What if a stranger interrupted your dinner party? How would you feel and respond? Jesus reveals to us that he's a world changer with his reaction. Listen to part three of our series "The Real Jesus."

Click here to donate to the program

Click here for more sermons

OC Church of Christ

well, good morning everybody.

How we doing?

Good morning.

I'm actually gonna use this table because it's one of the few tables that, uh,

is tall enough for me, so that helps.

Well, it's great to be with you all this morning.

For those who don't know who I am, my name is Kyle Lsk, like I

mentioned earlier, and I help lead the campus ministry, make some noise.

Campus ministry.

Come on.

All right.

That was okay.

That was all right.

. I'm, uh, I'm gonna judge you guys on that one.

Let's try it one more time.

How about that?

All right.

Can we, can we get loud for them?

Let's wake the church up a little bit.

All right.

Make some noise.

Campus ministry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

There you go.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, you know, it's, uh, great to be with you all.

I'm very encouraged and excited to be able to preach the word today.

Um, you know, like Marcel mentioned, we are going through our series here called

The Real Jesus, and we've been talking about how Orange County doesn't need just

another church and needs the real Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

And so, as we've been studying out the Book of Luke together, it's been so

impactful and so convicting personally to me, Um, to see the interactions Jesus

has been having with certain individuals.

Right.

And obviously last week, uh, Marcel preached a, a fire lesson about

how Jesus was not religious, but he was righteous and it was very

convicting to see how Jesus may call.

Uh, he does things that are countercultural, right.

He calls the outcasts to follow him.

Right.

The fishermen, he touches the unclean leper and he makes 'em clean.

Yeah.

And he calls Matthew the tax collector, who in that society was not looked well

upon to follow him and be his disciple.

And so today we're gonna look at another, uh, interaction that Jesus has with

someone that hopefully, uh, will be convicting to you and inspiring to you.

Amen.

Amen.

With that, I'm gonna go ahead and say we're a prayer, that we're

gonna jump right into the passage.

Let's bow our heads.

Lord, thank you so much for this morning and this time to worship.

You we're so grateful to be able to experience to see.

To, to be able to, uh, live with and walk with the real Jesus God.

We're so grateful that you sent your son Jesus down to this earth to give us an

opportunity of salvation, an opportunity to live our lives as new creations.

And we're so grateful that Jesus saved us from so much God.

And so I pray today that as we dig into your word, remove me from this

stage that it's you speaking today, God, that it's not me or my thoughts,

but it's you and your spirit.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you and pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter seven, verse 36, and the

title today of my lesson here.

This thing works.

There you go.

The real Jesus is a world changer.

Okay.

All right.

The world changer, Luke 7 36 there reads, and we're gonna read just verse 36.

To start says, when one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him.

He went to the Pharisees house and reclined at the table.

So we're gonna stop for a moment.

I want to paint the picture of what's going on here.

Can I do that?

Yeah.

I think it's important for us to understand what's really happening

in this culture and this time in this context of the story.

Because for us reading it in 2023 with the westernized view of

society, we may not fully understand what's really happening here.

Okay?

So what's happening here is that it says that Jesus was

invited to have dinner With who?

Pharisees.

Pharisees, right.

Last week Marcel mentioned a little bit about who the Pharisees

were, and these were sort of the religious teachers of the law, right?

They were sort of the, the highest of the highest religious

respected officials in that time.

And as we see the scripture, as we've been studying out, for those who have

been studying it with us, we're seeing, okay, Jesus keeps to an extent opposing

Pharisees a little bit here, right?

Some of the things he says are sometimes like little digs at at the

Pharisees, and so it's interesting.

At least in my opinion, to see that the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner.

All right.

And then it goes on to say that he reclined at the table.

Right?

So Jesus was ready to have a great meal.

But what I wanna make mention of, and I appreciate Eric Enes mentioning this to

me, cuz he actually lived in the Middle East for some time, is that they didn't

have the classic kitchen table like we do.

Yeah.

They were sitting on the ground, right.

That, that's, that's a common way of eating dinner in the

Middle East or eating a meal.

As you sit, as you can see in this picture, sort of on the ground,

there's a, a spread laid out.

You got some cushions on the ground.

This was customary.

And so he's almost, instead of reclining like we think in like a lazyboy

recliner, no, he's actually sort of laying down on his side, eating this

meal, talking with the Pharisees.

And so I think that's another important piece to, to recognize it.

