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Oct 21, 2012

Failure Is Never Permanent Around Jesus

Passage: John 7:53-8:11

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Life to the Full

Keywords: judgment, judge, mercy, stones, shame, forgiveness

Summary:

This message deals with the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. It examines shame and judgmentalism from the perspective of the woman, Jesus and the Pharisees as well as the implications for us as people who experience shame and/or take up "stones" of judgment towards other people.

Detail:

Failure Is Never Final…Around Jesus

Life to the Full—John 7:53-8:11

October 21, 2012

 

Have you ever been to a stoning?  We’re not talking about the kind that happens every Friday and Saturday night on American college campuses.  We’re talking about the kind that uses literal rocks, like the ones you hold in your hands right now…against real people, like the ones sitting near you and standing in front of you.

Well, I can’t say as I’ve actually been to a stoning either. Hopefully today won’t be my first one! J   But I’ve watched a stoning…on the big screen…and it isn’t pretty.  The film production company where our daughter worked and first met her husband about 5 years ago came out with the movie The Stoning of Soraya M. in 2008.  It’s based on a true story which a journalist picked up in 1986 in a remote Iranian village when his car broke down.  There he met a woman whose niece had been unjustly condemned to death by stoning due to the false charges of her own abusive and unfaithful tyrant of a husband. 

 

As you will see in just a moment, this evil man, in conjunction with the local ruling and religious authorities, convinced even her father, her brothers and her own young sons to participate in her death by stoning. 

 

(See clip of The Stoning, Scene  )

 

That’s not the kind of video I would normally begin a Sunday teaching time with here at Mosaic.  But then the passage we are dealing with today isn’t your normal Bible story either.  As Eric so ably pointed out last week, this story of the woman caught in adultery is, we are pretty sure, probably out of place in this location in the Gospel of John.  As we will also see, it has all the authoritative ring of the rest of scripture and the life of Jesus Christ.  But we just aren’t sure textually why it was placed at this point in the narrative of John. 

 

But regardless, this story is all about a stoning…and it is all about our Savior, too.  So let’s begin by simply reading it, starting in John 7:53-8:11.

 

Whenever this incident took place, it was sometime when Jesus was in Jerusalem.  As we’ve seen and will continue to see in John, Jerusalem was a place that was particularly hostile to Jesus.  That reality didn’t cause him to mince his words or tone down his teaching any.  But it did cause Jesus to be very careful about when he went to Jerusalem and what he did there. 

Because Jerusalem was the seat of both political and religious power of the day, and because those who held that institutional power were jealous of Jesus’ divine power evidenced by his miracles and teaching, Jerusalem was the most dangerous place Jesus could go on earth. 

How strange, no?  The one place on earth God has chosen to place His name, the place where His presence was to dwell most evidently and visibly, became THE most dangerous place for God in human flesh to visit.  And ultimately, it became the place of his murder at the hands of the very people who should have been the first to bow in worship and submission. 

 

That simple fact should scare us to death.  One of the truths underlying this whole story today is that the people of God who know the most about God’s word, who study it most diligently, who give their lives to worship of God and calling others to do the same can and have often been the staunchest opponents of a fresh move of God.  May we never become that in this city or anywhere in our brief lifetime on earth. 

 

That danger is picked up from the very first words of this story (vs. 7:53—“Then each went to his own home.  But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.”) Just a comment about the significance prophetically of the Mount of Olives.  The prophet Zechariah foretold the Day of the Lord which will the judgment of the people of the earth by our Lord Jesus after the battle of Armageddon.  Here is what Zechariah foresaw in that prophecy in Zech 14:4-- And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it toward the south.

 

But at Jesus first coming, the incarnation, the Mount of Olives was his preferred place to go and do what? Teach and pray.  Every one of the 4 Gospels presents Jesus either teaching or praying with and for his disciples on the Mount of Olives. 

The night of this story is no exception.  Jesus, instead of looking for a place to bunk down, goes to that Mount which overlooks the city of Jerusalem.  This is going to be the place where he will wrestle in prayer about his upcoming crucifixion the night he is arrested.  This is the very place where his very power as God will split this mount in two and cause a valley running east to west. 

 

Jesus goes to meet with the Father and pray outside while his enemies go to meet with each other and plan his destruction in their homes. What a contrast!

 

Notice in 8:1-2 the timing of this incident.  Jesus has been awake all night.  So at the first light of dawn, he’s at the temple.  He’s there to teach, to help people know and experience God.  Meanwhile, his detractors have apparently been awake rather early that day as well.  In fact, some of them have probably been awake all night.  If we think that the teachers of the law and the Pharisees just “happened” upon this woman caught in adultery, we’re being way too naïve.  They didn’t just stumble upon this woman.  They had this event, this “trap” for Jesus, planned and premeditated. 

