Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity

Well good morning everybody. I'm Rene. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. You guys glad to be here this morning? Isn't it a beautiful weekend here in Santa Cruz? And we want to welcome you if you're joining us live. Also everybody joining us on Facebook live. Every single week we have more and more people from all around the world. Places like Morocco and Egypt and Alaska and Italy. We've had all sorts of people. Ireland watching our church services live and so it's great to have you join us too.

We have begun our Richer Life series. We kicked this off last weekend and I would love for everybody to be literally on the same page. We wrote a little devotional book that goes along with this. Now I want to emphasize this is not something anybody's making any money off of. Writing this book was just my gift to the church. I don't get anything extra for doing this. I don't get any return from the book. All the money goes back into the ministries of Twin Lakes Church and it's donation anyway. So if you don't have anything with you forget it just take the book. We would love for you to join us.

It has daily devotions for every single day. We just begun week two and also in the back there are small group questions for your small group. We have hundreds and hundreds of people all over the county and the world doing these small group questions. They tie into videos that I filmed that you can find at tlc.org/richerlife. You can see how we're trying to make this just an immersive experience as we explore Richer Life and if you're joining us online you can order this on Amazon or download this to your Kindle or your iPhone or your tablet device. So there's all kinds of ways that you can get into this. I'm so thankful for modern technology.

I heard Billy Graham say one time modern technology is both bringing out the best and the worst of human nature and so we want to be part of bringing out the best of human nature. I'm really super grateful for our whole team that's putting that together. Now this is a series about biblical generosity, living generously. Now many people when they hear that word generously tend to think of money but money is only a small subset of what the Bible means when it talks about generous living.

It also means forgiving generously, being relationally generous, emotionally generous, being generous with your hospitality and more and we're gonna look at all those aspects of kind of living large, living generously in this series because it does lead to a richer life and most importantly it honors God because our God is a generous God. Now today as we continue to develop this topic of generosity what I want to ask is biblically where does generosity come from because generosity doesn't just come out of a vacuum or just out of a sense of obligation.

Here's the biblical truth jot this down in your notes that look like this that that are in the bulletins that you got when you came in. Generosity is the overflow of a heart filled with gratitude. That's sort of the big idea for this morning. Generosity is the overflow of a heart that is filled with gratitude to God just for being God for all that he lavishes on us by his grace. We have so much in this world to be grateful for and when we are grateful there are all kinds of benefits.

I put some of those benefits in the message notes in bullet points. I mean look at look at those people who are more grateful get better sleep if you're more grateful. Lower blood pressure in the richer life book we ask you to begin a gratitude journal and see if this isn't true for you. All kinds of benefits all awesome but there's a problem and it's this when we most need these effects is precisely when we struggle to be grateful right.

I mean when you could really use lower blood pressure and better sleep is when it's very difficult like you just had a fender bender on your way home and your insurance deductible is $1,000 and you're getting home and you know you have to work very late on a project could be an all-nighter and the kids now are showing signs of chicken pox and the baby is screaming and the neighbors are rehearsing their metal band in their garage at 2 in the morning and somebody tells you be grateful in all circumstances you just want to punch them in the nose right.

It's when we need these effects that we can't think of anything to be thankful for cuz life's a mess. Show you what I mean. My friend Brian King former president of Cabrillo College next door moved his family to Folsom California from Santa Cruz about three or four years ago and when Brian first told his daughter Celia she was a young teen near me teenager at the time she was not thrilled to say the least.

In fact she was keeping a gratitude journal at the time that she showed me and so he was keeping this gratitude because just like today and just like in the series I was encouraging the church four years ago to keep gratitude journals and so she at 14 years old decided I'm going to do this and with Celia's permission, Celia's a freshman in college right now, I'm able to share with you that day's entry in her gratitude journal. Thankfulness not.

