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meet. An extraordinary invitation. Why? Why did he go to the Pharisee's
house? Why does he do anything? Because
one of his bride is there. One that he loved from all eternity. One that the Father gave to him
in the covenant of grace. One that was saved in eternity
by that precious blood of the Lamb slain before the foundation
of the world. He came to gather his bride to
himself. What extraordinary wisdom our
God shows. What wisdom it is. When you think
of the wisdom of this world, I think Elon Musk or someone
else that's involved in AI said that AI is getting so clever
and learning so fast that soon AI will have all of the knowledge
and the intelligence of not only all of humanity but all of the
human race put together. What is it? Is it wisdom? Here we have a story of real
wisdom, the real wisdom of God, where God in Christ Jesus exalts
all of the character of God and brings this sinner to himself
and loves her and embraces her and loves her eternally. These
stories are pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ and his bride meeting
in love. And it's an initial meeting here,
but it's a meeting that goes on and on and on throughout our
Christian life. We always come to the Lord Jesus
Christ, exactly as this lady did. Turn with me in Colossians
chapter 1. I want to show you this from
the scriptures. We're always dealing and having to do battle
with this notion that somehow we get better and better and
there'll come a time when I don't actually need to come to the
Lord as a sinner, I can come to the Lord as a partial sinner
or someone who's a little bit better than I used to be. I love
what Colossians 2 verse 6 says, as, I'll wait for you to turn
there, as you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord,
So walk ye in Him. How did you receive him? Exactly
as this lady received him. And so I love the fact that in
these simple stories, these glorious meetings of the Lord Jesus Christ
with women, particularly in the scriptures, we have all of the
wonder of Romans and Galatians and the other New Testament scriptures
just laid out for us in a picture form. And the older I get, the
more I like pictures. The older I get, the more I like
stories that are simple. The older I get, the more I like
stories that relate to me as I am right now and I am in all
of my life. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
the same. He's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. And he says, come. He come, come
just as you are. Let's look at this remarkable
invitation. And I just want to go through
the passage briefly because I wanted to get to the last part of it,
which is just so glorious. But this is a remarkable invitation.
One of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him
and he went into the Pharisee's house and he sat down to meet.
There was no love in this invitation, there was no faith in this invitation,
it was just self-aggrandisement. And as I said earlier, he went
there to meet a bride, to meet his bride. He drew her to himself. And at some stage earlier in
his preaching in that town, she's heard. She's heard about a saviour. She's heard about a saviour.
A friend of publicans and sinners. One of the poor that the gospel
is preached unto. Also, these pictures show us
the difference between works and grace, law and grace. They
show us again and again that the Lord Jesus Christ will never
bless our religious and intellectual notions if they're mixed in any
way whatsoever with any of our self-righteousness at all. He
accepts sinners, real sinners. Sinners, as we'll see soon, who
have nothing, nothing whatsoever to pay. And he went into the
Pharisee's house and sat down to meet. As I said earlier, this is a
remarkable invitation that's accepted by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Pharisee said, come and dine, and the Lord Jesus Christ says
to us, come and dine, come and feast on the glory of the gospel. And we are told to gaze upon
this woman and behold, a woman in the city. We don't know what
she did, but nevertheless, we get some indication of the fact
that she was in the city and not in a house. So you can guess
what she was, and you can guess what the Pharisee thought of
her, which was a sinner. What a great
description of the bride of Christ. She was a sinner. That's all
she needed to have described of her, wasn't it? She was a
sinner. She was a sinner who came. She came to him. She was a notorious sinner. And
she came to the Pharisee's house in verse 37, and she brought
an alabaster box of ointment. I can't help but think of Mary
bringing that ointment to the Lord Jesus Christ. She was the
one person in all the gospel accounts that really believed
that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to be buried. the only
one who believed after all that he said, after all the Old Testament
scriptures are said. And she anointed the Lord Jesus
Christ and this lady did the same. She'd heard, she'd heard. The question for me is, am I
wisdom's child. Wisdom's children are all justified
children. To be justified is to be declared
by God to have never sinned. You have a president, we have
a king, and your president no doubt in a few years' time will
start pardoning people. And all of us will know all over
the world that the pardoned people are still guilty people. The
crimes are still there before all others. But to justify someone
is the glorious wisdom of God displayed in the cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ, where not only are the sins pardoned, but
the sin is gone altogether. A justified person is a person
who has never sinned. John preached, didn't he? Behold
the Lamb of God. who taketh away the sins of the
world, which means he picked them up and carried them upon
himself and took them away. Why does the Lord deal so wonderfully
and graciously with this lady? because her sins are gone. A
holy God can meet with this lady on exactly the same ground of
