As we mentioned in our bulletin this morning, we begin a new series of messages today entitled "Meet the Real Jesus?'
And I'm going to begin this morning by asking each of you here, "Which Jesus do you follow?"
Now, yes, I'm anticipating some questions or comments which are going something like this: "What do you mean? There's only one Jesus, isn't there."
And I agree, absolutely, that there is only one real Jesus. However, having said that, the truth of the matter is that there are many counterfeit Jesuses out there. There are many who believe in and follow a false concept, or counterfeit version of Jesus.
For instance, there is the Marxist Jesus found in Liberation Theology--the idea being that what Jesus was really about was liberating the oppressed victims of political and social injustices and re-distributing wealth from the rich to the poor. Then there's the New Age Jesus--the Jesus who is simply one of many "Ascended Masters" who approves of any and all occult involvements that you might practice. And then there's the Guru Jesus, that Hindu or Bahai philosophy that Jesus is just one of many avatars or manifestations of God to appear on the planet, and you can worship any one of them you want, you just can't worship Jesus exclusively. And then there's the Prosperity Jesus, who's will for you is to be rich, if only you'll give superabundantly to whatever TV or Radio evangelist is promoting him. And there are actually too many false concepts of Jesus to mention, but one I will mention this morning is the Religious Jesus, the Jesus who may forgive you and promise you heaven if only you'll involve yourself in as many religious rituals as you can, and do as many good works as you can, only you can never know for sure, so that's your motivation for continuing to do good works and religious rituals over and over again, you just might not have done enough.
Now the idea that there are counterfeit concepts of Jesus is not a new one. It was something that was happening as far back as the first century, within 30 years of the death, resurrection and ascension of the real Jesus. The Apostle Paul addressed the problem back in 58 A. D. in the New Testament, in his second letter to the Church at Corinth where counterfeit concepts of Jesus were being preached. He wrote in II Corinthians 11:4, "For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully."
Now his statement here was definitely not a commendation of the Corinthians for accepting the person who preached "another Jesus." It was actually a way of sarcastically stating that the Corinthians should not have tolerated should false teaching. That becomes clear as Paul states the potential consequences for those who both teach a false concept and Jesus and those who accept and follow such a false Jesus in verse 15 of II Corinthians 11: "Whose end will be according to their deeds." A rather ominous prediction, to say the least.
So, this matter of know whether you're actually following the real Jesus, or a counterfeit Jesus is just a little important. If you're following a wrong Jesus, it is likely to have a destructive effect on your relationship with God, and it might even lead to eternal destruction. So, again, this morning, I ask this crucial question: Which Jesus do you follow?
Well, the next question you should be asking at this point is this, "Well, how can I know whether I'm following the real Jesus or not?"
The answer is simply this: By comparing your concept of Jesus to the Jesus presented in the most ancient and reliable historical accounts of Jesus, the Gospels, as well as the New Testament, written mostly by the eyewitnesses to Jesus, the apostles themselves, or their close associates. In other words, the entire basis for anyone's so-called Christianity, or concept of Jesus should be based solidly on the New Testament documents, because they constitute the very foundation upon which Christianity, or at least, true Christianity is based. Without the New Testament, real Christianity would not exist, because we only reliably know who Jesus Christ is through the eyewitness and apostolic accounts of Him that we find in the New Testament, and especially the Gospels.
So, the question you need to be asking this morning is this: Is the Jesus I follow really the real Jesus who is presented to us in the New Testament, the very foundation for all we know about Jesus? If it's not, then it's time to make an adjustment.
So, this morning, we've read a very interesting story about two very ordinary but real people in the Gospels who had an encounter with the real Jesus. Exhibit A is the highly respected, highly religious, scrupulous ethical, Simon the Pharisee. And Exhibit B is the unnamed very sinful woman, the woman of ill repute, whom everyone in her neighborhood apparently recognized as an absolute failure in terms of her moral and spiritual life. She is a great sinner. Even Jesus acknowledges this.
