Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina. Also, because it is all about Jesus that we want to look at this morning, we're going to look at a story in the Gospel of John that is an incredible, incredible story. John chapter number.
Eight this morning. And in John chapter number 8, we see a very familiar story to us. It's a very beloved passage. Scripture And in this passage of Scripture, we see judgment. on one side.
We see guilt on one side and we see punishment on one side, but on the other side of this story, we see grace. Unmerited, unearned grace, and those two things are going to collide this morning, and they're going to wrestle for dominance in this story today. And if I could start out by saying this is, you know, I think the majority of us this morning. We all kind of have a default setting inside of us. It's our flesh, let's just be honest.
Um but all of us kind of ta lean toward Um judgment. We want to see people pay for what they've done a lot of times. We want to see people get what they deserve. If we're just being honest today, and yet we serve a Savior. who is anti-that.
We serve a Savior who is more about grace and about forgiveness and about redemption. And I want to start by reading you a couple of verses out of the book of Romans. And these verses were actually intended for another message that I had wrote this morning that was entitled, If God Be For Us, Who Can Be Against Us? And so in Romans chapter number 8, Paul writes these words, and I want to start our message by reading. From Romans chapter number eight this morning, verses 38.
And 39, Paul writes, For I am persuaded, or I'm convinced. I'm standing on this. I'm solid on this, Paul says. I am persuaded that, listen to this: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature. Shall be able to separate us from the love of God.
which is through which is in Christ Jesus. Our Lord. And listen. This is a very familiar verse. I learned this when I was in elementary school.
Many of you learned this in Iwana and Sunday school and all of these different types of things. But listen, we get so calloused.
sometimes to familiar verses. But this verse right here, think about it for just a second. It says that nothing. Nothing in your life Nothing from your past, nothing from your present, nothing from your future. No spiritual powers, no earthly beings, no height, no sin can separate us.
From the love and the forgiveness. that we have through Jesus Christ. Let's focus on that this morning as we go through this passage of scripture. What's on it? In our lives, a lot of times When we do something wrong, if we wrong somebody, if we say something or offend them, we want them to forgive us.
We want to be able to say, oh, listen, I'm sorry for that, and we want to experience all the forgiveness and all the restoration that that person has to offer. But very little, few times do we ever really want to give that to somebody else. That's why our pastor's been doing a series and a phenomenal job. I don't know if you've been convicted by it, I sure have on resentment. We don't want to hold on to things.
We want to make sure that people pay for what they've done. We want to make sure that they're punished for what they've done. But here's the thing. We want forgiveness, but we don't want to give it. But we serve a Savior that calls us to be different than that.
We serve a Savior that says, hey, you forgive first. You restore first. You accept first. He calls us to his mission, a challenge to reach the world with his love. and his grace and it brings us to John chapter number eight.
This morning, where this tension between judgment and unmerited grace are going to collide this morning. And this is one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture. And listen, I want to deal with something really, really quickly. And my goal this morning is not to create confusion. It's, in fact, to clear confusion up.
I'm not trying to be controversial or anything like that. Um but some of you may have in your Bible something that that looks a little bit like what you're gonna see on the screen where it says that these manuscripts, this these this passage of scripture that we're about to read was not in the earliest manuscripts of uh of the Greek. And so, I want to talk to you about that. I don't want there to be any confusion on that this morning. And the reason that I want to address this is because I had a conversation with a guy one time at work.
And he kind of brought this up. He was an unbeliever, and I'm a believer, and we're talking about this passage of scripture, or we're talking about the Lord. And he said, Well, you know, you really can't trust the Bible. You know, there are certain things that were added later on, and different men added this and took stuff out, and so we don't know what was added. And, you know, I'm arguing back and forth, but sure enough, I go home and look, and this passage of scripture that we're about to read.
There are certain copies of God's word that it did not appear in in the early church. And listen, please don't mistake me. What we have in our hands right here is the Word of God. Right? What we have in our hands in your lap this morning is the Word of God.
And I believe with all my heart, and most of you believe with all your heart, that the Apostle John wrote these words. These were his words. They were in the original manuscript 1,500 years or so ago. And he put those words in there, and he wrote those words. And these were an original copy, an original part of the Gospel of John.
But somewhere along the way, Somebody took it out. Right, so around 300 AD There were some Christians, there were some people in the church that decided they're going to take this passage of scripture out. And so for five to six hundred years, These people took this out. And you guys know as well as I do, before they had copies of God's Word, they would hand copy God's Word and they would pass it down. And you know what's amazing is that virtually everything that we find is almost identical.
You tell me God doesn't preserve His Word.
Alright, so what we have is God's Word. And so please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But for about 500 or 600 years, there were some Christians that took this out of the Bible. You guys know why? It was because it was something they were uncomfortable with.
God help us. There's something that they didn't really agree with, something that didn't line up with their thinking. They were uncomfortable with this teaching that Jesus Himself gave us. And so there's a man named Augustine, and he wrote down. His thoughts on why he believes that this was taken out.
Here's what he said: his concern wasn't with whether or not the passage reflected a true event. I don't need Augustine to tell me that. This happened. Right, God put it in his word. He inspired the apostle John to write these words.
And so I don't need Augustine to tell me that, but he says, I don't struggle with whether this is a true event. He says, but this, in the early church, it implied easy forgiveness. And so people were uncomfortable with this teaching. They were uncomfortable with this story. And in fact, it was the men of the church, Augustine says, that began to take this out because they thought, well, when you read this passage of scripture, it looks like you can go commit adultery and get away with it.
That Jesus will just brush it under the rug. And that's not the case at all. Thank God there were some Christians that said, you know what? We can't deny this teaching. We need to put this back into God's Word.
