Alabaster Jar: Radical Forgiveness and Humble Worship

And you need to understand here today for you to really experience the fullness of God, it requires brokenness. And there's a moment in your life that I hope and pray you don't have, but you do have is that there's a moment where something happens in your life, something that breaks you so much you don't feel like you can breathe or survive or take another step doing the way you've been doing life. And it's not until that moment where you understand the depth and the severity of the need that you have for God. [00:42:12] (40 seconds)  #BrokenToBeWhole

And I'll tell you, there's a lot of organizations that are doing that now with the scriptures. Is they're changing the bible because it doesn't fit our narrative of morality. And you need to know that's not a church, that's an organization. You see, the church of Jesus Christ defined by the bible has always been a high call of holiness, but also high grace that gets us up to that holiness. [00:46:16] (30 seconds)  #HolinessAndGrace

She was willing to come into a group of holy people. Everybody knew how she made her money. Everybody knew what she did, but she didn't care. She was willing to humble herself before Jesus and then lay everything down at the feet of Jesus. You see, there's only one requirement to follow Jesus and to become a follower of Christ here this morning, and that is full humility humility, where you give everything up. [00:43:23] (30 seconds)  #HumbleToFollow

Which here's what Jesus did do. What Jesus did do and what he did say is I love you and I forgive you. See, there's a difference where you don't lower the holiness now, but rather the grace of God brings us up. And so this important idea that Jesus loves us and for he forgives us, it allows us and requires us to be fully in humility at the feet of Jesus. [00:46:57] (34 seconds)  #GraceLiftsUs

And what Jesus is pointing out, he's pointing out the hypocrisy of a religious person. He says, you didn't anoint you didn't wash my feet. You didn't give me a kiss. This woman is washing my feet with her tears. She's pouring out her net worth on my feet and anointing me. And I think this is a really, really important moment where she is displaying sheer and utter brokenness. [00:41:43] (28 seconds)  #BrokenAndAnointed

You say it's no longer about me or what I have or who I know or what I do, but it's now who I follow and who I submit to. And so I gotta ask you the question. Have you ever had that moment in your life where you're so desperate nothing else matters? Because it's in those moments you experience the fullness of God. And this is when when Jesus becomes real for us in the twenty first century in our situations. [00:43:54] (35 seconds)  #DesperateForGod

And it's in this moment where he knows it, she knows it, and he says, oh, your sins are many, but it's forgiven. And I I I really want us to make sure we we see this connection. Here's what Jesus didn't do. Jesus didn't say, you're okay just the way you are. If Jesus would have said that, what what Jesus would have done is he would have lowered God's call for holiness down to where we can live and then meet that call of holiness. [00:45:37] (39 seconds)  #ForgivenCalledHigher

And it's in that moment you lay down everything. Nothing else matters. Your money doesn't matter. Your political views don't matter. Your your idea of family doesn't matter. Nothing in this world matters except in that moment to say, I need God. Now everybody's definition of a brokenness moment is different because we all have different backgrounds and we all have different ideas and and experiences. But this woman leads the way. [00:42:52] (31 seconds)  #GiveItAllForGod

You know, I hear all the time from people that are coming to our church for the first time or who say, I can never come to church because I'll light on fire if I come to church. Which is funny because I'm like, there's probably a lot worse people that have come into this church that did not light on fire. You know? And it's important that we understand. Here's why we can't judge others or we can't really even judge ourselves, is that Romans three twenty three says this. For we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. [00:37:37] (30 seconds)  #NoRoomForJudgment

So I'd say we can't be too quick to judge. Here's this moment here where this guy is he's not even outwardly saying it. He's thinking it. He's being judgmental about this person. And there's a lot going on in this moment. There's there's this cultural idea that these people are so holy and this woman is so unholy. She's almost like spiritually and culturally contagious. [00:34:29] (25 seconds)  #StopLabelingSin

And following Jesus means responding to his conviction in our lives. And what we need to do is receive the grace and the gift that God has given us. And and I think there's some people here, maybe you need to confess something, get that off your your chest. Maybe it's a a point of humility that you've not yet let go of. But rather, I think there's some people also that need to hear your sins are forgiven. [00:47:31] (31 seconds)  #GraceAndRepentance

