MAR 26 2023 | The Gospel of John: Throwing Stones

Sea Change Church · MAR 26 2023 | The Gospel of John: Throwing Stones
John 8:1-11
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts Where all the people gathered around him And he sat down to teach them The teachers of the law and the Pharisees Brought in a woman caught in adultery They made her stand before the group And said to Jesus Teacher, this woman was caught In the act of adultery In the law Moses commanded us to stone such woman Now what do you say?

They were using this question as a trap In order to have a basis for accusing him But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground With his finger When they kept on questioning him He straightened up and said to them If any one of you is without sin Let him be the first to throw a stone at her Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground At this those who heard began to go away One at a time The older ones first Until only Jesus was left With the woman still standing there Jesus straightened up and asked her Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared Go now and leave your life of sin The word of the Lord Controversy Controversy A dividing line between you and me Gossip between guilds, pettiness, and rivalry Controversy Can it ever be beneficial? Certainly the son of God was controversial He was a vagabond king, a rebel that overturned the temple With some cord and a string He disrupted the social norm, yet it was also him that calmed the storm But Jesus, not content in controversy, contended for mercy While abuse and neglect were recurring My sin he was transferring My punishment he was enduring So yes, for the sake of salvation Maybe the pot needed stirring But all I can ask is this Do not simply dismiss You'd be remiss to not look closely At the king of controversy All right, well again, my name's Harry And I have the honor of getting to preach the word today And a couple things It is Youth and Family Sunday So I gotta give some shout outs One to Antonio for reading the scripture today It's awesome having him And to my family who's made it My in-laws, my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and grandmother Are all here And my wife's not even here She is on vacation with her girlfriends down in Palm Springs And they still came for me And then my little brother is here And my best friend Chase from high school So I just gotta give some shout outs Anyway, all right So a couple things One also, I'll shout out my wife And my wife Because that little spoken word poem we just did Is a poem I'd written for the kids For a sermon series we were doing And my wife made that video Which is pretty cool And the reason we decided to stick with it for today Is that this story is steeped in controversy There's controversy all throughout the contents of this story And there's even some controversy surrounding this story itself And what I mean by that is If you were to open up your Bibles to John chapter 8 Where most of you should find it there It'll give you this little annotation Which it says that this story is not included in the earliest Greek manuscripts And so that's important for us I just want to address that Because I think I'd be doing you a disservice if we just ignored that What's our Bible telling us there?

And so what it's essentially saying is Our earliest manuscripts that we have that give us our Bibles Come from the second century They're second century copies of the original text written by the Apostles Which is really amazing by the way It's an incredible historical feat That we have several second century copies of original eyewitness texts That's very incredible This story however It does not show up until about the fourth century And so the Bible is telling you right away Our Bibles are honest Like they're never trying to trick you, right?

Even though this is a beloved story They could just ignore that They don't There's a ton of scrutiny That goes into the formation of our Bibles And so it tells us Hey, this story does show up later Circulated later And so we kind of have to make a decision about Okay, well what do we do with this story? And we could get in the weeds of all the debate around it But what we're going to do instead Because that would take a lot of time What we're going to do is We're going to do what the church has done with it Throughout all of history And that's embrace it as a historical moment in the life of Jesus And there's tons of different reasons and textual clues That tell us that this is a historical moment And we could talk about that That would be a longer time than we have today But I believe Pastor Jim is available day and night To talk through church history I think you could contact him at 858-942 Just kidding, just kidding But so instead we're going to embrace it, right?

And not talk too much about that And for me, what makes me so confident in this text Is it's at the very heart of the gospel This text gets at the very heart of what the gospel is And so I'm excited to jump in Let's go ahead and let's just read verses 1-6 again together So it says But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts Where all the people gathered around him And he sat down to teach them The teachers of the law and the Pharisees Brought in a woman caught in adultery They made her stand before the group And said to Jesus Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman Now what do you say?

They were using this question as a trap In order to have a basis for accusing him So let's just pause there I think one thing that's going to immediately jump out Right away and also throughout this story Is the contrast between the Pharisees And between Jesus, right? That jumps off the page There's this clear contrast between legalistic religion And the way of Christ, right?

