Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 7:36-50
If you have your Bible, take it out, find the Gospel of Luke, and there's an outline in the bulletin if you'd like to follow along there. This morning will be the last Sunday that we're going to look at Luke for a couple of weeks. We'll come back and pick up right where we leave off here at the end of chapter 7, beginning of chapter 8. During the month of December, we're going to talk about the story of Christmas and the subtitle for this series is going to be just four weeks long, it's going to be what to tell your kids, parents, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and enemies about the greatest story ever told. And so on the one hand, I want to remind you about what the story of Christmas truly is. At the same time, I want you to remember and to understand that it is a story not just to keep to ourselves but to share with the people in your life. So we're going to talk about Christmas the next couple of weeks. In January and February, we're going to talk about what does it mean to be a church member? I am a church member. What does that mean? What are the expectations for you? What are the expectations of being a part of a church family? And we're going to spend about seven or eight weeks talking about what it means to be part of a local church body. But this morning, we're going to look at Luke 7, the last part of the chapter. And since we're going to take a couple of weeks off, you may not hear me remind you for a few weeks that Luke 19-10 is the theme verse for everything in the gospel of Luke. And there it is in the title of the series, "The Son of Man Came to Seek and to Save the Loss." That's the big idea of everything that Luke is trying to tell us in our particular passage this morning. The last part of Luke 7, here's the big idea as we're talking about who Jesus is in this section of Luke. Jesus is the one who has authority to forgive sins. Jesus is the one who has authority to forgive sins. We're going to read the passage in a minute, Luke 7, 36 to 50. Before we read it, I want to just make sure we all kind of know the lay of the land. We're familiar with the characters and a few of the potentially tricky things in this passage that can trip us up. So first of all, let's talk about the characters in this story that we're about to read. First of all, there is a man named Simon the Pharisee. Simon the Pharisee. He invites Jesus to basically a meal at his house. Jesus agrees to come, and it's worth pointing out as you're talking about Simon the Pharisee that when it comes to eating and fellowshipping with sinners, Jesus is an equal opportunity kind of guy. He's willing to eat with sinners who know that they're sinners, and he's also willing to eat with sinners who have no idea how bad of sinners they really are. And Simon the Pharisee falls into that latter category. Sometimes we think Jesus. What a scandal that he would eat with these sinful, immoral people. This is one of them. Simon the Pharisee had no clue how sinful he was, but Jesus was willing to spend some time with him. Second, there is Jesus, who shows up at the dinner, and maybe Simon invites Jesus to dinner because he wants to listen and he wants to learn. Maybe he's sort of like Nicodemus, who remember comes to Jesus at night and he has some questions for Jesus. But more likely, if you go back to Luke 611, we understand that the Pharisees already at this early point in the story are working and planning and plotting and scheming to figure out what they need to do to get rid of Jesus. And I think Simon the Pharisee is not in the Nicodemus category, but he's in this scheming category of he's trying to set Jesus up and he's trying to trap Jesus. Third character is an unnamed woman. We're told that she has a reputation, that she is a sinful, immoral woman. She shows up at this party, uninvited, which is really strange to us, but you ought to understand that when Simon the Pharisee has this party at his house, it's a lot more like what we would think of as a block party than just two people sitting down in the privacy of their own home. This would be more of a community event, and so the woman coming in uninvited is not as strange as we might think it is to begin with. The story is really, really simple, and we'll read it in just a minute. The woman comes into this party. She is weeping. She brings ointment or oil, and she anoints Jesus' feet, and her tears are falling on Jesus' feet as she anoints him, and she lets her hair down and she wipes Jesus' feet with her hair. Now, I don't know about what kind of parties you guys go to or who you're hanging out with, but I've never seen this at a party. In the middle of a gathering, a block party, a meal with somebody, I've never seen anything remotely close to this happen, and there's a couple of things in this story as the woman is coming in and as Jesus and Simon interact on the back end, there's a couple of things that can be a little bit confusing, and so I want to make sure we're clear on this. The first little tricky thing in this story is that when you read, remember we're in Luke, when you read through Matthew and Mark and John, they tell a story from Jesus' life that sounds an awful lot like this story. Matthew, Mark, and John, a very, very similar