The Difference between Repentance and Resistance

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

It has been a nostalgic week at our house. My wife has been a little sad about the fact that as of today, for the first time in many, many years, we don’t have anybody in the nursery now that Princess Spider-Man has moved up to the next class. And I walked in the auditorium, and my second oldest told me, Daddy, I really enjoyed the youth group today.

And I was not prepared for that. and I know when I get home y’all are going to say but we told you you understand just because I knew doesn’t mean I realized right there’s a difference so there’s been a lot of these conversations about the kids growing up and things changing and we’re finding ourselves more and more getting into that stage of life where we say the thing that we’ve always heard back in my day first time I ever said that I thought wow that came out of me back in my day that’s something old people say. One of the things we were talking about this week is how they just don’t understand what life was like back in the day.

We didn’t have a lot of money to eat out just as one example. We didn’t have a lot of money to go to restaurants all the time. So if we did, it was a real treat.

And the biggest treat of all was if we got Chick-fil-A because they weren’t everywhere. They were in the malls. So the only way we got Chick-fil-A is if we happened to be at Dorman Mall, and mom was in a really good mood and had some extra money, and it was meal time.

So if we ever got to eat Chick-fil-A, it was like we had won the lottery. It’s not that way anymore. I ate there three times last week, which sounds bad.

Hear me out. I had been sick and nauseated, and when I started getting over it, that was the only thing that didn’t repulse me, so that’s where I went to eat. But we could take the kids there, and because they have grown up with that not as a but as a staple, from the time they had teeth, we were going at least once a week, maybe sometimes twice.

It’s not a big deal to them. Hey, we’re going to take you someplace special for lunch. I thought you said you were taking us someplace special. This is just Chick-fil-A.

They don’t know. And it reminded me that when you’ve always had something, you don’t always appreciate it the way somebody appreciates it who hasn’t always had it. And we could say that about any number of things that maybe we didn’t have growing up, that our kids do have or our grandkids do have, that if it’s just always been there, you don’t realize what a big deal it can be, like you do if you haven’t always had it.

And that’s the principle that’s at work here in the story that we’re going to come to at the very end of Luke chapter 7 today. If you’re new with us this morning, first of all, we’re glad you’re here. And second of all, we are working our way piece by piece through the book of Luke.

And today we’re at Luke chapter 7 starting in verse 36 where Jesus encounters a couple of people that live out this comparison on a spiritual level between those who have always had or always thought they had and so didn’t appreciate like those who had never experienced it before the things of God and appreciated them on a whole different level. So we’re going to look at this this morning in Luke chapter 7. We’re going to start in verse 36.

If you would turn there with me in your Bibles, if you have your Bible today, and once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Now, if you can’t find Luke 7 or you don’t have your Bible, that’s okay. It’ll be on the screen for you here so we can all follow along as we read.

But Luke chapter 7, starting in verse 36, says this, Now one of the Pharisees was requesting him to dine with him, speaking of Jesus, And he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner, and when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.

And Jesus answered him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he replied, Say it, teacher. Verse 41, Jesus says, A moneylender had two debtors.

One owed 500 denarii and the other 50. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?

And just to put this into a little perspective, a denarius was about a day’s wages for a common laborer. So when he says 500 denarii, that man owed 500 days wages to the money lender over a year’s salary. The other owed 50.

So over a month’s salary, both enormous sums of money, but there’s a difference between the two. And so Jesus asked if they were both forgiven, Which of them will love him more? Verse 43, Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more.

And he said to him, you have judged correctly. Turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with perfume.

For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little loves little. Then he said to her, Your sins have been forgiven.

Those who were reclining at the table with him began to say to themselves, Who is this man who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace, and you may be seated.

So we see in verse 36 that Jesus is invited to this banquet where the contrast between his host and this uninvited guest are going to teach us something about sin and transformation. And the first thing, we need to kind of understand what’s happening here because this is kind of a foreign concept to us. In this day and age, if you were wealthy, if you were somebody prominent like this Pharisee, you would hold these lavish banquets and you would invite other prominent people that you would host these banquets and people would come to these banquets to see and to be seen and to socialize and to network.

And it was the invited guests who would come in and would recline on these couches to eat. That just sounds like a horrendous way to make a mess to me, but that’s what they were in the custom of doing. They would recline on these couches next to the table and they would eat.

What’s strange to us is that these banquets were kind of open to the public. Not that everybody could come in and participate in the banquet, but they could come into the banquet hall. It was kind of like, I don’t watch the award shows, but I think people will show up who aren’t going to the Oscars or the Emmys or the whoever’s, and they’ll just show up at the award ceremony.

