 All right, good morning, Radiant Church. Good to see you, Portage, good to see you. Thanks for joining us and people are online. My name's John, I'm the campus pastor here at the Richland location. And Pastor Lee and Jane, I think you either get back today or tomorrow. They've been on vacation and as you heard, we're gonna launch right into Red Hot, which is such a, it's really a pivotal moment for our church because we get to kind of expound on some things that in a shorter span that you can't hit on every single Sunday. So again, just want to encourage you to come out for that and invite some friends for that. But today we're doing a stand kind of a lone message that I feel like the Lord's given me to just again, encourage us and help us grow to look more like Jesus. So if you brought your Bibles, turn to Luke chapter seven. Luke is in the Old Testament after Exodus. Just kidding, that's a lie. Kept it easy for you. Luke chapter seven, let's pray. Ask the Lord to bless this time. Father, we do ask that you would open the eyes of our heart. God, we don't want to just hear for the sake of hearing. We want to hear so that your Holy Spirit ministers to us. God, somehow you are aware of every single person's heart, every single person's challenges and securities, victories, wins, and you're the only one who can minister to us. So God, I pray that Lord, it would be more than my words that the word of God would go forth and speak to each one of our hearts and each one of our situations, God. We love you and we honor you in Jesus' name. And everyone said, amen, amen, amen. I called the message Jesus paid it all and it brought me back to when I was a child, I've shared before the church background I had was a little more, I would say fundamental than this church, it was a smaller church. And part of my upbringing was we had Sunday school, every single week in between the two services. So I went to church and Sunday school, so I don't want to brag, but that's why I'm really holy. Anyway, love our children's ministry here. We have such an incredible, incredible team that right now is not like babysitting, they're not just giving out crackers, they're literally pouring into this generation with the good news of who Jesus is and partnering with us as parents. So can we give them a huge round of applause? They can't hear us because they're serving, but we're so grateful for them. So my, again, my experience was a little different. We had kind of a smaller room we met in and we had a teacher in the front, but we would all just sit down and we would go through Bible stories and we had a felt board. Raise your hand if you grew up in Children's Church and you had a felt board. Look at that, a lot of us felt boards are the best. They just stick them up there and you were like, wow, who needs Netflix? You know, kind of a thing. This is amazing technology, but I don't remember a whole lot of my childhood church experiences. I have very few memories. I do have two though that have honestly stuck with me all the way till now I'm 45 years old. One was in probably like third or fourth grade in Mrs. Davies class. I was not paying attention to the lesson whatsoever. So I know it's hard for you guys to believe, but I was in the back talking to my friend, Scott Null and I had no, she could have been, I had no idea what she was talking about. And then obviously I was probably talking louder and I became a distraction to the entire class and the teacher stopped. I didn't even know that she had stopped talking because again, I wasn't paying any attention. And she out of the blue says, John, do you know who that was? And I didn't know who that was, who she was talking about, but I didn't want to admit that because I'm a survivor. Like I'm not gonna just pack it in and admit I wasn't paying attention. So when you're in Sunday school and your teacher says, do you know who that was? You're gonna say Jesus, right? 100%. Like if you got a guess, you're gonna go with Jesus and you got like a 48.3% chance of probably being right. So that's what's going through my head. I didn't want to admit I wasn't paying attention. This girl named Amy who I kind of had a crush on and was in the class and I wasn't gonna just pack it in. So I was in that moment, I was like, you can kind of answer Jesus? Like Jeopardy style, like in a question or you could just be bold John like and just nail this. So I was like, Jesus. And then the teacher said, no John, Jesus did not betray himself for 30 pieces of silver. And I was the laughing stock of Bible stories and I was scarred for hours. Anyway, that stuck with me. But another thing that I remember from children's church was the story that I'm gonna expound on today, the scripture that we're gonna look at. And again, this was a weird moment for me in the sense that I don't remember really as a child being gripped by the Lord