Just A Stone's Throw Away

This morning's scripture reading can be found in John chapter 8. We'll be reading verses 1 through 11.

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. John chapter 8, beginning of verse 1.

They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and sat down, and all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to him,

Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law,

Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say? This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground, 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.

And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 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.

Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do

I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more. You may be seated.

Our Father in heaven, we come before you, each of us,

Lord, with our own struggles with sin, and as this woman who was brought before the

Lord with adultery, we could be that woman, Lord, each of us in our sin, and we are all guilty.

So Father, we come before you guilty, in need of forgiveness. So we do confess this, and we do confess, too, that you,

Lord Jesus, are sufficient to even forgive our sins, whatever they are.

So we ask, Father, that you would work in each of us, that you would give us wisdom, understanding, and help us to deal with our sins, to keep short accounts with them, as it were, to confess them before you, to forsake them, that when we come together, we would come in sincerity of heart, that we would come as people of integrity who want to worship you.

Remove from us hypocrisy, Lord, and that lingering sin that easily besets us.

Help us, Lord, to walk before you humbly, honestly, sincerely, that when we talk with each other, we might encourage and lift each other up and build each other up in the most holy faith, and that you would be honored in our conversation, that we would have no compartmentalized aspects of our life before you, that we would live in such a way as to give you honor and praise in our private thoughts, in our private deeds, in our public actions.

Father, we ask for this because we know this is what would honor and glorify you. Work in us,

Lord, to be men and women of integrity. Father, we ask for your blessing upon the preaching of your word, that your word would go forth with power this morning, that Henry would be unctioned by the

Spirit of God to declare the truth that is in it, and help us, Lord, to receive it.

Help us, Lord, to grow by it. Help us to be better fit as servants of yours, and we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

Brother, please come up and bring us that word the Lord has put on your heart for us this morning. Well, it's good to be with you again.

It's funny being and praying with the guys in there, and John brought up the title that I gave to Josh on Thursday, just as stones thrown away, and then

Friday morning I went into emergency because I had a kidney stone, and I'm in the hospital, and I don't know where it's gonna go, and I'm thinking

I might have to call Josh and have him get somebody else because I don't know how long this is gonna be, but thankfully

I was able to pass the stone that day, and I was back to normal. Like nothing ever happened, but something did happen,

I guarantee it. So we were a stone thrown away from me not being here. So anyway, as I was reading this passage,

I couldn't help but think how much it was like a modern soap opera with all the drama and the ironic twists and turns.

The Pharisees dragged this woman before a crowd to the feet of Jesus with what they thought was a foolproof plan.

This truly was a blessing in disguise for this woman. They meant evil for her, but God meant it for good.

At the center of the story is what happens when a sinner is placed at the feet of the

Lord Jesus. It's a place where every person must go in order to experience the promise of eternal life, and that's really the theme that runs through this story.

So I kind of broke it down into three parts. One is the trap, secondly the response, and three the rescue.

Well the Pharisees had a planned outcome, but Jesus ends up exposing them for who they were, hypocrites.

And hypocrisy basically is a covering up. It's the living of a lie.

It's the wearing of a mask, and that's what it is. It's a mask. It's what actors used.

And it describes people whose public appearance is one thing, but whose inner life, whose real desires and motives are another.

It tells a different story. This is what Julian Lennon said about his father

John Lennon. And if you remember John Lennon, the Beatle, you're really old. When Julian was interviewed, he said, my father was a hypocrite.

He said, dad could talk about peace and love to the world, but he could never show it to the people who were meant to mean the most to him, his wife and his son.

So this morning I want to look at this story that exposes the cancer of religious hypocrisy, and then deals with this woman who ends up receiving something totally unexpected.

Hypocrisy is something we, we're not immune from it. You know, there's a story of an elderly woman, and this young man tells her, well,

I'll never step foot in a church because they're all full of hypocrites. And the woman looked at him and said, well darling, there's always room for one more.

And that's the truth. Well, some background first as we come to this passage.

In John 7 37, Jesus is at this large gathering where there's a harvest festival.