It shows that he felt a comfortability, a normalcy.

Right that he was in this space of, man, I'm just gonna enjoy this

meal and have this conversation.

I'm gonna have this interaction with the Pharisees.

You know, some scholars say that meals like this, when there were the Pharisees

were together, that they would actually leave the door open to the dinner.

And the reason for that was so that uninvited guests could enter

and sit around by the walls to be able to witness and listen to the

conversations that were being had.

Cuz they may have been very insightful conversations.

So this is a very unique setting, right?

Typically we wouldn't say, you know, Hey, come over for dinner,

I'm gonna leave the door open for whoever wants to just roll in there.

Right?

Yeah.

It's a little different.

So I think that's important to also understand.

So we see here that the scenery has been set.

Jesus is enjoying a nice meal.

He's reclining at the table and he's teaching and talking

with the Pharisees here.

Amen.

Amen.

So hopefully that helps give you a little picture here.

Let's continue reading in the story.

Verse 37 there reads a woman in that town.

Who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisees house.

So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to

wet his feet with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.

So during this time, it was customary if you invited guests over into your home, it

was a customary thing to wash their feet.

And so interesting enough, we see here that for some reason, this

tradition, this honor, was not completed for Jesus by the Pharisees.

There was something that was missed.

You know how he's laying down there?

He's, he's eating, he's kind of having this conversation.

His feet are filthy cuz the roads are dirty.

They didn't have paved robes like we do today.

And so it's almost as if this woman.

Has very easy access to the feet cuz he is laying down in a position where his feet

are away from the table and he's sort of eating there, talking with the Pharisees.

You know, some, some may say that this woman was attempting

to get as close as she could to Jesus without being too close.

That the feet aren't necessarily the most intimate thing on someone's body, right?

The feet are, are a dirty thing, especially in this time

with the dirt all over them.

Yet she gets close and wants to, to wash his feet for him.

And then it goes on to des.

Describe how she did that, that she used her hair, right?

That the, that her hair was being used as sort of a towel to clean his feet.

You know, in this time hair was considered almost seductive.

They covered their hair in the Middle East, they don't show their hair.

So for a woman to come in there, And use her hair to wash his feet.

It was saying something.

And so we see there's a clear tension in the room at this moment.

All the attention now has been focused on this interaction

between Jesus and this woman.

Yeah.

And an intimacy is being had with Jesus and the woman that is being welcomed.

Great.

You know, this isn't an inappropriate intimacy or an unholy moment.

This is actually an act of worship from this woman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And some may interpret this, I'm sure the Pharisees interpreted

this in a completely different way.

They're like, what is this woman doing?

Which we'll get to in a little bit, but I believe it's really important

for us to take a moment to acknowledge the bravery that this woman has to

step out on faith and interrupt Jesus.

Think of the bravery required to interrupt Jesus in the middle of a meal

with all the, the highest officials.

Think about that.

Yet.

Jesus honors it and he welcomes this woman's interruption.

And so one point I wanna make this morning, oh, there's a picture

of kind of what's going on.

One point I wanna make this morning is that world changers welcome interruption.

Okay?

The real Jesus welcomes interruption.

He welcomes this woman into this moment.

And so let's be honest for ourselves.

No one really likes to be interrupted during dinner.

No, you right, you.

You don't want solicitors going knocking on your door in the

middle of dinner trying to sell you something or tell you about something.

Or telemarketer phone calls can be an irritation.

You know iPhones, now they say spam risk, right?

When it's coming in there, you're like, man, I don't want to be interrupted.

When we sit down and eat, we want to enjoy our food and our time with our family.

You guys with me?

Yeah, sir.

Can we be real about that?

It's important for us sometimes.

And so on a, you know, this may be true on a normal evening, but

especially at a dinner party, right?

So can you imagine an uninvited guest coming into your dinner party?

Right.

The Pharisees are throwing this big dinner for Jesus.

They're, they're, they're having this conversation and this woman who it

describes in the text as a sinner comes in there probably pretty emotional,

maybe a little inappropriate or obnoxious, and it probably irritated

some of those Pharisees a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

. But we see that there was a theological moment that was being

had between Jesus and the Pharisees.

Yet he welcomes such a unique interruption and he ends up using

that to teach on something else.

Mm-hmm.

, he uses that moment to teach on something else, and he welcomes

the interruption in his life.

So I want to ask you this morning, do you welcome interruption into your life?

