Last Sundy I attended my local church, Lansing Woodview Church of the Nazarene. I was privileged to hear our Rev. David Williams, our Pastor of Discipleship, preach from Luke 7:36-50. He was speaking on our monthly family Sunday when we have all ages in worship. This sermon was also preaching in fulfillment of a requirement for a preaching class he is currently taking at Nazarene Bible College. Pastor David took an interesting approach to preaching this particular passage in which Jesus' feet are washed by the sinful woman who cleans his feet and anoints them with perfume to the ire of Simon the Pharisee. Jesus uses this as an opportunity to use a parable to teach about grace and its availability to everyone. After reading the passage he began to break down the different perspectives of the characters in the story as if analyzing a play. He examined the perspective of the woman, Simon, Jesus and the others at the dinner. …show more content…
He suggested at each of us might be able to identify with one or more people within the passage. He suggest that perhaps we need to be like the woman and understand that we are worth of forgiveness and must give praise for that forgiveness. Or like Simon we need to have our perspectives renewed on the availability of grace for everyone. Maybe we need to be like the crowd and follow after the question of “Who is this , who even forgives sins?” Finally concluding with the point that we all are worthy of grace and we are called to receive and reciprocate that grace in our
James Myers is the pastor at the East Campus of Biltmore Baptist Church. Myers has been employed with BBC for the past 4 years and has a Master’s Degree in Christian Education. He and his wife, Michelle, live in Asheville with their 2 children, Noah and Cole, and are expecting their third child, a girl, due in August. Myers says he is very lucky to be a part of this church because they have an extensive network of employees, including a group of licensed therapists located in the Hope Network.
This kind woman tried to encourage this boy to have faith in God and Jesus, Jesus was the “lamb of god” also “a man with sorrows and acquainted with grief.” “Sundays [were] days for Jesus; it was wrong to feel comfortable or laugh on a Sunday.” Jesus was the lamb of god and went around the world for three years sending his message to others implying them not to do harm. When the little boy grew up to be a businessman, “he began to wonder about Jesus [again],” in a different aspect than before. The businessman knew that great successful businessmen inspire enthusiasm and build great organizations, Jesus Christ already established the greatest organization above anyone else. The businessman now waited to see if anyone would write a novel about Jesus Christ, an individual who knew him personally. In the businessman’s mind, he would treat Jesus Christ as an individual he never heard of before. The businessman had no faith in Jesus Christ, but was interested in making money off a character he thinks is weak, and grabbed twelve individuals from the bottom of the chain and built the greatest organization people praised him love and forgiveness. Nobody wrote the book so the businessman wrote the book
He argues towards the sinners to express the way he feels about them and what he'll do to
I think I would thrive at Archbishop Williams. I’ve been told many good things about the school from my neighbor, Matthew Klier as well as a friend, Julia Geary, with whom I’ve played softball for a number of years on our local Squantum team. I’ve spent time in the Archbishop Williams buildings taking the HSPT review course, am looking forward to a shadow day, and can envision myself succeeding in its environment.
The speaker questions God’s ability to forgive all the sins of human beings. He praises god in the highest and believes that he has many sins that need forgiven. The speaker try’s to be the best thing he can be but he still sins greatly and asks that god to forgive him for that. He believes it is almost impossible not to sin for everyone. Thus, he asks since god has so many people to forgive, will he have time to forgive him. The speaker want to get into heaven thus he begs god to forgive him for all his sins so he will not be stuck in limbo or hell. The speaker believes if he reaches out to god for forgiveness, his son will save him and he will fear no
Furthermore, Hughes uses the rhetorical device of allusion when he writes about his aunt’s bringing him to the church for a special meeting. When he writes, “Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, ‘to bring the young lambs to the fold’’’ (1), he attempts to correlate his invitation to salvation to a Biblical parable. Along with his reference to the Bible, he conveys the church member’s excitement with vivid imagery. He illustrates the church’s setting as being infuse with “all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell”, and he also describes the preacher’s sermon as a “wonderful rhythmical sermon” (3). Conjointly, Hughes presents imagery of the churchgoers and alludes to a Biblical story in order to demonstrate the magnitude of the religious enthusiasm of the members of the church.
