So it will come as no surprise this evening, perhaps, that if I were to put a title on our little consideration this evening, that it would be simply this, Jesus, the sinner's friend. Jesus, the sinner's friend. The friend of sinners. The little reading we had together there in Luke's gospel in chapter seven brings before us a lovely story of forgiveness of sins. It brings before us a lovely story, a consideration of love. And it also teaches us something about worship. Forgiveness of sins, love and worship. We have three main characters here. We have Simon, the Pharisee, who invites Jesus. the Son of God into his home. And then we have a woman who comes into the narrative. A Pharisee, Simon, invites Jesus to a meal. Simon, a man who was a member of a sect that was bitterly opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt the Lord Jesus was completely aware of the animosity that was borne him by the Pharisees, how they derided him. They would not accept him as the Messiah, as the Son of God. And we might think that the Lord Jesus Christ would have been quite justified in saying, no thank you very much, I won't come into your house. But what a gracious person the Lord Jesus Christ is. What a lovely, lovely character he demonstrates throughout the gospels. He's prepared to mix with sinful people. He's prepared to mix with the knowledgeable, the educated people. We think of Nicodemus and how that the Lord Jesus Christ would deal with that man and how that in the very next chapter, having dealt with Nicodemus in chapter three, of John's gospel. In chapter 4 he meets with an altogether different person, a woman who was living an immoral life. But he deals with each of them in the very way in which it was necessary for them to be dealt with and in a way that they could understand the message of the gospel. And as I look around this room this evening, I see many different people, all different in many, many respects, many aspects. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ has come alongside each and every one of us, and he's spoken to us, and he's declared himself to us as saviour of the world. And we have a daily, we have a continuing relationship with him, on our level if you like. What a wonderful saviour he is, what a wonderful gospel message it is. And Jesus accepts the invitation to go into the house of this Pharisee. And then later they are joined by a woman. And it simply says in our narrative here in the authorized version that she was a sinner. Well, we can make of that what we wish. But she was a sinner. Not a person who would naturally and normally be found, I'm sure, in the house of a Pharisee. And as we go down through this little incident together, it becomes obvious exactly what Simon thinks. of this particular woman. A woman then, who is a sinner. It's a strange triumvant of people, isn't it? Very odd, here we have three very, very different people. We have the Lord Jesus, and we could put across him as a title, the Righteous One. for he was righteous. We've already prayed in our prayers that he was the Lord Jesus Christ, one who was totally and utterly sinless, one who was perfect in every respect, one who was the very Son of God, the righteous one. And then we've talked about this woman, and we could write across that woman perhaps the unrighteous one, for she was a sinner. And then we come to Simon himself, and we could say from what we learn of him in this passage that he was the self-righteous one. Three people then, the righteous, the unrighteous and the self-righteous. Perhaps we all have been in the position in our past experiences of being the people who were the unrighteous. Before Christ came into our lives, before we committed our lives to him, before we accepted him as our saviour, we were those who would be looked upon as those who were unrighteous. But the righteous one, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into our lives and changed us and turned us around and set us on a new pathway. And perhaps in the past we might have been self-righteous, just as Simon, relying upon our religious knowledge, relying upon our church attendance and the people that we mixed with as giving us some form of righteousness, and we become self-righteous. These then are the three people in this narrative. And just for a few moments, I want to concentrate really upon this lady, upon this sinful woman. Concentrate upon her actions, the things that she does. She doesn't speak, but the things that she does, the very way she treats the Lord Jesus Christ, speaks volumes of that lady. And it gives us a very clear picture, I believe, of what true worship is all about. True devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ is all about. Right from the very outset of our reading, we read that this lady came into this room. Now that might seem to be a strange thing. How did she get there? Well, I believe that in those days, quite often, these meals were held outside of the house, under a veranda. And it would have been very easy for her to slip in onto that veranda amongst the people who were there, invited to this particular meal. And so here she is, she comes in. And what's the focus of her attention? Immediately she is focused upon the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. The company are reclining. They would eat in those days, if you can imagine it, not as we sit at a table with our feet under the table, but they would be reclining with their feet stretched out behind them and their elbow on the table. and they would be eating in that particular way. Feet then pointing outwards away from the table. So the lady comes in and she concentrates. She focuses immediately upon the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. What blessed feet they were, weren't they? I don't know about you, but I don't like my feet very much. Most people don't like their feet very