It's taking place and all these people are gathered there. And Jesus stands up and he says, if any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

If you're thirsty for spiritual realities, then come to me. Come to me. And then in the next chapter, verse 2, these same people, these same thirsty people, get up early to go hear

Jesus at the temple. And I thought, as a side note, that's kind of convicting how many of us would come here at six o 'clock in the morning.

So he takes his first available moment to teach these spiritually hungry people who want to listen to these words that will feed their souls, that will in a sense give them headlights to guide them through the the fog.

And during this teaching session, it's abruptly interrupted by the

Pharisees. Verse 3, where it says, and the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery when they had set her in the midst.

Right? And so, and what you have to do with this story is kind of picture yourself there so that you can kind of enter into it.

And I have to ask you, what do you think this woman was feeling, was experiencing?

She's caught in the act of adultery. She's dragged naked by force into a public gathering place.

She's separated from anyone, including the man she was with. Supposedly he wasn't around.

This has to be the worst moment of her life. And I couldn't think of anything worse.

She's probably thinking, this is just a bad dream. I'll close my eyes and count to ten, and I'll wake up from this nightmare.

It's the ultimate humiliation. She's being pushed and shoved along by these religious leaders.

It's a theocracy, and they're the senior people in the country. But secondly, what are the teachers of the law thinking?

What about them? We see that they're thinking in verse 3, as they march into the center of the crowd with scorn in their eyes, and they throw this emotionally devastated woman into the middle.

There's a crowd there. It's embarrassing for her. They made her stand before the group, and they say to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery.

The law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. Now what do you say? So they're thinking, these religious authorities, they're saying, okay, you call yourself a rabbi, and you've stood up at our great feast and said, come to me and drink, and now you've come to teach at the center of our temple courts right here.

You say you're going to feed spiritually hungry people. Well, here's a difficult legal and moral question for you to solve, you arrogant, uneducated,

Galilean peasant. Here's one for you to solve. Here's this adulteress.

Now sort this out. And so we have our first heading, the trap.

Verse 6, they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him, and that's what they're thinking.

That's what's going on, and it's a very brilliant trap, very clever, because whatever

Jesus says, they're going to get him, and they're going to nail him. So they thought.

They must have been thrilled when they thought of it, giving each other high -fives and so on. You see, if Jesus upholds the law of Moses in Deuteronomy 22, you would have to say, okay, stone her.

Go ahead, kill her. But that would put him in trouble with the Romans. They're occupying the country, and what would they do?

He had no authority to order a stoning, nor did the Jews. And that's why stonings happened outside the city limits, far away from the

Romans. It was done secretly if they did it. And that's why the

Jews had to take Jesus to the Roman governor Pilate to get him condemned to death. They couldn't do it themselves.

They didn't have the authority to say stone her. And if Jesus did say stone her, they would be too happy to run to the

Romans and to get him killed. Because, you know, the

Romans would look at Jesus as a troublemaker, and they had a way of taking care of troublemakers.

But on the other hand, if Jesus said, with this woman trembling in front of him, if he said, let her go, just let her go, then that would confirm the case they were building about Jesus, that he's a lawbreaker.

He's come to destroy the traditions of Mosaic law. So if he said let her go, what about Mosaic law?

He couldn't possibly be the Messiah, because he's violating the instructions

God gave to Moses. And what would happen is a Jewish patriotic lynch mob would probably risk their lives and stone him.

The lynch mob would take care of him if he didn't enforce the law of Moses. So you see it's a brilliant trap.

No matter what he says, they would have a basis for accusing him. They're going to kill him either way.

I mean they must have been thrilled with it. They must have been like this. I mean we're going to get him killed.

We've accomplished it. We've done it. And he has to give an answer, because the poor woman has been thrown in front of him, and she's not going anywhere.

And if we could stop for a moment, these Pharisees don't care about morally cleaning up Jerusalem.

They're hypocrites. They don't really care about the law of Moses, because if that was the case, if they cared, where's the man?

She's been caught in the very act of adultery. Where's the man? The law of Moses hated the idea of partiality, injustice.

It was meant to reflect the character of God, and it was meant to be impartial. You can't favor the man over the woman, or the rich over the poor.

The man and the woman were to be tried together. And if she was caught, they certainly could have brought the man as well.

