Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 33
7:28-43
Luke–ACTS
21
‘Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
and he will prepare your way before you.’
I tell you, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John. Yet even the
least person in the Kingdom of God is greater than he is!”
When they heard this, all the people—even the tax collectors—agreed
that God’s way was right, for they had been baptized by John. But the
Pharisees and experts in religious law rejected God’s plan for them, for
they had refused John’s baptism.
“To what can I compare the people of this generation?” Jesus asked.
“How can I describe them? They are like children playing a game in the
public square. They complain to their friends,
‘We played wedding songs,
and you didn’t dance,
so we played funeral songs,
and you didn’t weep.’
For John the Baptist didn’t spend his time eating bread or drinking wine,
and you say, ‘He’s possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man, on the other
hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and
a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be
right by the lives of those who follow it.”
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to
his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that
city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled
with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping.
Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she
kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If
this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching
him. She’s a sinner!”
Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I
have something to say to you.”
“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.
Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two
people—500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. But neither
of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their
debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger
debt.”
