Sermon Tone Analysis

I am excited this morning to get into the next installment of the Jesus Never Said Series.

This is part 2, if you missed part 1 you can go online to our website, or, you can do what I like to to do and go to the handy app.

So we started this 4 week series called things Jesus never said and you may be thinking, how weird is it that you are talking about the stuff Jesus didn’t say?

Sounds like a time waster in a way.

But we are going to be talking about some of things that Jesus didn’t say.

And we get Jesus’ words primarily from the gospels.

If you don’t know, there are 4 biographies that have been written about Jesus and we call those biographies the gospels.

Matthew Mark Luke and John are the biographical accounts of Jesus Christ’s life on earth.

In those books we see the words of Jesus.

Some of your bibles will have Jesus’ words written in red and we remember that the words of Jesus are otherworldly, they, in some cases seem to make no sense; it makes me think of last weeks message, pray for your enemies.

Outside of Jesus that makes no sense, it’s other wordly.

Those words are powerful and sometimes, to understand the power of what Jesus said.. we need also to understand what He didn’t say, what He could have said, what you or I would say.

But we remember that sometimes to understand what Jesus says we need to also understand what He didn’t say, because what Jesus

What Jesus could have said, what you or I would say what he didn’t say

We look at what he didn’t say to truly be able to understand what He DID say.

Today we are going to talk about what Jesus didn’t say about happiness.

Now I know something about all of you here, because I am included with this statement.

Today we are going to talk about what Jesus didn’t say about happiness.

Now I know something about all of you here, because I am included with this statement.

All of us want to be happy.

We do don’t we?

We all want to be happy.

No one’s goal is to be miserable.

Just For fun this morning...

Jesus did not say: Go into all the world and preach whatever makes people happy.

Jesus doesn’t say, “whoever wants to be my disciple must affirm themselves avoid the cross and follow their own heart

Jesus Never said, ask and it will be given to you because God is your celestial sugar daddy!

Or your cosmic coke machine.

God never said any of that about our happiness.

Incredible power for us today.

And the end we will look at what he did not say.

It has the power and potential to transform our lives

John 8:2-

Now let me interrupt just for a second to let you know what is going on.

Jesus is teaching in the temple (it’s kind of like our home group, not a huge amount of people, it’s not a ceremony, jesus is just teaching some folks and in the middle of his teaching there is a commotion, there is a crowd coming in and they completely interrupt what is going on.

Interrupting Jesus when he is preaching?

That’s weird.

But these men, these leaders of the church at the time come in and they bring a woman before Jesus who was caught in the act of adultery.

We don’t have time for this but we have talked in the past about this story.

We don’t have time to go over the fact that we don’t see the man in the story being drug before Jesus.

We don’t see him.

We also see that the guys that drag this lady before Jesus are the accusers.

Listen, the way the law worked was this, you could only bring this type of accusation if not one person sees the act, but if at least two people see the act.

and can you say peeping Tom?

How in the world would two guys happen to come along this scene?

Listen, people acting out in adultery usually don’t flaunt it, especially the part of it about her being caught in the act of adultery.

These guys are setting this situation up.

And if they caught her in the act, then she is probably barely dressed, she is humiliated beyond belief, she is in the worst state of shame she has probably ever even experiences and the men who bring her don’t care about her.

They are using her to get to Jesus.

It was all part of their grand plan to get Jesus between a rock and a hard place.

verse 4

John 8:4-

So the teachers of the law, the Pharisees bring this woman before Jesus and they basically ask Jesus what are you going to do?

The law says that anyone caught in adultery is to have the people pick up stones and throw them at her until she is dead.

That is what the law said.

Verse 6 there says that this was a setup.

This was a trap to use against Jesus.

This is one of those times when they were trying to catch Jesus.

You will see this a few times in Scripture.

People try to use God’s own Word against Him and they think that this is a no win situation for Jesus.

They think he either had to agree with the law and have her killed.

Or to say, your sin is no big deal, don’t worry about it.

If he says yes, stone her, he doesn’t look full or grace and love.

Or, he says, This isn’t that big of a deal, we need to love her and forgive her and we should just let her go.

Then, Jesus is going against the law of Moses and loses his credibility as a teacher.

This is a no win situation.

Ever been there?

Ever been in a no win situation?

verse 6

So they are accusing him and Jesus bends down on the ground and writes with his finger.

And of course this brings us to the question if you have ever paid any attention to this story, what was it that Jesus was writing on the ground?

What was he doing?

Was he doodling?

Was he avoiding the situation by playing tic tac toe in the sand?

No one really knows what he wrote but most scholars believe Jesus wrote down their sins.

Don’t know if its true but all that I have read from scholars makes me lean in this direction because of how the word is used in the Greek.

The word to write is graphin which means to write down.

The word used in this story is Katagraphin Kata is the word for against.

So in this story Jesus is writing agaisnt something or someone.

So Jesus knows these pharisees, of course he does, He is God!

And he is writing on the sand, avoiding?

No maybe he writes, Frank, He looks at Frank, Frank the Pharisee, then he starts writing against.

He says, Frank, I saw your browsing history..

I heard what you said when that camel cut you off on your way to the temple.

You didn’t know I saw you but I did.

Maybe Jesus is even writing down the names of the guys holding that poor woman.

John 8:

This is something I learned this week was that the word Jesus uses for sin there does not just mean acting in sin but it’s even more than that.

It is all encompassing, meaning sin in your heart.

Even the desire, the wanting to sin.

Now can we be honest?

Can we be real for a couple of minutes?

There are lots of times where I have a sin presented to me, we all do and there are times when I want to do it, I want to sin there.

I am tempted to say something I shouldn’t say, or I am tempted to do something.

That is real isn’t it?

It’s also true that it’s really easy for me to see other people’s sin when I want to cover mine up.

Almost like my sin doesn’t count or something.

We are sinful people.

We enjoy pointing the finger at someone else because it takes the eyes off of us and on to another person.

This is what Jesus is saying.