John: What to Make of a Complicated History
Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 7:53-8:11 about the story of Jesus’s response to the woman caught in adultery. Discussion points: The golden plates theory and the dictation theory are some common but unlikely explanations for where the Bible came from, the plenary theory asserts that the origin of the Bible is both human and divine, Jesus does not choose to reject the law or to condemn the woman, gentleness requires us to use the right amount of force with others to bring them closer to Christ.
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Scripture reader: [John 7:53-8:11] 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 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 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 rode 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.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: We're going through a series on the book of John. At the moment. We've been walking through the gospel of John, which is one of the four biographies of Jesus. We've been walking through this, this gospel for several months now and we come to this passage in John chapter seven slash eight, mainly in eight that is probably one of the most heavily debated passages in the entire scripture. And it's not because what happens in it is necessarily very controversial. What happens in it actually isn't very controversial. What happens in it is it can be supported by many other stories about The New Testament. We don't learn anything new about Jesus, we don't learn anything new about salvation. We have no new doctrine found in this passage. But the only problem is that we have this little header at the beginning of the passage that says the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage. And so what do we make of that when it says the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage.
The Bible has a lot of different ways of notating when there might be a section of the the Bible that is controversial that scholars aren't sure about. They usually just put a little, a little superscription or a footnote. And they say, hey, there's a little bit of debate about this word and, and exactly where we, we do what we do right here, but this passage gets an entire break in the action. OK? It doesn't just get a superscription. It gets a break that says this passage is probably not original and it's just a shining red light for us as we read it. And it should be, I can only think of one other place in the entire scripture that has this type of break in it. And it's at the end of Mark 16, which is more questionable than this one even.
But this is probably the, the second most debatable passage, whether this belongs in the Bible or is it or does it not belong in the Bible? And it leaves a lot of questions in our mind? Does it not when we read that type of thing? What are we to make of that? What are we to think about this story? Why is this here? If the earliest manuscripts didn't have it? How did it get here? What is going on? Where did it come from? Is it original or is it not? How can we know, how can I trust the Bible anyways? Where do we get, where do we get this thing? If this wasn't in the original? Where did the original come from? What is going on here? And if these aren't the questions that are going through your mind. You can believe that they're going through others minds and it just leaves us with the question of where did we get this Bible? How did we get this thing? Can I trust the Bible and look friends? We are a church that believes the Bible. I'll be very clear. We are a church that believes the Bible. That's what we're all about. We believe the Bible.
But why, why do we believe this book? We need to think about that carefully. We need to think about it because it's not gonna work to go to your friends and say, you know what if it's in the Bible? I believe it. And then they say why? And you're like, well, it's God's word to me. How do you know? It just is right. That's usually where the conversation ends. It just is, we have to have a better reasoning for believing the Bible than that. And if you grew up with the idea that the Bible is the word of God, I'm so glad that you did. I'm so glad that you're here and that you're a part of our church, but you might not spend a lot of time questioning the origins of the Bible. And that's OK. You don't have to, you know, if you believe that it's the word of God, that's the right answer. And sometimes that's all you need. But you better believe that your friends spend time questioning because what if you, what if you could actually defend this? What if you could go to a friend and say the Bible is the word of God? And they say why? And you actually could give them a good reason for why the Bible is the word of God. Would that change the conversation that is to follow about who Jesus is?
Well, sure. Yeah, if they could actually believe that the Bible is what we say it is, they would, they would change their mind. So we have to think about the Bible when we think about this because the earliest manuscripts didn't include this section. It just leads us to wonder where all this is coming from. So I have two points for us today. First, we're gonna spend like half of our time talking about the Bible because I just think it's such an important thing for us to talk about. And this is such a great opportunity for us to just take a step back and think about where the Bible came from.
So the first point is the complicated history of this passage. And then the second point, we're going to actually look at the passage and talk about the complicated history of this woman. So we, we have two things with the complicated history. One is this book in front of us that has a complicated history. And the second is the woman that we find in the passage who has a complicated history. So first, the complicated history of this passage, passages like this one, invite us to consider the origins of our Bible. Now, what I'm about to say might sound rather sacrilegious to some of you, but the Bible did not descend from a cloud one day and appear before us in a completed format. The Bible is not the fourth member of the Trinity, although we treat it like it often times we have to think about where we got the Bible.
