Caught in the Act! Sunday, August 17, 2014

Transcription

1 Caught in the Act! Sunday, August 17, 2014 Intro: It is great to be back after a couple of weeks of vacation and I wanted to thank our leadership team and Pastor Kristy for giving excellent leadership to the Church and to our Church services. And I would also like to formally congratulate our Children s Ministry leadership team who once again, did a tremendous job on this year s edition of VBS. As the sun begins to set on our precious summer, I have been very busy praying and reading the Word and getting a sense of direction for our pulpit ministry for the next year and I am feeling very clear about things. We will largely be in the Book of Acts and there are a few themes there that we will zero in upon. But as for today, last Sunday morning was one of those times when the Lord seemed to say, This is what you are going to preach next Sunday and so I am going with that Holy Spirit impulse trusting that God has something important for a number of folks here today. Proposition: There are people here today who need grace, plain and simple. You have really messed up and are under the condemnation of the devil and perhaps of some Christians, too, and I want you to be encouraged today. Text: John 8:1-11 As we begin today s message, we get a peak into the life of Jesus in a way that perhaps many of us have never considered. As He ministered, He lived a pretty uncluttered life. Following a time of some serious debate in Chapter 7, or conflict rather, those involved in the debate went to their own homes, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. I want you to consider that Jesus spent many cool nights on the mountain with perhaps just a blanket; the Son of Man often had no where to place His head. And now he arises, if He did sleep much, and is off to the temple and why not, it was His Father s house and it was His house! All the people came to Him, and He sat down and taught them. (John 8:2) We are not wholly sure what the format looked like, but I suspect there were other Scribes teaching as well and perhaps there were small groups or learning communities taking place and all at the same time. I. The connivers There is a word that past generations might have used a little more than we do and that word is conniver! It simply means a sneaky and deceptive person or group of people when we are talking about the plural. The connivers in question were in fact the Scribes who would have often taught in the very place where Jesus was teaching and the Pharisees who you know a great deal about. They were often the recipients of the holy ire of Jesus!

2 They brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. Let s try and envision the scene. A group of men in ecclesiastical garb are yanking and pulling on the arms of a completely humiliated woman that they have caught in the midst of sexual sin and they have the audacity to interrupt Jesus as He teaches the Word. Do you know what connivers do? They connive! Let s have a look at this conniving. II. Their conniving For those of us who have been around a long time, we know it takes all kinds. Connivers do connive! They sit around and craft plans in darkness and we all know what kind of things take place in darkness. This is in fact a trap for Jesus. They obviously have missed the point that Jesus knew all things, but they decided to recap things for Him, anyhow. This woman has been caught in the act of adultery. As if Jesus didn t know. These connivers are trying to take Jesus to school on the Law of Moses! Let s revisit the theology of this thing the Scribes and Pharisees had uncovered. We all know adultery is bad! (Right?) If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10) And, If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her 14 and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity, 15 then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. 16 And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man to marry, and he hates her; 17 and behold, he has accused her of misconduct, saying, I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity. And yet this is the evidence of my daughter s virginity. And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city. 18 Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him, 19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days. 20 But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, 21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 22 If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 23 If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 22:13-24) So, now armed with this information, here is the essence of their conniving, their trap, and Jesus dilemma!

3 1. If Jesus sides with the woman, He undermines Jewish Law Jesus demonstrations of compassion would have been a stark contrast to the spirit and attitudes of the Scribes and Pharisees and He was popular for it. Now if Jesus chooses to side with the girl, the connivers can claim that He does not keep the Law. If He chooses to uphold their interpretation of the Law, He appears to be just like them and, 2. If Jesus acknowledged the requirements of the Law, the necessity of the woman s being put to death, He would become an enemy of the State. But there is no question; they have a legal case against this woman! III. Connivers are no problem for Jesus Jesus now stoops or bows down and begins to write with His finger on the ground. A lot of things have been written about this stooping, so let s have a go at some of the things people have been saying over the years. 1. The reason of time and compassion Many have suggested that Jesus simply needed some time to process what He was dealing with, to re-gather His emotions. After all, we can infer what He must have been feeling. He loved people and He didn t like Pharisaicalism and hypocrisy very much. 2. The reason of His hatred of sin As He stooped, no doubt there were overwhelming feelings of compassion for the woman, a wonder that they hadn t brought the fella that was involved, but more importantly the indignation that these religious folks had missed love and were missing taking a good look at their own sin. Adultery is a terrible thing, but here is what C.S. Lewis had to say about sin in Mere Christianity: If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity (sexual sin) as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: The pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me...they are the animal self and the diabolical self; and the diabolical self is the worst of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither! 3. The reason of prayer I strongly believe that Jesus was taking time to pray. When dealing with connivers, you want to get your words absolutely right, and Jesus test was a complex one, He had a little devilish dilemma on His hands. I wonder what that prayer sounded like?

