I would invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter seven. Today we're gonna be looking at verses 36 and 50, through 50 rather. And there we're gonna be reading the story of a dinner, a dinner party in which the host was terribly upset and embarrassed because he would not accept a truth about himself and indeed about the world and about his guest. I pray that it's the case that if Jesus came and supped with us, that we would listen and we would do so with humility and that we would own him and invite him into our midst with reverence and awe. But before we go and we talk about this particular dinner, let's go to the face of the one who has invited us to the marriage supper of the Lamb and let's ask him to help us to understand what was going on that night. God, our gracious Father, I do pray now, Lord, that as I stand to preach your word, that you would help me to divide it aright. I confess, Lord, that I am a weak and sinful man, that I have no capacity to divide this word without your light, without your illuminating grace. And I pray, O Lord, that you would help me to do so. Let me not go astray and say anything to your people that is not true. I pray also, Lord, that you would open their ears to hear, Lord. Help us all to hear the words of Christ. Help us all to know that we are debtors and that we have a debt we can't pay. I pray, Lord, that you would help us, therefore, to understand what to do with that debt. May we learn that from this lesson. We pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen. Luke chapter seven, verses 36 through 50. And I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Then one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. And he went to the Pharisee's house and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil and stood at his feet behind him, weeping. And she began to wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head. And she kissed his feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answered and said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. So he said, Teacher, say it. There was a certain creditor who had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii and the other 50. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him more? Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more. And he said to him, you have rightly judged. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint my head with oil, but this woman has anointed my feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. Then he said to her, your sins are forgiven. And those who sat at the table with him began to say to themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? Then he said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I don't know if you've ever been to the National Debt Clock website. It's actually kind of terrifying. It should be far more terrifying than it actually is to most people. I checked it last night and the national debt is at $35.2 trillion. This is a number that is inexpressible. There's never been a number in terms of wealth that large. To put that in perspective, the entire gross domestic product of the United States is $28.6 trillion a year, meaning that our debt ratio to our GDP is 134%. We owe more than the entire United States can produce. We pay, just to give you more insight into this, we pay 2.4 billion in interest payments every day. It's a number so vast that there is no hope of ever paying it off. It means that each child born into the USA, their birth date present, is a gift of $269,000 worth of debt. And the numbers on that clock, if you go to the site, you just see them continuing to spiral up and up and up and up and up and up. Your child's debt is greater every single day. But as serious as that government debt is, Have you ever thought that each person born into the world has their own debt clock where the numbers are continuing to spiral? And I don't mean one that tracks our monetary debt. That could be very frightening as well. But the debts that Jesus was talking about in this parable, and that is our sin debt to God. We are born already, just like the children in the United States are born already with a debt that they have to service, we are born already with a far worse debt. We are born into this world with the original sins of our first parents. It's interesting, I did not plan it this way, but you remember that when we confessed our faith using the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we talked about how all mankind fell in Adam's first transgression. We sinned in him and fell with him. We inherited his original sin. We inherited our first parent's sin debt. And if that wasn't bad enough, We are born not just with the sins of our first parents, Adam and Eve, held against us, but also we begin to accumulate more and more sins as we ourselves sin against God. Thomas Watson is a wonderful Puritan divine, an author who I always recommend him as if you've never read the Puritans before, start with Thomas Watson. He's kind of the easy mode of the Puritans. Do not start whatever you do with John Owen, okay? That is like jumping in. for your first time ever in a swimming pool into the deep end side. Thomas Watson will allow you to paddle in. He gets very deep at times, but he's very understandable, very homiletical. We just finally, after many years of reading it, incidentally, well done, lads, we finished reading through Body of Divinity by Thomas Watson at the Anstead's men's group. We're going to be starting a new book by John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, very soon. Thomas Watson wrote many books. They were based mostly upon his sermons, and one of his wonderful books is The Lord's Prayer, and it points out why, in an extended section, I can't obviously read the section to you, it points out why our debt to God is the most serious debt, far more serious than any debt that we can owe in this world. He asks, in what sense is sin the worst debt? And he answers this way. Because we have nothing to pay. If