holiness. She heard, she came. Verse 39,
when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spoke within himself,
saying, if this man was a prophet, He would have known who and what
manner of woman this is that touches him, for she is a sinner. The big problem with the Pharisee,
he didn't know that he was a sinner himself. He was above sin, wasn't
he? Don't you love the fact, I love
thinking about the fact that God sees our hearts all the time
perfectly. I love the fact that God sees
my heart. Justified people can love the
fact that God sees and knows everything about us all the time,
which means that we can go to him As we are. I love what Hezekiah did when
he had all of the troops outside, 185,000 troops outside, and they
were mocking his God and mocking Hezekiah. And Hezekiah goes into
the temple and he just lays out his life before the Lord and
his circumstances before the Lord. And one angel that night
destroyed an army. We could come to God. Wisdom's
children come to God. knowing that God knows everything
about them. We can be honest with God. She
came to the one place in all of that town where she was going
to be most openly exposed for what she was. before people who
in their hearts despised her and condemned her because they
thought themselves better than her. God sees our hearts. When holiness
of the Lord Jesus Christ meets a sinner, there are only two
results, always. There's always a division among
the people because of him. There's always either cleansing
or catastrophe. There's always purification or
perdition. Mercy or misery. Salvation or sadness. As some people say, people either
get mad I want to be glad about the Lord
Jesus Christ. And the Lord deals with him,
verse 40. And Jesus answering said to him,
Simon, I have something to say unto thee. And he saith, Master,
say on. There was a certain creditor
which had two debtors, one owed 500 pence and the other 50, and
when they had nothing to pay, He frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of
them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose
that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, thou hast
judged rightly. Nothing to pay. Wisdom's justified
children know they have nothing to pay ever. nothing to pay,
nothing. Everything that God requires
of me, he can and must look only to the Lord Jesus Christ for.
And in mercy, I pray that he'd cause me to look there again
because that's what a justified child of God does. They're looking
to the Lord Jesus Christ and nothing else. We are just quite
simply, we owe God. holiness, perfection, perfect
obedience to his law, we owe to God that we love him with
all of our hearts and all of our minds and all of our strength.
And to love our neighbour as ourself. So many people want
to put the children of God back under the law and back under some sort of works like the Pharisee
had been involved in all of his life. Somehow they can make themselves
better. Somehow they can earn God's favour
by something that they do. God requires holiness. God requires perfection. And he cannot accept anything
other than perfect holiness, and it's a silly thing to say,
isn't it? It's not perfect. There is just one holiness. It
is the holiness of God. God requires holiness. And he will deny his very character
if he accepts anything less than that. And right now in heaven,
he sees his son. Perfect. the holy spotless Lamb
of God and justified children realise with joy that they have
nothing to pay and with great joy that the Lord Jesus Christ
has paid it all, paid it all completely. wisdoms, justified children,
love, free and sovereign and saving and effectual and powerful
grace that draws us into his presence all the time, all the
time, again and again. And that's the heart of this
message. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Sinners, come to the
Lord Jesus Christ. I don't want to spend much time
looking at the common courtesy of the day which was denied the
Lord by this self-righteous Pharisee. But I love the way the Lord dealt
with him. I just love what it says. Listen
to verse 44. And he turned to the woman. He always turns his heart and
his eyes and his mind, he's always, he's fixed upon his people. In Song of Solomon he speaks
with such adoration of her, he says, turn your eyes away from
me, I'm overcome with love for you. He turned to the woman,
isn't it wonderful when he turns to us, when he turns to us. And he said to Simon, seest thou
this woman I entered into thine house. Thou gavest me no water
for my feet, but she has washed my feet with tears and wiped
them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but this
woman, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my
feet. My head with oil thou didst not
anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. She came, she came to him. She came to his feet in faith. She stood at his feet in hope. She wept at his feet in brokenness
and love. She washed his feet in reverence
to him. She wiped his feet in submission. She kissed his feet in adoration
and affection. She anointed his feet in consecration. Those very feet that brought
the gospel of peace to her. How precious are the feet of
the Lord Jesus Christ. How precious are the messengers
that bring you the message of this glorious, glorious Saviour. She found forgiveness at His
feet. When the resurrected Lord came,
He showed them His feet. He showed them His feet, those
very feet that were walked on the dust of this earth. He showed
them, the wounds in them. All your sins are gone, my justified
ones.' He turned to the woman, and I love the fact that even
though Simon had no love for him, he had no need of him, he
had no need of his mercy and grace, he was full. You don't
have to be very full to be full of righteousness. If you've got
one tiny bit of righteousness, you're pretty full of it, and
you'll make sure that other people know you're full of it. And he looked down on others.
