Throwing Stones, John 7:53-8:11
Notes
Transcript
John 7:53-8:11
SERMON TITLE “THROWING STONES”
Dealing with the text.
It may shock many of you to know - that this passage (John 7:53-8:11) - is most likely NOT God’s Word.
Unless you are reading from the King James, your Bible probably has a note somewhere on your page that says something like, “The earliest manuscripts do not contain these verses.”
Why is that marked in the Bible & if this is not God’s Word, Why is this passage in the Bible?
It’s confusing.
-Conservative scholars have come to believe that this passage was not in the book of John originally.
-When the King James was published originally in 1611 there were limited copies of the greek Bible to translate from. Today’s passage was in those limited greek manuscripts.
-400 years since the King James was published, archeologists have unearthed thousands more copies or fragments of the greek New Testament.
-When you look at the greek manuscripts that have been unearthed since the King James was published here is what we see.
-In the first 500 years after Christ left the earth none of the manuscripts of John include this story.
-The first 500 years of the history of the New Testament do not include our text today.
Our earliest, most reliable, greek documents do not include this story.
-Somewhere, after 500 A.D. a scribe included this story and it began to be included in other copies as well.
-Why is it in the King James?
-The greek texts that were available to translate from in the 1600’s were limited.
-So, scholars translated from the best texts they had.
-Very solid conservative scholars believe that this passage was not in John originally - that John did not write this story.
-Your pastor thinks this is correct.
-Doesn’t this bring into question the truth of the rest of the Bible?
-No, We have great confidence that what we have is God’s Word.
-We have over 5,000 full copies or fragments of ancient copies of the scripture.
-Their are literally thousands of more copies and fragments of the Bible than any other ancient document in all of the world.
-Their is incredible evidence for the accuracy of the scriptures.
Here is the good news for all of us who really like this story.
Conservative scholars agree that this story today actually happened.
There is confidence of its historicity.
There is confidence that this story is a historical event.
-There are plenty of things that Jesus did that were not included in God’s Word.
We will use our text today as an historical example of the goodness of Jesus.
Read John 7:53-8:11
Pray
Intro - Every year I have had the honor of teaching a weekly bible class at TJ, on the opening day I talk about how we are all broken and how we all try to hide it.
-Tell these 13 and 14 year olds the truth that I’m such a mess that I’ve broken every one of the ten commandments.
-I’m such a broken mess that unintentionally I sin at least twice before 9am. Usually in thought or in attitude.
The reality is that some of us are better at hiding our sin than others.
We all, left to ourselves, are broken.
We all have spiritual regrets.
Big idea - Jesus desires to forgive your worst and most embarrassing sin.
How would you answer this question...
-What is my worst sin or my most embarrassing sin?
-You know that sin that you never want anyone to know about, or that sin you wish others would completely forget about.
2nd sheet of paper, take that out.
Everyone stick up your pointer finger.. I want you to pretend that pointer is an ink pen. On your blank sheet of paper using your just your finger I want you to write your worst sin or your most embarrassing sin.
-Set that paper aside. We’ll come back to it.
Transition, Jump right in … “let’s look at our text.”
Context vs. 7:53-8:2
In the passage today - Jesus is in the temple, and He is teaching.
-The religious leaders have failed to arrest Him.
-The Temple police (Levites) have refused to arrest Him, because they know there is something special about Jesus.
Transition - This is where the drama in our passage begins.
1. THE ACCUSERS Condemnation, vs. 3-5
read vs. 3-5
Some how the religious leaders are able to catch a woman in the act of adultery.
-But notice that their focus isn’t on the woman.
-There is no man. That’s a major red flag.
-The woman is just being used for their purposes of finding fault with Jesus.
-The religious leaders didn’t need Jesus to deal with her.
-They knew the law, they could have just gone out and brought her to the courts themselves.
-Their focus is on tricking Jesus. They want to find fault with Jesus.
-They want to accuse. They want to blame. They want to shame.
-The more the religious leaders tear down others, the better they feel about themselves.
-They are using the Law of Moses as a tool to condemn others and prop of their feeling of importance.
For many hyper critical people even today...
-There is a haunting belief that they are not good enough.
-They don’t measure up.
-To compensate for this they put others down or point out their flaws.
-They prosecute others imperfections and sins so they feel good about themselves and their righteousness.
Pause
-Here we have this woman... Caught in adultery, being dragged into the temple - the holiest place of worship, before a holy teacher.
-She is shamed and she is being used.
-No one cares for her or about her.
-I wonder how this woman felt.
-Unloved?
-Starred at? It would feel like everyone in the temple would be looking at her.
-Ashamed? If she was a respected person word would be out.
-If she came from a respectable family she would immediately be rejected and an outcast.
-Regretful, for what she had done
-The horrible memories of today would be with her for the rest of her life.
Transition - The religious leaders were doing Satan’s work for him.
The Evil One accuses, shames, & blames.
-He keeps reminding us of our sin and spiritual failure.
-He tells us that we are not worthy to come to church or to worship.
-He tells us that God couldn’t love us. He tells us that God could never use you to minister and spiritually make a difference in someone’s else’s life.
-Those are lies straight from the pit of hell. Pause
-We start believing Satan.
-We accuse ourselves - sometimes feel like we can’t forgive ourselves.
It get’s tricky, because we know that ...
-We have sinned and messed up.
-Our sin does offend a holy God.
-Tha we do deserve condemnation.
-We feel hopeless.
This woman was in the same place we all have found ourself.
-Condemned and hopeless.
-But with Jesus, our spiritual condition is never hopeless. Long Pause
The spotlight in our story turns to Jesus...
Transition - Jesus is in a very difficult situation.
-Jesus is faced with the biggest question that Christianity is faced with ...