They can’t necessarily get in and have a seat, but they go and see who’s going to be there and what they’re wearing and who they’re with. And the people would be able to come into the room and see who was there and talk to some of the people, talk to some of the important people in society. And so Jesus was invited to this.

We don’t know for sure what the Pharisees’ motives were here. I’ve seen some commentators say, oh, he was obviously trying to trap Jesus. I’m not sure the Scripture tells us enough to be able to make that assertion with certainty.

Other people say, oh, he loved Jesus, and he just wanted Jesus around. I’m not sure we know that much either. We’re in Galilee.

We know that in Galilee, people tended to be a little more accepting of Jesus than they were around Jerusalem. Probably the Pharisees were more accepting than the Pharisees at Jerusalem. So you probably have a guy who is friendlier toward Jesus than regular people in Jerusalem, but not as friendly as the regular people in Galilee.

My guess, and what I think is a safe place to land on as far as his motive, is everybody was talking about Jesus. So let’s have him to the party. Let’s see what he’s going to do.

Let’s see what he’s going to say. Let’s see how it makes me look if we have this prominent rabbi there. And so he invites Jesus to the party.

This woman comes in because she could come and see Jesus and have an audience with him. But she goes beyond just coming in and talking to Jesus and comes in to anoint him. You’ll also notice, I believe all four Gospels talk about an instance of somebody anointing Jesus with a broken vial of something.

In some cases, there’s the detail of washing his feet with tears. In some cases, there is the detail of drying his feet with his hair. And people will say, well, there are discrepancies among this story.

So it shows us the Bible’s not true. But if you look at the details, I think these four Gospels record three separate events. Because they’re outlined as taking place in three different locations.

Or on three different days. That’s more of a Sunday night conversation. We can talk about that tonight if you want to get into it.

But this is one of the instances where somebody comes and anoints Jesus. And for this woman to come in, they say she’s a sinner. That’s kind of code for she was a woman of loose morals.

That’s how the man talked about her. She was a sinner, and she came to Jesus, and the way she came to Jesus just scandalized everybody. But the way she came to Jesus also indicated that there was a serious change of heart that had taken place.

And she teaches us in a couple of verses here, in verses 37 and 38, that a repentant sinner is a transformed sinner. Because that’s what she was. She was somebody who had come to Jesus repentant.

That word repentance gets thrown around and misused a lot. Just to clarify what we mean by repentance, it doesn’t mean that she has completely turned her life around. She is sinless from here on out.

Repentance means she has changed her mind and her perspective to where she now agrees with God about her sin. An unrepentant sinner says, I love my sin and I hate God. A repentant sinner says, I love God and hate my sin.

If we’re repentant, we’re still going to sin from time to time. It’s an unfortunate fact of living in this fleshly body. But as repentant sinners, we hate our sin and we agree with God.

We understand the need for His forgiveness and we’re seeking it out. And something about that transforms us. So some of the ways that it shows us she’s been transformed, we see here in verse 37, she has abandoned her sinful pursuits because of Jesus.

When it says she’s a sinner, when I use the word a woman of loose morals, she’s very likely a prostitute. These are euphemisms that Luke is using. She’s very likely somebody who is involved in sinful relations for money.

By the way, this is not Mary Magdalene. I don’t know where we got the idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. This is not Mary Magdalene.

But she comes to Jesus and she breaks this alabaster vial of ointment, of perfume to anoint Jesus with. This was something expensive. When things like this happened, on other occasions, some of the disciples, especially Judas, who was skimming the money, who was embezzling, got mad because that could have been sold for a lot of money.

Now, when we know something about this woman’s history, and we know she’s able to afford these fancy things, it’s not hard to imagine that she’s able to afford these things because of her job. She’s been involved in the things she’s been involved in to make money and to have that kind of lifestyle. But here she’s no longer concerned about the cost. She’s no longer concerned about the worldly goods she’s been able to amass and afford because of her worldly lifestyle.

Instead, she comes and this that she has worked for, this that she has pursued, this costly perfume in alabaster, she breaks it open and pours it out for Jesus. The things that she has pursued sinfully up to this point just don’t matter to her anymore. She’s willing to abandon those things for Jesus.

And we see she’s changed her entire way of thinking because of Jesus when we get to verse 38. And it says, standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. She is holding on to Jesus.

She has thrown herself at his feet. She is she is weeping so hard that her tears are able to wash his feet. This is clearly a woman who’s going through something.