Now, let's assume you know nothing of the Gospel story which we have read. If you had to lay money on which of these people would receive Jesus' assurance that they would be going to heaven when they die, which one would you lay money on.
Now most of us here, and possibly me included, would put our bets on the highly religious man here.
However, as we have read, incredibly, the person who departs from Jesus' presence assured that they're going to heaven, that they're saved from their sins, is not the highly religious person, it's the woman whom every has acknowledged is a great sinner.
How can this be?
Now, if you would have bet your money on the highly religious man as the one who would be assured by Jesus of heaven, then there's a chance that you've been following a false concept of Jesus--the religious Jesus who keeps you on doubt and guilt until the end, because he insists on your involvement in religious rituals and good works before you can be assured of heaven.
So, let's go back and take a moment to seriously consider what has happened in this story.
In the preceding context, Jesus admits that he has been accused by some, as it turns out the Jewish religious leaders, of an awful sin from their perspective, he's been a friend to tax-gatherers and sinners, of all things!
And then one of those very Pharisees, or religious people who were so critical of Jesus invited Jesus over for a meal. Jesus accepts the invitation and thus proves that he's a friend even to highly religious people who are critical of Him. Jesus truly loves his enemies and even associates with one of them here.
So, in verse 36, Jesus accepts the Pharisees' invitation.
Now at this point, it's important to understand something about who Pharisees were in the first century. They were a group of highly religious, scrupulously moral people who were highly respected by their contemporaries. The Pharisees had begun as a movement that had high ideals to begin with, back in the first and second centuries before Christ, to counteract the paganization of Judaism which had been instituted by the Greeks who had invaded the land after Alexander the Great, and who had sought to destroy Jewish culture by Hellenizing it--in other words, making it like pagan Greece. But by the time of Jesus, those involved in the movement had become extreme.
They not only obeyed Old Testament commands, but they added to those commands the teachings of men, the teaching of their rabbis, which defined, for instance, how far a man could walk without breaking the Sabbath on a Saturday, and things like whether a man could gargle on the Sabbath, and a lot of that had to do with whether he spit it out or swallowed. And to show just how nitpicky they were they even talked about whether a man could eat an egg that was laid on the Sabbath. The rule was that you could, provided you killed the hen that laid it! So there!
But among their most extreme practices were that they required everyone to be ritually pure. In the Old Testament, ritual purity was required only of the priests when they were involved in temple service. Ritual purity meant that they had to undergo various rituals, including ritual washings, offerings of various sacrifices and sprinkling of blood on things, in addition to practicing certain quarantines and keeping themselves separate from things that might defile them, like unclean animals or foods, or for that matter, people whom they considered unclean, or sinful. That's because uncleanness was contagious. If you touched an unclean person or thing, then you became unclean, and it was like having the cooties. You needed to avoid at all costs getting the cooties or being unclean. So, all of those things are important issues relevant to this story, as you'll see.
And you should notice in verse 36 that as Jesus enters the Pharisee's home, he reclines at table. Now the word is specific here because it reflects just how people ate in those days. They didn't sit down in a chair at a table. Rather they laid down, they relined, generally on their left side, on a pillow around a low table. So, their heads would be pointed toward the table and the food, and they would feed themselves with their right hand, with their feet stretched out behind them.
So, Jesus had reclined at table, and in the original, Luke writes, "And behold." Or we could translate, "And look" or "lo and behold, guess what happens." There's a rather unusual scene that begins to unfold before everyone's eyes. An uninvited guest, a woman who was a sinner, one who apparently had well-known reputation as a sinner, shows up in the dining room. She has with her an alabaster vase full of costly perfume. And she stands behind Jesus and begins weeping. And as she weeps she kneels down behind him, at his feet, and without saying anything begins to anoint his feet with the perfume, and begins to wet her feet with her tears, and then begins wiping his feet with her hair which she has let down, and not only that, but she's also kissing his feet.
