seven rivers, Presbyterian Church, and Lakanto, Florida, sermons by Reverend Ray Cortes. Luke, chapter seven, we're going to begin this passage, reading at verse 36 as I recall. So why don't you stand if you're able and you're willing and we'll give our attention then to the Word of God. It's been said by New Testament scholars that there is more gospel in this passage than anywhere else in the New Testament. If you want to be exposed, you know, if you want to get the gospel, here's a great place to go in this vivid account we have from God's words. So let's give our attention to it. Luke chapter seven, verse 36. Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Jesus to dine with him. And Jesus entered the Pharisees house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner. And when she learned that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisees house, she brought an alabaster vile of perfume and standing behind Jesus at his feet, weeping she began to wet his feet with her tears and kept wiping them with the hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with perfume. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he wouldn't know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that Jesus sinner. Now notice, he said this to himself. And yet the Bible says, in Jesus answered and said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. Say it, teacher. Well, a certain money lender had two debtors, one owed five hundred denari and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. Which of them therefore will love him more? Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more. And Jesus said, you judge correctly. In turning to the woman, he says to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she since the time I came in has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with perfume. For this reason, I say to you, her sins which are many have been forgiven. For she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little. And Jesus said to her, your sins have been forgiven. And those who were reclining at the table with Jesus began to say to themselves, who is this man who even forgives sins? And Jesus said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace, make God bless this reading of his holy and infallible word. Amen. And amen, you may be seated, please. Never going to get the gospel without God's help. So bow your head if you'd like. It's up to you. Just ask God to speak to you through his word. You can use those very words, if you like. God, would you open my mind? Would you speak to my mind? Would you move my heart from your word this morning? I want you to be the teacher. I want to be the learner. Make that your prayer, because if you do, he will do as you've asked. And so we thank you in Jesus' name. Do you get the gospel? That's the question before us. Do you get it? In this passage, Jesus tells us that somebody gets it and somebody doesn't. There's two people, two main characters in this passage other than Jesus. Who's the one who gets it and who's the one who doesn't? The one who doesn't get it is a religious leader. And the one who does get it is a prostitute. She's an immoral woman. So that ought to catch her attention, right? It's the immoral woman who gets it. And it's the religious person who doesn't. No question this morning then is, which are you? Are you religious? Are you Simon? Or are you the prostitute? Which are you? Because unless you can identify yourself as the prostitute, then you don't get it. You see, the religious always struggled to get it. We sang the song, didn't we? The religious, Jesus came to call, but sinners. The religious struggle because we think, particularly in our country, that if you say the right words and you pray to prayer, that I prayed, you know, Jesus, I trust you. I ask you to come into my life and forgive me my sins and you believe. If you believe that Jesus is God and the Trinity and He died in a cross and He raised from the dead, then you get it. But so many of the religious, so many of the churchgoers, we would say are chronic complainers, have lives that are bereft of much joy, have deeply critical spirits, constantly find the flaws in other people, and give scant evidence of love for others, right? If we don't think so, we just ask the non-Christians. They'll tell us all these things are true. They very often see the truth about us more keenly than we see it about ourselves. So what does it mean to get it, to get the gospel? Jesus said, if you want to get the gospel, look at this woman. And that's what we're going to do this morning. So what's your year? What's your year? Are you Simon? Are you the religious? Or are you the immoral woman? Jesus was invited by a Pharisee to a banquet, that ought to get our attention. Pharisees held Jesus in contempt. They loathed him. Yet he's invited to this banquet where perhaps they can scrutinize him up close. And at such an affair as this, the people would eat in a recline position, laying down. They would lay on their left side. They would eat with their right hand. Their heads would be