I wanted to present there's many different theories for where we got the Bible. But I want to present at least three different theories for where we got the Bible. The first theory that I'll point out is the Golden Plates theory. Now, I don't know any scholars who actually believe this theory. but it's this idea that the Bible was this thing that we discovered and where did it come from? I don't know, but it's from God. And so we discovered this thing, I don't know where this material came from. It just fell from heaven. And this is a, a theory that Tim Mackey talks about the guy who does the, the Bible project if you've ever seen that youtube channel. And it's it's, it's kind of the default position of most Christians even though no one seriously thinks this is, this is what it is. This is the way that we treat the Bible often times it's just like, because we don't know where it came from. We just treat it like it's a golden plate. Like, I don't know where it came from, but it's the word of God. So I believe it.
Now, the second theory for where we got the Bible that I want to present to you is, is from a book. There's actually a book that I appreciate a lot called 40 Questions About the Bible and Interpretation. It's written by one of my seminary professors and a friend. He was the second reader on my, my dissertation when I finished my doctorate a few years ago named Rob Plummer. And he wrote that book and, and he puts forward this theory of the dictation theory. And so if we don't believe that the Bible just descended down from heaven or like some golden plates that we found in the ground. Many people would believe this dictation theory, which this is a theory that says the authors of the Bible were actually writing exactly what God. God was whispering in their ear or God was actually like controlling the pen himself as they were writing it. So it was humans writing the Bible. But, but the Holy Spirit like a Ouija board was taking over the pen at that moment, like who's moving the pen? It's not me moving the pen. Are you moving the pen? I don't know. It's the Holy Spirit. It has to be. And so God took over the pen and dictated exactly what the human authors were to write.
This is just absolutely ridiculous though, is it? Huh? It's not like John fell into a trance and wrote his, wrote his book and then he woke up and he's like, oh, what's been happening? Oh, look at this book. I, I guess I should see what the Holy Spirit just wrote. You know, what, what, what's happening or actually a better illustration might be. Luke who's a doctor. He's a historian, he's going around doing all these eyewitness interviews and trying to get the most accurate depiction of what happened in the early days of the church. And throughout jesus' life, he didn't, he didn't just begin his studies by saying, you know, I prayed and I just wrote exactly what the Holy Spirit brought to mind. No, he endeavored to put together the most accurate depiction of who Jesus was and is and what he the spirit continued to do through the apostles in the early days of the church in the Book of Acts. So I don't think that's the dictation theory either.
I think that the best theory for us that I'm going to present is called the verbal plenary theory. And the verbal plenary theory says that the Bible, much like Jesus has two origins. The Bible is both a human book and a divine book. Much like Jesus. The Bible is both human and divine in that the quote from the book says this, that the that there is a dual authorship to the scriptures. While the authors of the Bible wrote as thinking, feeling human beings, God so mysteriously superintended the process that every word written was exactly the word he wanted written. That is where we got the Bible from normal humans under the inspiration of the spirit writing. But God superintended his purposes so that what they would write would be the exact words that he would want written at that time. Now, this is a better way to view the Bible because it just causes us to think about what the Bible is and where we got it and why, why we care about it so much.
The Bible is authoritative to us. Not because in and of itself it is authoritative. The Bible is authoritative to us because in the Bible, it tells us who Jesus is and Jesus is authoritative to us. The Bible has no authority apart from Jesus, apart from God giving it authority and Jesus is my king. I want to know everything that Jesus said. But you know what Jesus except for what he wrote in the sand. In, in today's story, we have no recording of him writing anything. All we have are the recordings of what his disciples of what his followers would write about him in the gospels. And then we have what happened in the early days of the church that were seen and recognized the scripture very early on.