And I think the Pharisees in this story Should act as a cautionary tale to us Because after all they are the religious people of the day And I don't know if you know this But you are in a church And you're in very old pews And by just those things alone Many might consider you religious, right? And so we should at least learn Learn from the mistakes of these religious leaders Because I believe that human beings Have a tendency towards the Pharisee We have a tendency to want an eagerness To want to use others for our own gain An eagerness to want to cast judgment An eagerness to assume that we're in the right And things like mercy and things like forgiveness Don't always come natural to us And so we need to learn from examples Like Christ in this moment And his way of mercy and forgiveness And it's not about going soft on sin, right?

Christ doesn't go soft on sin here We'll talk about that later But it is about, as we sang And Chris sang so beautifully earlier Mercy triumphs over judgment That's what it's about That's what he shows And so I put in your notes That the path carved out for the Christian Is one of grace By this path we are rescued And thus by this path we should walk If we find ourselves full of judgment And condemnation We should check the ground beneath our feet For we have likely strayed to rocky terrain So in this story, right?

You get this woman And she, before, actually Before we even bring her in Let's talk about Jesus Jesus is, he's at the temple He's about to teach, right? He sits down to teach He says all the people gather around him Which means Jesus has now gathered A large crowd that he's teaching And in the midst of that The Pharisees drag this woman Who had been caught in the act of adultery In the Greek, the word says In the very act In the midst She'd been caught in the act And they drag her before the crowd And I think if you're ever going to get caught for something Like in the act is probably the worst time, right?

Like that's not a great There's no plausible deniability There's no excuse There's no chance to like confess later Like you are caught red handed in the act It's not a worse scenario And especially with something like adultery I remember when I was in high school I was a freshman in high school Me and my buddy Chase, who's here today Where are you Chase?

I see you Chase was a really good influence on me Anything I ever did wrong It's his fault And so we decided one day That we're going to ditch school Because who needs school, right? And so we were at school And just kidding, any children listening We're at school I am the youth pastor We're at school And we decided one day during lunch Like we're going to leave during lunch It wasn't that rebellious Because we were going to come back for our classes We just didn't want to be there during lunch We went to his house Because we're like we're going to eat some food at his house, right?

Makes sense And so we leave And we walk to his house to eat lunch And then we start walking back for our classes Well you're not really allowed to do that And one day this La Jolla High security guard I think his name was Mickey at the time He rolls up in his golf cart And he spots us Because we're easy to spot, right? We're like five, five And our backpacks are the size of our bodies And covered in acne It's like you belong in there And so they take us And they just He brings us to the principal's office And we are caught red handed, right?

There's no plausible deniability No excuses And so we're just at the mercy of the authorities at this point We're just like we got no excuse, right? So they go and they literally I'm kidding you not They give me a full pat down They're patting me down Making sure I'm not like I don't know They search through my backpack They're just They want to make sure I wasn't doing drugs on the bike path Is really what they're looking for In reality Like we were eating Pop Tarts And drinking Capri Sun Like wouldn't Just pubescent nerds Like nothing Not doing anything Like drugs But anyway And so they do this full pat down Search for my bags They confiscate our ID And we have to wait to hear like what our punishment's gonna be And eventually we actually I don't know what happened to you actually I don't remember I got shown grace because I was on the wrestling team And the vice principal of the school was a wrestling coach And so one day in the hallway He just saw me and he passed by Didn't look me in the eye at all Just handed me my ID and like kept walking And I was like that's amazing That's merciful For now though in this story This woman caught red handed She's at the full mercy of these authorities There's nothing she can do There's nothing she can deny She's fully at the mercy of these authorities But we should notice right away There's something wrong in this story There's something wrong if these people care about the law so much Because something's missing, right?