close to the table. They'd be laying on the floor. And their feet would be split out away from the table with their sandals removed. Even though it was a private invitation to dinner, the host would leave his doors open. And it was understood that people in the community could come into the dinner as well. They weren't invited to lay down and eat. But they could circulate around the table. They could be there as observers of what was taking place. And listeners listening into the conversation that was taking place. So Jesus is there engaged in this banquet at Simon the Pharisee's house. When suddenly he would have felt on his feet the tears of a woman. She's come in. There's others around behind them. And she's come in with the intent of anointing his feet with perfume oil. Why would she do that? Because it's luxurious, because it's an act of service in the culture in which they lived. It would be very soothing on tired feet to be anointed like that. It would cleanse dirty feet. It would soften calloused feet. It would actually odorize or deodorize smelly feet. It was, hey, who doesn't like their feet rubbed, right? And so she comes to lend this service to Jesus. And yet before she can even begin, she's overcome with tears and emotion. And her tears are pouring so freely that they begin to wet Jesus' feet. That she falls to her knees and undoes her hair and lets her hair down. Embarrassed. Well, what she's doing, she tams out the tears and she uses her hair to wipe Jesus' feet. And she anoints his feet and she begins to kiss his feet. And Simon the Pharisee is watching this whole display and he is appalled. And Jesus says to Simon, yeah, there's somebody who gets it. And Jesus says to you, look at the woman, look at the prostitute. There's somebody who gets it. Do you ever think you'd hear that in church? The Son of God's saying, I want you to be more like the prostitute. Not like the religious. Take out your sermon outline. The real question isn't to Simon get the gospel. The real question is, do you? Do you? What we see is that if you get the gospel, the result of that is an accurate assessment of yourself. A true self-analysis for which we are naturally blind. And this passage, there's two people. Which one has an accurate perception of her condition? Which one? It's the immoral woman. The immoralist, it's a tale of two deaders, right? Both are in debt, but only one person realizes the depth of their debt. And so when she comes to Jesus, she presents herself on her knees in tears. Her dirt-matted hair, her kneeling posture, all suggest what? She knows she's a big sinner. She doesn't come in her glory. She doesn't come with her merit. She doesn't come with her righteousness. She comes presenting herself head-bout on her knees utterly needing, right? She understands who she is. Simon has no clue. Simon is utterly blind to his spiritual condition. Simon's pride is uglier than her prostitution. Do you think he sees that? He is filled with rage at this foul woman who's come into his house. He doesn't understand that the person sitting at the head of the table is more foul than that woman who's come into the house. He has no consciousness, no accurate self-perception of his spiritual emptiness and deadness and deep need and his internal corruption, completely blind to him. We see this in a number of ways. One is he appoints himself as a judge in jury over Jesus. That's always a mistake, right? When you annoying yourself to judge whether Jesus is worthy of you rather than whether you are worthy of him. Simon looks at Jesus and he says things to himself. This man is not a prophet. If this man was a prophet, he would know who that woman was. And he certainly wouldn't let that woman touch him. Simon's of that school. The way that you have personal holiness is you separate yourself from immoral people. You have a church that meets in a what? In a phone booth, right? Which is you. Because you're the only good one. This is the way you get the holiness. Separate yourself from the immoral. She's letting him... He is letting this woman touch him. Does he know what kind of foul woman she is? And not only that, in fact, in this passage, Jesus is revealed as a prophet because he not only knows who the woman is, he knows the thoughts and intentions of Simon's heart, though he doesn't say a word. Now, we also see Simon's heart revealed in his lack of hospitality. Hospitalities are a great indicator of a redeemed heart. Jesus says to Simon, you didn't greet me with a kiss. This was common behavior, courteous behavior. When a guest came into your house, you greeted them with a kiss. You took off their sandals. You had a servant wash their feet. And you anointed their head with oil. And Jesus said, you extended none of these curses to me. None of them. It took somebody to come off the street to extend common curses. Simon, do you think he sees that about himself? Do you think he sees his unloving heart? And then finally, Jesus says, you are deeply in debt, and you don't even have a clue. Jesus, in fact, tells a story. He says there's two debtors. 