So we have like Peter, an apostle of Jesus writing a book, a letter and he references some of the writings of Paul and he calls them scripture. And so they're referencing each other and they're calling them scripture. And so it's very easy to see that early in the church. There's a recognized number of books that are that are recognized as what's authoritative and what is, what is inspired by God. So when we, when we look at the Bible, what it is is it's, if you think about the Bible is like the Golden Plates theory, or you think about the Bible from the dictation theory, what we normally end up doing when we do that is we end up treating the Bible as is as if it is a sacred rule book, a sacred guidebook. OK. It's like this is the book that has all the rules and I'm gonna live my life by these rules and that's gonna make me a better person, but that's not what the Bible is and it's not what it was meant to be.
The Bible is a collection of books. It's 66 books that are meant to tell one story and the story is both God's creative purposes for the world, but also his redemptive purposes for the world. So the Bible answers the biggest questions that we have about our life. Who am I? Why was I created. What is this for? What are these desires in me leading toward and what's wrong with me? And, and it answers that and it actually shows us the resolution to these things by showing us the story of the world being broken and then the world being put back together by Jesus. And so the Bible is meant to tell us the story of Jesus Christ. Every passage, every scripture points us toward who Jesus is. And that's why we believe the thing because we love Jesus. And this is what tells us who Jesus is.
So when we go to the Bible, we're not just going to learn the etymology of the words. We're not just going because it's the sacred text that teaches us how to be moral. We go to the Bible looking for our savior, looking for Jesus himself. That is why we're going to the Bible. So what do we do with a section like this that very clearly tells us that the earliest manuscripts did not include it? Well, I think that that's a good indication that it probably isn't original, that it probably wasn't what John originally wrote it. The earliest manuscripts because what you see over the course of the Bible is that the Bible was copied thousands and thousands of times over because in the early days of the church, church was persecuted. They didn't they current, they couldn't all get together and, and have these conversations that what they would do is they would kind of go in hiding from city to city and then scribes would copy down the, the letters and the books that were passed around and they would take it to a new city.
And so you had like one Bible for each church and in many of these places. And and then over years and years, the scribes would continue to copy it. And so often times when we see things added to the Bible, we assume that it's not original because it was inserted by a scribe at some point. But the the occasions are so rare and it tells, it just tells you, it tells you when we find that type of thing. It's the Bible is not trying to hide anything. It's not trying to dupe you. The Bible tells you when there's a problem with the, with the with, with the translation or, or with what we understand it to be. when you look at New Testament scholars, none of them.
Well, for the most part believe that this story was originally a part of God, a part of the gospel of John when it was written, but it was added centuries later. So John Piper summarizes this in, in six points as he so often does with so many points. But John Piper summarizes the evidences that like so OK. Yeah, he says first, the story is missing from all the Greek manuscripts of John before the fifth century. Second, all the earliest church fathers omit this passage and commenting on John and pass it directly from John 752 to John 812. In fact, number three, the text flows very nicely from 52 to 8 to 812 from John chapter seven verse 52 to John chapter eight verse 12. If you leave the story out and just read the passages that the story were not there. Number four, no eastern church father cites the passage before the 10th century when dealing with this gospel. Number five, when the story starts to appear in manuscript copies of the gospel of John, it shows up in different places other than here.
So sometimes when you find the early manuscript here, this story will pop up in different places. So it will be after John 736 after John 744 after John 2125. And in one manuscript, it pops up in Luke totally different book. Same story. It shows up in Luke chapter 21 verse 38 its style and vocabulary is more unlike the rest of John's gospel than any other paragraph in the gospel. And so we have really good reason to believe that this is not original to what John wrote, but it was inserted later. And why was it inserted later? Well, it's almost, it's also almost guaranteed that it actually happened based upon the way that it is written and the way that the scribes were insistent that it's included. And so from the very early days, it, it, it was a story that people told about Jesus and that we assume was an actual aspect of what Jesus did. And as we go through the passage, I'll show you more reasons why we think that it actually happened.
But most scholars as I've read and, you know, I think that they're smarter than I am. Most scholars believe it actually is something that happened, but that they didn't know exactly where to put it. So they just had to insert it somewhere and that's why it ends up here. All that to say, what should this complicated history of the Bible do to your faith in the Bible? And I'll tell you what it does for me when I learn about where the Bible came from, the more I learn about the Bible where the Bible came from. It's not that I question it more, but I trust it more because who am I going to trust more? The person who says I'm always 100% accurate no matter what or am I gonna, am I gonna trust the guy that's like, you know, this one thing, I'm not sure on this one, but I'm very sure on all of these things. Well, it's gonna make me want to believe the things that they say they are sure on more because they're willing to admit when they're not sure.