In my life I have nothing to be thankful for. You might say I live in the beautiful Santa Cruz but guess what not for long I am moving to ugly disgusting Sacramento California and believe me I do not want to no beach and then I love the way this escalates it eventually on page two it gets to I just want to die I would rather be starving and homeless but be here than live in Sacramento I would rather be cut with paper cuts all over my body and jump into a sea of lemon juice I think I'll just cry and cry till my tear ducts burst what is the point of life if you live in a terrible place with no friends my motto now is life sucks trademark okay I'm done writing about it makes me sad to think goodbye Santa Cruz and let me remind you this was her gratitude journal.

And by the way Celia and I were texting this last Thursday this is Celia now proud graduate from high school starting college this fall so we were texting on Thursday and she said of course you can use that journal but please tell everybody quote that move ended up being the greatest thing in my life but let's be honest here there are times when all of our gratitude journals could start thankfulness not in my life I have nothing to be thankful for right now so the big question is of course is there a source of gratitude beyond my circumstances right well yes there's a source of gratitude you can tap into no matter what's going on in your life right now and one of my favorite places to see it is in the story of Jesus we're looking at today in Luke 7 starting in verse 36 and going to the end of the chapter.

Now I'm gonna read the story and explain some of the cultural context to you and I want to encourage you you can find the whole story written on page two of your notes and then I'm gonna make three quick application points there on page three but if you've got your Bibles with you or on your phone or something crack open those Bibles I want to encourage you to get into the Word of God for yourself we covered this story very briefly in the daily devotional at the end of this past week that kind of got your mind thinking about this but today I want to just dive into further depth here so Luke 7 starting in verse 36 when one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him he went to the Pharisees house and reclined at the table.

Okay stop who are the Pharisees they're often portrayed as kind of villains these days you Pharisee but actually in those days they were the holiest of holy people they tried to keep all the commands of the Bible faithfully and actually there's nothing wrong with that right one of the ways they went off track however was they thought that if they even associated with unholy people then they personally would be compromised in a word the Pharisees were concerned about contamination kind of getting sin germs from other people.

And if you're the type of person who ever worries about like getting germs and and worries about that sort of thing in your life you will be able to relate to the Pharisees just translate it from the physical realm to the spiritual realm by the way did you know what the most germy substance in your house is it's not your toilet seat it's not door handles any guesses it's not soap somebody shouted it out it's kitchen towels check this out 89% of kitchen towels the kind you use to clean your counters that they tested in a recent study contained coliform bacteria which is the really really bad stuff 89% that means probably yours are infested with these germs and you use them to clean the surfaces in your house.

Now some of you right now are going no big deal I got a good immune system but some of you right now you want to jump up and run home and incinerate those towels right use bleach on all your surfaces well you can relate to how the Pharisees felt if that's how you're grossed out right now that feeling is what the Pharisees felt when they looked at unholy people because they thought if you just kind of touched unholy people fellowship with them associated with them then you by association became impure.

So this Pharisee invites Jesus over and he doesn't know yet whether you know he's pure or impure heretic or Orthodox he wants to size him up if this is this guy a prophet or not now in those days if you invited somebody to dinner here what is what was polite to do one you provided some water for your guests so they could wash their feet I mean think about it in those days people wore open sandals they walked through dust and mud and manure their feet got really dirty and really stinky and so when you went over to somebody's house you either washed your own feet with water that was provided for you by your host or if it was a special dinner like this one your host would do it for you or have his servants do it for you.

Second a good host always greeted you with a kiss and we don't do this in America but in Europe they still do this and in the Middle East they still do this and every single time I go back to Switzerland to visit my family my relatives who live there I always forget to remember now in France they kiss one direction and in Switzerland they kiss the other direction and which is which and every time I bonk somebody on the forehead because I got it wrong every time and then third excuse me they would pour a little fragrant olive oil on your head because in those days they used oil instead of soap to wash up and that would take some more of the nasty smell away right but this Pharisee doesn't do any of that no water no oil no kiss of greeting nothing it's just a Jesus sit down over there right why contamination he doesn't know yet if Jesus checks out so it's like keep your distance you can sit down there.