150 dinari, they're those 500 dinari, okay? And both are what? 150, 150, 500, and he says both of these debtors are what? They are unable to pay. That's the key. They're both unable to pay. You understand that? It doesn't matter whether you owe a thousand dollars or a million dollars. If you are unable to pay, then your creditor has power over you. Then the creditor, particularly in that day, could arrest you. He can take all you have. He can throw you in prison. It really doesn't matter. If you can't pay, it makes no difference. It makes no difference whether you're a deeply immoral woman or whether you're a religious person like Simon. If you're in debt, you're what? You're helpless and hopeless and powerless. She gets it, he doesn't. Hey, it's like, you know, you could be sleeping and a little tiny spider drop from the ceiling and poisonous spider bite you on the neck and without even waking up, it's poison could enter you and stop your heart and you could be laying their peaceful smile on your face and dead. Or a lion could escape from your closet and bound up under your bed and rip you to shreds and leave the room a bloody spectacle. But you know what, it really doesn't matter because in the morning, both are what? Dead. You got pretty dead and you got ugly dead, but all you got is what? Dead. She can be way in debt or less in debt, but either way you're in debt. And it's a debt you cannot pay. She knows it. She knows she has nothing to bring. And I'm nothing in my hands, I bring. Weak and wounded, sick and sore, poor and wretched. That's how she would describe herself. She knows she is a great sinner. He has no clue. And the religious never do. You know why? The religious just think we're not that bad. Guess we need Jesus. I don't know any religious people who would say that they could pay their way to heaven and they don't need God at all. We just don't need them as much as other people. We think that we're not that bad. In fact, we constantly compare ourselves to other people. Every day we could read the paper and say, God, can you believe this woman who abandoned her kids? Can you believe this guy who killed his wife? Can you believe this pedophile? Can you believe the people who did this? Can you believe the people who said of those car bombs? Gosh, this world needs more people like me. Because I'm not that bad. We're not like the really corrupt people of this earth. The religious have a sense that we're not that flawed. We don't get it. We don't see. Simon doesn't get it. His debt and his inability just as great as hers. His pride is uglier than her immoral life. So I ask you, do you see that about yourself? Are you the worst? Is there no center greater than you? One of my kids was talking to a friend recently and the friend said, I just can't buy a Christianity that would have God allowing rapists and murderers and pedophiles to go to heaven. And so we talked about that. I said to my daughter, one thing you could have said to them is, so you believe there's a system of merit. And if somebody's a rapist or a murder or a pedophile, they don't have the merit that's necessary to go to heaven. Well, one thing you might ask is, how do they think that they do themselves? If there's some line and rapist and murderers and these kind of heinous criminals are below the line, then how do they know they're above the line? I mean, there's nothing like going to heaven and being in line behind Mother Teresa to get in and here the angels say to Mother Teresa, sorry, Mama, you don't qualify. That's when you know you're in deep wheat. How could you ever know that you're right with God if there's a system of merit? How do you know you qualify? How do you know you've got enough? Well, the religious don't see their sin. They don't see their corruption. They simply don't get it. Simon doesn't get the gospel because he has not come to terms with his helplessness and his corruption. He doesn't get the gospel even when the gospel is sitting at his own table because he doesn't see the depth of his own personal need. See, the religious reduce Christianity to outward behavior. And if there's gross sins that they haven't committed, they're completely blind to the actual condition of their heart. And when I talk about the religious, who am I talking about? I'm talking about the Baptist and the Methodist, right? I'm talking about Seven Rivers Church. I'm talking about us. I'm talking about the people in this room. Very often people come to me and they'll say, my son, he's abandoned his family, he's taken up with another woman, and he's ashamed our whole family, and it's embarrassing, and we are distraught, and we have to get our son to stop this behavior and go back to his family and make it all right, and pastor, how can we make that happen? And sometimes I'll get to know them better, and I'll talk to them about that, and I'll say, I'll tell you what you could do is repent of your sins before your son. Because you've presented a view of Christianity, your son's never heard you ever admit to doing anything wrong. You've always been a good example. You've always loved your spouse. You've