And that's what the, what the translators of the Bible are doing. They're saying, hey, we're not sure about this one little section. We're gonna tell you, we're not sure. We're gonna be honest. We're not being disingenuous, but these are things we are sure. And so it makes me so much more confident in what the Bible is teaching me as I look at the history of the Bible. And so all that being said, well, I would, I would actually hesitate to call this the word of the Lord, the inspired word of God. I love the story. And there's nothing new in this story that we can't learn from other passages about God's character who he is. And so as we go through this story, we can reflect on who Jesus is and appreciate it and appreciate who Jesus is from it. So let's do that.
Number two, the complicated history of this woman. Let's look at the passage. This story displays the perfect combination of jesus' gentleness, his compassion and his justice. Isn't that what we most want as a God to both be compassionate and just at the same time. And this passage does a great job of explaining that. For Jesus, look at, look with me, verse two early in the morning, he came again to the temple and all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them and, and the scrip that might tell us one reason why they put it here because Jesus is in Jerusalem and it's not leading up to his death just yet. So they had to find some time when Jesus was in Jerusalem, which he's in Jerusalem for the feast of the booths. And so this might be one reason why John seven is a favorite place to put it. 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. All right.
So the religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes of the day, they are dead set on catching Jesus, they want to trap him, they want to kill him. They're not big Jesus fans. And so they, they kind of set a trap here. They're, they're looking to find a way to, to get Jesus discredited or something like that. And so they have this woman who's caught in adultery. Now, here's the thing with adultery. Adultery is a hard thing to prove, right? How many movies do we know of people that are trying to prove adultery before you know, DN DNA test and Maury and all that type of thing? It's, it's a very difficult thing to prove, but from this passage, it doesn't sound like there's any doubt that this woman is an adulterer.
There's no doubt. It says that she is caught in adultery. It doesn't say that she was seen leaving a house with a man. It doesn't say that we have suspicion to believe that the w that the child that she's impregnated with which we're not sure that she is, um, is not her husband's or anything like that. It says she was caught in adultery. That means someone walked in, ok. Uh, someone walked, they saw everything that happened that for some of this, for some of us, this is nightmare fuel. Like think of the most shameful moment of your entire life. And then imagine religious leaders walking in and catching you in it. Oh, it should jar us a little bit. She got caught in the act here. Now, there's one thing, there's one thing missing here. If you think about it. And that's the other person that was participating in the act. And where is he? Where is the man that was here?
I love the way that scholar D A Carson puts this. Now, this is a very proper scholar. He, he is very dry. If you know D A Carson, he's, he's Quebecois. He's, he's very like just very sincere Canadian man. And, and he said adultery is not a sin one commits in splendid isolation. It's just a great line. It's just fantastic. Yeah, I love it. Verse five. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. This is this is what the, uh, Pharisees were saying to Jesus. So, what do you say? They, they've lobbed the softball up? They're like, all right, Jesus, what you gonna do with this? All right. We got another one for you. Here you go. They said this to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Now, they're really just trying to bring, make a trap. Ok.
They're not concerned about a justice. The scribes are not concerned about justice here. If they were concerned about justice, there would be two people standing in front of Jesus right now. Not one. Ok. This guy was caught in the act as well as she was because it's not something you can do by yourself. And these Pharisees are just trying to catch Jesus and this time and still in today's society, in many ways, women are far more likely to face the consequences of sexual sin than men are. And so as you read this passage, you are suppo your heart is supposed to go out to this woman to say, oh, what do you do in that situation? It's unfair, right? That she's being brought forward like this and the guy is not and what adultery is not.