Now it says they reclined at the table I really want to help you picture this story and this is important because we hear the word recline we think of a lazy boy right your feet are below you but here's what it looked like in those days low table mats and their feet would be stretched out away from the table and this is important when you picture what happens next in this story verse 37 a woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

What's going on here in those days if somebody hosted a prominent teacher and Jesus certainly qualified kind of a celebrity already these were public events kind of like you know the Panetta lecture series a Monterey or something people would want to hear what this guest would have to say and they'd line up against the wall and eavesdrop on the conversation no cable no internet this is what passed as entertainment back in those days and so a woman enters and not just any woman says she was a woman of the town and the phrase used there many commentators that I read say was a Greek term that might have meant she was a prostitute it was a term like our English a woman of the streets or a working girl right and Luke specifies she had lived a sinful life not just made a mistake once or twice her whole life is characterized as a sinful life and everybody in the room knew it as we will see.

And it says she brought an alabaster jar of perfume now this wasn't like some big jar she was lugging around you know what what was she doing with that it would have looked more like this about this size alabaster is something like marble that they mined in Egypt and these would have been very expensive and you need to know alabaster jars were often completely sealed and at the top there was a tiny little opening so that the fragrance inside could get out but the actual perfume would stay inside the jar if the owner decided to use the perfume the top had to be broken off the neck had to be snapped so that the perfume could get out.

Now these were tied around a woman's neck you can see the little hole where the string went through it right and she would wear this around her neck if she had the money to do it they were very expensive there's one ancient first century source that says that they they cost with the perfume it cost about 400 gold coins to buy one of these things so why would women even do this well again this was ancient times before air conditioning before deodorant and needless to say the body smells were incredible so women who could afford it had these around their necks because a kind of an aroma of beauty would surround them and if this woman was a prostitute well this would have been like a tool of her trade this would have been something absolutely essential for her profession to make her attractive to potential clients.

Now watch what happens as she stood behind him at his feet remember these are feet stretched out on the floor she began to wet his feet with her tears and then she wiped them with her hair and kissed them and poured perfume on them there's a lot of information here let's take it just phrase by phrase she'd apparently heard about Jesus in Luke 5 it says the Pharisees were very frustrated with Jesus because he had sinners around him sinners around him all the time why were they attracted to Jesus because he was speaking of God's grace and she'd heard of his teaching or heard his teaching and now there she was in the same room with him and she's overwhelmed it says she's weeping because she sees they never even gave him water for his feet or fragrant oil either and so she wets his feet with her tears and the word the author Luke uses here for wet is the same word in Greek for rain she's drenching his feet with her tears like rain she's so emotional and she the reason I think this was spontaneous she didn't plan this is because she didn't even have a towel with her and now his feet are wet and instead it says she wipes them with her hair and this was a very shocking thing for a woman to do in public.

In fact one first century rabbi taught that a woman letting her hair down on the side of any man other than her husband was grounds for divorce but she doesn't care what these these religious people in this room think she just loves Jesus so much that she kisses his feet now what's that about kissing feet again we don't really have anything like this in American culture but in many cultures around the world kissing somebody's feet is a sign of extreme reverence and gratitude.

You might know we often take medical and dental teams with us when we go to little flock children's home in India near Chennai where as part of our 2020 vision we actually built a dental and a medical clinic and a school as part of our 2020 vision initiative but we not only take care of the kids and the staff there we also open up these clinics to the surrounding villages so just picture the building you built that opened last year and and villagers from their surrounding villages are flowing in to find medical and dental help.

Well to say thank you the villagers often put their hands together like this and the more appreciative they are the higher their hands go and if your hands are like this above your head that is the second to highest compliment you can give somebody the second most intense way you can say thank you the most intense well the first time a woman bent down in gratitude and touched and stroked the feet of our dentist our dentist was just shocked like what is happening here you know what's she doing well in India that is the sign of the absolute deepest gratitude and it was the same exact thing in Jesus's culture.

But she's not just touching his feet it says she poured out her perfume now remember what I told you what's the only way she could have poured out her perfume she broke the jar she snapped the neck of it she broke the flask now she had probably put all the money she had into that thing and if she was a prostitute the most important thing a prostitute would have had in the world would have been her desirability but here she is pouring out her primary investment at Jesus's feet and I want you to see how this is not just gratitude this is repentance because she's saying this is no longer going to run my life now you are my Lord now I just want to follow you and and her giving is extravagant to Jesus because his love has been extravagant to her and she's overwhelmed with gratitude.