Okay.

It's a unique thing to think about.

Right.

We, our view of interruption is bad, right?

We tell the kids, Hey, don't interrupt.

You need to, you need to wait.

Right?

But what I'm talking about is the interruption of man, what is the

spirit leading me to think and do?

And what is he interceding for me in my life?

You know, uh, someone brought this up to me.

Uh, Eric brought this up to me.

The Good Samaritan experiment.

Who has heard of the Good Samaritan experiment?

Okay.

Few of us, right?

It's an amazing experiment.

It's really convicting and we see that seminary.

So what it is, is seminary students had to go prepare a talk

about the Good Samaritan, right?

So they're in, in training, they're being taught, and they have to go

prepare this, this, uh, they're gonna teach on the Good Samaritan, right?

So upon arriving to the classroom when they're ready to do their

talk, they were told that the class location had been moved elsewhere and

only had a few minutes to get there.

So you gotta go across campus to the other classroom to be

able to do your co your talk.

And on the route to the classroom, there was someone that had been

placed in their path that was in need, someone who needed help.

And the experiment was designed to see what percentage of the seminary

students would stop to help the person in need, despite being rushed to the

classroom to teach on the Good Samaritan.

The stats were pretty sad overall.

Only 40% of the students offered some sort of help to the

victim in low hurry situation.

So what they did was they changed the, the time, uh, hey, you got, you know, 20

minutes to get there, says 63% helped.

They stopped, they saw him and they helped in medium hurry.

So maybe like five, 10 minutes, 45% of the people stopped.

But in people who were late, high hurry, only 10% stopped

to help the person in need.

So what does that say?

It says a person in hurry is less likely to help people even if

they are going to speak on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

So there's something in how we think.

There's something about who we are in our DNI DNA as people.

There's something that we lack here that Jesus emulates perfectly, that

we should imitate exactly like him.

You know, however, we see that Jesus takes the moment to be interrupted.

And so I think it's important for us to ask, how would you respond if you

were at the dinner, if you were in this moment, if you were with Jesus seeing

him interact with this woman, what?

What would be your response?

I know for me, brothers and sisters, it would be, . I know naturally I would

probably be feeling a lot of things.

I'd be like, why is she doing this?

What's I would be questioning, I'd be uncomfortable.

I'd feel frustrated.

I was like, we're just trying to have a conversation with Jesus

and you have to do this right now.

What's your problem?

Mm-hmm.

, my prideful nature would be to kick this woman out.

Get outta here.

What are you doing?

Yeah.

And selfishly enjoy my meal and my guests.

I don't know what your response would be, but how many of us miss moments

like this because of our selfishness and pride in our daily lives?

How often do we miss these moments?

How many of us miss the opportunities that God is giving us to imitate

him and welcome interruption?

You know, what would it look like if we welcomed interruption into our lives?

What would it look like?

Let's talk about it.

What would it look like if you welcomed interruption?

Maybe some of the conversations that you'd have at the grocery

store would be much more fruitful.

There you go.

Maybe you'd be willing to listen and take a moment to hear what the, what

the clerk has going on in their lives.

Maybe the, the person who's homeless on the street, who's in desperate need.

Maybe there's something that can connect there.

Maybe you're able to help and meet that need.

You know, maybe some of our coworkers are crying out for help,

yet we're too busy and we never make the time to connect with them.

You know, maybe some, some of us, it's, man, we don't associate with

certain types of people because they make us uncomfortable.

Okay?

Maybe it's the gay person who's looking to learn about Jesus, but

never gets an opportunity cuz we feel uncomfortable talking to them.

Come on.

Maybe it's the person who has completely different political views than you, who is

searching for a purpose beyond themselves.

Okay.

Come on.

But you're too closed off.

Because you're not welcoming interruption, you know, unfortunately, we can

sometimes miss these opportunities because we're too focused on our own

needs or we're too busy that we're not willing to welcome people into our

lives who may make us uncomfortable.

Jesus does this in this moment.

It's beautiful.

You know, and I wanna share a brief story here of a week of, of a moment

that I missed the interruption Jesus was trying to place in front of me.

The campus probably has heard this story, but when I was a freshman in high

school, I had just become a disciple.

And, um, it was my Spanish class, my first Spanish class.

I go in there second period, I'm sitting in there, everyone's talking.

And there was this really nice guy who was saying hi to me.

I was like, wow, this guy's really nice.