            The fact that the man with whom she was committing adultery is not brought before Jesus tells you something about what is going on.  He, apparently, got to “have his cake and eat it too.”  The law of Moses demanded that both the man and woman should be judged for the sin of adultery, not just the woman.  Whoever this man was, he had also committed adultery that night. 

Anybody thinking that maybe this trap was set the night before by this very group of men who were to be the shepherds of God’s people?  Anyone able to see that these leaders probably knew the man who had engaged in sex outside of marriage with this woman and were willing to let him off the hook if he would just let them catch the woman in the act…and then shame her while trying to trap Jesus with his always-grace-filled heart? 

 

You see, for them, this woman is expendable, literally.  The man’s sin is excusable.  And Jesus, well, if they can just put him in a double-bind where they know his grace and compassion will run head-on into God’s holiness and justice, then they will have some way of damning this do-gooder Jesus, killing two “birds” with one stone, figuratively speaking. 

These were the people charged with caring for God’s sheep, for this woman.  Love would have gone to her that night and said, “Don’t do this.  Don’t break God’s law.  Don’t shame yourself.  Don’t ruin your life this way.”  Instead, they used her as bait, allowed her to be used by some well-connected man, and shamed her publically for the rest of her life.

 

Vs. 3-5—“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 women.  Now what do you say?”

 

How many of us can remember what it felt like as a kid to get caught by your parents doing something you knew you were not supposed to do?  Being a perfectly compliant child, I, of course, have no memories of such incidents.  J 

No, fact is, just last week, someone brought a hand written greeting from a couple of the kids of a former neighbor of ours when I was growing up here in Spokane.  Their father was the bank president at what used to be Lincoln Savings Bank downtown.  He used to drive nothing but Jaguars, his wife’s a sedan and his the latest sports car model. 

That simple, friendly, handwritten greeting reminded me of how ashamed I am of one simple incident I was involved in as a kid.  (My boys, please turn your IPods on at this point so you can’t hear what I’m about to say!)  It was a warm fall day like we’ve been having this entire fall.  The trees were changing color.  The chestnuts were falling from the trees.  There was a group of about 3 or 4 of us boys, apparently with way too much time on our hands and bored.  So in our pre-adult, pre-winter snowball minds, it seemed like a good idea for us to hide in one of the neighbors bushes and throw, not snowballs, but chestnuts at passing cars.  (Yes, I know. It’s got to be proof of original sin!)

Thankfully, we were all miserable shots…except when Mr. Lindsey’s powder blue Jaguar XK-E started up the street and approached his house.  Somewhere between letting go of that chestnut and hearing the screech of the breaks, it began to dawn on me that maybe this wasn’t such a brilliant idea.  J

To this day, I feel ashamed about my behavior. 

 

Shame is one of life’s more powerful emotions.  Proverbs 3:35
says, “The wise shall inherit glory, But shame shall be the legacy of fools.”  While shame is their legacy, it is not always evil people’s experience.  Shame as God intended it to be used is meant to lead us to conviction of sin, of something we have done wrong, and repentance that changes our direction, sends us towards obedience and removes that dreadful feeling of shame.

            But for those who will not learn from shame, there is a growing immunity to that proper feeling of shame.  Over time, people become “shame-less.”  They stop feeling shame for what they have done.  As one man in the congregation taught me years ago, “You cannot shame evil.”  I’ve found that true.  Shame only works with people who value goodness.  But people bent upon engaging in shameful acts eventually cannot be shamed.  Instead, they try to shame and silence those who stand for truth and goodness.

 

So here is this woman, totally, publically exposed and shamed by those who should be ashamed of the callousness and hatred of their own hearts.  Who, at that moment, felt their shame?  Not the ones with the stones in their hands.  Not the spiritual leaders who should have been far more sensitive to their own sins that those of others.  Not those men who had committed adultery in their hearts probably far more times than this women had committed adultery in a stranger’s bed. 

No, this woman, who according to the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 22 could be stoned to death for her sin, she stands shamed before the entire community, before the leaders of the nation, before her family, her relatives, her neighbors. 

 

Shame that is not dealt with properly will lead to ugly things. 

