In India, I had the privilege of preaching several times. It was one of the coolest things I have gotten to do on the race. I preached my first sermon ever in this country, and then preached many more after that. I told the gospel in tents, buildings, and out in the open. Preaching Christianity is very much illegal in this country, so we risked EVERYTHING each time we went to ministry. One sermon I gave was on the sinful woman in Luke 7. It’s my favorite story in the bible and I want to tell you about it.
Let’s start in Luke 7:36. I won’t put the scripture in this blog, I want you to open your bible and read it yourself. I promise, when you dig deep into the passage, break it down and understand it for yourself, it will change everything.
This is a story about a sinful woman who gave up EVERYTHING she had for Jesus. I truly mean everything.
In verse 36, we see that the Pharisee invites Jesus into his own house to eat a meal. This is a perfect time for Jesus to minister to his people, so he gladly accepts the invitation.
Before we continue, let me first tell you about a man named Simon, who is the Pharisee in this story. In the book of Matthew, Jesus describes the Pharisees as: people who honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Simon is one of those people. He is someone who has spent his entire life studying scripture. By the age of 12, he had the first 12 books of the bible memorized. By the age of 15, he memorized the entire Old Testament. He is the man who invites Jesus into his home, which is a very big deal. Can you imagine having Jesus in your own home? Wouldn’t you treat Him as royalty? Doing everything in your own power to make sure He is comfortable, honored and welcomed? I know I would.
You must first understand some cultural information before continuing.
1. If the person is a guest of equal social rank, then the host would greet the guest with a kiss on the cheek.
2. If the guest was a person of high honor, then the host would greet the guest with a kiss on the hand.
3. You would then wash your guests feet, or a servant would do that for you. At the very least, you would give your guest a water basin to wash their own feet.
4. For especially distinguished guests, you would anoint their head with olive oil. This oil was very cheap, but was still considered an honor.
All of these things are obviously expected from any normal host. Not doing them is like ignoring the fact that your guest is even there.
In verses 37 and 38, in the middle of this meal, a sinful woman walks into Simon’s home. “Sinful” is a polite way of calling her a “prostitute”.. and suddenly, this prostitute shows up at a religious leader’s house. She was not invited, she decided to come on her own. Can you imagine how uncomfortable things became? Now, why would she just show up randomly? My guess is that she must have heard Jesus teaching earlier in the day. She must have heard Him speak of something that changed her heart. She must be feeling some blend of humiliation, doubt and a lot of shame. Something brought her to this home and it was Jesus. She was desperate to see Him. She longed for Him and desired to be in His presence. She wanted to be fixed because she has come to the end of herself. When she heard that he was eating dinner at Simon’s home, she took it upon herself to go there and see Jesus face to face.. bold move.
So, here we are, Simon, Jesus and now a prostitute who shows up uninvited. Everyone’s staring at her, but all she sees is Jesus. Or maybe I should put it this way: all she sees is Jesus seeing HER. As their eyes lock, there was no judgement in Jesus’ eyes and there was no humiliation or shame in hers. She is broken and she knows it, but Jesus sees something else. He sees someone who is beautifully broken. A daughter of the Most High.
Try and picture this scene in your mind: Jesus is reclining at a table. Simon and his friends are sitting at the table, on the floors, and all around them. A woman then walks into the home uninvited and stands at Jesus’ feet, left filthy by Simon who did not wash them. The room is silent. She looks around hesitantly, seeing men stare at her in disgust. Some of them might be looking awkwardly down at the ground, fearing that this woman knows them by name from past transactions. She then meets the gaze of Jesus and He is delighted to see her. He is not ashamed to be associating with her, His day was actually made. He is so happy!
Because of this, she comes undone. This is the moment she has come to the end of herself. Tears begin streaming down her face, hitting the feet of Jesus. She realized that she cannot stop crying because the love of Jesus is so real. She is feeling it for the very first time. She falls to the floor and begins to kiss his dirty feet that should have been washed by Simon. Her tears clean his feet. They are spotless.