very often. But this was one of those times and it was sort of an obscure story in the sense that it wasn't David and Goliath or Daniel and the lion's den, stories that you would expect a 10 year old boy to really gravitate to, although I knew those stories. I had never heard this. I had never encountered this story before and this teacher is talking about this woman who comes into a house and kisses the feet of Jesus, washes the feet of Jesus, dries the feet of Jesus with her hair and then dumps a bottle of perfume onto Jesus' feet. And so it was, I was, for whatever reason, just mesmerized by this story. Like it didn't, I couldn't figure out any context for it, like what is happening? How would that be a thing? Part of it might have been like there was a lady behind this, Mrs. Johnson, bless you if you're watching, but she wore enough perfume to like kill a small tree basically, right? So when I hear you're dumping perfume on Jesus' feet, I was like, I hope it's not Mrs. Johnson. But for whatever reason, I went home and I never, I can never remember doing this any other time and I asked my parents, like what is that? Why, what is that story about? What does that mean? And it's something that's stuck with me all of these years. And so today we're gonna look at this encounter that Jesus has with a particular woman and a man. And I want to just, I wanna tell it to us. So it's, I'm not gonna just read it, I'm gonna try to add some more detail and context to it because I really want all of us to feel the sort of weight of this story, of this situation and of what's really happening. And my prayer for all of us is that it will recalibrate our hearts and give us a new ability and potential to know God, love God and recognize what we receive from God. Okay, so in Luke chapter seven, you can kind of follow along or you can just listen, but it starts out this story in verse 36, I think, all the way through 50. With someone inviting Jesus over for dinner, his name is Simon and he's a Pharisee. So Pharisees were the religious leaders and scholars of the day. They were super, super educated, super smart and probably Simon would have been one of, if not the most respected person in this entire town. So he's got clout, he's got authority and he invites Jesus over to his house for a meal. And we don't know exactly why he invited him, we're not told, but it's evident pretty quickly that it's not because Simon encountered like the love of Jesus in a powerful way. And it's not because Simon suddenly recognized his need for a savior. And the reason we know this is because in first century Middle Eastern culture, it would have been incumbent upon someone who had a guest over to take a little bit of oil. This was part of their custom and take a little olive oil and just anoint the head of a guest as a way of honor, as a way of respecting someone who's a guest in your home. But Simon offers Jesus no oil. Another thing would have been to greet someone who's coming into your home with a kiss, a kiss on the cheek. Some cultures still do that today. But Simon offers Jesus no kiss. And then obviously this is Middle Eastern roads, they're muddy, they're dusty and people wore sandals. So it was almost a given that when you went somewhere to someone's house, they would offer you a bowl of water or something to be able to wash your feet before you entered their home. But Simon offers no water to Jesus either. So what he's saying without saying anything is this, you Jesus might be a bit of a curiosity. To me I might want to get to know you a little better but I have some serious suspicions about you. I don't believe what people are saying that you could be the Messiah and I don't see you as an equal much less as an authority in my life. That's what Simon is basically saying because of his rudeness quite honestly to Jesus coming to his home. So that's what's happening. Then the story shifts and it says that a woman enters this Pharisee's home who is the complete opposite of Simon in every single way. Luke says, behold a woman of the city, a sinner. That word behold was meant to bring like shock value. Like you cannot have a greater dichotomy between Simon and between this woman. And when it says a sinner and a woman of the city it's implied that it has something to do with her reputation. Some pastors will teach this that it was a, she was actually a prostitute. We're not told that in the text but she may have been. She may have been an adulteress. She may have just lived a promiscuous lifestyle but there's something about this woman, her past and her choices that the entire town is aware of. And she comes into this room and it's shocking not in the sense that she enters his house because that was normal. If a respected Pharisee had a guest over it would be normal for people to actually line the room of the home against the wall and just listen. Like