  • In the heart hardened by sin, it will lead to shamelessness.  The shameless person will go deeper and deeper into sin, a journey that will ultimately destroy them and cause untold damage to anyone nearby.  They will shamelessly attack anyone who dares criticize their shameful behavior.  They will end up calling right wrong and wrong right.
  • But in the heart shamed by the abuse and misuse by others, shame can bury you under a torrent of guilt that leaves you , at best, defensive, oversensitive, wounded, angry and reactive while it more often leaves you depressed, despairing and even suicidal. Ex:  15 year old Amanda Todd from Canada who committed suicide several weeks ago.   

Shame is not meant to be a long-term emotion.  It was designed by God to be short-lived, to be dealt with by repentance and forgiveness, and to move us on to healthier, more righteous living. 

 

Friends, some of us need to stop running from our shame and start dealing with it.  Unaddressed shame will destroy friendships, destroy marriages, destroy churches, destroy your relationship with your son or daughter, your mom or dad, even God himself.  For some of us, shame was used as a control mechanism as kids.  We may have gotten the shaming but what we didn’t get was the experience of forgiveness and restoration that was meant to wash that shame away and send us in a healthier direction.

EX:  In my own childhood, I remember feeling proper shame for acts of disobedience or just plain wrong behavior. BUT what I don’t remember is the reconciliation and forgiveness that should have brought that sense of shame to a healthy conclusion.  We just moved on from the discipline as if nothing had happened, leaving me with the childhood impression that not only had my behavior been shameful in some way but that I myself was shameful.  That’s why constructive discipline must include not only the punishment for the sin or bad behavior but the loving reconciliation and forgiveness that puts an appropriate end to the shame of our souls.

 

But sadly, religious people, Christian people, churches have been some of the worst abusers with shame generation after generation.  Like the Pharisees of old, we have been far too selective about which sins we are going to punish and which ones we will ignore.  We’re quick to pick up stones of judgment and condemnation for the sins of others that we may despise while completely overlooking the sins of our own hearts that we tolerate. 

 

Does that mean that the church should never take a stand against sin?  No, we are called to by God to “judge those inside” the church (I Cor. 5:12).  Does it mean that we should never address anyone’s sin publically or privately?  No, John the Baptist addressed the immorality of pagan king Herod who had taken his brother’s wife illicitly and was ultimately murdered because he stood against that evil.  There are times when we must be God’s prophetic voice into our culture, calling sin, sin, and calling people to repentance.  So to hide behind a misapplication of Jesus condemnation of a critical, judgmental, Pharisaical attitude in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 7:1) when he said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” is equally wrong.   

 

No, we don’t have that luxury as children of God.  Judgment begins at the house of God, so certainly in some ways we should be the least tolerant of sin in our midst.  But we must also be the most grace-filled towards those who repent and those who are “caught in a sin” as Paul talked about in Galatians 6:1. We are the salt and light of this earth, and as such we must be the voice and conscience of God in a culture that will gladly slide into decay and evil if we do not intervene.  Jesus and Paul both made it abundantly clear that we must judge the evil that exists in our own hearts and lives as God’s people while calling a world full of evil to repentance and the forgiveness of Christ. 

 

Exposure of sin hidden or not repented of should properly produce a sense of shame in anyone.  But it must never stop there. It should always lead us to the feet of Jesus, to the only being in the universe who has all authority and right to forgive sin and extend mercy and grace.  He “who knew no sin” took our sin upon himself so that he could exchange our sin for his righteousness, our shame for his clean heart and conscience. 

 

Imagine what this women must have felt that morning.  Here her sin is dragged out in public for all to see.  She is literally dragged out in public, openly shamed, and then brought before the most holy and only sinless being ever to walk this earth, Jesus.  She is made to stand before him while she is virtually sentenced to death for her sin by people who are simply using her (just like her lover must have used her) to satisfy their own selfish desires.

 

It is at this point that God’s Word says (in John 8:6) that “Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.”  Of course, the great speculation throughout history has been about what Jesus wrote.  And nobody who can answer that question definitively today exists.  My belief is that it was something that, when combined with the next phrase Jesus would speak, brought conviction of sin to those who were so eager to destroy this woman. 

Maybe he started writing the 10 Commandments, things like “do not bear false witness against your neighbor,” or “don’t covet” what your neighbor has, or “do not steal…or life…or kill.”

Maybe he wrote down single words like “lust” or “envy,” “hatred” or “greed,” things that everyone in that crowd knew they were just as guilty of as this woman was of adultery.   

 

But some in that crowd aren’t paying attention.  They want to hear Jesus speak either words that will uphold the Law of Moses and condemn this woman to death OR words that will demonstrate compassion and mercy towards this woman but condemn Jesus to breaking the Mosaic Law. 

