Refreshing Stories from the New Testament

John 8:1–11 KJV 1900

1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. 2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. 3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, 4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? 6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. 7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. 8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. 9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. 10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? 11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Introduction

I would like to spend some time dealing with a passage that most modern commentators don’t believe belongs in the Bible.

Many Bible versions agree with this sentiment and will either remove this story, place it in brackets, or put a note at the bottom saying something like “the best manuscripts do not include this account.”

It is a story that has been attested to since 160 AD, just 60 years after the death of the human author of this passage. My purpose is not to lecture on manuscripts, if you’d like to study that out more you’re welcome to do so. It is an interesting study.

But the debate that surround the legitimacy of this account is not dissimilar to the debate that surrounded Jesus. It’s kind of ironic actually…

The modern commentators and religious leaders of Jesus’ day doubted His authenticity too. They did everything they could think to do in order to discredit Him.

They posed what they thought were impossible questions, they laid traps, and they tried to find occasion to accuse Him of a crime.

Every time they tried to expose Jesus as a fraud, they only succeeded in further confirming His genuineness.

In this passage Jesus teaches us a lesson about how we too can demonstrate an authentic faith when tested.

This account takes place during the Feast of Tabernacles.

There are some things you should know about this feast.

It was a week-long celebration to commemorate the Israelites sojourn in the wilderness.

Every Israelite male was obliged to attend, whether his family could make it or not.

During this week, the Israelites would live in booth surrounding the city.

It was a festive time, in fact some commentators say it was the greatest of all Jewish feasts.

For Jesus, this particular feast took place 6 months before his crucifixion.

As this is close to the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, we can all understand the gravity of the coming months.

For 2.5 years, the pharisees had been trying to disrupt Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus is used to their daily tricks and questions which sought in vain to catch Him in a contradiction or compromising statement.

The religious leaders were constantly testing and probing Him for weakness.

There’s a difference between testing someone to see if they’re fake and testing someone to see if they are real.

The difference stems from the underlying assumption.

Testing someone to prove they are real indicates an expectation of genuineness.

Testing someone to prove they are fake indicates and expectation of falsity.

The scribes and pharisees approached Jesus with the assumption that He was false.

This colored all of their interactions with Him.

Today we see another such interaction where the religious leaders sought to expose Jesus as a fraud.

On one of the mornings of the feast, after spending the night on the Mt. of Olives, Jesus entered the Temple and began to teach the people.

Of course, it didn’t take long before there was a crowd of people gathered around Him.

As Jesus sits and teaches, it obvious to everyone that Jesus was like no other teacher they had ever heard.

For many, they had tested Him and found Him to be genuine.

The people ate up Jesus’ words like starving children.

Of course, they were spiritually starving because the people that were supposed to be teaching them, were more concerned with holding onto their power and discrediting Jesus.

As Jesus is in the midst of teaching the crowds, He is interrupted by a noisome disturbance.

The religious leaders push their way through the crowd, trying to get to Jesus.

As people begin to move out of the way, they are shocked to see a woman in some distress being pushed/pulled/dragged by these men.

After thrusting her into the middle, before Jesus, the scribes and pharisees begin to speak.

It is at this point we begin to figure out what is going on.

The religious leaders inform Jesus that this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. (Read verse 4 w/sarcasm)

It was not a rumor.

It was not second-hand information.

She had been caught in the act.

All that was needed for proof in their day was two male witnesses, which they apparently had.

There was no arguing with the factuality of their accusation.

They go on to say that according to the law of Moses she should be stoned.

This is a misinterpretation of the law.

Their are two key passages that deal with how to address the issue of adultery in the law of Moses.

Levi 20:10 = Adultery between two married persons.

Deut 22:23 = Adultery between a betrothed girl and another man.

Only in the case of a betrothed girl was the punishment to be stoning

It had become accepted practice in their time, however, to stone all adulterers.

Who do you think was responsible for that?

If you thought “the pharisees” then you are right.

Now, perhaps you are sitting there and you are thinking, “well maybe they knew she was betrothed, and so they were not misrepresenting the law.”

Ok, perhaps she was betrothed.

They are still not following the law, because in both passages where this is addressed the punishment is to be executed upon the man and woman equally.

You cannot have an adulteress without an adulterer.

Yet, all we see in this passage is a woman accused.

This makes me wonder, where was the man?

Or, better yet, who was the man?

The Pharisees then ask Jesus what He thinks they should do.

Will He agree with their knowingly twisted interpretation of the law?

Will He allow a convicted adulteress to go free?

Either way, they win.

Jesus does not respond to the men and their accusations, instead He leans down and starts writing in the dirt.

The Bible says He acted as if He didn’t hear them.

This phrase is italicized, which normally means it was supplied by the translators.

In this case, however, this phrase is actually included in 6 different collections of manuscripts.

Jesus knew full well that they were not interested in justice, they were only interested in getting rid of Him.

The pharisees must have taken Jesus’ silence as a sign that they had finally been successful.

Verse 7 indicates that their questioning of Him was continual.

The maturity of these men is pathetic.

They are literally trying to overload Jesus by repeating the same question over and over.

Finally, Jesus stands up and responds to these religious men.

Jesus’ well-known response was “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

This is interesting because it seems that Jesus is saying only a sinless man can execute judgment on this woman.

There is a slight problem with this though.

Adultery was a sin, and God had prescribed a punishment for it.

But, if only a sinless man could execute that judgment, than no one could.