we could pay the debt, what need to pray, forgive us. We cannot say, as he in the gospel, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. We can pay neither principle nor interest. Adam made us all bankrupts. In innocence, Adam had a stock of original righteousness to begin the world with. He could give God personal and perfect obedience, but by his sin, he was quite broken and beggared all his posterity. We have nothing to pay. All our duties are mixed with sin, and so we cannot pay God in current coin. And then after that, Watson goes on to point out, sin is the worst debt because it is a debt against an infinite majesty. Sin is the worst debt because it is not single but a multiplied debt. Forgive us our debts. We have debt upon debt. Sin is the worst debt because it is inexcusable debt in two respects. There is no denying the debt. Other debts we may deny if the money be not paid before witnesses or if the creditor lose the bond, the debtor may say he owes him nothing. But there is no denying the debt of sin. If we say we have no sin, God can prove the debt. I will set thy sins in order before their eyes. That's Psalm 50, 21. God writes down our debts in his book of remembrance and his book in the book of conscience exactly agree so that the debt cannot be denied. Sin is the worst debt because there is no shifting off the debt. Other debts may be shifted off. We may get friends to pay them, but neither man nor angel can pay this debt for us. Sin is the worst debt because, and take this to heart, sin is the worst debt because it carries men, in case of nonpayment, to a worse prison than any upon earth, even to a fiery prison. And the sinner is laid in worse chains, chains of darkness, where he is bound under wrath forever. But the sad thing is that so many people are unaware of their debt, just as most Americans, if you ask them how much debt is there in the nation, they can't immediately reel off 35 trillion. You are now in a privileged position. You can actually answer that. But when you talk to the unbeliever, how great is your sin debt to God? They have no idea. What debt, they say. And when you say to somebody, if you can convince them You have a sin debt that you owe to God. You have sinned against your creator, your infinitely majestic creator, the God who alone was worthy of all honor and glory and praise. You have sinned against him and committed cosmic treason. If you can convince them of that, if you were to ask them, how can you be clear of it? They usually cannot give you the answer. Usually they say, well, I'll work it off. I'll do something. I'll do good works. Whereas I was unrighteous for most of my life and I, okay, I sinned, but now I'm only going to do good things. But they can't do that. Now, in these verses that we just read, we learn about two debtors, not just one, two debtors. And we can learn about their debt and how to be clear of debt by listening to what it teaches us. Now, we know very little about the woman in these verses. Unlike Simon the Pharisee, we are not given her name. While we're told that she is a notorious sinner, well-known in the area, we are not told what sins she was guilty of. Our natural instinct, or the natural instinct of most commentators in history, has been to assume that she was a prostitute, perhaps that this even was Mary Magdalene. But even that is uncertain. And at least one commentator has pointed out that to qualify for the treatment that she received that night, and had obviously been receiving for quite some time, she just needed to have been, for instance, a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock. That would all have been all that was necessary. But the little you do know about her is critically important. What do you know about her? You know about her faith. You know about her love, how she loved Christ. so deeply, and you know she was forgiven. And as I hope we shall see in just a moment or so, these are the most important things that we can know about this woman. Now, we're told a lot more about Simon. Who was Simon? Simon was a Pharisee. He was probably a very important man in this city. He invited Jesus to his house for a meal. Why did he do that? The Pharisees obviously did not like Christ at all at this point. Well, his motives for inviting Jesus are uncertain. We can't know them for certain. But the truth is he probably invited Jesus to dinner in order to confirm the reports of those in his party, the Pharisees, that they were circulating. The people, we remember, at this point thought Jesus was either a prophet or possibly the Messiah himself. But the Pharisees, they said, no, no, no, no. This man, he's a blasphemer. He's a glutton, an alcoholic, a friend of sinners, an enemy to all that is right and righteous. And it's possible that Simon himself was just looking for something that he could use as a charge against Jesus, something that might just slip out in the relaxed atmosphere of a dinner party. Now, you know that Jesus knows the hearts of all men. We see that from the way that he knows the heart of Simon, what's going on within him, his thoughts in verse 40. And you saw it in the events earlier in Luke 6 when Jesus healed the man with a withered hand. We read there, This is Luke six and verses seven and eight. So the scribes and Pharisees watched him closely, whether he would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the withered hand, arise and stand here. And he arose and stood. Again and again we see that Jesus knows the hearts of men. He knows them better than they know themselves. And why then does he go to Simon's house? He must have known what was up. Have you ever thought about that? He knew that Simon was not inviting him with grace in his heart and a desire to hear more teaching from Christ. He calls him teacher. But he did not want to be taught by him. None of the Pharisees did. Well, the answer to the question, why did he invite him, is simple. And I think if you will, or rather, the answer to why he went after he received the invitation is simple. And I think if you keep it in mind, you'll understand Christ's interactions with the Pharisees far better. And this is amazing, but Christ loves even them. Christ loved his worst enemies. You remember, as he was being crucified, what did he say about the very people who were driving nails into his flesh and putting him to death unjustly? Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. And he desires the world to come to faith in him and be saved. You remember, he rides up to Jerusalem and he looks upon the great city, the city that is about to reject him utterly, and he weeps. He weeps because he wanted to gather them to himself like a hen gathers her chicks, but they were not willing. Jesus desires to see Simon repent and believe him just as much as he desires the salvation of this woman who did. And if you remember that, you will see in Christ's rebukes the same desire to convict the Pharisees of their sin that John the Baptist displayed and later on Peter will display in his preaching to the crowds in Jerusalem. Remember, Peter, when he stands up on Pentecost in Jerusalem, what does he first start by doing? He starts by saying how God said that the Messiah would come, and how he would do the great works that Jesus did, and he says, you all saw them, and then that he would be raised from the dead, that he would not let his beloved to see corruption, and indeed, he says, and you know he's been raised, you can't go get his body. He's not dead anymore, he is risen. And he points out that they were guilty of taking the promised one, the Messiah, and putting him to death with their unrighteous hands. And their response is to be cut to the heart. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? So when Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees, it's not just heaping scorn upon them or exposing them. He's hoping to expose them to themselves. He wants them to see the state of their own heart. He wants them to understand their own death, their own need of a righteousness outside of themselves. I don't know if you've ever been convicted in a sermon, but if you have, good! It is good to be convicted of our sins that we might see them and repent of them. So often when people come to us and they admonish us and we feel the sting, what is the substance of the sting? Why does it hurt? It hurts because we know it's the truth in our heart of hearts. And if that's the case, then we should act on it. It should cause us to be humbled and to turn and to say, As hard as that is to accept, you know, you're right. And then to go in the opposite direction. A person who loves us will not allow us to go barreling towards a cliff and fall over. They will tell us, brother, sister, you need to stop. You need to turn away. The course you're on is a course that heads to destruction. If they love us, they'll do that. And Jesus loved them. That's why he told them what was actually going on. So Jesus goes to dinner with Simon, and into Simon's house comes this woman who had heard that he would be there. She also had heard and believed the gospel message of Jesus. Maybe she'd heard just something as simple as, come to me, all you who labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. But she is conscious of the awful weight of her sins pressing her down, crushing her. And she who had lived with that had felt the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. She had felt her heart coming to life. That heart of stone had been quickened. The light had streamed into her prison and she had embraced with joy the message of free grace. She was a woman who knew what Charles Wesley expressed so very well in his hymn when he wrote, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin in nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. That was her testimony as well, so there she is. Jesus is reclining at the table. Whenever you hear that he went to dinner, remember, they did not sit in chairs around the table like we do in the modern age. They actually reclined on couches, and they would eat, plucking things from the table in front of them. So there she is, and as Jesus reclines at the table, she breaks this alabaster vessel of fragrant oil. This is probably spikenard, which cost a small fortune, and she anoints the feet of her Savior. Now, this is, admittedly, this is speculation on my part, but I can't help but think that as she came into the room, her heart overflowing with love for Christ, keep in mind that the feet were not under the table, all right? You're reclining, your feet are exposed at the end of the mat. She couldn't help notice that his feet still carried the dust of the road. She couldn't help but notice that his host had not offered him water or towel with which to wash them, and so her love moves her to serve her master. Now, she has no water to offer him, save what Luther, and this is one of the most beautiful descriptions, just two words, save what Luther described as heart water, her tears. That's what she bathes him in. She has no towel with which to dry the master's feet, so she uses her own hair. And then she anoints him, but not with the cheap olive oil that you would give to a guest coming by your house, but with the most expensive perfume possible, this costly Spartan art. And in that moment, she's weeping, I'm sure, not only out of gratitude and love, but also at how shamefully her master has been treated. How the Messiah, the Son of God, has been put to shame in this household. I don't think enough, we don't weep enough for the way that Christ is treated in the world. the way he is reviled, the way he is disdained or mocked. Our tears should flow freely over the way that Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king is treated, but also over the way his body, the church is treated in the world. Why do the Muslims hate the Pakistani Christians so very, very much? Because they hate their master, the Lord Jesus. They deny that he is, in fact, the son of God. In fact, in the Quran, blasphemously, they have their version of Jesus