entertainment, like a movie. He's an educated person and they're gonna have probably a debate so people just line the house or stick their head in the window, find some way to try to listen. So I want you to picture a small room just kind of packed with people and there's Jesus and this Pharisee at a table and in comes this woman and there's gonna be whispers, there's gonna be gasps, there's gonna be silence. Like this is shocking that a woman with her past, her reputation would walk into a Pharisee's house. Like they as I said were so well respected. They were like set apart. And so there's massive shock value here and we don't know exactly why she did this, why she entered this but again you can gain from the rest of the story that there was probably a moment that this woman encountered the message of Jesus, the gospel, the good news of Jesus. Maybe earlier when he was teaching the sermon on the Mount, maybe John the Baptist when he was talking about repentance but at some point this woman gravitated to the message of Jesus that says there can be freedom in me. There can be forgiveness in me. Your past doesn't have to define you. You can have new life in Christ and she has this moment where her faith rises up and she says I believe that. I can access that. This man's different than anybody else and I want to receive what he's saying and there was probably a salvation experience and maybe she wanted to meet Jesus but as often was the case there were huge crowds that would surround him. So maybe she couldn't get to him because the Bible says then she heard that he was dining at a Pharisee's house and something rose up in her and she said I'm going. I'm going over there but I'm not gonna go empty handed. The Bible says she grabs an alabaster jar of perfume or of ointment. Probably the most prized possession she owns maybe she didn't even know why she was doing this but she was just like I'm bringing this with me and she clutches that little jar and she crosses the threshold of that home amidst the stairs, amidst the shame, amidst the accusations and she stands before Jesus. I want you to picture this happening in a room. The Bible actually says that she's behind him at his feet and the reason that can happen is because the table, the Middle Eastern tables at that time were very low to the ground. So you would actually like kind of like lie down and maybe have your elbow on the table and then the person would be across from you so your feet would kind of splay behind you. So I want you to picture Jesus kind of almost lying down and then she's standing behind him at his feet in this room full of people. And maybe she intended to say something. Maybe she was like I'm gonna thank him. I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna just share a little of my testimony. I'm gonna tell him how much encountering his love has meant to me, but the Bible says she's so overcome with emotion that she just begins to cry. She starts weeping, which is not untypical for someone who encounters or meets someone who has meant so much to them in their lives. Like sometimes emotions just take over. I remember for me I got saved. I gave my heart to the Lord in this church in 1999 on a Sunday in March and I didn't intend to do that but I had had some rough experiences and I was not living the way that I wish I had been and I just remember when the opportunity came, I went up front, I confessed my sin and I just, I literally bawled for, I don't even know how long, but it felt like eternity and it was this cleansing like deep, like not a few sniffles, like I was just a broke mess and that's what she's doing. My wife's been reading these books about the Holocaust and we all know how terrible that was, but there's this video I watched of a man who was a German soldier and he de factoed from the army and instead of doing what German soldiers were doing to Jewish people, instead he decided I'm gonna liberate these Jews and I'm gonna risk my own neck to save them and to bring them into safety and so there's this meeting, they set up this meeting between these two men 70 years later, this former German soldier and this Jewish man who was liberated by him and it's like this big event, there's a band, there's big crowd and you watch these two men come onto the stage and they haven't met each other and they're older, I think one was in like a wheelchair and one had a cane and they start walking towards each other and this Jewish man when they come together just begins to weep uncontrollably, literally like throws himself on this man and he's sobbing and he's kissing his neck and he's kind of like patting his face and everything that was gonna be scripted and everything that was gonna happen in that moment was just out the window because of the emotion and that's what this woman is doing. She's experiencing God in a way that she'd never felt