Why did he look down on others? What's the one thing that allows
us to look down on others? It's our righteousness. It's
our righteousness. And they've got nothing to pay.
You've already told them they have nothing to pay. She touched
him. And he allowed himself that intimacy
of touch with him. Don't you love the fact that
the love of God draws us. The love of God, the love of
Christ constrains us. The love of God and the love
of Christ embraces. And the love of the Lord Jesus
Christ is always going to receive its reward. What happens? We
love him because he first loved us. He loved her with an everlasting
love, an infinite, everlasting, unchanging love. And he drew
it out of her in this extraordinary transaction. It's just so beautiful. I want to come to him. I want
to keep coming to him. I want to be loved by him. I
want to hear him say, come. That's what 1 Peter chapter 2
says, isn't it? To whom coming, coming and coming
and coming. And we come as she came. She'd heard the words of eternal
life. This man receives sinners. That is just such an extraordinary
statement, isn't it? This man doesn't judge sinners,
this man doesn't condemn sinners, this man receives sinners. The Pharisee is self-condemned
by his own words and his own action. So then the Lord speaks
these wonderful words, these last few verses, they're just
so glorious. Wherefore I say unto thee, he
speaks to the Pharisee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven. It's in the perfect passive tense. Who did the forgiving? God did
the forgiving. How much of the forgiving did
he do? All of the forgiving. All of the forgiving. It's one
of the extraordinary things, isn't it? We live with so much
awareness and growing awareness in my case of the fact that I'm
just a sinner and I'm getting weaker and weaker and weaker.
The justified children need to be continually reminded that
the Lord Jesus Christ has put away all of our sins. And that's what justification
means. They've all gone. They are no
more. And all of God's children stand
before God in the very perfect righteousness, robed in his righteousness,
washed in his blood. Not a drop's gone to waste, brothers
and sisters. He didn't make an offer of salvation.
He came and saved. Always, he just saves. He doesn't
try. God can't try and fail. This
man receives sinners. This is good news for sinners. Listen to what he says to her.
Let's turn back to our text. Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven,
the same loveth little. When the Holy Spirit comes and
brings conviction of sin, what's the sin? John 16 verse 8. We'd like to think it was the
harlotry possibly of this woman or the greed or the covenants
of all things. What's the sin that the Holy Spirit brings conviction
of? Unbelief. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
If you were to name the greatest sins that you see around you
or in you, Would you ever say that that's the greatest one?
The beginning of them, isn't it? She was a sinner. She was an
open sinner. She was nothing but a sinner.
And she was a saved sinner. Thy sins are forgiven thee. And they that sat at meat with
him began to say within themselves, who is this? that forgiveth sins
also. The same Pharisees had said earlier
in Mark Chapter 2 that only God can forgive sins. Who is this? Who is this man? This man is God Almighty. This
man is God Almighty here displaying the wonderful and extraordinary
captivating wisdom of God. in how he justifies this lady,
this sinner, who represents all of the bride of Christ. It's
the only way we can come like her. And here we are just laying
our life before God and saying, I'm just a sinner. I'm just a
poor sinner. and nothing at all, but Jesus
Christ is my life, my all in all. True faith, true saving
faith, true justifying faith of wisdom children loves much
because we've forgiven much. So much true faith is evidenced by love,
love that's costly, love that exposes us before this world
as we come and forget what the world says about us and we just
come to the Lord Jesus Christ and we come and we come and we
come. This God receives sinners. don't stay away. Brothers and
sisters, come and we have to keep, we keep coming, we keep
coming. Faith unites us to the Lord Jesus
Christ. True faith honours him. You know
what it's like, don't you? When someone doesn't believe
what you say, it's an affront to you. And yet God has spoken
in this word the most glorious promises issued the most extraordinary
commands to come and fulfils those. What a dishonouring thing
unbelief is. What a dishonouring thing. What
a dishonouring thing self-righteousness is. One thing that we need to
be mindful of is as we see the stories of the Pharisees in We
need to know that there's a Pharisee in here, which is a far worse
Pharisee than any I've ever seen in the world. Those ones come
and go all the time. This one here is bothering me
and troubling me all of the time. That's the Pharisee we need to