story of something that happened in Jesus' life. In fact, a lot of Bible teachers and authors will combine these stories into one story. Matthew, Mark, and John and Luke, and they combine them all and they try to fit it into one story. I mentioned to you last week. My favorite children's Bible is called the Jesus storybook Bible. We read it regularly in our home. Just a couple of nights ago, we came across this story, and as I was reading it, having studied for this passage, I noticed she's combining details from what Luke said and Matthew and Mark and John, and she's combining them all together into one story. I think they're different stories, and here's a couple of the reasons I think that these stories are different. In Luke, the woman is an unnamed woman. In Matthew, Mark, and John, her name is Mary. In Luke, he goes to eat with Simon the Pharisee, and Matthew, Mark, and John, it's Simon the leper. Luke's story takes place in Galilee that's up north. In the other gospels, it happens in Bethany that's down south by Jerusalem. In Luke, it's early in Jesus' ministry, Matthew, Mark, and John. It's passion week. It's this woman, Mary, anointing Jesus according to Jesus for his burial. That's down at the bottom. In Luke it happens the anointing on his feet, Matthew, Mark, and John on his head, and then in Luke, the woman is doing it because Jesus has forgiven her sins, and Jesus says in the other gospel accounts that she is doing it to prepare him for his burial this to come. So I think we're looking at two stories. We don't want to mix them up. We don't want to confuse the details. Here's another tricky thing in this story. After the woman comes in and all of those details take place, there's a little back and forth between Jesus and the host, Simon, and Jesus tells Simon a parable, the first parable that we've really come across in the gospel of Luke. Now, a lot of times when you think about a parable, a little light bulb goes off and you say, okay, I remember Sunday school, vacation Bible school, they told us Jesus talked in parables so that people could understand what he was saying, simple, uneducated people could understand the point when he taught in parables. And it's true that when Jesus taught in parables, he used familiar everyday words and situations and things that people were familiar with. There was a level of familiarity. Here's a problem with the idea that Jesus taught in parables so that people could understand. Jesus tells us why he taught in parables. And Jesus says to his disciples when they say, why do you teach in parables? And I'm paraphrasing. He says, I do it so that some people will understand and some people won't. When I tell these truths in this form of a parable, some people are going to get it and their life is going to be changed and some people are going to have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Now, that may seem like a strange answer from Jesus. We can talk about that later. But the reason he teaches in parables is so that some get it and some don't. That means there's something to parables that's a little bit tricky. He's not always entirely obvious what Jesus is driving at. And today in our society, here's how we make parables even more tricky. We try to decode them. You've seen the Nicholas Cage national treasure movies, right? Decoder and he's going around and he's turning the Constitution upside down with a black light and reading it backwards. And he finds a secret message and he figures out the treasure map and all of these things. Sometimes we do that with parables. We sit down with the story and we say, okay, well, what do you think he meant by this? What do you think he meant by that? What do you think this stands for? What do you think that stands for? And we try to be Nicholas Cage and national treasure three decoding these parables when really most of Jesus' parables have one simple truth, one simple lesson that Jesus is trying to drive home. And as Jesus tells this parable, as the woman is standing there and Simon is listening the big idea of this passage is Jesus is the one who has authority to forgive sins. So keep that in mind. Take your Bible and let's read Luke 7 beginning in verse 36. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him and he went into the Pharisees house, took his place at the table and behold a woman of the city who was a sinner when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisees house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment. And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who was touching him for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you and he answered, say it teacher. A certain money lender had two debtors, one owed 500 denari and the other 50. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will love him more? Simon answered, the one I suppose for whom he canceled the larger debt and he said to him, you have judged rightly, then 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. She has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with the oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you her sins, which are many, are forgiven for she loved much. But he who is forgiven loves, he who is forgiven little loves little. And he said to her, your sins are forgiven. Then those who were at table with him begin saying among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins, and he said to the woman, your faith has saved you, go in peace. Let's pray. Lord, we do love you. We are grateful for your blessings in our life and for your presence in our lives. We're grateful for you. We're grateful that you are a God who has spoken to us in the Bible. We pray this morning that as your spirit inspired these words, you would help us to understand them and apply them to our life. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Think with me. This is not a complicated story, but think with me about what's happening in these characters as they're meeting in Simon's home. Simon invites Jesus to eat at his house. Jesus comes. We don't really know his motives, but one way or the other, Jesus is there at dinner. In the middle of the evening, at some point the woman comes in and does something that is really out of the ordinary. It's not just culturally out of the ordinary to say, "Well, maybe they did this sort of thing back then. We would never do it now." This is completely out of the ordinary. She comes in weeping on Jesus' feet, anointing his feet with oil and wiping them with her hair. I think it's probable, and we could debate it, but I think it's probable that Jesus had already met the woman. I think they had already interacted. You may say, "Well, he doesn't mention that. It just seems like they were strangers." But this doesn't seem like something you do for a total stranger. At the very least, we know the report of Jesus has been circulating around the area. People have been hearing about the miracles. People have been hearing about his teaching. So at the very least, she's probably heard these things, and I think they've probably met. I don't think it's too far of a stretch of the imagination to imagine Jesus spending time with this woman who was an outcast, maybe like he spent time with the woman at the well in Samaria, confronting this woman in her sin, like he confronted that woman in her sin gently but firmly, pointing out the sin in her life and calling her to repentance. And I think that in this interaction between Jesus and this woman, I think he's already told this woman, "Look, put your faith in me, turn from your sins, and I have authority to forgive you." I think the woman shows up with all of this in the background. She hears where Jesus is going to be. She knows where she can get access to him again, and she comes to say, "Thank you." And it's an extravagant, over the top, "Thank you." She comes in in front of people who hate her, into a hostile situation, into which she was not invited or really even welcome. She weeps openly at Jesus' feet. She anoints his feet with oil that would have been very costly, very expensive, something very, very valuable to her. And then she lets down her hair and begins to wipe his feet with her hair. That last detail, she let down her hair and begin to wipe his feet with her hair. That last detail is probably what sent Simon the Pharisee over the edge. Remember, he is a Pharisee, and we've talked about the Pharisees. The Pharisees were so afraid to break God's law that they added a hedge around it. They added their own laws to keep them from God's laws, and so you look at this situation and you say, "Well, the seventh commandment says, 'Do not commit adultery. Be faithful to your spouse.'" The implication is this woman has not done that, but the real problem in the story is that she is breaking one of the Pharisees' extra rules. So the Pharisees are so afraid that they might break the seventh commandment. They add this rule. They add that rule. They add this rule. The real rules they add was a woman will never, under any circumstance, let down her hair in the presence of a man who is not her husband. They add that rule and years go by and they add a few more, and eventually they come to the point where they say, "If a woman lets down her hair in the presence of a man who is not her husband, her husband can divorce her." That's how serious it is. And you step back and you say, "But she didn't really break the seventh commandment, but she broke the hedge that the Pharisees had put around it." And here comes this woman with already a bad reputation, and she lets down her hair. She breaking the seventh commandment? No. Is she breaking Simon's hedge? Absolutely. And she wipes Jesus' feet with her hair, and Simon, that pushes him over the edge. He's a coward, so he doesn't say anything publicly. But Luke tells us he is saying to himself, "This man must not be a prophet." He's not verbalizing it, but he's watching it, and he's talking to himself, and he's thinking, and he's thinking, "This guy cannot be a prophet." If he knew what was going on, he wouldn't let this woman within a million miles of him. There's no way he can truly be who he says he is. And you've got to picture Simon's amazement when Jesus answers him. Remember, he didn't say anything out loud. He's thinking to himself, "And Jesus answers him and says, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And here's the parable. It's really, really simple. There's a money lender. Everyone there would have been familiar with money lenders. Two people owed him money. One owed 500 denarai. Denarai is about a day's