Do you love God? - July 9, 2023

NewLife Christian Fellowship's Podcast

This morning, I am continuing in my summer series, The Power of One Life, looking at minor Biblical characters and what we can learn from their lives about knowing God. This morning we’ll be in Luke 7:36-50, looking at a nameless person who is called “a woman who had lived a sinful life.” We’ll go through the passage a little at a time.

Luke 7:36-50 - Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37 When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38 and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is-- that she is a sinner."

Stop there. What is going on here? Let me give some background.

The Pharisees were in many ways the religious leaders of Israel. The word Pharisee is from the Hebrew word Parash – to separate. The Pharisees’ chief concern was that the Jewish people would be pure and faithful to God’s law, separate from pagan influences. One of the reasons for this focus on purity was so Israel could maintain their Jewish identity and hopefully achieve freedom from the Roman oppression. They believed that the Messiah would liberate the Jewish people from their Roman oppressors, but that he would not come until the people were pure. So, they tried to steadfastly keep all of God’s rules from the Old Testament, and even added more in order to help the Jewish people maintain their purity. The laws were boundary markers, keeping pure people in and impure people out. You can imagine, with such a focus on purity, what kind of people they would not be happy with. They weren’t happy with the Jews who broke God’s laws, because they were preventing the Messiah from coming and the Jews from achieving freedom. So, their goals were admirable – purity, freedom, faithfulness to God – but it caused them to behave in ways which caused Jesus to criticize them vehemently.