Chapter four was a difficult read mostly because it describes in great detail our natural sin nature and our tendencies to naturally disconnect from God’s intention for our lives. The authors start out the chapter discussing what sin is, or as the authors put it “we are a mixture of good and evil” (Grenz and Smith, 60). As humans, we miss the mark of what God intends for all Christians, which is to live in community and make the conscience choice to be Christ-like in all of our dealings and encounters with humankind. Instead, born in sin, we can quickly find ourselves making moral choices that causes us to sin. This comes from an innermost desire for something or someone that we give control over to and inevitably become
This is a summary of a No Travel Seminar on a Study of the Gospel of Matthew. The seminar was lead by Dr. John Dunaway who is a professor at NTS and has served as a pastor for over 50 years. After his brief self-introduction, he began his presentation with an overview of the Gospel of Matthew, followed by a more elaborated narrative summarizing the gospel, and he finished with brief closing remarks. Throughout this enthusiastic presentation, Dr. Dunaway made reference to remarks by multiple prominent commentators, which added substance to his narrative, even though none were explicitly stated upfront.
Jesus gets the last word at the diner by sharing a brief parable with Simon. The parable is about one lender and two debtors that cannot pay their debt. The emphasis is not on the debtors, but the forgiving nature of the lender that canceled out both debts. God does not see us to set us up for failure. Nor is God evaluating us in public, but He does see us. This table meeting is about Jesus forgiving the women, and also Simon. The story is not just about them, but sinners in general. Jesus gives a very simple question to Simon for him to answer regarding who would be the most gracious. Simon reluctantly answers that the one with most debt forgiven should love more (7v43). Jesus point to Simon is that he has judged wrongly. Jesus affirms his answer and then explains why this woman’s sins, which are many, will love more than those
I believe that this verse is used to remind us that our God will always forgive us no matter how serious or daring our sin was. Therefore the relationship we have with him can be healed by our thoughts of confessing, all the evil and misleading intention that we have done to hurt others and ourselves. And so when we finally accept that truth that we have sinned, we can finally heal our relationship with God and others. In comparison to the NRSV version of this verse it's identical to the NAB version, but the only difference between them is the wording they used to write out the verse. Even though these changes are minor it’s making the verse seem more, complex and gives it a deeper understanding into how the wording can change one's perspective
During childhood we begin to learn the meaning of integrity. Having patiently awaited Jesus? appearance for what must have seemed an interminable amount of time, the pressure on Hughes to get up and go to the altar must have been ponderous. Finally, when Jesus failed to make an appearance that evening Hughes had a choice of continuing to wait or rising and satisfying the expectations of the congregation. In making his decision to approach the altar, Hughes is fearful, as most children are when disobeying the ?rules?. Hughes? reticence in coming forward probably reflects his type of up bringing, and he watches his friend to see what punishment God will mete out and bases his decision on the fact that nothing appears to happen. In embracing his friend Westley?s deception, in being saved without seeing Jesus, and because of his own up bringing, Hughes had to acknowledge his own dishonesty.
Final paragraph: "Restorative justice cannot manufacture penitence and forgiveness. But by placing a concern for the healing of hurts, the renewal of relationships, and the re-creation of community at the heart of its agenda, it makes room for the miracle of forgiveness to occur and for a new future to dawn. Nothing could be more compatible with the message of the New Testament than this. For without diminishing the reality of evil, without denying the culpability of those who commit crime or minimizing the pain of those who suffer at their hands, and without dispensing with punishment as a mechanism for constraining evil and promoting change, the New Testament looks beyond retribution to a vision of justice that is finally satisfied only
He lets them know that there is no one that is without sin and stands guilty before God. Apart from being in a personal relationship with the Lord, the average person has always felt that they were a good person, or a morally good person that performs good deeds. Paul points out throughout the book that it is the saving faith in Christ Jesus’ virgin birth, death, burial and resurrection that saves our soul and not anything that we can or could do. With that faith, we are to live in the assurance that we are accepted by God and endowed with the power of the Holy Ghost to do, not just good but, godly works of righteousness, all by the motivation of love for Him. All the while, we are to understand that it is not the works that make us righteous but rather, our faith in Jesus. He points out that thinking we are saved by works is living under the Law, which is contrary to why God gave them the Law.
It is also vital to look at Wilson’s view on the practice of forgiveness and how if an individual decides to ignore it, it can place a road block in their process of change. She believes that God speaks about forgiveness for the following reasons:” (1) we are all sinners with whom to relate so we’ll need to become skillful forgivers (2) God makes forgiveness a centerpiece of our healing process because living in un-forgiveness is so much worse (Wilson, 2001).
The Gospel of Luke thoroughly illustrates the themes of mercy and compassion in his use of literary devices such as symbols, stories and parables. Luke urges how significant it is to feel and deliver the ready willingness to help anyone in need in our society. The Gospel offers a model to live out these virtues through Jesus’ actions and his parables.