wage, so that's about a year and a half worth of pay. This man owes me a year and a half salary. This man, 50, a month and a half. Neither could pay, so the money lender cancels both debts. And then Jesus looks at Simon, and he puts him in a really awkward spot. And he says, "Simon, which one is going to love him more?" Now, my guess is that you've been in this situation at some point in your life, if you've been around church much. You've gone to Sunday school, you're sitting in class, you're listening to the teacher give the lesson, and then the teacher asks a question. And you're about 75% sure you know the right answer. And you're thinking, "Well, I think I know the right answer, but it might be a trick." And I don't want to look stupid in front of all these people, so I'm not going to say anything. When you think about it, you're thinking about the answer, and you, on top of not wanting to look stupid, say, "If I give the right answer, it's going to make me look bad," because of the implications of this truth. So at that point, you do what everyone in this room has done at one point in time. You fold your hands, you put your head down, and you don't make eye contact with the teacher. And you just hope somebody else is going to say something. It's going to get too awkward, and he's just going to give us the answer. I'm waiting, I'm waiting, and maybe Simon's doing something like that. He's listening to this parable, and he's thinking it through, and he knows what's coming. But Jesus won't let him off the hook. This is pretty bold. Jesus is a guest in Simon's home, and he says, "Simon, tell me, who will love more?" Five hundred or fifty. And you can tell Simon's a little bit nervous because he says, "Well, I suppose I guess what you're wanting me to say is the one who cancelled the larger debt." And Jesus says, "Simon, you have answered correctly." Now, look at the details here. Look in the text, verse forty-three. Jesus is looking at Simon, and he says, "That's correct." Then Jesus looks at the woman, but he's speaking to Simon, and he says, "Simon, you didn't go out of your way to make me feel welcome. No water for my feet, no oil for my head. You didn't roll out the red carpet in any way, shape, or form. This woman has been coming. She's wet my feet with her tears. She has shown hospitality much more than you have. Verse forty-seven. He's still looking at the woman. He's talking to Simon, and he says, "Her sins are forgiven." Then look at verse forty-eight and verse fifty. He looks at the woman, and now he's talking to the woman, and he says, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you." Verse forty-nine says this. Those who were at the table with him begin to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" Remember, this section of Luke is answering the question, "Who is the Son of Man?" You say, "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." Well, who is he? And they're asking that question right here. Who is this man who is claiming the authority and the power and the prerogative to forgive sins? That's the story. Four simple lessons about forgiveness. Number one is this. Jesus wants you to have an accurate view of your sin. He wants you to have an accurate view of your sin. Simon is oblivious to his sin. He is completely aware that the woman who crashed his party is a sinner, that she's immoral, that in no way, shape, or form does he put himself in the same category as the woman. She's in that category. I'm in this category. He's completely oblivious to his own sin. Tell you an interesting story from the life of a man named George Whitfield. Put a picture of George Whitfield is there he is, and his preacher garb and his old-school hair. George Whitfield was an evangelist in the 1700s, and he was famous. People knew him on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and knew him in England. They knew him in the United States. He was very well known, and as weird as it is to say, when it came to preaching, he was a physical specimen. I know that when you look at that picture, the first thing that pops into your head is physical specimen. That guy looks impressive. This guy was really impressive. Benjamin Franklin tells the story one time in Philadelphia at the courthouse, George Whitfield was preaching. And Ben Franklin writes this down, and he says, "I went to hear him because I had heard he was so amazing, and I went, and I started where he was preaching at the podium." Remember this is 1700s, no microphones, nothing outside, steps of the courthouse. And Franklin says, "I started walking away from the stage, and I stopped when I could no longer hear Whitfield preaching." Franklin is a pretty smart guy, so he counts up the steps in between him and the stage. He does a little math, and he puts it in the shape of the crowd, which is a semicircular semicircle, and he does the area, and how many people he figures it all out. And he says, "At that instance, 30,000 people were listening to George Whitfield preach with no microphone. 