Luke 7:36-50

Luke 7:36

I. The narrative encourages sinners of every name and degree to go at once to Christ. He will in nowise cast them out. There are no more touching stories in the Gospels than those which tell how Jesus dealt with the most degraded class of sinners. Recall His conversation with the woman of Samaria, at the well of Sychar. Bring up before you once again that scene in the Temple, where the scribes and Pharisees dragged in before Him the woman who had been taken in the very act of sin. Then read anew this narrative, and say if the prophecy regarding Him was not true, "A bruised reed shall He not break; the smoking flax shall He not quench." Where man perceived no promise of success, and would have been tempted to give up the individual as hopeless, He would labour on until the reed which had given forth a note jangled and out of tune was restored to its original condition, and gave its own quota to the harmony of Jehovah's praise.

II. If we would be successful in raising the fallen and reclaiming the abandoned, we must be willing to touch them and be touched by them. In other words, we must come into warm, loving, personal contact with them. What an uplift Christ gave to the soul of this poor woman, when He, the pure and holy, let herthus approach Him. When the Lord wished to save the human race, He touched it by taking on Him our nature, without our nature's pollution. So we must take the nature of the degraded, without its impurity, if we would help Him.

III. If we wish to love God much, we must think much of what we owe to Him. Low views of sin lead to a light estimate of the blessing of pardon, and a light estimate of the blessing of pardon will lead to but a little love of God.

W. M. Taylor, The Parables of Our Saviour,p. 210.

References: Luke 7:36. Phillips Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 342; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 75; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 28; W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 184; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 214; Expositor,1st series, vol. vi., p. 214.Luke 7:37; Luke 7:38. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 129; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 801; Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 312; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 153.Luke 7:38. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 90.