possible and the Bible says that she's literally raining tears down on Jesus' feet, she notices that they're dirty and so she takes her eyes that maybe at one point had been flirtatiously painted to attract men and she's using them to wash the feet of Jesus and then she does something even more scandalous, she lets down her hair and that culture, you would, as a Jewish woman, let your hair down only on your wedding night for your husband, like it was part of, you know, your crown of glory would be to keep your hair and she just says and lets her hair down and begins to dry the feet of Jesus and then the Bible says she starts kissing Jesus' feet in a room full of people who are just staring at her, wondering what is going on. Lipset probably kissed multiple men now kissing the feet of her king. It's a beautiful picture of Romans 6 that says don't present your members as instrument of unrighteousness to sin, instead present your members as instruments of righteousness to God as those who have been brought from death to life. So she takes her eyes, she takes her hair, she takes her lips that had been used in sinful ways and she presents them now to her king and to Jesus in front of this crowd. And it's a beautiful picture of heartfelt worship. Then she takes that prized possession and maybe she didn't even know she was gonna do this but in the moment she breaks it open. If you were gonna know what a guest had, like I said, you would take a little bit of kind of cheap olive oil and just rub it on their head. Like you're not going crazy extravagant but she takes the most expensive ointment, a nard and breaks it open and just puts all of it on Jesus' feet and that entire room is filled with the beautiful worship, smell of her worship. And that's what Jesus is experiencing but then you see Simon's reaction. So all of this is happening. I'm sure people, like I said, are shocked and then it says Simon, the Pharisee looks at this woman and he says to himself, he doesn't say it out loud, he says in his head, look, I didn't really believe he was the Messiah to begin with but now I'm sure he's not. In fact, I don't think this guy has any prophetic gifting at all because if he did, he would know what kind of woman this is, what her history is, what her background is and he wouldn't even let her in the room much less kiss his feet. So Simon judges this woman immediately but now he's judging Jesus for what he's done. And ironically, the very thing he doesn't think Jesus has, the prophetic gifting Jesus uses because he reads his mind and knows his thoughts. So he knows he's thinking this even though he hasn't said it. And Jesus looks at Simon and he says, I want to say something to you. And Simon says, say it, teacher. And he tells a story, a simple story. He says, there's a money lender. Two people are in debt to him. One of them for 50 denarii, one for 500 denarii. Both of them are forgiven. Both of them can't pay. Both of them have their debts released. Which one's gonna love him more? That's all Jesus says. He tells a simple story. Somebody owes a money lender money. Two people, 150 denarii, 1500. A denarii was a day's wage for a laborer. So what you would make in one day. So imagine 500. It's like a year and a half of debt of every cent that you make you owe. And 50 is still substantial. I mean, it's almost two months of your income you owe someone else. And it's forgiven. Totally wiped away. Not a payment plan. Not debt consolidation. Not, hey, we'll work with you. Not the TV commercials you see all the time. Wiped away. Scandalously, like that never happens. Imagine your bank calling you and saying, you know that payment you make every month on your house? Yeah, just keep that. The house is yours, right? You'd be like, that will never happen. Exactly. That will never happen. And so this is just a crazy story, but it's so simple. And he just says to Simon, okay. Both of them forgiven. They can't pay. Who's gonna love more? And Simon, I think reluctantly answers. I suppose the one who had the larger debt. Okay, I get it. It's math, Jesus. You know, he answers. And Jesus' response is so powerful. He says, you have judged correctly. And then he points to this woman. And he says, do you see her? You offered no water for my feet, but she came in and she washed my feet with her tears and dried it with her hair. You offered no kiss, but she hasn't ceased to kiss my feet since she came in this room. And you gave me no oil from my head, but she's anointed my feet with her most prized possession. Her sins, Jesus said, though there are many, they're forgiven. And he who is forgiven much, loves much. But if you've only feel like you've been forgiven a little, you love little. And then he looks at this woman and he says, your sins are forgiven. And then the crowd goes crazy. Like, what is this guy? He pays no attention to that. And he looks at