Untitled Sermon (2)

Have you ever been to a bar or a pub? Especially at night those whom attend like the lights to be down low. There is something about the darkness that allows them to move and operate in thoughts and deeds that are not appropriate to right living. I suggest that it is easier for evil spirits to operate in an atmosphere that is dark or of little light. It is in these conditions that men and women begin to do things that they would not normally do because they have dulled their consciousness with a depressant known as alcohol or other chemical. Do you want to ruin an atmosphere of skullduggery, then simply turn on the lights in a bar or pub. I have seen this happen many times. When the lights turn on the mood quickly changes and people leave and or complain profusely, then leave.

In John 3:16-21 we hear the core purpose of Jesus’ ministry on earth:

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Three times Jesus could have easily condemned someone would have been

1) His torturers when HE was on the Cross.

2) The Woman caught in Adultery

3) The woman at the well.

HIS TORTURERS:

If ever there were someone whom by our standards deserved to get their full payment by being tormented for eternity in hell, it was the brutal and sadistic Roman soldiers that tortured Jesus, then were part of the team that crucified Him. Jesus even in His indescribable anguish, with pain beyond what we can imagine because of their actions, asked the father to forgive them for what they were doing. Because, they did not understand what they were doing and whom they doing it too. He chose to have them forgiven.

WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY

Today we frown on adultery, and it has led to many divorces. Today there are even couples whom believe the age old lie that they can have an open marriage where they can visit other partners. This thought has been around for almost 6,000 years. To the Jewish people, and to us we should shudder at such a thought. The reason is that such behavior, such as adultery destroys the concept of shalom. Shalom is not just a common greeting that the Jewish people then and today give to one another such as we tell someone, good morning or have a good day. Shalom is a condition of being at peace within you, your family, with your neighbor, with the community as a whole, with your neighbors and your enemies alike. When you have shalom all is well. There is no strife. That is why adultery was such a heinous crime against not only for the couple, but against the village, and the city, and everywhere it spread. In fact, for a people whom track their very identity through their heritage, to bring in the element of uncertainty into your heritage through a child conceived in adultery, can bring an element of doubt into your family and ancestors being tied to the Abrahamic covenant. This is why adultery was dealt with in such decisive terms such as stoning a woman to death for being caught in adultery.

So, when the towns people, and elders brought the adulterous woman to Jesus so that He could have the final say in her demise; instead of condemning her to death Jesus bends down and writes something into the dirt, the gravel. Then he gives them permission to throw the first stone, only if they have never sinned. Whatever he wrote, turned the men from their desire to murder the woman, to dropping their stones and walking away. The Bible does not record what Jesus wrote. I, now this is me folks not something that I got from a deep dive into research, but what I like to think happened is that like the speaking in tongues of the disciples on the day of Pentecost where dozens of people heard their message in their native language at the same time, that when Jesus wrote a prophetic word into the dirt, that it reminded each one of their own sins, and many of them had also visited the same adulteress woman in the past. They turned away.

Then Jesus did not condemn the woman, but told her to go and sin no more. Jesus forgave her.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL:

The woman at the well was not a chance encounter of Christ. It was a God appointment between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. I am not going to get into the reasons of why Jews and the Samaritans were angry with each other, other than to say that this racial divide set the tone for the woman’s interaction with Jesus. Now here we have a woman whom is still operating in her ongoing sinful behavior of having five husbands that divorced her, may have still have been married to one man, but living with another. What would any good Pastor or Church Elder advise this woman to do today. They would call her on what appeared to be her ongoing serial adultery in violation of the concept of shalom. Then they would have told her to stop that behavior and make it right. Especially break off the relationship that she is having with her current boyfriend. Jesus never condemns her, instead He offers her salvation, Jesus does not clean her up before she received salvation, instead Jesus introduces her to the Messiah, Himself.

Jesus points out to her that God the Father was not tied to one geographic location, either Samaria or Jerusalem. Instead, God is a Spirit and those whom please Him seek Him not only at a temple, but in fact in their own spirit. They seek to worship God in Spirit and Truth.

TO the woman, the Samaritans, and the Jewish people of the world, Jesus was the light shining in the darkness. To quote the Christian Radio host and preacher, Alexander Hamilton, “Darkness is not an affirmative force on the attack, it merely tries to occupy the space that was vacated by the light. The light has now returned and is shinning brightly to the Samaritan woman and he rest of the world.

Jesus never condemned her. Just by her knowing and understanding, and accepting that Jesus was the Messiah, and that she had met Him, it reset her world view, took her instantly from her darkened world of wokeness, (whoa is me, my life sucks and there can never be any hope for me attitude. This attitude permeates today’s world), to a worldview where the very person of hope was standing before her. Hope was here! Hope is alive! My, sins now identified, are gone. That was her moment of faith, that was her salvation moment. She shouts, I am going to tell everyone about the One who knew everything that I did.

JESUS DID NOT COME INTO THE WORLD TO CONDEMN THE WORLD, HE CAME SO THAT WE WOULD HAVE LIFE, AND LIFE ABUNDANTLY.

If Jesus does not condemn us then maybe you think that God the Father does instead? Jesus answered this in John 5:19 when He said, ““Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Jesus was using a familiar analogy of a father training his son in a trade. To condemn the Son was to condemn the Father.

Again, you ask is there a time when we will be judged for all our sins? Yes, of course at the end of this present age, when we are called before the judgement seat on that Great and Terrible day OF THE Lord. The judgement throne on the day of the Lord is mentioned nearly 30 times in the old and new testaments. That is the day that we will be judged for our deeds, both good and bad. If we have any bad deeds, called sin, then we are judged and cast into hell.