There are consequences written for adultery in the Old Testament. They were rarely executed throughout the biblical times, rarely because it's just such a hard thing to prove. But the law of Deuteronomy is clear if you're caught in adultery by more than one witness, you are to be condemned to be stoned. And so they're asking Jesus his opinion. He has a choice. Jesus either has to do one of two things. He has to reject the law of Moses and say, you know what, not a big deal. The law of Moses isn't a big deal. Just let her off or he has to reject this woman and, and say, you know what stone her and that is the choices. Those are the choices that are laid before Jesus.
If he picks to reject the law of Moses, he's condemned as a heretic. If he picks to condemn the woman, he is heartless and he loses his credibility with his followers. The Pharisees, oh, they have to be excited. They've got a good one. OK? This is a good puzzle for, for them. They're just, you know, maniacal over there laughing got Jesus between a rock and a hard place. Now, Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. I love this detail. I have no idea what he wrote. No one does. OK. Many people have theorized what he wrote in the ground. I'm not even going to give you any of the theories because I don't know, I have no clue. He could have just been drawing a stick man for all. I know. I don't know what he was doing. He was writing something on the ground.
It actually does contribute to the case of authenticity of the story. CS Lewis who often gets quoted by us, but here he's speaking as a literary uh historian, a literary, literary, literary historian. Um, obviously I'm not one and he is, um, he was a Harvard, it was an Oxford professor in in literary history. And I'm saying that wrong. I it's just not coming to me at the moment. I'm sorry. And this is what he says. I'm, I'm perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are, they are not legends, they're not artistic enough, they don't work up to things. Look at the story about, about him scribbling in the dust with a woman caught in adultery. Nothing comes of the scribbling. It adds nothing to the story and the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art. Surely, the only explanation of this passage is the thing really happened. The author put it in simply because he'd seen it. So there's no reason for the author to record this. It makes no contribution to the story. He just saw it. And so he's like, I'm gonna tell you how, how I saw it. Jesus wrote in the ground. What did he write? It doesn't matter. He did it. And that's, that's what's going on here.
Verse seven. As they continue 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. That's brilliant. He doesn't choose one or the other. It's brilliant. He doesn't reject the woman, he doesn't reject the law instead. What Jesus does is he shows the gross hypocrisy of the religious leaders, the gross hypocrisy. Now, when he does this what he's, he's quoting also from Deuteronomy, they come to him with a Deuteronomy challenge. He quotes from Deuteronomy And this is what he says, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And he's saying basically what he's saying is in order for you all Pharisees to be witnesses to the crime, you have to also not be perpetrators of the crime.
You see you can't be a witness if you were participating in the crime yourselves. And so he's saying he's certainly saying, hey, if you think you're better than her, watch out, you're not, you are just as sinful as her and you're wanting me to judge her. But it's very likely that he's insinuating more than that because if you had to be sinless in order to judge someone, then no one would ever be judged right? There would never be any judgment of guilt because no one is sinless. No one can stand before you sinless. Instead what I think that he's saying is you Pharisees and religious leaders, you are perpetrators of the very sin that you are accusing her of how can you accuse a woman of adultery when you yourself are participants in it? This is the more likely solution. That's probably what he's insinuating.
And so Jesus is saying I'm not rejecting the law of Moses, but you're not qualified to be witnesses. Boom, he dropped the mic, he, he got her off on a technicality. OK? This is a totally, this is the type of lawyer that I would want if I ever did something bad. Ok, I this is some saul Goodman stuff. Ok? He's, he is getting her off, not because she's innocent and he's also not rejecting the law. He's just saying your witnesses are not good witnesses and therefore you have no case against her. He finds a way to hold both moral conviction and radical compassion.
This is the beauty of Jesus. Is it not that he holds moral conviction and radical compassion at the same time, verse nine, when they heard it, they went away one by one beginning with the older ones and Jesus was left alone with a woman standing before him. The Pharisees knew that they had been defeated. And you know, this is a different sermon for certain, but it does say that they left the one by one beginning with the older ones and I don't know exactly why. But maybe it's that as you get older, you're more willing to admit when you're wrong. Maybe not. We all know some older people that aren't that way. But maybe, maybe it is one of those things you're willing to count your losses as you grow in maturity. And that, that is something that we can learn.