this woman and he says, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. And what he was saying, the whole premise of this story, what he's saying to Simon is this, Simon, you know what your problem is? You're cold to me. You're distant. You're not able to love me because you don't think you're that bad. You don't think you really need a savior. You're over there haughty. You're over there judging. You're over there looking down on her, but she has felt the weight of her sin. She recognizes her need and the value of a savior. And she has come in and said, at your feet, I throw myself at your feet. I recognize my brokenness, my failure, my inability. And I accept your mercy. And that's why she loves me the way that she does. He was saying to Simon, you don't see your need. You think your performance, you think your ability to keep the law has somehow excused you from needing mercy, but this woman understands how desperately she needs a savior. And it's a beautiful picture of what experiencing the mercy and love of God produces in a humble and submitted heart, but it's also a picture of what someone who thinks their own righteousness is enough gives them the inability to see and know Jesus the way someone else does. So I wanna talk, I wanna just unpack that a little more, but first let me just say what Jesus isn't saying by what happened in the story. He's not saying that this woman was forgiven because she loved much. He's not saying because she loved much, because she broke open that, ointment, and because she kissed my feet, now I'm gonna forgive her, like she's earned her forgiveness. That would contradict pretty much the whole New Testament. So that's not what Jesus was saying. We don't earn the right to be forgiven. He's saying she already was forgiven, and the response of her heart is this heartfelt worship, is this extravagant response to the mercy of God. In verse 50, he says, "'Your faith has saved you.'" Not your actions, not what you did here today, your faith. However many days ago when you heard that message, when you knew that's for me, when you by faith said I can have a new star, I can have a new life, I can receive the love of God, that's when you were saved. When you clutched that bottle and you said, I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't know what they're gonna say, but I'm going and I'm gonna find Jesus, and I'm gonna worship, and I'm gonna walk into that house amidst the shame and amidst the snickers and amidst the eyes of why are you here, and I'm going to worship my King. That's what saved you. So that's what Jesus is saying. And the second thing he's not saying is he's not putting like a premium on sin. He's not saying, hey, as long as you, if you sin a lot, you can love me more than other people. That's not, he's not trying to say, yep, so Simon, here's your deal, bro. Go off the rails for a few years. Go crazy, you know, sin status and kind of beef up your testimony a little and then come back and you'll be able to love me like she does. He's not saying that. It's not about, hey, should I sin more? In fact, in Romans six, they asked, like, should we keep on sinning so that grace can abound? And he says, no. Paul says, no, it's not about the amount of sin, but some people think that. Like, oh, you have to have lived this terrible life and robbed banks and been an ax murderer and then you're gonna have capacity if you come to the Lord to love more than me because I was never drunk by 10 years old. You know, or something? It's not what God's saying. He's saying it's not about the amount of sin. Listen, this is so important. It's the amount of sin realized. He, Simon, didn't think his sins were that bad. He didn't think his need was that bad. He looks at this woman with her past and her actions and her decisions. Obviously she needs a savior, but I don't, I don't struggle with that. I don't have those issues. And there's a spiritual pride that crept into Simon's heart and kept him from experiencing God and his love and his goodness. That's what Jesus is saying. It's not about sin amount, it's about sin recognized. Sometimes it's not so much what you're doing as who you're doing it to. And here's what I mean. It's real easy to judge other people's actions, other people's sins and compare them to yours. Like, well, I'm not that bad. I'm not as bad as Joe I work with. He's the worst. I hate that guy, you know? So it's easy to judge other people, right? But it's not so much what others do against God. We need to realize every sin, every failure in our lives is in a front against a holy God. And so I use this example. It's not so much what you do as much as who you do it to. So let's say I'm having a family reunion, me and my brother getting a fight and I punch my brother. What's gonna happen? Not much. My mom's gonna be like, you're not 10 years old, stop punching your