And at this point Simon makes an abrupt decision about Jesus he's not overwhelmed by this scene at all verse 39 when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself if this man were a prophet he would know who is touching him giving him germs what kind of a woman she is that she's a sinner so we can't be a prophet because he's letting himself get contaminated you see the thinking there now it says he said to himself he didn't say this out loud so how in the world would anybody know what Simon's thinking well of course it's kind of a literary joke because everybody knew what Simon was thinking because his face told the whole story sometimes you don't have to say a word right your face says it all kind of like another Simon you might remember I'm thinking Simon the Pharisee probably looked something like this what is happening over there right but in Simon the Pharisee's mind Jesus is getting contaminated by this woman a must a prophet would not allow that so surely he must not be a prophet.

And Jesus knows what he's thinking so verse 40 Jesus answered him Simon I have something to tell you okay tell me teacher Simon says and Jesus tells him a story two people owed money to a certain money lender one owed him 500 denarii that's about a year and a half's worth of wages a year and a half worth of your salary and another owed him about 50 that's a lot too that's two months worth of wages so both these figures are astronomical neither of them had the money to pay him back so he forgave the debts of both interesting the Greek word therefore forgave the root of the word is karass which is the Greek word for grace so he graced them both now which of them will love him more and Simon replied well I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven whatever you have judged correctly Jesus said.

I almost wonder if there's a little irony here you're so good at judging you're really proud of your ability to judge you have judged correctly and then in verse 44 it all starts to make sense notice what Jesus does then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon are you catching that he turns he's looking at the woman but he's still speaking to Simon do you see this woman now what kind of a question was that she'd been making a spectacle everybody in the room was looking at the woman but that wasn't the question are you looking at her the question is do you see her because Simon didn't see her he only saw a category a dirty dish towel she was a sinner and this is exact listen this is exactly what can happen to religious people like me and maybe like you very subtly we can start to just see people in categories drug addict philanderer heretic sexually promiscuous crazy homeless person and what happens when I see people in categories is I don't see anybody made in the image and likeness of God anymore I don't see anybody who needs to be touched by the love and the grace of God I don't see anybody whose life could be radically transformed.

And then Jesus praises her Simon I came into your house you didn't give me any water from my feet but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair you didn't give me a kiss but this woman from the time I entered hasn't stopped kissing my feet you didn't put oil on my head but she has poured perfume on my feet and then he makes the startling pronouncement therefore I tell you her many sins and notice he doesn't excuse her sin he's like saying Simon hey I'm not gonna argue you that point her many sins but watch this have been forgiven as her great love has shown but whoever has been forgiven little loves little and really what he's saying is whoever thinks God didn't have much to forgive when he forgave me probably didn't have to die on the cross maybe just like one nail in one palm for me you know cuz I'm pretty good whoever thinks like that loves God little doesn't get joy out of their faith and to be honest with you I see it in myself and to be very frank I see it in us all the time.

I've been here almost 24 years now and here's what I see when I'm introducing communion or leading in communion which we're going to have in a few minutes today I see those of us who are second and third generation Christians who've been coming to the church for decades kind of like going Oh communion kind of like sneaking a glance at the watch like how is this service going overtime and then sitting right next to them there's somebody who had been living a life just hell-bent and lost and empty and maybe they just got baptized a few weeks ago and there's literally just tears just pouring down their face and they're just trying not to sob as they're holding this they're thinking of Jesus and what meaning he's given to their lives and what love you got Simon and you got the woman sitting right next to each other and he looks into her eyes and then Jesus said to her your sins are forgiven.