And we kind of have to read between the lines here. We want to be careful about what we assume. We don’t know exactly what’s going on in her mind and why she’s crying like this, but she’s either weeping over her sin because she regrets the sin that she’s been participating in, or she’s weeping in joy over the salvation she’s found in Jesus.

She’s weeping in joy over the hope she’s found in Jesus, or maybe it’s a combination of both. But there’s something about where she’s been and where she is now with Jesus, and there’s a difference between the two, and it drives her to this extreme emotional reaction where she is weeping to the point that she is able to wash his feet with her tears. Something has changed about this woman’s perspective on life.

Again, either tremendous regret over her sin, tremendous joy over the hope she’s found in Jesus, but there’s been a tremendous change in the way she thinks. And we look just a little further in verse 38, and we see she surrendered her dignity because of Jesus. It said she kept wiping his feet with the hair of her head.

This was considered a shameful thing. As a woman in first century Jewish culture, you didn’t uncover your hair and let it down in public. And yet she is not only doing that in this very public place, but she’s using her hair to dry this man’s feet.

You also didn’t go up and touch somebody like that. And she’s doing all of these things that broke these social taboos. And why is she doing it?

She’s doing it to serve Jesus. She’s doing it because what’s dignified for her, what makes her look better, what makes her more acceptable in the eyes of other people is not as important to her as serving Jesus. And so she kept wiping his feet with the hair of her head.

Not only that, she offers her full allegiance to Jesus when it says that she was kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume. Her actions here leave no question for us about where her heart was and about where her allegiance was, that something in her life had changed because of this man, and she’s ready to devote everything she has to Jesus. Folks, that’s a picture for us of what transformation looks like in the heart of a repentant sinner.

Now, when we’re repentant today, 2,000 years later, we don’t have the opportunity to physically go and anoint his feet. We don’t have the opportunity to do exactly like she did. But the things that these actions represent are still things that we’re called on to do today as those who trust Jesus, as those who’ve repented, as those who’ve been transformed.

We are supposed to walk away from our sinful pursuits, walk away from the old way of living. Now, that walking away from sin and that and repentance are not exactly the same thing, but they are connected. Repentance is that change of mind, but it leads to the change of life.

And if we say we belong to Jesus, but there is no change in who we are before Jesus and after Jesus, something’s not right. When we repented, it’s supposed to transform us. The things that we used to cling to, the pursuits that we used to run after, the sinful things, they shouldn’t have the same allure for us anymore because Jesus changes us.

He should change our entire way of thinking. If we think about everything after Jesus precisely the same way we thought about everything before Jesus, something is not right. Because the new life that we have in Christ entails a renewing of our minds as we are conformed to be like Jesus.

If there are places that we are called to obedience to Him, and we’re not willing to surrender, we’re not willing to submit because it might make us look bad, or because it’s undignified or that it’s just the phrase we use at home. We stole it from Bluey. It’s not the done thing.

I’m not saying dumb, saying done. It’s not what people do. If we’re, if we’re willing to look at Jesus and say, oh no, I can’t do that.

That’s not what people do. Then something’s wrong. If we’re trying to offer Jesus anything less than our full allegiance, something is wrong.

Now, am I going to stand here and lie to you and tell you that’s always easy? No. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be entire books of the New Testament that talk about how we deal with our flesh and how we have this ongoing struggle between the flesh and the spirit that we’re called to deliberately walk in the spirit and to avoid the flesh.

It’s a battle. It’s an everyday battle to make sure that our allegiance is not just with Jesus, but that it stays with Jesus. But if after Jesus, we’re still going on trying to offer him half of our heart, half of our allegiance, half of our time, half of everything we have.

If we’re trying to offer him less than 100%, something’s wrong. Because the transformation that he makes in us calls for 100%. That’s why he said the first and greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

That’s just in the first three verses. Then we move on from there and we get to deal with the other sinner. See, the Pharisee thought there was one sinner in the room.

There were a whole bunch of sinners and he was one of them. A self-righteous sinner is a hardened sinner. This man was hardened to the point that he could not understand his need or didn’t want to understand his need for forgiveness.

He didn’t want to understand his need for Jesus because he was hardened by his own self-righteousness. What is self-righteousness? That’s one of those church words.

Self-righteousness means when we think I’m good enough. God will just accept me however I am because I’m good enough. I try hard.

I’m not like these other people. That’s self-righteousness, and it hardens us. We see some of the ways this shows up.