brother, right? And that's gonna be it. But what if I punch my boss? Sorry, Pastor Lee, I would never do that. It's the same action, different response, different consequence, different way of experiencing it. Now I'll probably get fired, I'll get in trouble. I'll probably get beat up, quite honestly. But then what if I punch the Queen of England? Seriously. It's the same action. It's the same thing I did to my brother. I didn't get in trouble. Now I'm probably gonna get shot for real. I'm gonna be on TMZ and I'm gonna go to prison for a long time. Same action, different significance. And so that's what Simon didn't understand. He's like, look, at least I'm not as bad as her. She punched the Queen of England. I can't believe this is on a podcast. Nobody tell anyone that I said that. So he's not saying that, but what is he saying? And I wanna take the rest of the time that we have to just give you a couple of things that I feel like this story can help us in. First is this, recognizing this story beautifully depicts that you need the mercy of God in your life. Every single one of us. And when I say you, I'm speaking right now primarily to Christians, primarily to followers of Jesus. You still need to recognize you're coming to Jesus as a debtor. In this story, all they had was debt. They didn't have anything in their own strength to offer to the creditor. They didn't have any way of recovering anything. They came completely indebted and it was graciously wiped away. That's our relationship with Jesus. We come as broken debtors. And we say, but by your mercy, but by your grace, but by your goodness, I am incapable of doing anything of significance in my own strength. And that's what Simon didn't understand. And that's what sometimes Christians today don't understand. They think, okay, I pray a prayer, I give my heart to the Lord. And now I gotta get better at this and I've gotta somehow pull myself up on my bootstraps. I'm gonna try harder. I gotta stop doing this. I gotta start doing that. And it becomes about performance instead of position. And it is a dangerous way to live your Christian life. To go before God and say, look, I'm not perfect, but I am better than a lot of people and look at what I've done and look at what I'm doing and look what I've accomplished. And we hand that to God, like here's my righteousness and God is saying, I don't want that. It's filthy rags to me. We don't come before God with our resume and with our list of things we've done. We come to God saying, I am in need of your mercy every single day of my life. It's okay to need the mercy of God. It's okay to be broken. It's okay to be vulnerable. And to say it's not my strength, God, it's yours that I need to live my life the way you're calling me to. And I feel like sometimes there's a disconnect and we think, no, God really wants us performing. And I'm not saying that we don't care about sin. I'm not saying that we are slaves to that and that's our identity. I'm saying we have to recognize, like this woman did, I don't have anything to offer, but my worship, my praise and give you my heart. And when we do that, God says, my strength is perfected in your weakness. My grace is sufficient for your needs. As soon as you're able to put yourself in a place of humility and in a place of needing the mercy of God, he comes in like a flood. He's not holding you at arm's length. He's not dangling carrots of mercy. He is overwhelming you with his goodness and his grace. If you ask him for it, we have to recognize who we are and who God is because we're sinners. We are broken. Raise your hand in here if you've ever sinned. Okay, that's most of us. A few Christians in the back, nice, okay. Portage, you better raise your hand. No, I'm just kidding. Raise your hand in here if you sin more than once. Okay, again, most of us. Raise your hand in here if you've sinned the same sin more than one time. Okay, there's no perfect people in here. Even Kendra, I'm just kidding. He's kidding, there's no perfect people. And we have to recognize that. I'm telling you, there is a culture, there is a culture wide idea that what we need to do is just accept who we are, grab the identity of that, and then somehow become comfortable with the way that we are. That's what society says. But the kingdom of God says no. You're not comfortable in who you are. You lay down who you are. You deny yourself and you take up your cross and you follow who Jesus is. Christianity is not Tony Robbins with a little bit of Jesus. Self-help and you can do it and you're a champion. You're not a champion. You're an overcomer but in Christ. You're a new creation but only in Christ. You have nothing to offer unless it's in Christ. Like it's not us. And we have an entire culture that just says, well, I was born that way or this is who I am. And we have an entire culture that's saying, well, just go with