denying that he was the son of God, denying that he was born of a virgin, denying everything that Christ taught. And so they mistreat his people terribly. And it should be something that does break our hearts. Simon, though, he's disgusted. He looks at this scene, which should melt our hearts, and he says, What they said is true. This man is no prophet. If he was, he would know about this woman and he would drive her away. Now, there's a fallacy there, actually. The prophets weren't omniscient. They only knew what God had revealed to them. You remember as we've been going through 2 Kings that Elisha knew certain things that were revealed to him by God, and he didn't know other things that weren't. They didn't know all things about all men. But what Simon thinks to himself in verse 39 speaks volumes to you about the condition of his heart. Because for Simon, righteousness consists entirely in externals, external appearances. He assumes that if Jesus really were righteous, he would be concerned as he was with knowing who was externally faithful to the traditions of the elders. He would be observing them in the most minute detail. And he would be keeping a running tally on who was observing the traditions and who wasn't observing the traditions, and thereby knowing who was a sinner and who wasn't. But here you see, I hope you see, so well the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. You see the difference between true religion and false religion. True religion is heart religion. Whose heart are those who are truly righteous most concerned about? It's not their neighbors. It's not those who are outside the covenant. The heart they are most concerned with, the one that grieves them the most is their own heart. False religion, on the other hand, is formalistic, it's external, and rather than seeking to know the true conditions of your own heart and assessing that aright and dealing with it, you're consumed with this self-righteousness, and you're consumed with how others are performing. You see it in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Oh, I thank you, Lord, that I'm not like this man. If that is the confession of your heart, man, you are in trouble. It's our own heart that we should be most concerned with. So here's application number one for you, and this is as true today as it was on this night. You can see it, unfortunately, sometimes in the church. You can see it in churches where gossip abounds, where the emphasis is not on have I closed with Christ? Am I full of love for my master? Am I keeping his commandments from the heart? Am I confessing my sins? Am I having small thoughts of myself? I'm able to say with John, he must increase, I must decrease, but rather the emphasis is on, do you know what so-and-so is doing? Sometimes it's expressed as a prayer request. Oh, we need to pray for brother Larry. That problem of his, you know, such a shame. Um, where people are horrified at the very idea of notorious sinners coming into the worship service. I remember a story, it was told to me by the pastor of a Baptist church. He had a young man, I'm sorry if you've heard this one before, he had a young man who was trying out for the position of associate pastor within his church. And the young man came in, and he preached a gospel, faith alone, in Christ alone. He used himself as an illustration. He confessed that he had been a drug addict and a sinner. And the man said, and at that moment, my eyes closed, and I thought, oh, no. Because he saw how the blue-haired old ladies in the back of the church stiffened at that. Drug addict? Our pastor's not going to be an ex-drug addict. And he said, I knew how the vote was gonna go at that point in time. There was no possibility that that man was ever going to be able to be a pastor within our church. And he said, my heart was grieved by that. You know, I could have invited a guy who was obviously guilty of the sin of gluttony to the nth degree. It wouldn't have mattered, that wouldn't have mattered. But he had confessed the icky sins, the ones that they disapproved of, and therefore he was utterly rejected. Let that never be the case with you, brothers and sisters. Strive to be the church of the publican and the church of the sinner, saved by grace. That's who's talking to you, incidentally. My background, oh my word, it would appall you, the things that I did as a teenager. I was a pagan, you know, There were very few sins that were outside the pale for me. Thankfully, there were some, but still, I'm just a sinner saved by grace, and that's all I'll ever be until I enter into glory. Now, Jesus knows Simon's heart, so he tells him this parable, and it's so straightforward, I almost need no interpretation whatsoever. Simon, this woman loves me much because she knows she's a debtor. She had a monumental sin, and she could never repay it, and yet she has been forgiven. Now what Simon no doubt would not see was the fact that he too was a debtor and that he couldn't cover his debt either. This woman knew how great her sins were and as a result she knew how great her need for forgiveness was. It's often the case, as many have pointed out, that the people in Las Vegas know their sinners. And as a result, it's easy to convince them of that. Whereas the people in Salt Lake City do not. And it's very difficult to convince them of that. And there is a second application. It's this, the knowledge of our sin is a great benefit to us. To have the scales fall from our eyes and realize just how great the burden on our back is. How much debt we have. It's a blessing beyond all measure. It should be to us like it was to Paul when his eyes were opened on the road to Damascus. Or when Nathan confronted David with his sins using a parable. And what did David do? He was struck to the heart after Nathan pointed at him and said, you're the man in the parable. You're the example. You're the wicked man. And he said, I have sinned before the Lord. Then you see the true glory of the gospel. Here's a woman laden down with sin. She's notorious