Verse 39 says, now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, saw this woman clinging to his feet, anointing his feet, washing his feet, drying his feet, kissing his feet, she saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know what sort of person this woman is who is touching him. He assumed he knew better than Jesus what was going on. He’s looking at this saying, if he really was a prophet, he would know what a sinful, awful person she is.

And that implies, I see right through it. That implies I have more discernment and more wisdom and more knowledge than Jesus, which is never a claim you want to make because it’s not true and it just sounds silly. But while he is failing to understand what’s happening, and he’s even attributing this to Jesus’s ignorance.

If Jesus and I have different perspectives on what’s happening here, then Jesus must be wrong. Again, that’s not a place you want to be. But not only is he saying that, he is questioning the claims that chapter 7 has all been about, about Jesus being a prophet.

When Jesus raised the widow’s son from the dead in a move that everybody connected with both Elijah and Elisha, I thought Blanche was here earlier. I said it was Elijah. She said it was Elisha.

We were both right. They both did it. And the people looked at that and said, he’s a prophet.

God has sent us a prophet. Now, that’s true. He’s more than a prophet though, but that was as true as far as it went.

And then in dealing with John the Baptist, is it you? Are you the expected one or should we look for somebody else? Everything Jesus had done up to that point had given irrefutable proof of who he was, that all of his claims were true.

And now here’s this one man with the arrogance to say, Jesus and I don’t see eye to eye on this. Clearly, I’m right. The irony, though, is here he says Jesus doesn’t know what’s going on.

He can’t possibly know what’s going on in this situation. Jesus read his mind. You want to talk about not knowing what’s going on in a situation?

You can’t say that to Jesus when you’re sitting there questioning him in your mind, and Jesus is reading your mind and answering the question. But he assumed he knew better than Jesus. And self-righteousness will do that to us.

That Jesus will call us to do something, and we’ll say, no, I’m too good to do that. Or we will see the work that Jesus is doing in somebody else’s life, and we’ll treat it as a trivial thing. We’ll try to explain it away, because he could never work in that person.

He could never change that person. Self-righteousness will harden us to the point where we think we actually know better than Jesus. Not only that, he assumed he was better off than this woman.

When we get to verse 39, part of what he’s saying to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner. Oh my goodness, call the police, there’s a sinner in his house. There had been one all the time.

He recognized the woman’s sin. He was right, there’s nothing, he didn’t say anything that was incorrect. there in the assertion that she’s a sinner, but it’s the implication, not that she’s a sinner, but that she is a sinner.

Not like me. He was one of the righteous, he thought. Well, the problem there is he recognized the woman’s sin, but he failed to notice his own.

And self-righteousness will blind us to our own sin. It’ll make us think, I’m fine. I don’t need to deal with God about that.

And the sin will be left there to fester and grow and get out of control. And he failed to see how Jesus’s words applied to him. Jesus spoke this parable about the debtors.

He told the story about the two men, one who owed 50 days wages to a money lender, one who owed 500 days wages to a money lender, and asked about them both being forgiven. What he was telling the man was that this woman, that he was just disregarding as a sinner, like he wasn’t one, this woman was merely showing the appropriate appreciation for what Jesus had done in her life, for the hope he had brought her, for the forgiveness that he was offering. She was showing the appropriate amount of forgiveness.

So he’s telling this story so that the man, maybe it’ll break through the wall of ignorance, and the man will understand she’s simply been forgiven more. But we get to verse 43, and the spiritual application of this just goes over his head. Jesus said, who do you suppose will love him more.

And Simon answered and said, I suppose, and Bible scholars have made a big deal about those two words, I suppose, that it indicates like, okay, as my kids say, duh, like it’s a ridiculous statement. Like, Jesus, I can’t believe you’re asking me such a ridiculous question. This is beneath me.

He’s answering the question, I suppose, the one to whom he forgave more, he’s completely missing the point. Because if he realized, you’re the one that owes 50 days wages, I think it would have hit that man like a ton of bricks. Because here he is thinking, I’m right with God.

No, no, no. Just because your debt is less doesn’t mean you’re not a debtor. Don’t pick on the person who owes 500 days wages because you only owe 50. You still owe 50.

And if God’s standard is absolute sinless perfection, then none of us measure up. Just because you’ve sinned less than the other person doesn’t mean you measure up to God’s standards. You look really good by human standards, but by God’s standards, we’re all fallen.

And so even as Jesus is coming at him with this story that should have broken through, he still is so blinded by his own self-righteousness that he can’t see how Jesus’ words applied to him. And I think this is the saddest part. When we get to verses 44 through 46, Jesus turns toward the woman and said to Simon, Do you see this woman?