that. Grab onto that. It's okay, get comfortable in your own skin. No, don't. My kids will tell you, I sometimes listen to pink. And if that makes you think less than me, I don't know what to tell you. But her song, literally the Lord put it in my head. Should I sing it for you? I will. Pretty, pretty please. Don't you ever, ever feel that you're less than, less than. Perfect. And then I was like, wait, what? Perfect. I'm not perfect. None of us are perfect. We're messed up. All of you are messed up. Portage, you're seriously messed up. I can see it from here. But we have a whole generation that say, no, no, no, no. Don't ever feel like you're less than perfect. No, feel like you're less than perfect. Feel like you need the mercy of God every single day of your life. Jeremiah said, this I call to mind, therefore I have hope through the Lord's mercies. We are not consumed for their new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations three, 20, pray it every single day. God, it's your mercy. It's the only reason I've not been consumed. It's the only reason I have any standing is the mercy and goodness of God. And I received that today. And my past doesn't define me. My failures don't define me. My own righteousness does not define me. The goodness and mercy of God is the only identity I can have and be full in Christ Jesus. Okay? So important. The second part that we learn from this though is that other people who aren't Christians also need the mercy of God. It's not just us. What is Simon's response when the woman comes in? He isn't like, wow, looks like she had serious life change. Praise the Lord. That's so cool. Look at that. She's really worshiping, crying hard, amazing. No, instantly he's judging. Instantly he has disdain and disgust for this woman because in his mind, she's the issue. She's the problem. She's the sinner and we're the saints. And in the kingdom of God, especially in the body of Christ, we have to stop looking at non-Christians as the enemy. They're actually the prize that we're fighting for as Christians. They're not who we're fighting against. They're literally who we are called to fight for. So we pray for them and we ask God, break our hearts for what breaks yours. You died for every single person. Everyone is in need of the grace and mercy of God. And sometimes as Christians, when we're dealing with non-Christians, we forget that at one point we were non-Christians. We were unbelievers. We're not somehow better than anyone else and that's why we have a relationship with God. He chose us. He rescued us. He showed us his goodness and his grace and now he asks us as his people to reciprocate that to the world around us. But we're so divided and it's so easy to look at other people and point out their issues and say things like, well, thank God I'm not like that. Thank God I'm at this church and we can't let those crazy people in here and we can't have them contaminate. Like us four no more, shut the door. That's not a good church motto. We have to be a church and a body that says, everyone is welcome. Come as you are. Come in your brokenness. Come in your pain. Come in your sin. Come in your insecurity. And come into the presence of God and then it's the Holy Spirit's job to convict people of sin, righteousness and judgment. It's the Holy Spirit's job to move on people's hearts. The Bible says it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance. It is not the judgment of God's followers. There's a huge difference between those things and we have to ask God, break my heart, forgive me for when I've been too judgmental, for when I've pointed at other people groups. It's their fault. It's the Democrats. It's the Republicans. They're the, it's those Muslims. They're the problem. It's homosexuals. They're ruining it for everyone. They're ruining mirror, whatever it is I'm asking you. Don't see through the lens of us against them in the kingdom of God. There is no us against them. There's only us praying for them to encounter the same love of God that changed us. That's what it looks like in the kingdom. And it's so easy guys. It's so easy to just come against everybody else and somehow insulate ourselves in our own kind of Christian cocoon. We have to be different. I'm not saying we lower our standards. I'm not saying we advocate for everybody's lifestyles or choices. I'm not, but I'm saying this and it's true. Love precedes any life change. If you wanna see someone's life changed who isn't a follower of Jesus, it's only gonna happen through love. It's not gonna happen through condemnation or judgment. And you're not gonna debate someone into the kingdom of God. It's the Lord asking you to love somebody who right now you think is unlovable. A person, a people group. Jesus was filled with compassion for people. This woman came forward and he was like, wow, I pray for you. But I'm also