much, I'm told. And I have some sympathy with that. But you know, this lady sees feet there that are blessed feet. She sees feet there that are shod with the preparation of the gospel feet, that have trod in the will of God, in the obedience to God. Wonderful feet. of the Saviour. She comes in and she concentrates upon them. Feet that would be eventually pierced for her sins. Feet which would have walked all around the country in that day for the one purpose of eventually walking to the cross at Calvary to give her life for each and every one of us. These were beautiful feet. Isaiah tells us that in chapter 52 and verse 7. These were feet that only brought good tidings to the folk of the day. Feet that published peace. She focuses on them. And while she may not have been aware of all the intricacies of the thoughts that we've had perhaps this evening concerning feet, this was her focus of attention. She might well have been conscious of her own feet. Perhaps she didn't like her feet either, I don't know. But she would have been conscious that her feet had led her in many, many ways that were unrighteous. They would have taken her places that perhaps she wasn't very happy to have revealed. so different from the Lord Jesus Christ's feet. Her feet were restless feet. Her feet were the feet that in the paths of sinners roam. Her standing, her weeping, her washing with tears of the Lord Jesus Christ's feet, and the wiping with the hairs of her head of the Lord Jesus, her kissing and anointing those feet. It all speaks so eloquently, does it not? So eloquently of her sense of guilt in the presence of divine glory. She was at his very feet. not approaching him in any way sort of, here I am and I'm someone special or anything like that. Here she was humbly kneeling at his feet in worship and the very things that she did proved that her love was for this one and her worship was to be directed at him. What a lovely picture, isn't it? You can just imagine it, seeing this lovely woman there, weeping. washing his feet with the tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head, anointing them with the oil that she brought. This was worship. This was true worship from this woman as she met with her saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Simon, he was altogether different, had no such feelings in that way, in that respect at all as we shall see presently. He questions immediately the Lord Jesus Christ's acceptance of this woman doing what she's doing. Is he a prophet? He says he is. Simon has got him there because he wants to find out more about the Lord Jesus. He wants Simon, don't doubt, to find out if he can trip her up, if he can catch her out. That's what he wants to do. So here he is, and he says, this man, if he was a prophet, he'd know who this woman was, he'd be able to discern that she was a sinful woman. this one who calls himself the son of god this one who purports to be from the line of david and a prophet this one who preaches as if he were an intimate on intimate terms with god himself surely he would know that this woman is a sinful woman and he wouldn't allow her to touch him surely The Lord Jesus, it told us in the narrative, the Lord Jesus, he reads Simon's thoughts. And he brings out a parable to Simon to just explain to Simon something of his wrong-headed thinking about this woman. Because Simon is looking upon this woman on the outward appearance. We thought a little bit about that this morning. How that we look on the outward appearance, but God, the scriptures tell us, looks on the inward part. God knows us from inside out. And so this woman, Simon sees what he thinks he sees. He doesn't appreciate what this woman really is and what she is about. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. The Lord Jesus tells Simon this little parable about the two creditors, the man who had two debtors owing one 500 pence and the other 50 pence, and he forgives them both of their debt. Jesus says to Simon, who's going to love him most? Who's going to be most grateful to him? Well, it's a simple story, isn't it? Because the only answer can be that it is the man who was forgiven most who's going to love the man more. The debt of the first was 10 times larger than and as great as the second. But on the one point, they were both alike. It didn't matter about the size of the debt, did it? On one point, they were absolutely equal. And that was that they were debtors. They owed this particular man. They were both bankrupt. They couldn't pay him back. They had nothing to pay. And as I say, out of the generosity of his heart, the creditor forgave them both. And of course, that's just like our God, isn't it? Again, we look around the room and we look at each other and we don't know everything about each other's lives, but we've all sinned in one way or another, perhaps some more than others. that God forgave us all in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. No partiality there. Totally impartially, God looks at us as sinful and he forgives our sin, however great, however small those sins might be. God forgave us out of the generosity of his heart. In Psalm 103 and verse 3, David writes that he is a God who forgiveth all thine iniquities, not just some of them. Just forgives all of our iniquities. So it's not the greatest sin, it's not the greatest sinner that is in view here. It's simply that we are all sinners. We all need to be, have those sins forgiven. Just as we were saying this morning from Romans 3.23, for all of sin comes short of the glory of God. There's no difference. We've all sinned and we all need that forgiveness. We've all missed the mark. We've all missed God's standard for eternal life. And of course the standard is set so very high that there's no hope that any mortal could ever reach that standard. For the standard is the person and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. That