The Sinfulness of Man and God's Forgiveness
Notes
Transcript
A. Man’s Dark Sinfulness and God’s Great Forgiveness, 8:1–11
(8:1–11) Introduction: this event is a most striking picture of “Man’s Dark Sinfulness and God’s Great Forgiveness.”
1. A picture of Jesus’ life (vv.1–2).
2. A picture of man’s dark guilt (vv.3–6).
3. A picture of man’s dark nature: all men are sinful—guilty of serious sin (vv.7–9).
4. Conclusion: the great revelation—Jesus alone has the right to condemn and forgive (vv.10–11).
What we are going to see this morning is one of the most despicable acts in all of the Bible… a people so driven in hate, that they will stop at no cost to get what they want.
1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
And here we see some practice that Jesus teaches us that we should implement in our own lives. We see in the middle of everything going on he is wanting to recenter himself with God so he goes to a place that he can be alone and get close to God. This was most certainly a reason that he was able to find peace in the middle of everything. We can take a great lesson in this from him that even when everything is falling in on us we need to get close to God and hear what he wants and allow his word and our time in prayer to recenter ourselves in the world.
2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.
Here we find something interesting, the word used of the people came and jesus taught them in the greek shows a continuous action… Its to mean the people kept coming to him and he kept teaching them. And we can see how important this is to Jesus for him to teach the people all they needed to know and we see how important it was for him to disciple the people around him so they could have good understanding of what they were supposed to do and how to live life for him and with him. And we can learn this is what we should be doing in our lives as well… sharing our story and what we have learned and making sure the people around us are learning how they can be closer to God with us.
And in these first two verses alone we learn how we should live our lives, by spending time worshipping God, for that is what he did on the mountain, and time teaching and sharing our lives with others. We need community. We cannot shut ourselves off and hole ourselves up it will lead to depression even for those of us that want to call ourselves introverts.
John 8:3–6 (ESV)
3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst
4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.
5 Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”
6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.
And this is one of the most despicable acts by the pharisees and rulers that you will see in scripture, of course they had him killed, but lets look at this.
Here is what we know so far in this story and what you need to know as the background for this story…
This happened during the feast and during the feasts it was an almost party like atmosphere… two weeks ago we looked and saw the amazing acts of worship and thanks to God for his provisions, but what we most certainly need to understand is that during all of that worship they also celebrated… and there would be drinking and over indulgences, just as any God thing can be turned into something that is bad when it is in the hands of man. And so there would be dancing and me and women would come together and dance and just have a good time… and this is the back drop that this horrible thing takes place...
Adultery was a sin in the OT as well as the NT today.
Punishable by death… stoning wasn’t what was required, could have been a number of things, but it was suggested for women who were betrothed to be married but not yet married.... so we get the idea from the idea of them wanting to stone them that this was probably a young woman who had not yet been married but was betrothed to be married, so this puts her at 13-14 years old most likely…
In their day, in order for someone to witness something there had to be at minimum 2 witnesses… and you can read that in Deut 19:15
15 “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.
So for this to be brought forth it had to be seen by two witnesses… and it wasn’t enough for the witnesses to see the two parties just going into a room together, the actual ACT had to be seen by the witnesses… in fact if you read
The apocryphal book Suzanna you will see a woman falsely accused of adultery that was acquitted because the witnesses couldnt agree on the type of tree the act had occured beneath… they hadnt gotten their stories straight so it couldnt be upheld in court.
IT shows that the two witnesses were trying to conjure up a story to have a woman convicted.. but they couldnt agree on the TYPE of tree the couple were laying under so, they couldn’t convict them… so that means that in this situation… the witnesses had SEEN the act… of both the man and the woman… it had been seen, and it is being brought before Jesus, and we see the man is not there, it is just the young girl, and the most likely culprit for this becomes the most despicable part… the reason the man was let go and not dragged before Jesus is because he was in on this… they wanted to catch Jesus so badly, that they got a man to find a young girl and lure her to a place where the witnesses would have been waiting so they could make sure they could get their story straight… they wanted to make sure they had Jesus and he couldn’t question the same way AS ABOVE so it was a horrible story.... and so what we see is the rulers and authorities are breaking their own laws and they are so intensely mad at Jesus they don’t realize they are doing it...