gonna pray for this self-righteous Pharisee. I'm not turning my back on him either. People would accuse Jesus all the time. Why are you hanging out with sinners? Why are you eating with those people? Christian people would say that about Jesus. And he said, because I'm a physician and they're the sick ones. Physicians don't only hang out with the well. No one goes to the hospital and they're healthy feeling 100%. Can I see a doctor? No, we don't do that. And Jesus says, I'm here for the sick. I came to seek and save the lost. And the mercy of God is for us, but it's for others. And the last thing is that we learn from the story that worship is the natural response to encountering the mercy of God. This woman, she didn't script it. She didn't have this all figured out in her head. She encountered the mercy of God. When your depravity, when your sin comes into alignment with the goodness and grace of God and you recognize how desperately you need a savior, you recognize all that God has done. He's saved you and redeemed you and healed you and given you eternal life. When you see that and you recognize that, I'm telling you church worship is the only natural outcome. It comes out of you. But you have to recognize your need first. That was Simon's problem. He couldn't really love God, only a little bit. Why? Because he didn't recognize how desperately he needed God. He didn't recognize how much God had really done in his life. And sometimes we have to remind our hearts that the gospel is not, hey, I'm pretty good, but I could add Jesus to get a few things better. No, the gospel is you're created in the image of God, but you're messed up and you're broken because of sin and you need the goodness of God. Ephesians 2 4 says that we were sinners on our way to hell, but God who was rich in mercy, not but I tried a lot harder. I did what I had to do. No, it's only God. And the expression of that is worship. And we're gonna end the service a little different than we normally do. And so don't stand up yet, but I'm gonna have you in a minute. And I don't want you to leave because I purposely tried to orchestrate this moment just so that you could have an opportunity to respond to the goodness of God in your life. Maybe you've been fixated on a problem, fixated on a relationship that's gone wrong, fixated on some circumstance that hasn't happened the way you wanted to. And it's enabled you to not see the goodness of God in your life or maybe you're a Simon. And you're a conservative Christian comfortable with who you are, but you've judged other people and you've not seen them through the lens that Jesus wants you to see them through. Or maybe you're in here and you're one of the women of the city with a bad past, bad choices, bad decisions, and you're bearing the marks of those in any condition. The answer every time is the mercy of God. The love of Jesus who paid it all for you. And so I'm not saying this is the only way we worship and if you really lift your hands, you're holier or God loves you more, it's a heart thing, but all I want us to do in this moment is say, God, maybe for the first time or maybe it's been a long time, connect my heart to what we're singing. Let it be more than words on the screen. Let this be a confession and a prayer for you as a follower of Jesus. Will you stand up with me? And Father, as we sing this song, as we meditate on this reality, we ask, holy spirit, speak to our hearts. Each one, not worried about the person to our right or the person to our left, right now, God, let us feel not just the weight of our own brokenness, but even more the weight of your love, your goodness, and your mercy in our lives. O praise the one who paid our debt despite ourselves, our brokenness and our weakness, our immaturity, God came rich in mercy and raised us from the dead. Let us never forget that wonder, that love, that love that loved us first, not by anything we brought in an offering, but came and searched us out and won us over. I want us all actually just to open our arms before the Lord. This is a moment to declare and to remember the love of God. Our circumstances, our time, our busyness can cloud and cause that truth to fade away. And we forget that it was God that loved us first. That we don't earn anything. We don't earn his attention or his affection. So I want you to repeat after me. We're gonna pray this prayer together and we're gonna declare it to our heart. We're gonna declare it to our circumstances and we're gonna declare it to the accuser trying to take that truth away from you. Say, Jesus, I thank you for saving me by your blood. I repent for letting that truth fade into the background. I declare I am not a slave. I am a child of God. I was once dead, but I am now alive in Christ. I was once lost, but I have been found by you. My sin has no hold on me, but I have victory in Jesus' name. Amen.