perfect, sinless life, we could never ever live up to it. God gave the Israelites ten commandments. We couldn't live up to those. We would never be able to live up to every single commandment, let alone the requirements of God for our sins. And so we needed the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. It says, the woman whose sins were many. But she had an appreciation of her sinfulness, it seems. For she takes the very lowest point that she can in that room, and she's at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. And her actions bring out a tremendous teaching of worship, how we can worship the Lord Jesus Christ and our Father God. A story then of forgiveness and love for eventually the Lord Jesus Christ says to her, thy faith have saved thee. Go in peace. Your sins are forgiven you. A story of forgiveness. A story of love that she shows to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But as I said earlier, also a story of worship. Teaching us something about how we can worship. the God of heaven, how we can bring praise and worship for the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Pharisee invites Jesus to come for a meal. The Lord Jesus Christ makes the effort and comes for that meal. This lady comes into the room showing great courage, tremendous courage, as she finds her way into that room. She brings an alabaster box of ointment, it tells us. Well, I'm told that in those days an alabaster box of ointment was something that was extremely expensive. It was something that was not to be used on every single occasion. In other words, you didn't use it every day to make yourself smell attractive. It was a flask that was a globular flask full of very precious, very expensive perfume or ointment. And when that globular glass recepting was filled with the liquid, the glass was then heated at the neck and it was drawn out so that it sealed itself. and it was kept in that particular way until it was to be used. It was very precious, it was very expensive perfume. It had no handles on it, it wasn't meant to be carried about, it was just to be used on one particularly special occasion. Not always made of alabaster, they were made of all sorts of materials, but they had the same purpose of being a receptacle for something that was very precious, something that was very expensive. And she approaches the Lord Jesus Christ's feet. And she approaches the Lord Jesus Christ's feet with the intention of breaking this bottle of ointment and placing it upon his feet. That was what she was about. That was what she wanted to do. But wonderfully, it seems that her emotions get the better of her. And as she comes, and before she even breaks this alabaster box of ointment, she weeps. She weeps over the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. Her tears fall. She then, obviously, is embarrassed at what she's done, and she tries to dry the feet of the Lord Jesus, and she does it with the hairs of her head. How humble this woman is. She's there at the feet of the Lord Jesus weeping and wiping his feet with the hairs of her head. Jewish women of the day would never have been seen in public with their hair down. That would have been absolutely a no-no in society of that day. But this woman is so overcome with worship for the Lord Jesus Christ that she sets all these things aside. You can imagine the folks there sitting around that table, particularly Simon. looking at this woman and thinking, this is ridiculous, she should not be behaving like this. They were perhaps embarrassed by what she was doing. She was totally involved in the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ there at his feet. She ignores public opinion and she starts kissing his feet as well. This is total involvement, isn't it, in her task of bringing worship to the Lord Jesus Christ. It was said in the day that perhaps, on very rare occasions, a high-ranking rabbi might be treated like this. But very, very rarely. It didn't happen very often, and not in public, certainly. And so she's there, pouring out her love and her devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. It seems to point us to the fact that at some point in her experience she'd had a meeting with the Lord Jesus and she'd had her sins forgiven. She'd recognized that she was a sinful woman, that she was a sinner and that she needed those sins dealt with and she'd accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who could forgive sins. It seems reasonable to imagine that she'd had this previous experience with the Lord Jesus Christ and that her many sins, her sins which were many, the narrative says, were forgiven. Now she wanted to show her profound gratitude and a profound expression of love for the forgiveness of those sins. Jesus, having shared the parable that we spoke of earlier, he then points out to Simon that Simon only sees this woman for what she is known to be, only sees her on the outside, not seeing her, as we might say in our day and age, a sinner saved by grace. And he goes on, the Lord Jesus, to compare her treatment of him to the treatment that Simon gave him as he came into his house. Jesus says to Simon, just have a look at this woman, who do you see? And he knows, Jesus, that Simon is saying to him, well she's a sinner, she's a sinful woman, she's a woman of the town, she shouldn't be in here even. Jesus said, I want you to look at her in an altogether different light. I want you to see what she's really about. So he points out to Simon that certain things that should have been done for him on his arrival at the house were not done for him. Common courtesies of the day were not shown to the Lord Jesus as he came into that house. The Lord Jesus obviously was a principal guest there, was an honoured guest. And yet he'd been not shown the common courtesies of the day, but this woman had