30,000 people outside could hear George Whitfield preach." He was amazing, phenomenal, and people came to see him by the thousands, and by the 10,000s, people knew about him and people either loved him or they hated him. And as a complete accident of history on the other side of the pond, on the England side of the pond, historians found correspondence between two wealthy women. One was a countess, one was a duchess. I have no idea what the difference is, but they were important ladies. And we have some letters that they wrote back and forth to each other, and in one of those letters, one of these really important ladies says to the other one, "Hey, Whitfield's going to be in town. Let's go hear him." She invites her friend to go listen to George Whitfield. This is what her friend writes back. "It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding." That's a fancy way of saying, "I don't want him to tell me that I'm a bad person. I don't want to go listen to somebody who's going to make me feel like a worm. I'm above that. I'm better than that. And there's no way I'm going to listen to that guy preach with you. You and I are usually not that blunt, are we? Most of us, if we're really put on the spot, would be willing to say, "I am not perfect." But when we're really pressed in an honest moment, we like to think that we're not that bad. Not as bad as that guy. Not as bad as that woman. Certainly not as bad as Simon the Pharisee. Can you believe what a rotten person he was? I'm glad I'm not a Pharisee. Most of us want to think that we're really not that bad. Jesus wants you to understand you are that bad. He doesn't want you wallowing in a gutter of self-pity, just feeling miserable, but he wants you to have an accurate view of your sin. Second lesson is related to the first and it's this, "If you can't see your own sin, you will not seek grace." That's the problem for Simon. Oblivious to his own sin, in no way, shape, or form does he think he is in need of somebody forgiving him or being merciful to him or being gracious to him. His sins are, you could say, socially respectable, somewhat private. He's clearly guilty of pride, but a lot of the times you don't just wear an armband that says pride. He's clearly insensitive to the woman and her feelings and her emotions and her situation, but sometimes we call insensitivity, "Well, it's just the truth. I'm just brutally honest. I'm just telling that what everybody already knows, it's sin and he's arrogant and he's insensitive and he's a judgeer. We talked about judging a couple of weeks ago and we said this is what it doesn't mean, and here's what it does mean. And he's looking at this woman who has more than one speck in her eye, but he refuses to see the log in his own eye and all he can worry about is her specs. He has no idea that he is a sinner in need of grace. The woman knows she's a sinner and she's grateful and thankful and exuberant and overwhelmed that Jesus would forgive her. And has no idea of his need for grace. Number three, forgiveness should result in sacrifice and worship. When you experience it, it ought to lead to sacrifice on your part and to worship on your part. And you see that in the woman's life. You see her coming into the room where everyone hates her and knows who she is and what she's done and who she's done it with. And she comes weeping, not ashamed, giving a valuable gift to Jesus and wiping his feet with her hair. I read an interesting story from the life of John Newton. John Newton wrote Amazing Grace to him and we think, wow, some spiritual giant that would write such a great song that we sing all these hundreds of years later. So he doesn't look it, he was not a nice guy before he met Jesus. He got wrapped up in a lot of bad stuff and he met Jesus and his life was changed and like this woman, his life was set on a new course but he realized very quickly that the sin in his heart didn't just disappear when he met Jesus. And he realized that he still was a wretch. Some modern versions of the hymn take that word out because they're like your ladyship earlier and they don't want to sing such an offensive word but he put that word in there for a reason. He realized that he was a wretched sinner. You can go back and you can read his journal. Just a couple of weeks before he wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, he wrote this in his journal. So much forgiveness, so little, little love. So many mercies, so few returns, such great privileges in a life so sadly below them. This was a man fighting for the abolition of slavery. This was a man writing songs like Amazing Grace, you say he was doing amazing things for God. In his perspective in his own life is what? God has been so good to me, so merciful to me, so forgiving to me. What have I done in return? And you see in his life, just like you see in the woman's life, that when you experience forgiveness, it changes. It doesn't just wipe a slate clean and give you a ticket punch for heaven when you die, but it changes you and it changed the woman and it changed John Newton. Forgiveness should result in sacrifice and worship. Last idea is this, Jesus can offer forgiveness because Luke 19-10 came to pass. Because we have the idea of forgiveness, just in our culture at large, that forgiveness, you picture two kids in the nursery and one steals the toy from the other and so you make the kid who stole the toy go and begrudgingly say, "I'm sorry, I stole the toy," and the other kid is supposed to say something like, "That's okay. It's not that big a deal I didn't even want