They apparently let him go. But they didn't care about the law, because they're hypocrites.

Now what do they care about? They cared about trapping Jesus. They don't care about the law.

They had Jesus derangement syndrome, is what I'd call it. And Jesus has been faced with a question.

Either way, we're going to kill him. So that's the trap. Secondly, the response.

And at this point, I have to confess that I find it easy to imagine myself in the nightmare of this woman caught in adultery.

I can imagine my whole world falling apart because of some incredibly sinful, stupid thing

I do. And I could imagine myself doing this, as being as foolish as this woman.

I know I'm capable of that. I can see it in my heart. That's partly why, because I became a

Christian, because I knew my heart was untrustworthy. So I could feel the consequences, and I can feel what it means to be like her.

But I can also empathize with the hard -heartedness and hypocrisy of the

Pharisees. I know what it's like to point a finger in self -righteousness. I can feel the satisfaction when someone gets what they deserve.

That's in my heart too. But when it comes to the mind and heart of Jesus, I don't know what to say.

I don't know how you get inside this man who is God. I mean, what would it be like to never have nurtured grudges or bitterness in your heart?

I can't imagine, because I fight these things all the time. But he didn't. What would it be like to never have gossiped?

What would it be like to never have rejoiced in another's misfortune? What would it be like to never have lusted and taken what isn't yours?

And as we see Jesus, we see him doing amazing things, and it's a million miles from us, unless you're very different from me.

I can't get inside that. I can't wrap my head around who he is. I can only see the

Son of God and be in awe of him. And it should make us want to know him, to get up first thing in the morning to see him and hear him like these thirsty people in verse 2.

Well, the Pharisees are waiting for him to answer, so Jesus bends down and the spotlight is now totally on him, and he starts writing on the ground.

And actually, this is an act of compassion, because now everyone is now looking at him.

I imagine that allowed the shamed woman to collect herself, maybe put on whatever clothes she had correctly, if she had any.

I can't imagine what condition she was in. But now Jesus has taken the focus, and he's not looking at her, nor is he looking at the questioners.

He's just writing on the ground. And with his divine finger, he begins writing in the dirt.

And there's another time in the Bible where a hand starts writing on a wall in the book of Daniel, where it tells us about a king,

King Belshazzar, who despises the Lord. He has a feast, and he takes all the temple cups, using them to toast other gods.

And he mocks the living God. It's kind of like taking your communion cups and mocking, and using them to mock the living

God. And as this king was growing up, he saw the goodness of God in his father's life.

But he forgets all that. He just mocks God at this feast. And suddenly the fingers of a man's hand starts writing on the wall.

And no one can understand it until finally Daniel, who's been kind of put to one side, has been put to pasture.

He's an old man by now, but even though he was a great administrator in his father's government, he interprets the words to Belshazzar.

God has numbered the days of your reign, and brought it to an end. You've been weighed on the scales, and you've been found wanting.

That was a message, and Belshazzar died that very night. That ought to strike fear in us.

So when God writes, people take notice. And the meaning in the Greek for to write is graphe,

I believe. It means to write down a record against somebody. So Jesus is writing something on the ground that looks accusing.

Maybe their partiality, or their hypocrisy, or maybe he's writing the words of the law that are being ignored by these men.

Maybe he's writing their names. Who knows? But you know they're so pleased with themselves, and they're trapped.

What do they do? They go on questioning him. And it's more of a harassment, a badgering.

It's, answer us Jesus. Tell us. What do you think? Come on.

They're not backing down. So in the middle of his writing, he stands up and looks at them, and he says these words that have been ingrained in our

DNA. Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

And he just lets these words hang in the air. And he stoops down again, and he starts writing.

He says no more. And these Pharisees want to kill him, and they're prepared to kill her to kill him.

But what a moment. I mean he's, literally Jesus says this, if you're sinless, and that's what the law of Moses says, then do it.

Stone her. If the law of Moses says stone her, then do it. But make sure you're without sin yourself.

And one commentator put it this way, Jesus sent their minds to their private lives. He says, what's in the basement of your life?

I know you're very respectable and well presented, but what's in the basement that perhaps your wives don't even know about?