demonstrated her love for the Lord Jesus and her appreciation of him. Simon, he says, you gave me no water to wash my feet. In those days, the dusty roads, they would have walked along. They came into a house and there would have been a bowl of water and a towel for them to have their feet washed. Simon, he says, you didn't give me that common courtesy of a bowl of water to wash my feet. But this woman, this woman who you're looking down on, she's not ceased to wash my feet with her tears. He says, Simon, you didn't give me a kiss when I arrived. But this woman, he says, didn't just give me a kiss. She hasn't ceased to kiss me while I've been here. Such is her worship of me and her devotion to me. Simon, he says, you gave me no oil to anoint my head with when I came in. And that word oil there is just common, ordinary olive oil. You gave me no oil, he says, but this woman has brought with her, has broken this alabaster box of ointment, this precious ointment, rare and expensive perfume. She's anointed my feet with that. Simon, he says, no water for me, no kiss for me, no oil, cheap olive oil for me. This woman has shed her tears on my feet and washed them, dried them with her hair of her head. She's not ceased to kiss my feet. And she's broken this alabaster box of very expensive perfumed ointments. Simon, he says. The very least I could have expected of you as I came into your house, you could not be bothered to give me. This woman has been overflowing ever since she came into this house. She's been overflowing with love and appreciation for what I've done for her. Do you get the picture? It speaks to my heart, and I hope it speaks to yours, of our love and our devotion for the Saviour. Sometimes we find it difficult, even when we come together on a Lord's Day morning perhaps, to worship and to praise God together. Perhaps we come in and we can't be even bothered to bring the very common courtesy of praise and worship to God. And certainly we're not like this woman overflowing in praise and worship, love and appreciation for the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we come together for praise and worship, how much does it cost us? This woman obviously spent all that she had, I would imagine, on this particular gift that she wanted to anoint the Lord Jesus with. So often our praise and our worship costs us perhaps nothing. We come with nothing in our hands, nothing on our heart or mind or praise and worship for God himself. This woman was demonstrating the difference between Simon and herself. However great her sins were, the grace of God was sufficient. Her sins, the Lord Jesus Christ, are forgiven her. The outpouring of that love and worship and praise was not the reason for her sins being forgiven. It was the result of her sins being forgiven. Her love for the one who had forgiven her sins. Her love is the proof that she had already been forgiven. Her love was the effect, not the reason for her forgiveness. It was the consequence of having had her sins forgiven, not the condition of having them forgiven. It was the result, not the reason. It was the fruit, not the root. And surely that is why we should be those who are constantly praising and worshipping our God and our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Not because it's going to earn us brownie points, not because it can save us, but because we are saved. Because we are those who love the Lord Jesus in that particular way. The people there at the meal murmur amongst themselves, who they say. Who's this who forgives sins also? It is God who can only forgive sins. It's a divine prerogative. You notice how the Lord Jesus ignores them completely. His one interest at this particular meal, with all these high-flown people around him, his real interest is in this sinful woman. and the fact that she has had her sins forgiven, that she's been saved by faith in himself and his coming sacrifice at Calvary's cross. What does he say to the lady? Go in peace, he says. Go in peace. Go and look at the original Greek and it literally says this, it says, go into peace. Go into peace. The folks of that day would have said, go in peace to those who were dead. They had a corpse before them, and they would say to that corpse, go in peace. You're dead. Go in peace. He says to this woman, go into peace, which was a phrase, a saying that they would use to the living. Go into peace. This woman, as far as the Lord Jesus Christ is concerned, has had her sins forgiven. and she's going into peace because of those sins having been forgiven. As I say, it just surely, surely just begs the question of us. How deeply do we love the Lord Jesus Christ? Would we be prepared to throw ourselves at his feet and weep? Would we be prepared to give the very best that we had, the most expensive thing in our lives, to honour the Lord Jesus Christ, to show our praise and our worship for him. That's what he wants of our hearts. We're saved, those of us who are saved, we're saved to be a praising and a worshipping people. We're not saved to do anything else at all other than bring praise and worship to our God. Yes, we serve God as well, but that's because of our salvation. That's an evidence of the fact that we're saved. We need to be those who are constantly praising and worshipping the Father God for the Lord Jesus Christ, for what he's done in our lives. And he says to each and every one of us, go into peace. Have that peace in your heart that you know your sins are forgiven. and that eventually you will be taken into heaven itself and you will be like the Lord Jesus. So a lovely little demonstration here of worship. A story of love, yes, and forgiveness, but a woman who was totally taken up with praise and worship for the Lord Jesus Christ. Might that be our experience in our lives, that we never lose, as Dick Saunders used to say, we never lose the wonder of it all. Amen.