Takes two to tango And the last time I checked And so where's the man, right? Where's the guy? Who also was committing adultery If they care about the law so much In the law in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 10 It says both the man and the woman If they're guilty of adultery Both should be punished Not just the woman So where's the man in this scenario? And a lot of people think Some people just blame it on just a patriarchal system But I think most scholars and teachers that I read Most of them think they set this woman up So that they could set Jesus up So they set this woman up Maybe she had some sort of reputation Where they knew they could set her up And so they set her up at the exact right time And then at the exact right time they walk in on her And that happened to be at the exact right time Where Jesus had gathered a crowd And was teaching at the temple All the timing lined up So they could bring this woman Into this crowd With all these eyewitnesses And catch Jesus in a trap That's the hope And so we clear here That as I put in your notes The pharisaical concern Does not have to do with God's law Nor with this woman But it's all about legal entrapment They're trying to trap Jesus in a legal trap And what I mean by that is The Jewish people at this time They lived under Roman law Under Roman oppression, right?

And the Romans would allow the Jewish people To practice their religion They were allowed to practice their religion As long as they operated within Roman law And now under Roman law There are certain things you can't do That only Rome can do One of those things is capital punishment It's the death penalty You simply cannot just put people to death anymore The Jews lost that privilege under Rome It would have been illegal, alright?

And so part of the trap is to say Jesus, the law of Moses Says we stone a woman caught in adultery What do you say? And if Jesus says Look, I'm a rabbi I love the law of God Of course We have to stand with justice And we should stone this woman Well then They can go to the To the nearby Roman precinct And they can go and accuse Jesus They have the basis for accusation They can say This man is a breaking Roman law He's advocating for the death penalty He needs to be taken care of Or On the other hand If Jesus says Look, I know what the law of Moses says But We should show mercy on her We can't stone her at this time Well then The Jews can go to the Sanhedrin Which is like the high Jewish council And essentially say That Jesus claims to be a rabbi And a teacher And he's gathered this following And yet He doesn't even stand with the law of Moses Hence the trap Right?

That's been set for him And so what's Jesus going to do? How is he going to respond? Let's keep reading in our story So let's pick up again at verse 6 So it says They were using this question as a trap In order to have a basis for accusing him But Jesus bent down and started to write On the ground with his finger When they kept on questioning him He straightened up and said to them If any of you is without sin Let him be the first to throw a stone at her Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground So Jesus I love this In this high pressure social situation Hot button issue Told to pick a side What are you going to do?

What law are you going to break? Roman law Jewish law There's a whole crowd here waiting for his response There's a woman waiting her impending death And Jesus in the midst of that He bends on the ground And just starts writing with his finger And it's such an odd scene And it's so odd They almost ignore it They just continue it says To pressure him As he's on the ground As he's on the ground As they continue to ask him What side are you going to choose?

What are you going to do? What decision will you make? And finally he stands He offers his decree And he goes back to writing in the dirt And the question throughout church history That everybody wants to know Is what was he writing? Today I'm going to tell you You're laughing because you know I'm not I have no idea That's what I'm telling you We don't know what he's writing But I'm going to tell you this I don't believe it's all about Or even about at all What he's writing It's about what he wrote with It's not about what he wrote It's about what he wrote with What I mean by that is If you remember Jesus is being questioned On a matter of the Jewish law Of the law of Moses And it was a law so central To the law of Moses That it finds itself In the Ten Commandments In the Ten Commandments It says clearly Do not commit adultery Well riddle me this What did God use To write the Ten Commandments with?

His big old God Palangie right? Yes his finger right? I heard someone say Yeah he wrote it with his finger With his finger In fact twice In the Old Testament It tells us Twice that God wrote With his finger Do not commit adultery And twice in our story today Jesus bends down on the ground And he writes with his finger And the new linguistic And exegetical key To the Greek New Testament Which is very academic sounding So you should believe it Says this Just kidding It says writing with the finger The finger was symbolic Of divine legislation See what I think is happening here In the most subtle way Is that Jesus is being questioned On matters of the law Roman law Jewish law And he's supposed to be trapped In matters of the law And all the while As he's getting trapped In matters of the law So subtly Jesus lets everyone know I cannot be trapped In matters of the law Because I'm the law maker I can't be trapped In matters of authority Because I am the authority You cannot trap me In the law of Moses I am the law of Moses As he says later in the text It's all about me I cannot be trapped And then he proves it He stands up And so masterfully He diminishes They're trapped!