And he draws a comparison between the two. I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

A good host in that culture was supposed to offer you something to wash your feet with when you sat down to eat. He hadn’t done the minimum that was expected. And he says, and yet she has come and she has washed my feet with her tears.

She’s wiped my feet with her hair. He said, you gave me no kiss. They were supposed to greet their guests and show hospitality.

I’m really glad that this custom has gone by the wayside. Don’t need to be kissing all over each other. But that’s what they did in their day and age.

He said, you didn’t greet me. You didn’t show any appreciation of me being here. But ever since I walked in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.

You didn’t anoint my head with oil. That was another common thing because of the dry, dusty climate. That’s why they would wash the feet because you walked everywhere.

It was dry, dusty roads. Your feet would be gross. Because of that same dry climate, your skin would be dry.

They would anoint the head with oil. It was just a way of taking care of your guests. He said, you didn’t do that, but she has anointed my feet with perfume.

And this really draws the contrast between the two. He made some space for Jesus in his life, but nothing really changed. He let Jesus in, but that was about all.

That’s the big difference between these two. They’re both sinners, 50 sins, 500 sins. It doesn’t matter in the sense that, I mean, obviously 50 sins is better than 500.

But by God’s standard, 50 or 500, one is enough to condemn us. They’re both sinners. Both had access to the same Savior.

The difference here is that one thought he was good enough and he hardened his heart to the point that he kind of made space for Jesus to come around. And the other one recognized her own sin, recognized that Jesus was her only hope. She repented and was transformed and her entire life became about Jesus.

That’s the clearest picture as far as what we can see of the difference between the self-righteous sinner who’s been hardened and the repentant sinner who’s been transformed. Are we just trying to give Jesus a little spot in our lives? Are we just trying to tack Him on, make Him a Sunday activity?

Are we making Him a hashtag in our social media posts? Are we making Him a song we sing now and then? Are we making Him a t-shirt idea that we wear around, but nothing really changes?

Or is He the Lord of our lives? And the difference between the two, what led one to be repentant and the other to be hardened, was faith. The reason this difference shows up on the outside is because of the difference on the inside, which was faith.

Jesus offered her. He had already promised her forgiveness in verse 48. As a matter of fact, he said, if you go back to verse 47, that the very reason she loved him like this was because her sins had already been forgiven.

And as Jesus is talking about the forgiveness in verse 49, the crowd began to question his ability to forgive. Who does this guy think he is that he has the right to forgive sins? Jesus doesn’t explain his authority.

He doesn’t give them an argument. He’d already shown all throughout Capernaum who he was that had the authority to forgive sins. He didn’t argue with them.

He doubled down and said, go in peace. Your faith has saved you. Why are your sins forgiven?

Who am I to forgive sins? I’ve already told you who I am to forgive sins. Let’s talk about why I forgive sins.

It’s because your faith. Because you believed. Was it because she believed he was a miracle worker?

I don’t think that was it. Was it because she believed he was real? Everybody in Capernaum knew he was real. That Pharisee knew he was real. It’s because she believed that he was exactly who he said he was.

That’s the kind of faith that it takes to transform us. What does that mean? Believing that when Jesus came, he came as exactly who he claimed to be.

That he was God’s son, Israel’s Messiah, and mankind’s Savior. that God the Son came in human flesh as a tiny baby, lived a sinless life, so that he could come and forgive sins. She didn’t know how he was going to forgive sins, but he paid for it.

The way he did it was to pay for it. And this perfect sinless man, who had no sin of his own, nothing to pay for of his own, was nailed to the cross and shed his blood, taking responsibility for my sins and yours and hers, and even the Pharisees. That sin was nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ. It was punished.

It was paid for in full. So that if we’ll simply put our trust in him, if we’ll have that faith, our sins will be forgiven. Let me tell you the difference between the repentance center and the self-righteous center, they still play out today.

You can sit in church for decades and still not be transformed. Because it’s not about how many times you’ve come to church. It’s not about how big a show you put on of being good.

It’s about have you trusted Jesus as your one and only Savior? Have you come to that point of realizing I’m not good enough. I need God’s forgiveness.

And this guy is the only way I get it. And trusting that Jesus can do what he says he can do. This morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, it’s not about trying harder.

It’s not about being better. It’s about realizing Jesus paid for your sin in full. And asking for the forgiveness that he purchased because he paid for it on the cross and rose again to prove it.

Asking for that forgiveness. Believing that you’ll have it. And you’ll have it.