be saved from. We can touch him and we can be
touched by him. Why? Because all of her sins
are gone. The Lord Jesus Christ came to
so purify a bride that his promise is that he'll present her holy
and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, whose sight matters. I'm glad it's not my sight and
I'm really glad it's not your sight. And you ought to think
the same, vice versa. But it's in his sight, it's in
the sight of God. we're accepted in the beloved. True faith loves the Lord Jesus
Christ as Christ is for Christ's sake, for Christ's honour. This lady honoured him when the
Pharisee dishonoured him and it's exactly the same throughout
this world. Wherever works and religious
righteousness and legalism is preached. The Lord Jesus Christ
is dishonoured in the saving of his people. He saves sinners. God loves us in the Lord Jesus
Christ and accepts us in the Lord Jesus Christ. All his children,
because their sins are gone, My sins are forgiven. Who is this? This is the sin
forgiving saviour. This is the everlasting loving
saviour. This was the saviour that in
a short time after this would take those sins of hers in his
own body to the cross of Calvary and suffer the infinite wrath
of almighty God upon them until God says I'm satisfied. Those
sins have been perfectly and justly Gone, they're put away,
they're buried in the depths of the sea, they're as far as
the east is from the west. We've been travelling west for
the last, I've been travelling west for the last two and a half
weeks or three weeks and I keep going west and I keep going to
England and I keep going west and I come to Charlotte and I
keep going west and I come to Lexington, keep going west and
we go to California, keep going west and we go, we just keep
going as far as the east from the west. gone. Would the Lord grant us the grace
to simply believe, to have a childlike faith, the faith of this woman. Listen to how our Lord Jesus
Christ finishes. He says to her, Your sins are forgiven. Thy faith
has saved thee. Go in peace. Thy faith has saved thee. People want to make faith a saving
act and a justifying act, but faith just lays hold of the saviour
who does all the work, isn't it? He said, it's thy face. Would
that woman have gone back to that town that night and greeted
her friends and said, I have been saved and I have been forgiven
because I believed? I don't think for a second she
would have gone down and said, what would she sort of said?
Oh, there's a saviour. There's a saviour for sinners. And he's revealed himself to
me in such a way that I'm drawn to him even though I'm the filthiest
sinner in all of this town. And I'm drawn to him in love. And she doesn't say a single
word. I love in the scriptures every
single time when one of the Lord's sheep is attacked, the Lord Jesus
Christ interposes himself and deals with them all the time.
We don't have to defend ourselves, brothers and sisters. We're sinners.
We'll proclaim him and we'll defend him in his glory. but
we don't have to defend ourselves. Thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace. What a way to go. I can lay my head on my pillow
when I think about this lady and I think about the way the
Lord dealt with her. And I can wake up in the morning
and I can look forward to the rest of the day looking at this
lady and thinking how glorious it is that we have such a saviour.
And he comes and he draws his people to himself in this way
and exposes himself to them and exposes them to themselves and
to him and he holds up his bride and says, this is the wisdom
and this is the glory of God Almighty in the Lord Jesus Christ. Wisdom. We have a wise God, don't
we? I love the way he saves. I love
the wisdom with which he saves us. I pray that we would just
come as she came. To Simon, he was a prophet, maybe,
and a man and someone to be used. To the woman, he was a saviour. A saviour who came, a saviour
who loved, a saviour because of his power of grace in her
heart, drew out this love for him. And she kept coming. She kept coming. That's all we
do, brothers and sisters, isn't it? We just keep coming and rejoice. And He is honoured and He is
glorified and His wisdom is magnified in the way He saves sinners and
reveals His glory. I'm in, brother. To have the Lord say, thy sins
are forgiven thee. There's nothing like that. And this woman is every believer
and this Pharisee is everybody else. It really is that simple. Let's pray. Lord, how we thank you for this
message. How we thank you? Of that one. Who this message message exalted? The Lord Jesus Christ. And his
love for and his salvation of sinners. And Lord, the only way
we can come. To you like this woman did. in
brokenness at your feet, at his feet, is
by your grace. And Lord, we ask that by the
strong hand of your grace, you would enable each person in this
room to come to your son the way she did. Lord, may we be those who have
been forgiven much and love much. In the high and holy name of
thy son, we pray. Amen.