People today still have this problem… we get to a place where we are so focused on what someone has done wrong that we can justify our own sinful actions for the greater good. Have you ever or heard someone explain things away with the idea, Jesus would totally understand because.... he understand why I had to lie because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have gotten the job and its obvious that lying on my resume was the right thing to do....
And the craziness of this story is how clearly we can see the hypocrisy here they are breaking the law and thinking they are so much better than the woman…
2) There was hypocrisy. They felt and claimed that they were religious, better than the woman, free from any sin serious enough to be exposed. They even used Scripture to condemn her sin and to support their right to condemn her.
3) There was complete failure to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mt. 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mk. 12:31; Lu. 10:27; Ro. 13:9; Ga. 5:14; Js. 2:8):
⇒ a complete failure to do what we all need sometime, to be embraced and pulled out of the sin and hurt gripping us.
⇒ a complete failure to hush—be quiet, and say nothing, except to the one caught in sin—and to set about a ministry of restoration and reconciliation to God and man.
d. There was Jesus ignoring sinful man as long as He could. “He stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground,” saying nothing. He was silent for a long time. We are not told why Jesus stooped in silence or what He wrote on the ground. Various commentators say it was …
• to allow Him to think through the situation
• to force the accusers to repeat the charges (v.7). By so doing, they and the public would begin to see and sense their lack of compassion
• to write Scripture or some of the sins of those standing around, hoping to convict them (see Jb. 13:26)
Note this: Jesus did ignore them in all their sinful, critical, self-righteous, hypocritical spirit; but He ignored them only for a time. Jesus will not ignore nor allow sin to go on forever. He will arise, face it, and judge it.
Lets move on...
7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”
8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.
9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
Remember the problem that is occuring here is they are wanting Jesus to judge her sin according to the law… they are wanting him to pass judgment and make sure he sticks to what they know to be correct… they are out for blood here, Jesus’ and the woman’s and if we look only at the law outside of the rest of the situation, the setup, etc, they are right, there are complete grounds for this woman to be killed, and if Jesus is going to stop it from happening something miraculous had to happen… so he stands up and says let him who is without sin throw the first stone… and he is pointing out the sin in every man here… he wants them to take a moment to think before they start judging this woman about the sin they have in their own lives…
and as they take inventory they begin to be convicted and start to question themselves and understand… and we know from the writings of Paul Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and after he says all of this and the word begins to hit their hearts he stoops down to continue to write...
and then he stoops down on the ground and begins to write, and there are tons of ideas and theories of what he stooped over to write…
To not have to look them in the eye
to write the sins of everyone standing there
to be like a roman judge and write what his judgment was before he spoke it
I wish I could tell you I had come up with the best theory on what he wrote and I had it all written out for you, but Truthfully, we cannot know, and it most likely isn’t really important…
And Jesus has just done the miraculous in this event… he gives them what they want and tells them they are able to cast a stone, but first.... they have to be without sin and in those words he is saying that only HE can judge because none of us are without sin...
And what he is effectively telling the people there is it isn’t in how much of the scripture you know or have memorized, or the position you hold, its based upon moral perfection and there isn’t a single person who has achieved that.
And we see this teaching is so in line with what he said in Mt. 7:3-5
3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
And later the teaching of Paul
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,
10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
The beauty of this moment is one that we can all hold on to… this picture of Jesus alone with the woman is a picture of you and I when we will stand alone before Jesus as the judge… when that moment comes there will be no accusers shouting accusations at us, no one else there that can condemn us, just us and Jesus.... and in this moment Jesus chooses not to condemn her for what she has done, but to offer her forgiveness he says “neither do I condemn you”
and so so many people can use this scripture to say that Jesus loves everyone and that he doesn’t condemn people and we can do what we want, and their have been entire books written about this that says that love wins… that we can lives how we want and as long as we have made a profession of faith that Jesus covers every sin no matter what it is and we don’t have to do anything with our sin at all but they forget the second half of verse 11
Jesus says go and sin no more.... so he is giving a second chance but his second chance involves her with the mention to go and not live the same life that she lived before… and that is the beauty of the Gospel… it offers us all the chance to go and sin no more after we come into contact with Jesus.
That is the beauty we find in 1 Jn. 2:1-2
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
We have just one advocate… Jesus… and he is the one that can make us right… that is the gospel!
What sets us right with the advocate is our need to ask forgeivnes....
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And in our lives we must ask for that forgiveness and then do what Jesus told that woman… go and sin no more