He stands up He picks a side He stands with the law of God To some degree Right? He doesn't say Well it's not really sin He doesn't make any excuses For her He says okay But He who is without sin Only the righteous Can deliver The execution And then we know The rest of the story Everyone else Starts to fade away And he's left alone With this woman And let's go to that scene Where they're alone together Verse Let's pick up at verse 9 Verse 9 Verse 9 says At this Those who heard Began to go away One at a time The older ones first Until only Jesus Was left with the woman Still standing there Jesus straightened up And asked her Where are they?

Has no one condemned you? No one sir Then neither do I condemn you Jesus declared Go now And leave your life Of sin First thing I just want us to notice Is this is the first time In this entire narrative That anyone has spoken To this woman This whole story She's been spoken about She's been used For personal gain She's been objectified Spoken about But now For the first time Jesus looks to her And he's the only one To speak to her In fact it says He straightens up Which I love in this story Because he spent Almost this entire narrative Bent over He spent Remember when the whole crowd Gathered what was he doing?

He was sitting When the Pharisees Come to question him He stoops to the ground Stands up for a second Stoops back to the ground Now it's just the two of them And he straightens up And he looks at her And he speaks to her And he restores her humanity And her agency By telling her to go And leave her life of sin He restores her He treats her He treats her Like a human being And he says Where are your accusers?

Where'd everybody go? Has no one condemned you? Well then neither do I condemn you But why doesn't Jesus condemn her? Because he said Only the righteous He who is without sin He can cast the first stone, right? So why not Jesus condemn her? Because Jesus could condemn her He is without sin It might be a slow stoning With like one person But he could do it, right?

It would be him He is the righteous Why doesn't he condemn her? Because his purpose Is not one of condemnation, is it? He's come, as he says To seek and save the lost His purpose is one of rescue His purpose is not to condemn her For her sin But it's to take her sin On himself And go and die in her place In a similar way, by the way In front of a crowd Likely naked Thrown up Shamed And killed That's his purpose And so right now He sees this woman Who's been dragged In front of this crowd Likely barely clothed Shamed for her actions About to bear the full weight Of her sin And Jesus sees her And he must think of the cross And what he's supposed to do No, no, no, wait That's my job That's what I've come here for You, beloved You get to go You get the opportunity To go And leave your life of sin Go leave it behind you I'll do this part This is what I came to do And so he shows her mercy Because it's why he's there Which is what I put in your notes I put the plot twist of the gospel Is that like this woman My sins were put on public display And they were punished Yet it was not I that was displayed Nor I that bore the punishment But the perfect Christ in my place on a tree And because Jesus dies in my place And he bears the fullness of my sin And the fullness of my punishment To the point where he actually says on the cross It is finished It is done It is done And when he says it is finished That means he can now look at you and me And say I do not condemn you Why?

There's nothing left to condemn He can look at you and me and say Where are your accusers? There are none Why? There's nothing left to accuse It is finished It is paid for It is done He goes to the cross And he finishes it And this is the only reason, by the way That any of us get to share in eternal life That any of us get to step into newness of life It is not because of my morality Or any of the good things that I have done Or any way I could possibly earn it It is because Jesus looks at me and says I do not condemn you I already paid your price That is it, right?

And that is the gospel That is our hope That is why we gather But we can't stop there either Right? Because Jesus doesn't stop there There is a call to action next We can't stop it I do not condemn you Because then he calls her to what? To go and leave her life of sin behind He calls her not just to salvation But he calls her to sanctification He calls her into deepening in her walk with him Calls her to become more and more like him Calls all of us, not just to salvation But to become more like Jesus To leave sin behind And I want us to notice that he doesn't say Go and grow in self-control Or go and grow in self-discipline He says leave it behind Leave it behind Flee from it Run from it Leave it behind Turn and change a whole new direction And so what happens then When this woman One day just like you and I She probably leaves this moment I imagine With great zeal and excitement Right?