Whoa! What a scene. Why in the world would anybody do that? And I imagine if you or I were there, and had not known who Jesus claimed to be, we might have asked ourselves, who does this guy think he is--God or something. Well, exactly, as it turns out.
So, I imagine everyone who is at the table, I imagine, is reacting somehow inwardly to this strange and poignant scene that is taking place before them, if not outwardly, then inwardly.
But Luke's focus is on the reaction of the host, the Pharisee, whose name is apparently Simon. And his reaction is exactly what we might expect from a Pharisee, a highly religious ethical nitpicker who is overly concerned about rituals and the purity that was expected to result from them. So, he says to himself (v. 39), "If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner." And of course, his conclusion was that a prophet, or holy man, would have nothing to do with her. Thus, ipso facto, Jesus cannot be a prophet, or any kind of holy man because he is allowing this unclean person to touch his feet! God forbids!!!
And so we come to the first point of our message this morning. Jesus does something this religious person does not expect. He reveals something about God. He reveals that both He and God welcome sinners who come to them. The Jesus of the Bible, and the God of the Bible welcome sinners that come to Him, especially if they're repentant.
Now, I need to tell you a little bit about myself. As a young man, I was a little Pharisee-like. I thought good people when to heaven and bad people didn't. And I also thought I was pretty good--that if God graded on the curve like the teachers in my school did, I'd be okay, and that I was better than most. That was before I learned that all have sinned, and the way that they've sinned is fall short of the glory, or the perfection of God. And as James 2:10 says, "If you keep the whole law, and stumble even in one point, you have become guilty of all." And so, according to the Bible, it is absolutely impossible for any mere man to be good enough for God, because we all sin. And his standard for judgment is not comparison, it is not a curve, but it is absolute. So, it renders all of us in need of God's forgiveness, which as we will see, the Jesus of the Bible is only too eager to provide.
Now as it turns out Jesus, not only knows that the woman is a great sinner, he also as the Son of God, God in the flesh, knows precisely what Simon, his host is thinking. So, he tells a telling parable. A certain money lender has two debtors. One owes him 500 denarii, and the other fifty. Now 500 denarii are no small amount of money. A denarius was a day's wage for common laborers in that day, and so 500 denarii was close to two years of wages. By our standards, I imagine it would be $50 to $100,000 depending on where you live. And the second person who is in debt owes a tent of that, perhaps $5,000 or $10,000. Apparently both of them have trouble paying back their debts, and the moneylender very graciously decides to forgive both of them for their debt. And then Jesus asks the Pharisee the $64,000 question. Verse 42: "So when they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more."
And then Jesus listens carefully as Simon places his head in the spiritual noose Jesus has prepared for him: Verse 43: "I suppose the one who whom he forgave more."
And Jesus said to Him, "You have judged correctly."
And then Jesus proceeds to recount all the customary things a host in that day would typically do for an honored guest which the Pharisee had failed to do, and then noted what this sinful woman had done for Him in light of the Pharisee's lack of attention:
Verse 44: "Turning toward the woman, He said 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."
Wow! I'm glad I wasn't in Simon's shoes, though at times I might have been mistaken for him.
Now, lest we move on too quickly, let's gather the lessons we should learn about the true Jesus from this. The real Jesus freely offers forgiveness to sinners. And when we have truly received the gift of his forgiveness, as the woman did, we should freely show our gratitude by how we live.
Again, the lesson. Freely receive the forgiveness that the true Jesus offers and show your gratitude by how you live.
Now notice this: Jesus didn't require that the sinful woman perform any of the religious rituals that the Pharisee regarded so highly. He didn't say to the woman, you've got to be baptized first. Or you've got to partake of the Lord's Supper first. Now I believe in those things, but not as a means to forgiveness. He simply granted her forgiveness, because he knew her heart, that she was expressing gratitude for the fact that she had been or expected to be forgiven by Jesus, the Son of God, for all her sins. Perhaps she had heard him teaching elsewhere, had come to faith in Him, and realized that He was the kind of person, the kind of God, who would forgive if she only asked him too, without having to jump through a lot of religious hoops. And Jesus confirmed her faith, and indicated she was forgiven. He did so emphatically in verse 49: "Then He said to her, "Your sin have been forgiven."