What Jesus more likely meant was that the man who was innocent of this sin should cast the first stone.

This is a much more pointed and convicting statement.

I believe it is backed up by the statement in verse 9 which says that each was convicted by his conscience after hearing this.

Is it possible that men of such high standing in the Jewish religious community were guilty of this same sin?

Well, yes. In fact, it is probable that they were guilty of this sin as well.

To understand this, we must consider the state of Judaism at this time.

The people were heavily influenced by the moral relativity of Greek Hellenism.

Adultery was rampant throughout their society.

A common saying at that time was that “if all the adulterers were stoned, they would run out of stones before they ran out of adulterers.”

This was especially true during the week of the Feast of Tabernacles.

All of Israel converging on Jerusalem for a whole week.

Everyone living in tents.

A large percentage of attendees; unaccompanied men.

This week turned Jerusalem into a petri dish of immorality.

So, the answer is “no” it is not unreasonable to believe that even these pharisees were guilty of the exact same sin that they were ready to stone this woman for.

Having made His statement on the matter, Jesus stoops back down and goes back to writing in the dirt.

This is the second time He’s done this, and you might be wondering what it was He was writing.

Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us.

If it was important for us to know what Jesus wrote on the ground, then it would have been recorded.

As much as I would love to be able to reveal some dramatic theory, I can not.

What we do know, is that as Jesus stoops back down to writing in the dirt, the woman’s accusers begin to disperse.

Starting with the oldest among them, these men begin to abandon their cause.

The reason is clear, conviction.

These men had to make a choice.

Pretend that they had not been guilty of such sin, with a crowd of witnesses who knew better.

Or, retreat from the situation in agreement with Jesus’ words.

In their attempt to expose Jesus as a fraud, He had turned the tables on them.

In the end, they were the ones who went away that day looking foolish, not Jesus.

They had couched their hatred for Jesus behind the veil of hatred for sin.

They thought they had the high ground, but Jesus revealed their hypocrisy.

They weren’t out for justice, they were out for Him, and this woman was simply a pawn.

If anyone had the right to judge her sin it was Jesus, but look at how He responds to her.

He offers mercy to the guilty. V10

Of course after having their own sin pointed out, her accusers had gone.

By the law, she could not then be punished.

But Jesus is the judge, couldn’t HE have pronounced judgment on her?

Yes, but what did Jesus tell Nicodemus just a few chapters earlier?

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

Jesus’ purpose was to die for sinners not see them put to death.

But, He also isn’t interested in enabling the continuance of sin.

Which is why He also consistently encourages the guilty to repent of their sin.

This is exactly how He ends His encounter with this woman.

Did she change? We don’t know.

What we do know is that Jesus' careful response to sin foiled the Pharisees’ attempt to discredit Him in the eyes of the people.

Instead He gave them even greater cause to believe in Him than before.

Jesus backed up His message of mercy and forgiveness with acts of mercy and forgiveness.

I would like to challenge you with this account of Jesus’ life to have a Christ-like response to sin.

Like Jesus, there is a crowd of people watching us, to see if we will live out the message we claim to believe.

One of the ways that you and I can prove the genuineness of our faith is by responding in a Christ-like manner to the sin of others.

How you respond to sin of will either validate or discredit our faith.

We claim a message of love, mercy, and forgiveness.

The world is watching to see if our lives will back that up.

There are two opposites presented in our passage.

The Pharisees, who responded with harshness to the woman, while they harbored sin in their own lives.

Jesus, who responded with mercy yet without compromise.

So let me ask you, how do you respond to sin? Do respond with harshness and judgment as the pharisees did?

Honestly, the harshness of our response to sin often depends on whose sin it is.

If it’s someone we know and love, well then, no of course not.

If it’s someone we already think poorly of, then it’s like we feel justified in judging them harshly.

After all, we suspected something wasn’t right there anyways.

Let me tell you, this is not only hypocritical and unjust, it’s un-Christlike.

Secondly, do we fain great offense to the sin of another while we harbor sin in our own lives?

Worrying about the speck in another’s eye while we have a beam in our own, is a common trap to fall into.

Recognizing the fact that we too struggle with certain vices in our own life really ought to cause us to have more mercy toward others, not less.

Now you may be wondering if this means that we should just gloss over sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist.

That is not what I am saying.

Because that’s not what Jesus demonstrated for us.

Jesus showed great mercy to this woman, but He did not condone her sin.

How can we show mercy to others without condoning sin?

Take their need to the Lord instead of taking the news to your friends.

See how you can help protect them from temptation instead of judging them for giving in to temptation.

Take an interest in the person instead of an interest in their sin.

Being loving and merciful will get you a lot farther than throwing rocks, and it proves to them and those that are watching that your faith is genuine.

When a person knows that you genuinely care for them, they will be more apt to listen to what you have to say.

This will open the doors for you to encourage them to repent of/ turn from their sins and do right.

What would happen to our churches if we acted more like Jesus and less like the Pharisees?

We’d have fewer people mad at each other inside these walls.

We’d have a better testimony with the people outside these walls.

How we respond to the problem of sin determines so much.

If you’ve never asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, then that is the greatest thing you need this morning.

If you’ve been acting more like the pharisees than Jesus concerning the sins of others then you are harming the cause of Christ, and you need to get that right.

We should never approve of sin (no matter where it’s found) but we should always love the sinner.

How genuine is your faith?

When given the opportunity to show mercy and love, how often do you respond like Jesus and how often do you respond like the pharisees?