The funny thing about tears is that when they fill our eyes, that’s when we see the most clearly. She knows that Jesus’ feet have not been washed. So she suddenly lets down her long hair, allowing everyone in the room to see. In those days, letting down your hair is a very intimate thing for a woman to do in public. For a woman to wear her hair down in front of a man who was not her husband, was considered to be an intimate expression that would literally be grounds for divorce. She then begins to dry Jesus’ feet with her hair. I bet there were so many gasps in the room when that happened. That was probably something those people will never un-see. A dirty woman is now the one who cleans the son of God’s feet.
Then, she brings out the perfume. Women in that day often wore a small flask around their neck, carrying their fragrance. For a prostitute, it became an important part of her daily business. A drop at a time, a man at a time. Instead of pouring a few drops on Jesus’ feet, she empties the entire flask. This moment is huge, it represents her emptying herself out to Jesus. She no longer needed that ointment anymore, because she was no longer the person she used to be. She gives him everything that she has. She gave him her tears, her hair, her ointment… everything. She offers all that she has, because He has changed all that she is.
READ 39-46….
Simon, who spent his entire life studying the Bible, can recite nearly 300 prophecies about the coming Messiah. And at the moment, he is looking across the table at Him. Yet, Simon treats Jesus like an unwanted dinner guest.
Simon had everything. A house, a table, water to clean Jesus’ feet.. yet he did nothing. And it’s not like he attempted to do those things.. he literally did not try at all. But this sinful woman, who only had the ointment around her neck that allowed her to work and make money was poured out because she no longer needed it anymore. That was all she had, yet she gave it away. She embarrassed herself in front of so many people but deeply experienced the love and grace of Jesus. She experiences pure intimacy with her Lord.
READ 47-50
…. he says, “your sins are forgiven, for she loved much.” How incredible is that? That seriously blows my mind. She was such a sinful woman. She sinned every single day, and she knew it. Yet… she was still forgiven from everything. Jesus forgave her because she had so much faith in Him. He was all she wanted and her actions proved that. She realized the life that she was living did not add up to be the life she originally planned for herself. It wasn’t worth it, it did not satisfy her. So she turned to the One who would make her whole, the One who could make her new. She could no longer make the word “prostitute” her identity. Because Jesus took that away from her and later nailed that to the cross. She no longer had to carry that burden because He was now carrying that for her. She was made clean, white as snow.
You see, Simon knew so much about Jesus, but he did not know Jesus in his heart. He did not love him. He had knowledge without intimacy. This woman, who sinned her whole life, brought everything she had in humility, in front of Jesus. She experienced love like never before, because she surrendered herself fully.
At the end of this story, the Pharisee was the fan, and the prostitute was the follower. I want you to ask yourself, “when was the last time you had an intimate encounter with Jesus?” It’s okay if your answer is, “days” or “months” or even “years”. It’s okay if your answer is “never”. In college, I went through a period of my life where I didn’t follow Jesus. I kept telling myself I didn’t believe in God because I was so angry at Him. I ran away from Him completely and got caught up in the world. I realized I was broken and I was in need of a savior. And just because I ran away from God, does not mean He ran away from me. Jesus was waiting for me to come back to Him.
A lot of us want to be made whole without having to be broken. We’d like to be like Simon, going on about our lives, reading the Bible and going to church occasionally, but never being radically broken and mended by Jesus. The problem is, we are all broken. The Bible even says that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Some people are just better at hiding their brokenness than others.
But in Luke 7, it’s painfully obvious that this woman is broken and in pain. She’s lying on the floor of a party she was not even invited to. Yet, Simon, who is sitting across from Jesus, doesn’t even recognize his own brokenness. He doesn’t even realize that what he did was wrong. He doesn’t realize that His knowledge of Jesus does not mean that He actually has a relationship with Jesus. I want you to understand that we are all broken sinners. We are all in need of a savior, someone so much bigger than anything we could ever imagine. We can’t live this life on our own. Jesus is ready for you. He is literally waiting for you to give up everything to Him, so that He can fix all the broken pieces of your life. He loves you so much. The weight of this world is heavy, and you were not meant to carry it on your own.
You can be made new.