That wow, there is a new path And a new direction And a new motivation To leave this life of sin behind But what happens when two weeks go by? What happens when a month goes by? Or six months go by? And she finds that she still struggles with sin Well I love what John says in 1 John 2, 1-2 He says this My little children I'm writing these things to you So that you may not sin But if anyone does sin We have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous He's the propitiation for our sins And not for ours only But also for the sins of the whole world So what happens when we're walking And we're learning And we're learning to live in newness of life And we still fumble We still stumble We still struggle Is Jesus continues It says to operate as our advocate He continues to look at us and says I do not condemn you Go and leave your life of sin And then we struggle And have issues And then he continues to say I do not condemn you I already paid for it It's done He continues to operate as our advocate And man When Jesus is your advocate The story shows us That things get better And that's not a prosperity gospel message That's the truth And it doesn't mean you're gonna get rich Or anything like that It doesn't mean struggle and suffering goes away But I can tell you this Things get better When the Lord is on your side They do Things get better And in fact We see that in this story Look at the change in this woman's life There's immediate change Right?

She's gone from We don't know a ton about her life We do know she just committed adultery And if she was set up That means she had such a promiscuous reputation That she had the ability to be set up By these religious leaders That even they knew who she was And then she was dragged And her life has led to this moment Where she could potentially die At the hands of a crowd And religious leaders Like things aren't going great Are they?

They're not But one encounter with Jesus And look how things get better All of a sudden Stones are dropped All of a sudden Crowd and accusers dispersed All of a sudden Humanity and agency restored And a call to action Of go and leave it behind Things get better When I was I got the opportunity Recently to go to Africa As many of you know With a graceful warrior project And again I just want to say Like a massive thank you To everyone who prayed for me And everyone who donated To help make that trip happen It was so impactful for me And I got to go and serve On the self-defense team For these girls There's 17 beautiful girls That were in this safe house That was built And all of these girls All of them Rescued out of rape Sexual abuse And female genital mutilation And so we're working With these girls Caring for these girls They're caring for us As well And we had this awesome day Where we got to all go to church Together on a Sunday And it's an ordeal To go to church Because you're in the middle Of kind of nowhere And so you all You get a big bus And you all pile into Church together And you start riding Riding along to church And I've just been Consistently amazed By their beauty and joy But I got a quick Video clip of it That we'll show You're so awesome I love it That what the words That they're singing Translate to Is things are already better When the Lord is on my side Things are already better When the Lord is on my side These are young girls Who've been raped And abused And yet they sing joyfully Things are already better When the Lord is on my side They know that And there's no youth pastor On the bus like me Going like sing children It's time That's not They just are doing this Out of joy They're just excited to sing They're singing on their way To sing at the church Right Some of us have a problem Like singing in the pews Just like when we're at church They're pre-gaming for this thing They're singing on the bus To come and sing Because why Because that's their reality Because things are already better When the Lord is on my side That's how they're living Because it's true It's true And so if you're here And man you just are like I need things to get a little better Or if you wrestle with questions and doubts I just want you to take stock of your life Like this woman How's it going?

And if you're following Jesus Or struggling to follow Jesus Man when you're following Jesus Are things getting a little better? Sometimes we can get so lost In the questions The questions and the doubts And the issues But if you just take stock of your life Things get better When I'm walking with him And so if you need things to get a little bit better I want to encourage you to turn to Jesus If you need a fresh start Like this woman got a fresh start I want to encourage you to turn to Jesus He's eager to forgive He's eager to show you mercy And he's not going to leave you unchanged He might ask some things of you He might ask that you leave some things behind But I can tell you this Things are better When he's on your side Amen?

Amen Let's stand and we're going to pray We're going to bless you today God we just thank you for your faithfulness We know Lord You've shown You've proven That things get better When you're on our side We thank you That you operate as our advocate Even in the midst of our shortcoming You operate as our advocate As our defender And so God we turn to you And if we need to leave something behind today God I pray you'd help us just leave it behind Whatever it is If we need to leave something behind Lord I pray we leave it We turn to you And we grow in love and in likeness with you I bless this congregation In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit We love you guys We'll see you next week