always, and never in your life have you really exposed your weakness or your need or your deep dependency to Jesus for your kids. Yeah, you've always been in church every week of your whole life. But your child has never known you as a sinner. How they have no example of, you think you've been a great example to your child, but you know what you've never been an example of? A sinner, a desperate prostitute who has nothing but Jesus and runs to Jesus for forgiveness. They've never seen you ever do anything wrong or admit it. So I think what's most needed in your family is for you to start to see your sin, and instead of worrying about your kids' sin who's being unfaithful to their spouse, and instead of writing letters of judgment to your kid about how they better stop doing that, what if you started admitting that every day you're unfaithful to your Savior, that the adultery you see in your son, you are guilty of too every single day you are adulterous because you give your love to something other than the God who deserves it, and that there's no bigger adulterer in your family than you. And when I give that counsel, what's the next words I hear from the people I'm counseling? Is there anything we can do about my son's sin? How do we stop my son from sinning? How do we get my son to go back to his wife? See anything, but to confess my sin, to see my sin, to see my adultery, to see my need. No, I need to fix them. Pastor, is there a book I can give them? Is there a way that I can get them to see their sin? The greatest need of the church is for us to get the gospel, and for us to be the broken prostitute on our knees before God. Now, why do I speak of these things? I do it because I know this subject, because I am Simon. I started this church's assignment. This was seven Rivers Pharisee Church, according to the way I preached, and the way I started it. I remember saying to people, you know, there's a lot of bad people in the world. It's hard to round up enough good people to have a good church. Maybe we can get enough good people so that if some bad people come, we'll have a mountain number, you know? And we can help the bad people become good people like us. Hey, you're looking at somebody that never used drugs, never had an alcoholic drink, never had sex before marriage, never smoked, went to church every week's life, went to youth group, went to Christian college, went to Christian school. I am a bonafide candidate for Pharisee, a deeply religious. Probably probably as after about seven or eight or nine or ten years of ministry, my wife and say, I got some problems. I don't love God and I don't love people. Those are two primary qualifications to be a pastor. Now, I went to a counselor and I said, something's wrong with me. I'm running out of steam. I don't have any passion for God and I don't much love people. And the counselor said, oh, you are so much in bondage, you actually think that you have to behave in such a way to get God's affection and love for you. You need to understand the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, which has been imputed to you, that Jesus did the work for you. You've got to stop doing it for yourself. And you know what happened? When I became convinced that God loved me and he was crazy about me and he adopted me as his son, all for the work of Jesus, who accomplished that for me. Then you know what I was able to do for the first time as an adult, for the first time as a Christian, for the first time as a person, start to see how wretched I was. There aren't good people and bad people. They're just bad people. They're just struggling. They're just sinners. They're just needy. They're just broken and weak and wounded and sore people. And none of them needed Jesus more than me. Because you know what? I didn't do the sex. I didn't do the drugs. I didn't do the smoking. But I had a crafty and manipulative heart. And I could use people with the best of them to make myself look good. And I could be self-absorbed. And I could be unloving. And inside of me was corruption. You notice the fruit of the spirit? The fruit of the spirit isn't. If the Holy Spirit comes into your life, here's the fruit of the spirit. You'll stop doing drugs. You'll stop drinking. You'll stop carousing. Now it says the fruit of the spirit is what? It's all internal. You'll love. You'll have joy. Peace. Patience. I had none of those things. None of them. So how about you? Can you say? I'm the big sinner. I'm the big sinner in my house. You know, it's not those neighbors who never go to church and there's a different woman sleeping over at that house every night. Gosh, they need the gospel. You need the gospel. Nobody needs the gospel more than we need the gospel. This is what the woman gets. And this is what Simon doesn't. Who are you? Are you Simon? Or are you the immoral woman? Well, second. If you're going to get the gospel, it not only helps you see yourself as you really are, but if you get the gospel, it produces a lavish response. In my, her response is lavish, isn't it? It's amazing. A gush is out of her. And we see the