Verse 10, Jesus stood up and said to her woman, who are they or excuse me, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you and she said no one lord and Jesus said, neither do I condemn you go and from now on sin no more. So look, Jesus isn't saying look, I knew you were innocent from the beginning. I knew you didn't do that thing. Now, what he says is go and sin no more. Jesus knows that she actually did do the thing but that doesn't cause him to condemn her instead what he demands is conversion. He said he doesn't just let her off the hook and say, OK, go live your life. He says, I don't condemn you now go and live your life in accordance with that, go and sin no more. He doesn't deny her sin or say anything about her guilt. He just says that she's not condemned. He lets her off, but he tells her to change the way that she's living.
You see, it's not that Jesus is light on sexual sin. We know that when we read the scriptures, he says that for us to look lustfully upon someone is the same thing as to commit adultery with them in our hearts. Jesus talks about sexual sin often throughout the scripture. He is not easy on sexual sin. He's not light on sexual sin. Jesus is heavy on mercy. That's the thing. He's heavy on Grace Matthew 12 verse verse 20. It says a bruised reed, he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. Just think about that for a second. A bruised reed, a very gentle, a very a thing that can be easily broken, a bruised reed, he will not break in a smoldering wick. He won't snuff out if you feel like you're at your very end, like there's not much left that you can do like you're struggling just barely making it.
Jesus will not just break you or snuff you out. He is gentle with the broken and the suffering. That's what this is saying that he is gentle with the broken and suffering. Matthew 11. He says come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden for. I am gentle and lowly of heart and I will give you rest. Do you know what it means to be gentle? Do you know what it means to be gentle? Have you received gentle love and care? Hopefully you have, but many of us have not to be gentle, is to use the exact amount of force necessary and not 1% less or 1% more to be gentle is use the exact amount of force necessary to accomplish the purposes in which you're seeking to accomplish.
If you have a broken arm and you go to the doctor and the doctor is like, hey, I'm gonna have to set your arm and you say, ok, please be gentle. What you're saying is not, hey, don't, you know, just pull on it softer because if they pull on it softer, they're not gonna set the bone, right. What you're saying is, don't pull on it any harder than what you actually have to pull on it with the exact amount of force necessary to set my bone. Please. And that is what it means to be gentle. Jesus knows how to be gentle with each and every one of us.
I have a friend who's Jesus's gentleness would feel like a dump truck running me over. He just has a harder head than I do, but it's the exact amount of force necessary for him. And every time I talk to him about it, he delights in the Lord's gentleness with him, even though I'm like, you just had a tractor run over you. And he's like, oh, it was great. The Lord's gentleness better than I deserve and it is it, I mean, for some of us, we have really sensitive consciences and Jesus knows how to deal with us in those. He knows how to get down in, in the dirt and care with care for us and our brokenness and our hurting and friends. I think that we can learn from his disposition.
How can we be gentle to one another? You have friends who have varying degrees of this and this is something that as a pastor, I'm, I'm learning and for some of you as, as your shepherd here, I'm learning that gentleness means that means roping you up and carrying you back to the other sheep. And for some of you that even to speak a word is hard and it's not always easy to tell if you're being too strong or too soft. It takes discernment. We have to pray to the Holy Spirit to help us to understand what does this person require for me to speak truth into their lives. May we be more sensitive to the spirit's leading on gentleness with our friends as we seek to follow Jesus' leading of being gentle with us.
It's not that Jesus looks at this woman and he says, you know, don't worry about it. Wink wink, not no, your sins. Good. Jesus never winks and nods at sin. This isn't how he handles it. All sin deserves consequences. But that is what Jesus came to do. Is it not? Jesus knows that the day is coming when he would bear the shame, the abundant shame of this woman by bearing her consequence for her. He'd be condemned on her behalf. So it's not that he winks and nods at the sin. He just knows that the sins consequences are coming through a different means that he himself would bear it on her behalf.