And then the religious people of course start debating because that's another thing religious people do you know they didn't rejoice over the fact that the most notorious women we have ever known is going to go now live a new life let's debate about how we don't like the way it happened who is he who is this who even forgives sins it's interesting back in Luke 5 the same group the Pharisees had the same complaint about Jesus he goes around forgiving sins and they say who does he think he is God only God can forgive sins and of course the answer is well Jesus is God and Jesus said to the woman your faith has saved you go in peace your faith has saved you not your works your faith in the Greek that's in the perfect tense and some of you're going that just changed my life let me explain that to you in the perfect tense that means something that happened in the past that's going to have continuing action in the future he's saying it's a done deal it's not if you keep it up it'll save you or if you're really super good it's gonna save you no it's done you're saved my faith not works.

Now think about it her faith obviously didn't rise to you know theology PhD levels she didn't know much she didn't know all the answers to all the religious questions she didn't even know all the questions but remember in our small faith great God series we looked at the man who told Jesus I believe help my unbelief I want to believe but I'm filled with doubt I don't have all the answers it's not the strength of your faith it's the object of your faith that matters and I want to make this clear what saved this woman wasn't her emotion it was her direction this is important because in our culture when people think of faith they almost immediately think of emotion like it doesn't matter what you believe what matters is if you believe it with all your heart like faith is an emotion that you can experience like joy or confidence or people think of faith as all doctrine like I've got to know all the theological answers to all my theological questions in order to have saving faith know what matters is the direction of your faith is it directed to the right object to the right person who can affect the change that you're hoping to make.

Her faith her faith is in whom who's her faith in it's in Jesus she's drawn to Jesus and then she's consumed by Jesus and then she worships Jesus and she hears from Jesus I forgive you that's it and that's the way it still works today it's not the perfection of your faith it's the direction of your faith that matters you don't have to have all the answers you don't have to be perfect you just have to love Jesus turn to him and away from your sin and your selfishness.

Don't you love this woman I am so glad her story is in the Bible I love it but let's bring this in for a landing before communion with three characters in this story to learn from jot this down number one I need to see Simon as a trap to avoid you know to some degree the Pharisees actually were on the right path and then they made a wrong turn because the Pharisees decided there's two kinds of people there's unholy people and there's holy people and God wants us to be holy actually so far so good but Simon and the rest of the Pharisees decided I am in the category of holy because of my good deeds and this woman is in the category of unholy because of her bad deeds.

The truth is there are two categories of people holy and unholy in the holy category is Jesus and in the unholy category is everybody else and if you don't see that then you just don't don't have any joy when you understand that Jesus Christ saves you and makes you holy because none of us can repay our debt we're all in need of God's forgiveness.

Jesus parable is interesting because both the 50 denarii debtor and the 500 denarii debtor both had debts they couldn't pay like it doesn't matter if you drown in 50 feet of water or 500 feet of water you're still dead you're still underwater they both were underwater it's just that she knew it and Simon the Pharisee didn't and so he missed out on the joy of God's grace and he was keeping people from God that God wanted to reach and so if you tend towards Simon faith and who doesn't if they've been a veteran religious person for a while repent of that and then the second point the second character I need to see the woman actually as an example to follow.

The woman is an example to follow some of you right now relate to her instantly she wasn't an expert on religion she had a lot of issues but she had the courage to walk into a religious meeting full of religious people because she's drawn to Jesus and maybe that explains you right now today you kind of feel out of place here surrounded by all these religious people who seem to know a lot more answers than you but you sure are drawn to Jesus to the point where you don't even care what anybody else thinks you're just here to love Jesus.

Again I want you to feel the story emotionally so I want you to hear from a woman very much like the woman in Luke's story Annie Lobert was a prostitute in Las Vegas and she sank deeper and deeper into despair until one night she overdosed on cocaine and as she had a heart attack and believed she was dying she cried out to Jesus even though she had not been religious before just said Jesus if you're there help me and I want you to listen to her describe on video what happened next.