But here's the other side of things that I think is important. You know, the reason is a lot of the times when we walk into church, I think we judge ourselves. And and in theory, you might have even heard this theory in the concept of Jesus dying on the cross. He's died for your sins. We know that sometimes. We've heard that, the bible stories when when we're kids. But we walk into church and we think God won't forgive me. Or we think somebody won't accept me if they really knew. [00:37:01] (36 seconds)  #StopSelfCondemnation

See, there's this important step that humility precedes forgiveness in this faith of Jesus and Christianity. Humility is is so important. You gotta understand this this whole idea. So this lady had an alabaster jar full of perfume. The reason why I have this beautiful chain is is not because it's a piece of jewelry, but really it was a representative of what this lady had. Because in the Jewish culture, the Jewish women would have an a jar of perfume attached to a necklace that they wore around all the time. [00:39:31] (36 seconds)  #HumilityPrecedesForgiveness

And so just in the same way, it's not good for us to compare ourselves with other people in terms of, let's say, the good things. Oh, man. They're better than me in this or they own this or like, comparison's not good that way. Comparison's also not good with sin because we'll stack certain sins on top of each other, calling them worse than the other. When Romans twenty three twenty three says, the reason why we don't have to judge each other is because it says, for we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. See, God's standard has always been up here of holiness. [00:38:16] (31 seconds)  #SinIsSin

You know, it's important to understand our sins are forgiven when we become broken before Christ. And it's important to know, let's not get this twisted. The scripture is very clear. This lady's life was a mess. She did not have her stuff together. She was an immoral woman. What that means is she was a prostitute. She was living in sexual sin. Sexual sin, and the bible's really clear, defines that anything between a outside of marriage, sex between a man and a woman outside of marriage is considered sexual sin. [00:44:56] (42 seconds)  #ForgivenNotDefinedByPast

Now, this is such an important part of a spiritual journey and you need to know this. Maybe you can help articulate this if you're a person who follows Jesus, is that you gotta tell people the church is meant to be where you wrestle with these ideas of faith and purpose. Too much of the time, we think that you have to be outside of the church doing that, but the church was created to do that inside. Like, you can have opinions inside. That's a part of wrestling with this book, which is the word of God. [00:33:05] (33 seconds)  #ChurchIsForQuestions

And I wanna invite you to worship not because the band leads us, not because you like the song, but actually our only response to God if we've received this grace is to worship. That's it. And so I wanna invite you in this next few minutes, have a connection with your creator, Jesus Christ, and thank him for what he's done. [00:50:01] (21 seconds)  #WorshipFromGrace

So one of the things that I think Jesus begins to model, one thing that's huge for us at Compass City is we're kind of a come as you are church. We talk about this all the time. But there's a lot of places in life that are not come as you are facilities and operations. They'll you'll go to some restaurants, and it's a suit jacket only restaurant. You ever been to one of those? I I have not. I'm just not that type of guy. But did you know Augusta National Golf Club where the Masters is held every year is a by invitation club? [00:28:00] (37 seconds)  #NotByInvitationOnly

And then what she did is she was crying, and what she was doing is she was washing the feet of Jesus. And then she anointed Jesus' feet with her perfume. She essentially laid down a 150,000 at the feet of Jesus. This was $7.99 on Amazon. Not $799, $7.99 on Amazon. You see, the Jewish custom was that when somebody came into your house, you would wash their feet, and then you would kiss them on the cheek and anoint them with oil. [00:41:08] (35 seconds)  #WashedAndAnointed

And what would happen is they would carry this perfume around for multiple reasons. First, in the Jewish culture and like in most cultures back then, freshwater baths were pretty rare, so people stunk. And so they would put perfume on on a regular basis. Another reason is that you could use that oil as a sign of hospitality. When somebody come in, you would anoint somebody with oil when they came into the into the room or in your house. [00:40:08] (25 seconds)  #HospitalityAndHonour