in the community, but she's declared authoritatively to be forgiven of her sins. She's declared to be saved. Not on the basis of her works. That was the way Simon was trying to go. But she is saved because of her faith. And out of that faith comes this love, this abiding love for her Savior. She is saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ. The faith in the Son of God uniting her to Him. And then making her a partaker of His saving and atoning and reconciling work. Whereas she had only debt before, the debt is cleared. And then she is given His righteousness. She's given His wealth, the riches that only He had. She was saved by that faith when Christ declared it to be the case in verse 50. He's giving her assurance. Christ's words were to assure her of that and to tell everyone present, this woman is not the sinner who you once knew. She is a new creation. If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Do you know that? She was a child of God. The prodigal had not stayed in the far country. He had returned. The fatted calf has been slayed and everybody should rejoice, but instead Simon here is standing in for the older brother and saying, this isn't right. Why should she be forgiven? She hadn't tried to keep God's laws from the very beginning. Oh no. She had broken them all and she knew it. And so Christ says, your faith has saved you. Jesus reassures her and from that living faith flows her love and from that faith flows her good works manifested that day. And from that faith flows tears of undying gratitude, the water of the heart to her maker. And which is my final application. It brings me back to my original illustration. Have you ever felt I hope you have at some point, as hard as it is. I hope you have felt the weight of your debt to God. Have you ever realized, I mean really realized that there's no way you can pay that debt? Have you realized that the wheels are continuously spinning and that your sin debt is just getting worse and worse and worse outside of Christ? Have you realized that only Jesus can forgive that debt by paying it for you? Because He and He alone is the Son of God. Have you fled to Him? Have you called upon Him? Have you cried tears ever in your life as a Christian? Have you cried tears of gratitude like that woman cried? When you consider what Christ has done for you, who were so unworthy, who were equally guilty of putting Him on the cross. If you've never felt those tears, have you truly felt the love of Christ that causes them to flow? Seriously, many, many a congregation, I hesitate to call it a church, many a congregation is filled with decent, upstanding, civil Simons. And I don't mean Simon Peter, who knew what it was to know that you're a sinner and then close with Christ by faith. I mean this Simon, the Simon who thought he was righteous to begin with, that he had nothing to be forgiven, that he had no debt. No one who has not felt that debt cleared by Christ, closed with him, really knows the peace of what he speaks of here. In Romans 5.1, Paul tells us what that peace with God is like. He says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And that's the peace that I speak of. Week after week, when I read the benediction from number seven, that's the true shalom, to know you've been reconciled with him, that you're no longer enemies, you have nothing to fear. But if you have not felt that peace, if you have never been brought to an end of yourself, if you have not seen how your debt clock is racking up and up and up, may this day the Lord open your eyes. I can't send you to a website where you see your own sin debt, I can't. But look into your heart and ask yourself the question, am I really righteous? Am I righteous enough to go to heaven based on my own works? And I hope looking there you will see no. May you stop thinking that that is the case. May you hear this message not as though somebody else needs to hear it, but you need to hear it. Hear the promise that Christ makes. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. And there is your peace, there's your hope, there's your salvation. Jesus doesn't ask you, clean up your life first. There's so many people who have this weird idea. The first time I heard it from somebody, it flabbergasted me. I can't come to church, I need to clean up my life first. I've actually heard those words. I'm like, that's like saying, I can't get in the bath, I need to get clean first. That's what it's for, brother, that you might be washed of your sins. And so don't hesitate, don't tarry. There's nothing holding you back except your own heart. Run to Christ. Throw yourself at his feet like this woman did. Weep, ask for his mercy. He never denies it to those who ask in faith, never once. And you will be justified. Come without waiting, come without tarrying, and you too will be saved. Let's go before the one who saves us by his working. God, our Father, I do thank you so much for this great illustration of your love and your mercy given to this woman who had, she knew nothing that she could offer in her hand. She could not pay for her salvation. All she had was debt, debt, debt. And yet, oh Lord, we also see the example of Simon, who is like us in our natural state, depending upon ourselves, self-righteous, hating others. Oh Lord, let us be free of any thought that we're more righteous than other people. Help us instead, if we have found mercy and grace, oh Lord, to do all that we can to serve you. We may not be able to break the alabaster vessel and anoint your feet, but we can take that which you have given us and use it, oh Lord, so that others might come to a saving knowledge of Christ. To show our adoration to you, for instance, by supporting widows, orphans, missionaries, and so on, to do all that we can for your kingdom. Help us though, oh Lord, to remember to begin with faith in you. Oh Lord, we need your help. We need you so much. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for what you've done. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.