Bible Verse: Luke 7:39
“When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself. If this man were a prophet he would know what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner”.
The story of the immoral woman who gate-crashed a dinner party given by a Pharisee for Jesus is quite well-known. The woman wept, wiped Jesus’ feet and poured perfume on them – all actions which had great symbolic meaning in their day.
But the point for today is the inner thinking of the Pharisee. The Pharisees were a group within Israel who conducted themselves with great propriety and considered themselves very pious. They were also legalistic and appear in the Gospels often as opponents of Jesus.
This Pharisee, whose name was Simon, made an inward Judgement about Jesus, because he allowed the sinful woman to touch him.
For Simon, it was unthinkable that a holy man would allow such a person to touch him or even be in his company. But Jesus kept confounding the Pharisees by welcoming sinners.
Simon is the sort of person who could not imagine himself being ungodly, lost spiritually, or unacceptable to God. He had, in his opinion made himself acceptable by his life-style and spiritual convictions, which included seeing himself as superior to others. Turn to Luke 18:10 to see this illustrated in another context. But as it turns out at the end of this story it is indeed Simon who is left out and the woman, though a sinner, is included in God’s great forgiveness.
One of the hardest things to overcome, when we think about God, is our stubborn pride that insists on thinking that if he exists we are acceptable to Him. We think there is no reason to fear him. But Simon’s mistake is very great and the greatest mistake of all was to write Jesus off with the thought: “If this man were a prophet …..” If? Jesus is indeed more than a prophet. He is the very Saviour Simon himself needed, in fact all of us need this Saviour. The word spoken to the woman: “your sins are forgiven” were not spoken to Simon, who equally needed it. He had no room in his thinking for such a remark. He would have asked: ME! What sins do I have that need to be forgiven.
Do you have a similarly closed heart?
The words HARDNESS OF HEART in the bible does not mean people who are always unkind and rude. Rather they describe that attitude of the human heart to GOD: a refusal to see why we need Him: a blindness to our lostness.
Until these words are spoken into your soul by the only One who can possibly say them – you yourself will be left out of God’s Kingdom
Put your pride in your pocket and turn in repentance to Christ now.
Prayer:- Almighty God, deliver me from ever thinking too lightly about Jesus. Help me never to be deceived by pride, hardness of heart and grant me a greater love for Christ. Amen