lavishness in two ways. First, we'll get how personal it is. It's so personal. It's so near. It's so intimate. She's touching. She's crying. She's right there. She's filled with affection. It's so personal. If you could have pulled her away and interviewed her, which she has said, I'm just filled with tears and emotion and love because I love the ethical system of Christianity. Is that what she would have said? Because I love the rational thought of how God calls us and then we're justified and then we're glorified. You know, I love the rational system of doctrine that holds true against secular thought. No, no, no. What would she have said? I love what? Him. I love Jesus. See, with the religious, they often love the system. They often love the truth. They see Christianity as a set of teachings or ethical or moral behavior instead of a personal relationship with Him. With Jesus. She loves Him. It's fascinating, you know. A lot of people today in our world would say we need to accept the message of Christianity but not the messenger. In other words, you need to accept the teaching of Jesus' life but not Jesus Himself. Because if you embrace Jesus, that's divisive. And you'll be cutting yourself off from all the other world religions, right? So don't accept Jesus, but accept His message of love for everyone. It doesn't matter how you feel about Him. It matters what kind of life you live. And Jesus says the exact opposite. What does He say? It doesn't matter how good you are. It matters how you feel about Me and a moral woman is the one who's right with Him. It's not how good you are. It's how you feel about Me. I guess I should tell you we violated the Privacy Act. And for the last six months, we've been filming you in worship. Just you. We just chose you. Just after the service, you'll be one of the decons of gravity and take you to room where we're going to show you our film of you in worship for the last six months. I wonder just sort of if we watched your face and your intent and your singing and your engagement. If we brought in forensic scientists to study it, would they detect a personal passion for Jesus? You know, we watch all these shows like CSI, right? We're all experts now. CSI, Lakanto. The police gets suspicious because if they show up at the crime scene and the woman's dead and the husband's sitting there and he's dispassionate, then the police are suspicious, right? The emotion doesn't match the situation. Somebody's dead and there's no tears. Somebody's dead and he died for you. But if Christianity is just a set of beliefs, you'll never let down your hair. You'll never cry any tears. It didn't really cost very much to save you. You're not that bad. You just needed a little polishing up. But somebody's dead. And they're dead on account of you. So who are you? Cold, dispassionate Simon, evaluating Jesus, or are you a woman who's been slammed by the wonder that God could love you? Her response is personal and her response is wholehearted, unreserved. She takes a little vile around her neck. That's where they would wear the perfume. A little alabaster jar with a long neck. And she breaks the neck of that jar and she pours it out. Why would a woman wear this perfume around their neck? Because it's a hot and humid culture. How do you think people smell back then? Pretty foul. They didn't have baths. They didn't have the opportunity to clean like we do. So a woman would wear this scent around her neck and it would make her more alluring and attractive. And remember this woman's trade. This was her capital. Because all she has in the world is her body and her appeal. And yet she falls at the feet of Jesus and she what? She breaks that jar and she pours it out. And we know that she could have never used that jar again. That jar would have been the most expensive thing she owned. And she pours it out. All I have. Take my love, my God, I pour. At the feet, it's treasure, store. Take my life and I will be ever only offered. She's not just anointing Jesus' feet. She's what? She's giving up her prostitution. She's giving up her way of life. She's giving up her means of living. She's giving up everything for him. So if you really get the gospel, you respond. If you get the gospel, you don't say, God, I love that I have a church. I love that I have you. I love that I'm going to heaven. But meanwhile, I'm still going to do youth soccer every weekend of the year. And meanwhile, I'm still going to shop just like everyone else. And meanwhile, I'm going to conduct myself in my marriage just like everyone else. It reminds me of a guy who was looking for a parking space. He's getting desperate because if he didn't park his car soon, he was going to miss the business meeting. If he missed the business meeting, if he was lady, he was going to lose this client. It was very, very important and lucrative to keep this client. And so he cannot find a space. The meeting is about to start. And in desperation, he cries out to God. And he says, if you find me a parking space, then I will be in church every week. I'll even give up drinking. And he browns the next corner, wala, wide open parking space right in front of him. And he quickly says, never mind, I found one myself. I want heaven. I want you to be there when I need you. But the rest of life is mine. I'm not breaking any jar for you. God. I'm not breaking any bile for you. I'm hanging on to my autonomy. I'm going to run my life my way. No, that's not the response of the one who has been rescued. Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood. I surrender. When you get the gospel, what risk are you taking? What are you pouring out? Not because you have to. But because you can't help it. Nobody told this woman to do this, right? Nobody said you have to do this or Jesus won't love you. No, and she came to an apprehension of the love of God for her. My life, my everything, it's yours. So who are you, Simon, or the woman? Last, what's the fruit of getting the gospel? What's the fruit of getting the gospel? If any man is in Christy as a new creature, you get transformed. You get converted. You get made new. And the fruit of getting the gospel is you get an ability to love that you never had before. Jesus gives us this amazing principle. The one who is forgiven much what? Loves much. So if you don't see the depth of your need and you don't understand how much God has forgiven you, then you will not love much. He says the one who has forgiven much is the one who loves much. And consequently, if you look at somebody and they may be an elder in the church, and they may have gone to church for 50 years, if they don't love much, what do you know? They don't get it. They haven't experienced it. They haven't explicit. We've got to be patient with each other. We can't run around thinking, I wonder who doesn't really get it. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find all the people in my life who don't really get it. No, you don't get it. It's about you. I'm talking to you. But if you get it, if you've experienced the depth of your forgiveness, Jesus says, if you've been forgiven much, you what? You love much. Love starts to come out of you. Somebody does you wrong. How do you respond? Well, how would you typically respond? I'll pull away from them. I'll show them. I'll protect myself. I'll have nothing to do with them. I'll license them out. Or, I'm not taking that crap from anybody. Right? I'm going to defend myself. I'm going to put it right back in their face. Somebody does you wrong. When you get the gospel, what do you say? I'm going to hold somebody else's sins against them. When I begin to understand how great a sinner I am, what do I think I am, the Pope? I'm going to act like I'm high and mighty and sinless. No. There's never been a worse sinner than me. How could I be impatient with somebody else's sin? Not only that, you say as much as I've been forgiven. I killed the Son of God and God forgives me. Somebody does me wrong. Somebody talked about me, and I'm going to hold it against them. Are you kidding? You see, when you don't love, it just shows you don't get it. If you get it. If you're if you are transformed by the love of God, love comes out of you. Two friends of mine. One went to base St. Louis after Hurricane Katrina. The entire town was wiped off the map. And that's when he went there. Another friend went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He took the job one week after Hurricane Katrina. People say, why? It's got to be the worst place in America to live. And his response is what? That's what Christians do. They go to where there's pain. They go to where it's broken. They go to where there's hardship. Your neighborhood becomes blighted. You don't move out of the neighborhood to the nice neighborhood. No, you move from the nice neighborhood to the blighted neighborhood if you're a Christian. Where do we ever get an idea like that? It might be from Jesus who left a really nice neighborhood. 1-0-0 heaven street, right? And left that beautiful neighborhood. And he came to live in a blighted neighborhood all for who? To find you and bring you home and to lay down his life for you. And so if you're a Christian and you get the gospel, guess what you do? You love. You lay down your life. Why? Because you've experienced it. Got it? Starting to make sense? You get the gospel, it changes you. This woman loves. Because she has been so deeply loved. And not only does she get a new ability to love, she gets a satisfaction in her soul she's never had. What do you know when you see somebody acting out sexually? What do you know when you see someone who's promiscuous? Someone who is pursuing pornography? Someone who's pursuing a high school girl who has boyfriend after. What do you know when you see that? You know they're thirsty, right? You know there's a deep longing of their soul. This woman has been empty and thirsty and yearning, but not anymore. She's found the lover of her soul. You know what Freud said? Freud said that spirituality is nothing but repressed sexuality. If people could really live out their sexual longings, there would be no need for this worship of God or creation of the idea of God. Okay? People