3.Jesus’ dilemma, vs. 6
Read verse 6
What is Jesus’ dilemma?
If Jesus said, Do not stone her he would have broken Moses Law.
-The righteous thing to do, the just thing to do, is to stone her.
BUT - If Jesus said, “Stone her”, He would not be a person of compassion and love.
They brought the hardest question against all of Christianity.
-If God is a God of justice, holiness, and righteousness then all sinners must die & pay the penalty of sin in Hell.
But this makes God hard, not merciful and loving.
BUT - If God is a God of love, mercy, grace, & forgiveness - then there is no justice against sin. God just ignores sin.
What is the answer to this dilemma? How do you have both justice and compassion?
There is no logical answer to the dilemma.
It is a paradox.
An unanswerable question. It looks like Jesus is stuck.
Transition - So, How does Jesus answer it?
4. The Answer, Perfect Justice and Perfect Mercy
a. vs 6, He ignored them, write on the ground
Writing in the dirt
-It was common for Rabbi’s to write in the dirt - like teachers write on the smart board today.
-We don’t know what Jesus was writing on the ground.
-Maybe he was writing each of their names & next to each name he was writing their sins.
-Maybe like in backyard football he was drawing up plays.
-We don’t know what Jesus was writing.
-but Jesus is intentionally not paying them attention
b. vs. 7, continued pestering Jesus for an answer.
c. vs. 7,
Jesus stands up (He has no fear), looks them right in the eye and tell them plainly,
“Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”
-Jesus says, If you think she should be killed. You go ahead and do it.
-Just let the one who is perfectly sinless be the one who begins the stoning. Pause
Still to this day, in countries where stoning is used, the judge who pronounces the verdict and sentence of stoning - he must throw the first stone.
-Interesting enough, not only was the death penalty for adultery rarely used by the jews, but the Roman Government would not allow the Jews to use the death penalty.
-Only the Romans could inflict the death penalty.
Jesus says, “Let him who has no sin, BE THE FIRST to throw a stone...”
“You have made yourself, judge, jury, and executioner, but you are full of sin yourselves.
-You are disqualified to stone this lady.
Jesus had already been accused the religious leaders of adultery.
They were adulterers as well...
-Matthew 5:28 “28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Matthew 19:9 “9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.””
-The religious leaders would cast their wives to the side when they were tired of them and pick up another wife.
-Just like the woman before Jesus, they were adulterers too.
So, Jesus give them the wisest and most brilliant answer
“Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”
-The oldest, those who have had time to build up a nice heavy bag of sin … they realize their own guilt.
-They realize they too are condemned.
-They deserve justice as well.
-So they walk. And eventually the others follow.
Pause
There is an important theological question that must be answered.
Question - Does Jesus ignore justice for sin?
Does Jesus just pretend that sin never happened?
That’s what our culture thinks.
They think that there is no price to be paid for sin.
They think that there is no justice due for sin.
Answer - Jesus knew that when this guilty woman did not receive justice for her sin that her justice was going to have to be fully taken care of.
-He knew that he was going to have to take her justice on Himself by enduring the wrath of God for her sin of adultery.
-Somebody was going to have to pay.
-Jesus loved her so much that he happily accepted her hellish punishment.
-In the future, Jesus was going to have to pay for her sin through blood letting torture on the cross.
Gospel -
-This is what Jesus did on the cross for your sin and my sin.
-That sin that you don’t want anyone else to know about.
-That sin that is so shameful to you that you cannot forgive yourself for...
-Jesus is willing to forgive it.
-Jesus endured in himself the wrath of God on the cross so that you could be forgiven.
I John 1:9 “9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Will you put you hand on that paper that you wrote your sin on with your finger.
-If you fully trust that Jesus paid the price on the cross for that sin, will you in you heart confess that sin to God, right now?
-Will you say to God right now, with your hand on that paper -
“God I confess this sin to you.”
“I trust that you have fully forgiven me.”
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
God has forgiven you. I remembers your sin no more.
I want to share with you - 2 quotes from Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly.
“Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.”
“Time and again it is the morally disgusting, the socially reviled, the inexcusable and undeserving, who do not simply receive Christ’s mercy but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates.”
Don’t we serve a wonderful beautiful God?!
Would you say in your heart right now to Jesus - Thank you for loving me! PAUSE
Transition - Look how Jesus ministers to this woman. Look how Jesus ministers to sinners. Look how Jesus minister to you!
6. Ministry to sinners, vs. 10-11
Read vs. 10-11
A. -Jesus free’s us from the accuser
-Jesus work on the cross has freed us from our condemnation and freed us from the control of satan
-The accusers are gone and Jesus does not accuse.
Transition - Pay attention to this.
Jesus does not accuse, but Jesus does not excuse. X2
vs 11, the last 7 words of our passage, “Go. From now on sin no more.
Jesus, ministry to sinners involves calling them to ...
B. Repentance - Running from your sin back to God.
-God wants both your actions and your heart.
-He requires all of you.
-Jesus knew this … The best thing for this woman was not to go back to a man who only loved her body ...
But to turn her life over to THE GOD MAN - Who loves her eternal soul.
-That sin on your paper that God has forgiven.
He is calling you to never return to it.
7. Closing
In a final outward action of what God may be doing on inside of you.
-If your intention is to turn from your sin, leave it behind - and with God’s strength - not return to it - would you crumple that paper in a ball and drop it on the floor?
-Just crumple it up and drop it.
-Would you leave it behind?
-Would you give it to the Lord.
-Would you replace that sin, by running to Him?
-Like the woman, Would you turn your life over to THE GOD MAN -Who loves your eternal soul?
Pray
Lord, We walk away from the accusations that are full of shame and run to you - the one who deeply loves us.