We started becoming, you know, acquaintances, but in the high

school world, he was considered maybe more on the nerdy side.

Right.

Maybe more of the quiet, not very cool.

And so in my insecure and and selfish nature, I was like, ah, I don't really

want to like get too close to this guy.

And so I had just become a Christian and I ended up never even talking

to him about Jesus and what Jesus had done for me in my life.

And I missed an opportunity with him.

Well, fast forward four years later, it's my freshman year of college.

I go to a college devotional, campus ministry devotional, and

Luke who walks right in the door.

It's that guy.

And he walks in there and he was going to a completely different school than I was.

Completely different school.

And someone else in our ministry had invited him out to church.

He ends up coming out, he starts studying the bible, joins

our ministry, gets baptized.

He's still faithful to this day.

Amen.

He's actually trying to go into the full-time ministry to become a teacher.

He's gonna get his master's of divinity.

Right.

And so I look at that moment and I was like, wow, I missed the opportunity.

I missed this interruption.

I missed the opportunity to, man, just let me say something, but

God never missed the opportunity.

God never misses the opportunity, and we see Jesus never misses the opportunity.

Amen.

Brothers and sisters.

Amen.

Jesus takes the time to welcome interruption into his life.

And so if we want to imitate the real Jesus and be world changers, then we've

gotta welcome interruption in our lives.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's continue reading the passage here.

Verse 39 says, when the Pharisees who had invited him saw this, he said to himself,

if this man were a prophet, he would know who was touching him and what kind

of woman she is, that she's a sinner.

Jesus answered.

Simon, I have something to tell you.

Tell me teacher he said.

Two people owed a certain money lender one hi one owed him 500 Denar

Denari, and the other 50, neither of them had the money to pay him back,

so he forgave the debts of both.

Now, which of them will love him more?

Simon replied, I suppose, the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.

You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to him, do you see this woman?

I came into your house.

You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her

tears and wiped them with her hair.

You did not gimme a kiss.

But this woman from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.

You did not put oil on my head.

But she has poured perfume on my feet.

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven as her great

love has shown, but whoever has been forgiven, little loves little.

That Jesus said to her, your sins are forgiven.

The other guests began to say to themselves, who is this?

Who even forgive sins?

Jesus said to the women, your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.

World changers.

Recognize how much they've been forgiven of, okay, come on, this woman realize

how much she had been forgiven of.

I found a commentary that talked about how the point of this story of course,

is that those who are aware of their great need have a great appreciation

for the forgiveness they have received.

They have a humility that comes with an appropriate sense of their sinfulness,

but those who are blinded by their pride are unaware of how much they need it.

So they don't have a proper appreciation for God's forgiveness.

You know, and in the campus ministry we've been studying out Matthew, uh,

chapter five, the, the Sermon on the Mount, the Be Attitudes, and it's

been a great time going through those.

And we're, we're really learning some good stuff.

But the first one he says there, Matthew five, uh, verse three is he says,

blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, right?

This idea of being poor in spirit.

And so we talked about this with the college ministry at first was like, man,

what does this mean to be poor in spirit?

Such a unique and different concept.

It's not something we usually think about, but what it really means is to acknowledge

how much you've been forgiven of and understanding your need for God's mercy.

Understanding that and recognizing that it's a sober judgment of yourself.

It's to be sober minded and realize, wow, I need grace in my life.

And so we've gotta be humble enough church to admit that we are sinful.

We've gotta admit it, we've gotta acknowledge it, and we need God's mercy.

Otherwise, it says we won't receive the kingdom of heaven.

This isn't an option.

This is a requirement in a sense that we've gotta be poor in spirit

to receive the kingdom of heaven.

You know, Jesus forgives the woman's sins.

It says, because she had the humility to recognize her need to be forgiven.

She had the humility to take us a leap of faith.

She had the humility to say, you know what?

I'm gonna use my hair.

I'm gonna use this perfume that I have.

Let's talk for a second church.

Can I be real?

Yeah.

Let's talk for a second about the problems that can occur with not understanding

how much we've been forgiven of.

Yeah.

Come on.

Because this is a weakness for me, I'll be honest.

It's, it's a tough thing to recognize.

And so some of the problems with not recognizing how much you've been

forgiven of is you can be prideful.

Yep.

And then if you're prideful, you lack compassion.

Yep.

, you lack compassion.

