‘ The sauce is on the middle shelf of the fridge’, so says my wife, but for the life me, I can’t see it.
My wife goes to the fridge and finds the sauce immediately.
Is it a man thing, an age thing or just a human thing?
Recently, I have been working on Luke 7:36-50, Jesus, Simon the Pharisee and the sinful woman.
I went through the whole process of sermon preparation and wrote out the sermon manuscript, but I knew I had not cracked the passage. I preached the sermon to my preaching club and knew it still was not right, so did they.
I prayed over it, I read and reread the passage, there was something I was not seeing.
You know the basic outline: Jesus invited to the Pharisee’s house, v.36.
The uninvited sinful woman and Jesus, v.37-39.
The parable, v40-43.
Jesus application and assurance of forgiveness, v44-50.
Pharisee is used 4 times, sinner 6 times and forgiveness 4 times.
Luke often works in pairs and especially men and women, inviting comparison, so here we have a comparison between a named Pharisee and an unnamed sinful woman.
Luke emphasises saving more than Matthew and Mark, here Jesus is portrayed as the saviour of sinners, no matter what your track record Jesus can wipe it clean and give a fresh start.
What wasn’t I seeing?
More prayer, more thoughtful reading, what was staring me in the face?
I was not seeing the obvious – I was treating the narrative as central and the parable as peripheral, but I needed to treat the parable more centrally and the narrative as the setting for the parable, it made a big difference, I should have been interpreting the narrative in the light of the parable.
A money lender, v41-42 is owed a greater and lesser debt by two debtors who are equally unable to repay him, and the central verse is 42, ‘he cancelled the debt of both’, the word translated cancelled is the verb for the application of grace, the lender literally, ‘applied grace’ in cancelling the debt.
So v.41-42 is a parable which teaches the core of the message which Jesus came to proclaim, illustrated by the woman’s experience.
Sin is a debt we cannot work off or repay, it is cancelled, ‘graced’, by the creditor, that’s what salvation is, forgiveness, cancellation of the sin record by grace through faith in Jesus the Saviour. All sin is against God, we cannot forgive ourselves, but He, like the money lender can graciously forgive.
Jesus looked Simon in the eye and told him this story, this was Simon’s challenge, this woman’s response was indicative of her many sins, her great debt, having been forgiven.
The biggest contrast between Simon and the woman was between forgiveness and unforgiveness!
Are we more aware of the sins of others like Simon, or of our own sin, like the woman?
We look back at the Cross where Jesus died for our sin, she by faith looked forward and Jesus applied his own death benefit to her, ‘your sin has been forgiven’. And she gratefully, breaks social convention in her service of Him, her great love is generated by great forgiveness.
Keep praying and thinking, working dependably, God will open eyes. (Eph 1:17; John 14:26; 1John 2:27.)
David Cook.