the toy to begin with. We're all friends and we're all happy," and you just sort of take the offense and you just sweep it under the rug. "I'm sorry, it's okay." It's not biblical forgiveness. We're not talking about Jesus has authority to forgive sins. That means you come to Jesus and you say, "Jesus, I'm really sorry I did that," and Jesus says, "It's okay, I'm not upset, it's not that big a deal," just sweep it under the rug with all this other stuff, no big deal. Rug is really big, don't worry about it. That's not what we're talking about when we talk about forgiveness in the Bible. The Bible is very, very clear that our sin is serious. It's a problem that we cannot fix on our own. It's a problem that cannot just be swept under heaven's rug and forgotten about. The only way for us to be forgiven is if our punishment is taken by another. And you understand, that's the whole point of the gospel of Luke. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. How did He do that? He did it at the cross. He did it when He took our punishment, when He took our death, when He took our place and paid the penalty for our sin. And because that came to pass, He can look at this woman, and He can say to her, "Although your sins are many, they're forgiven." And He can look at a person like John Newton and say, "Although your sins are many, they're forgiven." He can look at somebody like Whitfield or any of these fancy ladies who wanted or didn't want to go here and preach, and He can offer forgiveness. And He can make a genuine offer of forgiveness to you today, regardless of who you are, regardless of what you've done. Forgiveness is available because Luke 19-10 came to pass. Now here's the best part of the whole story. You read the story and you say, "Okay, Jesus gets invited to the party. The woman shows up. She does the thing with the hair and the ointment, and Simon gets upset, and Jesus tells him the parable. That's the story. That's not how it ends. Think about this story and think about the characters, and we know how the woman responded to Jesus. She accepted His forgiveness. She turned from her sins and she put her faith in Jesus as the Messiah. How did Simon respond? Did he repent? Did he hear the parable and say, "Jesus, you know what? You're right. I've never thought about it that way." Did he get mad and throw Jesus out of His house? You don't know. Luke just sort of leaves us hanging. And you may read the story and say, "Well, Luke, he's not very good at bringing resolution to the storyline here. We need to know what happened. Simon gets upset. Jesus corrects him. What does he do? We don't know." It's not an accidental omission by Luke. Luke leaves that part out on purpose to create some tension in the story. And so that you read the story and you say, "Well, how did Simon respond? I don't know. The real question is how are you going to respond?" You have several options. You can be like your ladyship and say, "I don't want anybody to tell me that I'm a rotten person. I don't want anything to do with that. It's offensive. I'm better bred than that." You can say, "The stuff about the cross is just gooey-gooey stuff and blood and guts and I don't buy into all that kind of superstition." Or you can be like the woman and you can come to Jesus humbly saying, "My sins are many." But I believe that you are who you say you are. I believe that you're the son of man come to seek and save the lost. I believe that you're the one who has authority to forgive sins. When you come you understand several things. Jesus is not sweeping sin under the rug. Jesus is not going to say to you, "Oh, it's no big deal." Jesus is going to say to you, "Repent, stop, turn, and go in the other direction. I'm setting your life on a new course and I'm offering you forgiveness." Not the kind of cheap forgiveness that just says, "Oh, it's no big deal," but the forgiveness that I bought for you when I died for you at the cross. We do not know how Simon responded. Really doesn't matter. The question is how will you respond? Let's pray. Father, we love you. We're thankful that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. And Father, in a moment of honesty and humility, we just want to confess that we are the lost. We are the wicked. We are the sinful. We are the immoral. We are the prideful. We're the arrogant. We're the insensitive. We're the stubborn. Father, there is no sense in trying to cover our sin, in trying to sugarcoat it, in trying to make ourselves out to be better than we truly are. You know us. You know the truth. Father, we put our hope this morning in Jesus who came to seek us and to save us. We are unworthy, but we rejoice and we worship in response to the cross, where Jesus took our penalty and he took our punishment and he took our place. Father, we pray for those who are here this morning, who maybe they're in the position of the woman, maybe they're in the position of Simon. But Father, all of us need to come to the cross, acknowledging that we have a debt with you that we cannot settle and we need to look to your son who gave his life to seek us, to save us, and to settle our debt. Father, be honored as we continue and worship as we sing about your grace and your mercy. We love you and we pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.