So too many of us who have either maybe grown up in the church like myself,

or maybe you've been around for many years, you've been faithful for many

years, but maybe some of us have failed to completely understand our

need for mercy, and we get prideful.

Mm-hmm.

, and we start to lack compassion.

Maybe we start lacking compassion for those who have

not yet been saved by Christ.

The lost.

Yeah.

Because we're not in touch with how much he saved us from Yeah.

We're not realizing it.

We're not recognizing it, we're not seeing it.

And so we don't have this overflow, man, I gotta share this.

I've been forgiven of so much.

I've gotta share it.

I gotta spread it.

I need my friends to know about this.

And so we lack that compassion.

We lack that zeal.

You know?

I think this can also lead to a lack of compassion that causes us to

start pointing our fingers at maybe other churches or other people who

are trying to live a life of Christ.

And we start pointing to them and start saying, man, they're

not living out true discipleship.

And we start judging them all, just like the Pharisees do.

Okay.

All right.

That lacks compassion.

Who are we to start judging other churches?

You guys with me?

Okay.

That's not our job.

That's up to God.

Mm-hmm.

We cannot become arrogant like the Pharisees and think we're the only

holy ones brothers and sisters.

Mm-hmm.

. We've gotta have the compassion and recognize our own sin.

You know, another problem with not understanding how much we've been really

forgiven of is we can get critical.

Yeah.

And when we get critical, this leads to becoming judgmental.

Yeah.

Criticalness leads to being judgmental.

And so some of us can become critical of the very own church that

has helped you learn about Jesus.

Okay.

And this leads to us being judgmental towards others in the church.

Alright.

You know, being critical towards the church.

Or maybe the leaders in the church or certain practices we do in the church.

It shows a lack of humility and empathy for those that are really

trying to build God's church.

Amen.

We can't be critical.

Criticalness does not lead to anything good.

Yeah.

There's a healthy type of criticalness, but I'm talking about the unhealthy.

I'm talking about the the prideful criticalness where it's, man,

look at all the problems here.

We can't be like John Mayer waiting on the world to change.

We gotta be proactive and help things change.

Amen.

Amen.

He just sits there and waits.

It's all the songs about, I'm waiting on the world to change.

He ain't doing nothing about it.

Let's not be like that.

Amen.

Amen.

Okay, so the real Jesus brothers and sisters, he, he forgives those who know

they need forgiveness, and so let's imitate the humility of this woman who

knew she needed the mercy of Jesus.

This.

Let's imitate that example.

Let's recognize that with our lives and a few action steps as we close out

Prayer for the week is I want us to ask God to reveal the ways that you

can welcome interruption in your life.

Start asking God, what are the ways I'm, what are the opportunities I'm missing?

Please show them to me.

Please help me understand them.

Help me see the ways that I can welcome this interruption.

And an action step is I want us to ask a trusted friend, what are the

ways that I can grow in my humility?

Come on, let's get some help in our lives.

So let's get some vulnerability in our lives.

So let's ask, man.

All right.

I know I'm not perfect.

What do I need to do to be more humble?

How can I implement this idea of being poor and spirit into my life?

What do you see in my character?

Amen.

So brothers and sisters, we're gonna in a few moments here, take communion together.

Hopefully you can write these down.

Take picture, whatever you gotta do.

But as we close out and take commune, I want us to remember that disciples

of the real Jesus welcome interruption.

If you wanna be a world changer like Jesus, let's welcome

interruption in our lives.

And let's also remember that disciples of the real Jesus recognize their

need for forgiveness and how the cross is what makes this possible.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's say a word of prayer.

Lord, thank you so much for this morning.

Thank you so much for your son Jesus, to be able to see how he interacts with

people, to see how he takes the moment and the time to be interrupted and

welcome that, and value that and value others above himself is what the, the

Bible, uh, says that he values others.

He made himself nothing by becoming a servant.

And God, I pray that as we reflect on the cross, as we reflect on the

communion right now, Lord, that you help us to connect with this idea of

realizing our need for forgiveness.

God, I know as a, as a young man who's grown up in the church,

it's hard sometimes to see that.

It's hard to, but Lord, I know I need it.

I know all of us need it because Jesus came here not for one, but for all.

And God, I pray that as we take the community, we can remember that as

disciples, we're called to love you with all of our heart, all of our mind, all

of our soul, and all of our strength.

And remember that the grace that you've shown us through the cross

is the best gift we could ever get.

We love you.

We thank you.

In Jesus name I pray.