Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning’s passage is incredibly unique.

One of the unique features of this section is that it is not found in the earliest manuscripts, or copies, we have of the Gospel of John.

In fact, a few manuscripts place it in different parts of John or even in Luke.

It sounds like something that Jesus would do, but it doesn’t read quite like John’s writing.

However, as Warren Wiersbe and others point out, it fits well in the context and helps transition from chapter 7 to the rest of chapter 8.

Although we could get deep in the weeds on this, for this morning, we are going to operate on the assumption that these events are put exactly where they are supposed to be.

John is continuing to show that Jesus is encountering opposition from the Jewish leaders, and this time, they are intentionally setting a trap.

There are three main sets of characters in this story, and we want to take time to look at each one.

First, there are the scribes and Pharisees.

Then, we will notice the woman caught in adultery.

Finally, we will look at Jesus and his actions.

Let’s go ahead and read the entire account.

Start with me in verse 1-11.

Although we are going to cover a few different aspects of this passage, the main idea I want you to walk out of here with this morning is this: In Christ, we are caught but not condemned.

Before we see that point clearly, let’s talk about the first group of people in the story: the scribes and Pharisees.

We could describe them as...

1) Correct, but not concerned.

As we start with the scribes and Pharisees, we have to acknowledge that they aren’t exactly the best guys, are they?

They were supposed to be.

They were the ones who knew God’s law better than anyone!

In fact, that is where they are stuck; they can’t accept what Jesus is doing because they have built their entire belief system around the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’t’s’ in the Law of Moses.

By the way, when you hear them talking about “Moses,” they are referring to the Law that God gave through Moses.

We find that in the first five books of the Old Testament.

These men were experts on what God’s law said you should and shouldn’t do.

They had even gone beyond what God said and added all kinds of rules that were supposed to keep you from breaking any of the commandments.

However, in their drive to know God’s word, they had lost sight of who God is!

In fact, God was right there in front of them, and they were fighting against him.

Jesus is in Jerusalem, though, and the Pharisees catch a woman in the act of adultery.

They bring her to Jesus, but the Scripture says their goal was to trap him.

We have to acknowledge something off the bat here: If these men are telling the truth, then according to the Old Testament laws that God had given to govern the nation of Israel, she was to be put to death:

Notice, however, that the command said that both the man and the woman were to be put to death for adultery.

So, where is the man?

One commentator suggested that he likely was able to run away faster than she did, so he may have escaped into the crowd.

We don’t know why the woman was the only one brought to Jesus, but we do know that the heart of those who brought her were not in the right place.

Their goal was to trap Jesus by putting him in a Catch-22 situation.

If he refused to stone her, they could accuse him of disregarding the Law.

If he did participate in her stoning, they could use that to tarnish his reputation of being a “friend of sinners.”

They also might have been able to get him in trouble with Rome, because the Jews don’t seem to have had the authority to put anyone to death since they were under Roman rule.

There are a few instances where an angry mob attempts to or actually succeeds in stoning someone to death, but that seems like an exception to standard practice.

Whatever their end goal, their hearts were in the wrong place.

They may have been technically correct, but they were not concerned about the right things.

For us to understand this, we need to take a minute and talk about why sin is bad in the first place.

Ultimately, anything that is sin is sin because it goes contrary to God’s moral law, which is derived from who God is.

One author summarized the concept of sin by saying:

“Sin is failure to live up to what God expects of us in act, thought, and being.”

(Millard Erickson)

[1]

Sin is wrong, then, because it goes against who God is and what he has told us to do.

It is a big deal, which is why God set laws in place in Israel with strong punishments for sins.

These punishments were put in place so people would remember how holy God is and how bad sin is and what damage it does to us and others.

If that had been their motivation—to carry out the punishment God prescribed in order to demonstrate God’s holiness, to protect people from additional pain from sin, and to keep others from sinning in the same way, perhaps this scene would have looked differently.

However, they weren’t at all interested in preserving the holiness of God or limiting the damage of sin to the community.

They were trying to trap Jesus, who is actually the holy God who set these standards in the first place!

They wanted to prove that they were right, and they were better—better than this woman, and better than Jesus, who everybody was impressed with.

Now, let’s bring this home to us.

Many of you have grown up in church, or you have been around long enough that you know what is right and what is wrong in a lot of different areas.

When you realize that someone is caught in a sin, what is your reaction?

What about when someone sins against you personally, and then something bad happens to them?

“Serves them right!

That’s what they get.”

You know what God says about that?

Sin should make us angry.

Sin should break our hearts.

However, it isn’t because we are right and they are wrong.

Instead, our heart for justice should be motivated by the fact that every individual is born with intrinsic worth and value because they are created in the image of God.

When people sin, they are damaging those made in God’s image, both themselves and others.

They are sinning against a holy God, a God who loved them enough to save them, and they are throwing that back in his face.

That should anger us!

We should call for justice when we see people being abused, repressed, or taken advantage of.

That’s not what the Pharisees and scribes did, though.

They weren’t concerned about the glory of God or the damage sin does to those created in his image.

They just wanted to trip Jesus up!

What motivates your frustration with other people?

Is it because they aren’t doing what you want, or because you know there might be some truth to what they are saying and you don’t want to think about that?

You might be right—they might be completely out of line and wrong.

However, is your heart genuinely motivated by love for God and a concern for other people, or are you correct but not concerned?

Ask God to search your motives to see why you get so upset about certain things.

If it isn’t because of God’s glory and concern for others, you are missing the mark, just like these Pharisees.

In fact, you will see as we look at the woman, we are all...

2) Caught, but not condemned.

In your mind’s eye, turn your attention from the angry crowd to the woman in the middle.

In verse 4, the Pharisees said this woman had actually been caught in the act of adultery.

Some have suggested that they may have been making this up, and the charges were fake.

I don’t think so.

One, the text doesn’t give us any reason to think so.

In fact, the strongest evidence of her guilt is the last statement Jesus makes to her in verse 11… “Go, and from now on, do not sin anymore.”

Why would he tell her not to sin anymore if she hadn’t been sinning to start with?

Actually, even if this was the first act of adultery this woman had committed, it wasn’t the first or only time she sinned.

In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, we all have sinned.

Look back at the definition of sin we gave a bit ago:

“Sin is failure to live up to what God expects of us in act, thought, and being.”

(Millard Erickson)

Can you say that you have always done exactly what God expects of you?

That every action, that every thought, that every part of your being has always done the right and not done the wrong?

Every single person alive has sinned!

That means you, me, the best person you know, and the worst person you know; all of us have sinned.

Don’t think that God has somehow missed that; we are all caught by God, and he knows everything we have done and thought and ever will do!

Just like this woman, we are caught in our sin.

There is no way to wiggle out of this; we are all guilty.

In fact, whether we have committed adultery or not, our sin debt before God is so great that we all deserve the same punishment she did that day:

Romans 6:23 (CSB)