What's really going on? I mean who are the adulterers here, can

I ask? And Jesus rips the veil away from the face of hypocrisy.

And he says, actually anyone who acts the moralist should know what they're really like themselves.

Because when you're very, when you understand your own failings, you're likely to be much more compassionate about other people once you've looked within.

So okay, throw a stone. But make sure the one who does it is without sin.

So if you've done nothing wrong, go ahead. Throw it. Be my guest. Kill her.

You gotta imagine what was going through the mind of the woman. And his words just echoed around the crowd who must have been bewildered trying to figure out what's going on.

And you know when you come into the presence of Christ, you're on dangerous ground. He has an all -seeing eye, as it tells us in the

Gospels. And Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking. And you can't be in his presence with hypocrisy in your heart without it being shown up for what it is.

And Jesus has the ability to penetrate the fog that we sometimes surround ourselves, our motives with.

He can cut through that. He exposes our heart, our selfishness. And it's not a comfortable experience meeting

Christ. I remember Peter said, depart from me Lord, I'm a wicked man. I mean just standing in his presence and he can read my mind is kind of humbling.

But isn't it amazing to see this turnaround from verse 6 to verse 8?

Because now Jesus is waiting for their reply. He bends down and he begins writing again.

They're in his trap. He says, I'm waiting for your reply with his silence. And what are they going to do now?

Well, verse 9 tells us that they, one by one, they drifted away. So they melt away, these accusers.

They've come to kill him, but such is the power of what he says. They melt away.

And some commentators think the older ones went away first because of their wisdom, that they were more aware of their sin.

But there's nothing in the Gospels that tell us they were really ashamed. Actually in the next chapter we see them trying to trap

Jesus again. So there was no repentance. I don't think they melted away in shame.

They melted away in angry humiliation. We're going to be back.

How dare you? We're coming back for you. Their hypocrisy had been exposed to the crowd.

That's why they melted away. They've been outmaneuvered and judged. But there's no sign that they turned away from their hypocrisy and sought

Christ's forgiveness. And so they're just angry that Jesus reproached them in this way.

So when we're convicted of how short we fall of God's perfection, and he is perfection as he stands before us, when we look at him it raises a question.

What are we going to do about our wrongdoing? As we have stuff exposed, the danger is we can be like these

Pharisees. We can melt away deeper into hypocrisy, hard -heartedness, selfishness.

It can increase our hostility to Christ, thinking those things aren't true.

Or we can look within and take responsibility for what we see and go to the cross.

See I'm undone. Lord I have no answer for myself, but you do.

So that's the trap. And then there's a response. And I mean thirdly there's the rescue.

If the Pharisees had their hypocrisy exposed, the adulteress, the woman is forgiven.

Both she and the Pharisees were both exposed before the crowd, before the

Lord, but two different reactions. As the last of the accusers melted away,

Jesus now confronts this woman. And I wonder if you can picture this scene.

He says, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

I mean can you imagine the emotional roller coaster she's been on this day?

Now she's guilty. She's a sinner. And Jesus stands up and he looks at her just as he did with the

Pharisees. There's no escape. The fact that she's done wrong is not debated.

She's been caught in the very act of adultery. It's not denied. But nevertheless, despite her wrongdoing, what's amazing is she's been totally exposed, yet she's unable to drag herself away from his presence.

Why didn't she slip away when the Pharisees were melting away?

Why does she remain there standing? I mean she stays glued to the spot until they're all gone.

And she's still standing there with Jesus. He's just judged the leaders of Israel with a sentence.

And she knows she's in the presence of the judge who sees right through her.

And so often with Jesus he then impresses the truth on an individual with a question.

He says, where are they? Has no one condemned you? A few minutes earlier she's been dragged in under the threat of death.

And they've appealed to him to sentence her. And now he says, where are your accusers?

She's still guilty. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees doesn't make her less guilty.

And the only person who has the right to accuse her who is sinless and has a right to throw stones is looking right at her.

Verse seven he says, let he that is without sin cast the first stone. It's ironic. The one person who's there who's sinless is the

Lord Jesus who's without sin. So Jesus is looking at her.