And then notice another thing, expecting and apparently believing Jesus would forgive, and had forgiven her, it affected what she did, how she lived as a result. Now if we take into consideration the parable he had just told, the forgiveness came freely, it was offered without any demand for anything, any payment whatsoever on either man's part for their debt. So, his forgiveness was given freely, graciously, without expectation of any return. And Her good works were not an expression of guilt, but rather an expression of gratitude and love for what Jesus had already done for her.
Now that's a paradigm for the Christian life. Forgiveness freely given by Jesus results in genuine worship, genuine love and genuine good works of service.
Now let me ask you, is this your kind of Jesus. Or does Jesus let you wonder, and waver, about whether he's ever going to completely forgive you. Does He keep asking for more and leave you dangling in the breeze until it might be too late to do anything about your spiritual situation. If he's left you dangling, and he's waiting for more payment, maybe, just maybe, you've got the wrong Jesus, maybe you're following a counterfeit Jesus.
Because what we learn here is again this: When you freely receive the forgiveness the real Jesus offers, your good works will result from gratitude and love and not be motivated by that pile of guilt the religious Jesus might burden you with.
And then, we learn, that now Jesus has gotten himself in trouble with some of the other guests at the meal. I don't know, but I suspect they were the religious friends of the very religious Pharisees. And they actually ask a very good question, "Who is this man who even forgives sins." They recognize that no man, no mere man, can ever forgive sins in the final and ultimate way that Jesus did, unless that man were God, which, of course, is precisely what Jesus was claiming to be as the only begotten Son of God.
But just in case there were any doubt about who the real Jesus was claiming to be, guess what He ultimately says to the sinful woman: It's in verse 50--the end of the story: And He said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you, go in peace."
Wow! The real Jesus makes it clear that he not only has authority on earth to forgive sins, but as God alone can, to assure people of their eternal destiny in heaven! Wow!
And then the most important thing to notice here is the basis for his promise of eternal life. It's not her work, but her faith.
"Your faith has saved you. Go, in peace."
Now I notice something here. The very moment that the real Jesus had a chance to require of the woman to be religious, to do something religious, to perform some ritual or something in order to deserve heaven he refuses to ask her for it. As far as we know, she has never been baptized, she has never partaken of the Lord's supper, she has never become ritually clean by performing any of the washings or sacrifices characteristic of the Pharisees. In stark contrast to the religious Jesus, the true Jesus grants her that absolute assurance of heaven based on what--her faith in Him as Her Savior.
In other words, the real Jesus offers heaven, the forgiveness of sins, absolutely eternal security, solely on the basis of faith, not works, and not religious rituals.
So, our final point this morning is this: Receive Jesus' forgiveness by faith in Jesus alone, because He doesn't come by being religious, or performing religious rituals or good works. Otherwise, the Pharisee would have gotten the promise, but He didn't. Because the Pharisee was depending on his good works, what He could do for Himself, rather than what Jesus would do for Him, when Jesus died on the cross for His sins.
This is confirmed by what the real Jesus repeatedly said about how people could be sure of eternal life in the Gospels.
John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 5:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
John 6:40: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
John 6:47: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life."
And it's what the Apostle Paul, a former Pharisee and ultimately an Apostle of Jesus Christ said in Ephesians 2:8-9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and [a]that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast"
So, my question for you this morning is the same. Which Jesus do you follow. The religious Jesus that requires, religion, rituals and good works and even then doesn’t guarantee complete forgiveness and eternal life.
Or the real Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospel and the Bible, Who offers the promise of forgiveness and eternal based on your faith alone in Him to forgive and to save?
Remember, He said, "he who believes, not he who works or is religious, has eternal life."
Let's pray.