Eric Raymond, a pastor over in Watertown. Actually, he is a friend of mine, but he wrote a book called He's Not Ashamed. And in the book, Jesus is, he says this Jesus comes for messy people and he comes from messy people. If you look at the lineage of Jesus, many messy people in the lineage of Jesus. Jesus isn't ashamed of you or your story. Of course not. Of course not. Everything we've done is OK. This is why we need a savior in the first place. But our shameful stories don't repel Jesus. He knows our shame and he still loves us. Look, some of you are here today and you just feel dirty, you feel like if someone had walked in on what you had, you had been participating in, in the past 24 hours or, or in the past seven days or in the past year or at some point in your life that, that if someone had really knew you that you, you are just sitting here feeling like you don't belong, right? Like I'm just faking it, I don't belong here. And if people, you know, I put on the face and, and people, you know, they seem happy to see me. But if they knew who I really would was they, they wouldn't even open the doors, they wouldn't even let me in.
Jesus welcomes you with open arms because that is all of us, we are a collection of the messed up people that is where we come from, that is who we are. And the, the quicker we start admitting that we are a collection of the messed up people. The more welcoming we will be to the type of people that Jesus most has a heart for Amen and friends. It's not that you don't deserve the judgment of God. You do and I do too. But you get off on the same technicality of this woman, which is double jeopardy. You know the term double jeopardy. There was a nineties movie called double jeopardy. That's how I learned this. Ok? Double jeopardy is, you can't be sentenced to the same crime twice. So if, if you are convicted of murder and then somehow you get off on it, you get off of the, the, the conviction, you can't be convicted of it again. You can't be convicted of the same murder twice. And what it's basically saying is Jesus has already received your punishment. The the condemnation has come down. He's been declared guilty on our behalf. That's why he had to die on the cross.
And therefore we get off because of what he has accomplished for us. We get off on the same technicality that he let this woman off on even those sins that you are most ashamed of. He is not ashamed of you. He already knows them, you can confess them and and God help us. Wouldn't it be great if we could confess them to one another? Wouldn't it be great if we had that type of confidence in Christ? That because He welcomes us with such open arms, we can welcome one another and we can be bold in our confession with one another. And as we're bold, we're encouraging one another to be bold in the same kind of way. It's gonna take time for many of us. But the scriptures tell us to confess our sins to one another that brings Jesus glory and let me end with this. What if you don't feel very messy? OK. This is an area of the country where a lot of people have their lives together. OK?
What if you resonate more, maybe with the Pharisees here and you look at you, look at this woman, you're like she got off scot free. I mean, she does deserve a little bit of punishment, should she not? Maybe you think Jesus was a little soft on this woman that was caught in adultery. And let me ask you this question to, to finish things up here. I think that the greatest miracle and the entire New Testament, apart from the resurrection would have been if the Pharisees had looked at Jesus and said, oh, you're right. They're prideful people and they walk away disappointed. They don't wanna hear what Jesus has to say. But what if they had heard what Jesus said? And then they said, we're sorry. Would you forgive us as well? Would you bear our shame as well? You see that would be a great miracle, would it not? And maybe God can show you that same sort of miracle today.
Maybe you feel like you have your life together. You look down on other people who are me messier than you are. But maybe today he can show you that even your self righteousness is but filthy rags before him and that you need his grace. As much as this woman in the story today needed his grace. So as we prepare ourselves for this communion meal, this is an opportunity for us to repent. It's an opportunity for us to go and sin no more as Christ told this woman, it doesn't mean you will actually never sin again. Jesus, open it welcomes us with open arms over and over again. But what it means is that you are living your life in accordance with what he has commanded us and you're trusting in Him as the one who's delivered you from your sins. So let's stand as we prepare our hearts for worship to respond to Christ this morning.
God, we pray that as we bring you our shame, that we would understand the depth of your love, the way that you are willing to bear our shame, that you were stripped of your clothes, that you were made. Nothing that you took the form of a lowly servant to serve us, that you're willing to wash our feet, that you're willing to care for us. Even though we have oftentimes rebelled against you and Jesus, we pray that you'd be gentle with us right now. We pray for anyone that needs a little bit more force to get to that general action that you would bring that force in their life. And we pray for anyone who just feels just beat up that they will know that a bruised reed, you will not break and a, a smoldering wick, you will not put out. So God, we, we trust you in this and we pray that your Holy Spirit would be moving in our hearts and helping us to sense who Jesus is and to love him more and more. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.