4 And as we hear Jesus response we get a marvelous look at God s wisdom in action and I think it is safe to say that Jesus is demonstrating what we know as a spiritual gift of Wisdom (See 1 Corinthians 12:7-12). We all know that knowledge is important; knowledge is the thing that wisdom acts upon. Now don t get me wrong, when we study anything it is good to get a lot of it but we are also old enough to know that knowledge without wisdom can get right out of control and do a lot of damage. Bible knowledge in the hands of an unwise person is like a gallon of liquor in the hands of a drunken fool! As Pentecostal type Christians and with a strong conviction that all of the gifts of the Spirit are for today s Church as much as they were for the early Church, we understand that God is all knowledge and all wisdom and sometimes in a moment of urgency and a moment of need, a thought comes to mind that helps us unravel some pretty sticky wickets or traps of the connivers. They continued to press Him for an answer and where there is a sense of unhealthy pressure, there is often the work of the devil! Now Jesus knows something here and He is going to use it against them. Every good Scribe and Pharisee understood that if there was going to be a stoning, the witness of the offense had to be willing to pick up the first stone (See Leviticus 17). Jesus understands that there is already a willingness to follow through. But now back to the stooping. What was it that He was writing? We will never know for sure but there are some educated guesses. The original Greek uses the word graphein, to describe writing and in this instance, the word katagraphein is utilized or against writing. Many of us have experienced someone writing some things against us. There is an unstable man that publishes things about me all the time here in Pembroke. Could it be that Jesus was writing down a few sinful things He knew about the obnoxiously self-righteous fellas in front of Him? 4. The reason of wisdom I think the stooping time was for gathering the right wisdom to turn the tables completely on this conniving bunch, and now Jesus does just this: Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. (vs. 7) And the word used for sin here is not just the act of sin, but the intent of acting out a sin. So in other words, it is not just about adultery, but those who have had thoughts of it. Remember Jesus words that the moment we lust in our hearts, we have committed adultery already! IV. Connivers can have a conscience too After letting out that wisdom zinger, Jesus again stoops to let the Holy Spirit do a little work on their consciences. I wonder what they were thinking? Maybe we are misogynous hypocrites and He does have a point about the things He was writing down.

5 And now the men begin to drop stones and bug out. The oldest go first! To me, the oldest should always be the quickest to repent of hypocrisy and judgmentalism run amuck because we have lived longer, we have screwed up more and have received more grace and we should be a good example to the younger folks. So now that the Scribes and Pharisees have gone away, what s left? That s right, Jesus and the woman. She must be somewhat relieved that she is not going to die, at least not now, but she still has the problem of the sin and of the feelings that go along with sinning. Jesus does a little recap of the situation with her. Woman, where are they? (vs. 10) And these words must have been powerful for her to hear, Neither do I condemn you! (vs. 11) Conclusion: I have a couple of thought I wanted to leave with you. Firstly, you are part of a very gracious church. Now I know you might be thinking the opposite and sometimes over silly things people can be very obnoxious here, but I have found that when it comes to the serious stuff, where people need grace, it is here for them! Secondly, I don t want the devil to distort my relationship with you, either. You know I am spiritually demanding and try and set the bar high. I preach holiness a lot, but what you need to know is that there will always be grace when things go bad for you. I can t think of a single person, when they have come to my office to confess something, that they have gone away feeling that I have acted in a non-gracious way. Don t let the devil distort my words or my heart in your understanding. Process by what you have actually experienced in dealing with me, not from pulpit guesses. So many times I have had people say, I really liked what you said last week And I have thought to myself, I never said that. The same is true of some devilish lying going on in your minds. And lastly, here is an important point that we do not want to miss. Jesus was not soft on sin and especially not sexual sin. He said to this woman, Go, and from now on, sin no more. (vs. 11) Grace requires a response of greater effort in saying no to your own flesh. Sin will always grieve the heart of God; however, with confidence we know that He pities us and has compassion for us when we mess things up good!