That's what I said Jesus please save me I don't know if you feel but I don't want to die the ambulance came and the doctor came up to me he grabbed my hand and he said you are lucky to be alive you have so much drugs in your system little lady you should be dead God must be with you and I knew that Jesus heard my prayer and I laid there and I had this peace come over me that was nothing I could ever felt in my entire life and I knew God gave me a second chance it got better and I started reading my Bible I recovered and was afraid to go to church come on an ex-prostitute do I think if I walk in church people are gonna look at me and really love me but I fucked in their church and people embraced me and God just really started doing that inner healing and the Holy Spirit was just like speaking to me telling me that I was beautiful and that I was chosen and that I was set apart that was a sanctified and I was a holy vessel for him I started to stand on Jesus's words that I'm home that I'm healed that I'm here that I'm a virgin in him and that gives me peace.

I remember I was back in my house one day and the Lord said to me he said yeah I want you to go back down to that strip I don't want you to tell the girls that are in slavery and so that's what I'm called to do to simply tell them God loves you no matter where you've been no matter what you've done no matter how deep how dirty you feel that there's redemption you are white as snow when you accept him into your heart little girl lost thought no one loved her thought no one wanted her ran away from her castle but God met her on that dark road you can come home now right here redemption set free that's my life isn't that powerful.

Women like Annie have been drawn to Jesus Christ for 2,000 years and the thing is that's you that's me we are that woman because all of us have debts that we can't pay now I want you to notice something do you see how for both Annie and that woman in the story her generosity is rooted in gratitude for God's grace she looks at God and generosity just overflows out of a sense of gratitude and this is why we're focusing on cultivating gratitude for the Lord and his grace this week in the richer life book in fact I put some verses in the back of the notes just kind of to help you get started some ways that God has been extravagantly generous to you meditate on these this week every breath I breathe is from God my salvation is from God you know I can honor him for all these things with my worship with my gratitude and that's really the third point I need to see Jesus as the beautiful Savior that I love.

You see the reason this woman in the story is responding so passionately is because she's never been loved like this she's touched a lot of men but never like this she's had a lot of men speak to her but never like this and because she's loved so differently she is passionate in her response someone said Simon's faith was a matter of obligation but her faith was a matter of attraction do you see that someone said there's there there was an aesthetic core kind of kind of an artistic core to her faith she saw the stunning beauty of Jesus and him pouring out his life for her somehow she saw that and she was just drawn to that Simon doesn't have that Simon's faith is just a list of rules now of course there's a place for rules but as Tim Keller said the core of our faith is beauty the compelling beauty of what Jesus did for us and if you don't see that you will only have Simon faith and it'll be ethical and it'll be upstanding and it'll be righteous but no passion no joy.

And so in this story Jesus is calling us to move from Simon faith to the faith of this woman she sees the beauty of Jesus Christ and so she pours out her perfume to him and so the application question to ask is how can I do that how can I pour out perfume on Jesus's feet in gratitude and worship well do you remember what Jesus said truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me and that's why I really want to encourage you to do one of the generosity projects that we've got going on this month take this orange sheet with you don't throw it away choose one of these at least and say that's the one I'm gonna do.

If you don't feel comfortable doing a building project how about project pajamas this month our goal is to raise a sum total of 10,000 pajamas for these kids in these life-altering transitions in their life you can just bring them into church during the month of October lots of projects pick one give of your time not out of obligation that's Simon faith but because when you do one of these that's pouring out perfume at the feet of Jesus do you see that it's breaking your alabaster jar it's it's it's beautiful.

Now we're gonna move into time of communion as we close but let me just ask you do you sense the love in the eyes of Jesus as he looks at you and even though you have a debt you cannot pay he says your faith has saved you go in peace and that is going to elicit gratitude and generosity as overflow from you because here's the bottom line when I see how Jesus poured out his life for me I will want to pour out my life for him because that is the source of gratitude beyond any changing circumstance.

Let's pray father we thank you for the grace shown to us in Jesus Christ and God in this room right now maybe even in each heart we've got Simons and we've got people like this woman some feel like that woman broken yet grateful and it's your kindness that leads us to repentance right now but some of us need to repent of being Simon and putting ourself in a category different than everybody else God may we see ourselves our dire need of you so that we rejoice in your extravagant grace and kind of break that alabaster jar and worship help us to see your extravagant love for us right now as we take communion in Jesus name amen.