Now what's he going to say? He can pick up a stone. He can judge her. But what does he say?

If you look at verse 11 he says, neither do I condemn you. And can

I say these are just words of monumental freedom.

I mean there's no words to explain what he did.

If you're, if you're honest about the dark rooms in your life, and there's going to be a couple of compartments that no one else knows about, not even your spouse.

And if you're honest about the things you've done or left undone, then can I say these are words of immeasurable hope and freedom, liberation.

This is why he could stand up and say, if you're thirsty come to me. This is the thirst.

These things need to be forgiven. And if we're honest, if we take responsibility for what's within, what's been done, and how we've treated

God, then these are words of incredible comfort. Words of freedom. Guilt is real.

And we feel guilty because we are guilty. We can't just blame it on our parents or our upbringing or whatever.

Yes those things may have had a part to play, but guilt is real. And if you're feeling condemned because of your sin, then it's comforting to hear him say when you go to the cross, and neither do

I condemn you, when we cast ourselves at his feet. So I think the question is, how is this possible?

How can he say this? At the heart of Christ's message is the fact that Jesus put himself between the woman and the punishment she deserves for her sin.

So you can imagine what it costs Jesus to say, neither do I condemn you.

I mean these words just don't come out in a frivolous manner or matter of fact. They're said with a great price.

He sweats blood in the garden of Gethsemane. Father take this cup, but he will drink the cup of God's wrath and anger at our wrongdoing as he dies on the cross.

These words just don't fall off his tongue. They're written in blood, his blood.

He says to this woman, I don't condemn you because on the cross I'll take the condemnation for you.

And yes stones ought to be thrown, but they'll hit me. Spears should be tossed, but one will go in my side.

So dear woman, you're free. You're free. He could forgive her because that's why he came, to pay the penalty for her sins.

And when someone has just saved your life from stoning, I mean he literally saved your life in a physical manner.

And when someone's prepared to die for you so that you can be forgiven, when these things are done it's easy to hear from him these words, go now and leave your life of sin.

Don't you think you can trust him to know what's best for you? I mean if your identity is that he has given you this freedom, he's given you his life, can you not trust him to know what's best for you?

He says leave it. Trust me to know what's best. This sin is toxic.

Leave it. Leave it before it destroys you, destroys those around you.

And on Judgment Day it will take you to hell. Leave it. I died that it could be forgiven.

Trust me to lead you. Well let me close with this.

And can I ask you, who do you most identify with in the story? For some it'll be the teachers of the law, the scribes, the

Pharisees. And part of the reason for that is that you go through life with clenched fists.

You're angry. In one hand you have a rock, in the other hand you have an accusing finger.

And if that's there you'll never be able to sit back and see your own sin, because you're pointed at others, or you're blaming

God for where you're at right now. In fact the

Bible says that's how many people deal with sin. They point at others. I'm not like them.

We even do it. We compare ourselves all the time. I mean they're the ones that have the problem.

And I mean can I say that if that's the case then that you can't get to your own wrongdoing because you're so fixated on what others are doing.

And I'm not saying they haven't done it, but they'll be judged. They have to face

God for that. But if you can't get through that and get to yourself then you may be in a very dangerous place because Christ had to come to die for you as well.

And you're saying, don't need that. Others do. They need to be straightened out. Well they will be straightened out, but what about you?

Others say I identify more with this woman. My life is such a wreck.

I'm beaten down. I'm such a mess. I can't possibly go to this

Jesus. He won't receive me the way I am. And Jesus came to stop you from destroying yourself in this life and in the next.

That's why he came. And if you're overwhelmed with what's in the basement, that's exactly why he came.

Jesus says come to me. Trust me. See how I've forgiven this woman. How I've protected her.

Come to me that you might have life. And that's what we do. That's what we need to do.

Go to Jesus so that you'll have life. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you

Lord that there is no longer any condemnation for us because of the blood of Christ.

We thank you Lord Jesus that you have received us as sons and daughters. And that Lord that one day we'll meet this woman who committed adultery and all kinds of people

Lord that have fallen short in this life, including ourselves. Thank you for your mercy to us this day, in Jesus' name,