 

So Jesus obliges them a verbal answer and stands up from writing in the dust.  I’m sure that at this point he is making eye contact with everyone who has a stone in their hand, everyone ready to make this woman pay for her sin. 

“If any one of you is without sin,” [he says] “let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And, the text tells us, he simply stooped down again and went back to writing on the ground.  Perhaps he wrote what he had spoken earlier in Mt. 5:28—“…anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  Or maybe he wrote an equation, “Anger=murder.” 

 

Then we have John’s commentary in vs. 9—“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.” 

Now who is feeling shame?  Now who knows, in the presence of the perfect Son of God, that they are as guilty or moreso than this woman because they have hated God in human flesh and sought to destroy Him through destroying this woman?

 

It’s interesting that John notes that the elders left first.  It took a little bit of wisdom to recognize that a.) Jesus had won the argument and there would be no trapping him that day, and b.) the older you are the more guilty of sin you are.  That’s one of the humbling effects age should have on all of us—recognizing we are no less a sinner than those we often are prone to condemn.

 

Then the only person in that crowd who had a moral right to stone that woman for her sin, the sinless Lord Jesus, waits for all her accusers to leave, straightens up and looks her in the eye asking, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?” 

 

What a reversal of events!  All of a sudden, in the presence of God himself, she is standing on level ground with her accusers and her community.  Everyone has become aware of their sin and that it deserves God’s righteous judgment. 

Then Jesus speaks those beautiful words that every sinner needs to hear over and over again throughout our lifetime:

“Then neither do I condemn you. 

Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Here was THE One who would shortly take the condemnation, shame and guilt of this woman and bear it himself on the cross saying words that restored her, forgave her and called her into a new life.  When God convicts us of sin (which He will do), he always calls us to “go” forward into a new life by “leaving our life of sin.”  He doesn’t want us to wallow in guilt or shame; he wants to win our hearts over to restored relationship and a new, righteous future.

            When Jesus says, “leave your life of sin,” I don’t think he is telling her to be perfect and never sin again.  God knows that is impossible.  But he is inviting her to embrace a change of heart. He is placing a clean slate before her and calling her to move into a different future, one that embraces God while letting go of sin. 

            This woman needed to recognize that this sexual sin she had chosen would never bring her the wholeness her heart was longing for so deeply. She now knew personally the power of the only True God who alone has the holiness and the right to forgive sin.  Here was a man who, rather than use her as other men had done, had saved her through loving forgiveness and called her to a new life. 

 

APP:  Have you come to that place in your relationship with Jesus Christ?  Have you felt shame and guilt from your own sin yet also heard Jesus’ words, “Neither do I condemn you”???  The only way we will know this forgiveness is to stand before Jesus, sin and all, and receive His forgiveness, believe in Him as your own Lord and Savior.  [Sinner’s prayer.]

 

APP:   As we saw at the beginning of this morning, stoning are ugly affairs.  They not only kill the victim; they harden and destroy the hearts of those throwing the stones. 

            Life gives us plenty of opportunities to pick up stones of hurts, of offenses, of personal slights, pain, abuse, self-righteousness, hatred, anger towards others.  We always have a choice to make: will I try and inflict punishment and pain on those who have wounded me (including myself), or will I come into the presence of Christ, allow him to speak both conviction and forgiveness into my life, and let go of those stones in His presence so I can embrace Him? 

            Sometimes the hardest person to forgive in life is YOURSELF.  Too many of us engage in self-stonings:  beating ourselves up with the guilt and shame of our own sins.  We somehow think that is more justified than the condemnation of others.  Yet the reality is, whether we or someone else is the object of our condemnation, we’re still living like the Pharisees, stones in hand, ready to inflict pain and punishment for sins God has already forgiven. 

            When you came in today, you were handed a stone.  By now you’ve probably figured out why.  We all have a tendency to become critical and judgmental of others, especially when we’ve been hurt, abused or wounded by them.  Everyone here could probably write on those stones the names of people we feel justified in condemning or judging or criticizing.  That may include even yourself. 

            Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses…our sins/our failures/our faults…as we forgive those who have trespassed/sinned against us.”  God knows that it is impossible to hold the stones of judgment, of criticism, of past offenses and abuse in our hands and have room to embrace the forgiveness only Christ can give us.  We must let go of those stones to embrace God’s forgiveness.

 

So before we celebrate communion today, we need to make some decisions.