could just be satisfied sexually, there would be no need for the spiritual. But you know what Jesus says, you know what the Bible says? Is that sexuality is repressed what? Spirituality. As our culture's intimacy with God and knowledge of God and acquaintance with God decreases what increases? The plethora of sexual obsession, sexual behavior, sexual this, sexual that, sexual everything. Why? Because people are thirstier and thirstier and thirstier. So they pursue the sexual instead of what? What their heart truly craves. What does the Bible say? We were made naked and unashamed. What we truly crave is to be exposed and to be known and to be loved. And that's what she experiences. The immoral woman who's known man after man after man and none of it ever satisfied her. She comes to Jesus and she lets down her hair. Do you know what that means? Do you even today if you're watching a movie and you see the woman come in from off the street and she undoes her hair and she shakes her hair out and there's a man in the room. What's about to happen in that movie? Right? That's not an act of defiance, that's an act of calm hither, right? She lets down her hair in that culture. The Pharisees said that you could be divorced if you let down your hair in public. It was tantamount to exposing her breasts in public according to the Pharisees. But she lets down her hair with all these uptight religious people around right in front of them because she's found her what? Her husband? Not physically? I don't know. The lover of her soul. All our craving for the things of this world gives away when we find ourselves loved by Jesus. There it is. That's what happens. When you get the gospel, say, what does Jesus say to her at the very end of the passage? Daughter, go in what? Peace. Peace. Who could put a price on that? Getting the gospel gives you peace. A guy said to me, a new Christian said to me recently, okay pastor, what do I do? What do I do first? What do I work on first? I'm a Christian now. Do I get rid of the drugs? Do I get rid of smoking? Do I get rid of drinking? Do I get rid of women? And my answer was none of the above. What do you do first? You come to believe that you are the beloved son of the heavenly father. And then what? The lure of all those things will lose. You will lose your appetite for those things because your soul will be satisfied. It's the expulsive power of a greater affection. Parents, your kids don't need to stop smoking pot so much as they need to be embraced by Jesus. They said, you know what they said to Bunyan, if you keep preaching the grace of God, that we have favor with God because of the life of Jesus and not the way that we live, then people are going to go out and they are going to be immoral and they are going to live however they want. And Bunyan said, if I could convince people of the free and unfettered love of God, they won't live the way they want, they'll live the way he wants. You want holiness? You want holiness in your life? You want holiness in your children? Give them the love of Jesus. It's what their heart craves. It's the only thing that satisfies. Gosh, I want you to get it. If you don't, Jesus will stay after you. He's a great disciple. He pursued me a long time. I got into church my whole life. It took me a long time to get it. I'm much more hard-headed and hard-hearted than you. You'll get it, too. As a family in our church brings a little neighborhood boy. The neighborhood boy's mama doesn't come to church just this little boy. But after he's been coming to a church a while, you know what his mama said? Said to these folks at church who bring him. His said, my boy has been incorrigible. Uncorrectable. He's in trouble at school all the time. He's in trouble at home. He's in trouble in the neighborhood. It's as if he possesses almost a spirit of disruption. And he's just uncorrectable, unteachable, unmanageable. And she says, I'm tearing out my hair with this kid. It's bad. It's worse than bad. It's worse than normal. But you know what she said? Ever since you've been bringing him to church, he's a new kid. He doesn't act out at home, school, anywhere. He's completely peaceful. And she said, in fact, at night he sleeps, curled up in bed holding his Bible. Brothers and sisters, even little boys can get the gospel. So can immoral women. So can phariseic pastors. So can you. Lord Jesus Christ, would you blow right past our religion and give us yourself that we might experience the utter freedom and delight of belonging to you that you've accomplished for us, that in our heart of hearts everybody in this room wants a daddy who's proud of them. In our heart of hearts, everybody in this room wants a daddy who would look at us and say, you're my daughter. I take such delight in you. You're my son. You belong to me. Every one of us wants that. Lord Jesus, would you make that invitation from you so compelling that we couldn't help but embrace it, being loved by you that way? And that this unmerited love would change everything about us. Oh, that's our prayer. It is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.