  • Will we simply, honestly come before Jesus Christ today as we are:  sinful, needing forgiveness, maybe full or shame or regret or fresh off some sin we know condemns us?  Will we stand before the cross of Christ rather than run from Him and allow our souls to hear the words of Jesus, “I died for you and those sins.  I bore your shame and judgment before God himself.  And I do not condemn you anymore.  Give me your sin in exchange for my righteousness…and go on from this place to a new life of forgiveness in Me”?  The only place we’ll find that freedom from shame and guilt is the presence of the one who died for us to redeem us from that. 

So as a symbol of that, rather than passing communion today, I want us to literally come before this cross, as we would come before Jesus were he standing here today. You may feel like the woman caught in the act of her sin…or you may feel like the Pharisees and teachers of the law who want to make someone else pay for their sin.

I want us to either pass by the cross and hang onto our stones of judgment of self and others OR I would like us to lay those stones down at the foot of the cross as a symbolic way of saying, “I release my right to judge or condemn or criticize or hate or inflict pain on anyone…including myself…to Jesus.  If there is judgment that should happen, I’ll let him make that call.  I choose not to condemn others or even myself.” 

 

THEN you will have room in your hands to go and take communion, to symbolically receive the forgiveness of Christ for you.  You see, it is virtually impossible to hold onto stones of judgment while at the same time embracing the forgiveness of God himself. 

            So if you want to exchange your sin for His righteousness, feel free to come to the cross, lay your stones down and go to either side to receive communion.  If you’re not ready to do that, then feel free to just remain seated and talk that over with God.  You can take that stone with you today as a reminder of the weight it is on life to not forgive or be forgiven. 

 

COMMUNION PRAYER

 

COMMUNION

 

CLOSE:  The reality is, we’re all on level ground before the cross.  The grace and forgiveness of Christ has the power to change every one of us dramatically.  I have no doubt that this woman was forever changed from her encounter with Jesus that day. 

But we know that not all the Pharisees and teachers of the law were changed.  Many of them went on to judge and crucify the sinless Lord Jesus.  Many of them went on to disdain and look with contempt upon this woman as they passed her in the streets or saw here in the Temple courts. 

            And that same thing so easily happens in the church today.  We know up here (head) that none of us is any different than the other when it comes to the forgiveness of Christ.  Yet we still view one person’s sin as worse than another’s.  We still withhold open-hearted love for some in the family of God who we think have done too much, sinned too greatly, been too dangerous. 

            Do you think it would have been easy for every woman in the church in Jerusalem to truly accept this adulterous woman as just another sinner saved by grace knowing that she had been a home-wrecker before? 

            One of the things I’ve learned ministering downtown is that God has SO much to teach me through the lives of people that society and much of the church of Jesus Christ has written off.  There are men and woman living here, sitting next to us, singing and praying with us, whose lives were SO marred by sin that most of the culture has written them off.  But they have become amazing trophies of God’s grace.  They have come to stand before Jesus and exchange their sin and shame for his forgiveness and grace.  And they have become the might men and women of God in this often very dark area of our city, bearing the light of Christ into the lives of so many others. 

 

I want you to know the story of one of those redeemed sinner-turned-saint in our fellowship.  Some of you already know Gary.  You’ve seen him leading the Hand Up ministry around here.  You see him working as a manager in a local business.  You see him worshipping Sunday after Sunday here, or helping men coming out of prison to start a new life in this city.  Gary represents dozens of similar men and women in this congregation whose lives have been rescued by Christ and are being transformed by the forgiveness of Christ. 

            But I want you to see a bit more of the truth of today’s text that failure is never final in Jesus Christ.  I want us to learn what we can do to help the thousands of Gary’s in our community who are like this woman in John 8 who have experienced the forgiveness of Christ and are now walking in a new life just as that women did. 

Interview Gary: 

  • What was life like before meeting Jesus?  [Started by stealing penny candy as a kid at 8, first incarcerated at 12; by 21 was sentanced to 35 years in prison.  At one point was sent to the hole where attempted suicide twice.  Was convinced he would always be who he was then.  In 1989 a Chr. woman visting inmates in prison led him to the Lord.  Has been out 2 years, and for the first time in his life is giving back to people and society rather than taking, stealing and damaging others.  For the first time has a job, a drivers license, buying a car, helping other men get settled out of prison, leading a ministry in the church, manager at a local business. 
  • How have God’s people responded to you when they have come to know your story? (Some well and others poorly.)
  • What advice would you have for us, your brothers and sisters, regarding how we can practically help others like you experience the forgiveness of Christ in God’s family?  [Give the one thing everyone needs--your self, your friendship, your conversation, interest, love, etc.]