And so, listen, if anybody ever brings this up to you, listen, don't be afraid to talk to someone about this and bring this part up. Listen, it was taken out of the Word of God by some Christians who did wrong. But thank God there were some Christians that said, you know what, this belongs in here. This is one of Jesus' teachings. And we love this passage of Scripture because of the forgiveness and the grace that God shows in this.
And so let's go to John chapter number two. Or excuse me, John chapter number eight. Excuse me, and read verse number One this morning. The Apostle John writes, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives, and early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and he taught them. When we hear the word temple, I don't know about you, but a lot of times I get the idea of like a church.
Right, you walk in, you got the chairs all out, and you got a stage up front, you got a choir singing, and there's a guy up on the stage, and he's preaching to a bunch of people. But it looked a lot different than that. All right, I don't want to rock anybody's world today, but Jesus was not a white shirt, tie-wearing, suit-wearing, fried chicken-eating Baptist. Everybody understands that, correct? Jesus was a Jew.
And so the temple courtyard would have looked something like this. It was a place, it was a huge area where tens and thousands of people could have sat there, and different rabbis, different teachers are sitting down and they're teaching these people that follow them. You'd have several rabbis and they're teaching their doctrine, which in that time period would have been called a yoke. That was their teaching, that was their doctrine. They had nicknamed it, they had given it the metaphor of a yolk.
Now, we think of a yolk sometimes, well, we think of a couple things, we think eggs. All right, and then we also think farm equipment, right? You put it on animals, and they would do farm work and things like that. But the teaching of a rabbi, of a teacher, it was called a yoke. That's why Jesus in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, take my teaching upon you, and learn of me, for I'm meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke, my teaching is easy, and my burden is light. Why would Jesus say that? Is because a lot of these rabbis, a lot of these teachers that are teaching in the temple there would have been teaching a law-based yoke. Right, you got to keep this law, you got to do this law, you got to dress this way, or you got to do all of these different types of things.
And there's seven or eight hundred different laws that these people have to remember. Jesus says, Come to me, learn my yoke, take my yoke upon you. It'll relieve you of that burden of trying to keep the law in order to appease God. And so, I don't know about you. I find that very comforting.
That's a relief verse, right? That releases us of a lot of responsibilities and things. We just gotta follow Jesus. Jesus said, come unto me. All right, so Jesus is teaching his yoke, he's sitting down, he's teaching his followers, he's trying to get them to buy into this and follow me, do what I'm teaching, do what I'm saying, follow my teachings and things.
And so, look at verse number three with me, John chapter 8. Verse number three. It says, and the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken, or that word taken means caught. Right, witness. Taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him, Master or teacher.
This woman was taken in adultery in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commands us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, That they might have to accuse him. They wanted to accuse Jesus. They wanted to trap Jesus in some way, that verse says. And so this morning I want to take just a few minutes and I want to talk about.
The religious leaders a little bit. And then I want to talk about Jesus a little bit.
So I want you to see number one, talking about the Pharisees, talking about these religious leaders, the conception of authority, their conception, their idea, their twisted view on authority. These were the religious rulers of the time. The scribes, the Pharisees, they're the legal experts of the day. They had positioned themselves. They took it upon themselves to be judge, jury, executioner of all things law.
They loved this part of their responsibilities, especially when it came to the laws of God. And these people were highly critical. They were highly in their attitude and in the way they carried out the law. They were very condemnatory. There was little to no sympathy involved here.
There was no forgiveness. There was no restoration. It was black and white. You were guilty, you're punished. This was their idea, and they loved lording this over people.
They loved being in charge. They loved being critical, and all of these different types of things. And so they bring this woman to Jesus, and they start rattling off these accusations against her. They said she was caught in the very act of adultery, and the law says. Right?
She must be put to death. The law says she must. Die. And then they say, you know what? What do you have to say about that?
And you can almost feel and hear the sarcasm. in their voices. Right, they didn't care what Jesus really thought. They weren't looking for righteous judgment. They're trying to trap Jesus.
You know how I know they weren't looking for righteous judgment? There's a very key part missing in this story. Anyone know what it was? The man. Where's the man?
Last time I checked, it takes two to commit adultery, but they only bring the woman. Right? They're not trying to have righteous judgment here. They don't care about the law. Their only desire here is to trap Jesus in some way.
They're using this woman. There was no other goal here and they were confident that they had Jesus because we know Jesus is sitting there, he's teaching his yoke, he's teaching his doctrine, and a major theme of his doctrine is forgive people. Be gracious to people. Be kind to people. Restore people.
Right, and now Jesus says, Yeah, well, you're right, take her out and stone her, he's gonna lose followers. He's gonna lose credibility with his followers. And so they have him that way, but if Jesus says, nope, you can't take her out and sown her, you gotta forgive her.
Well, now he's guilty of heresy in their eyes. He's going against the law of Moses, and now they have what they need to take Jesus out and prosecute him, have a trial, and he can be guilty of heresy. And so we see their twisted view on authority here. They love being in charge, they love accusing people, they love condemning people. And before we get to how Jesus resolves this, they ask him: what do you say?
Before we get to what Jesus says, I want you to see not only their conception, their twisted view of authority, but number two, the cruelty of their attitude. These religious people were cruel people. There is an ugliness. to this story. The Greek language makes it clear here, they says they caught her.
in this act. Which means that they are bringing her now before a rabbi and accusing her, which means by law, they're the ones that brought law into this. By law, they have to have all the evidence in order to bring her case before Jesus. Which means they had to have two witnesses. for this.
And the Bible says that they caught her in the very act. It means that they were hiding there. It means that they were expecting this. It means that they were waiting for this. They knew that this was going to happen.
And some have even speculated that the reason the man was not brought in was because he was in on the whole thing. It's like they had set up this little trap here to be able to trap this woman so that they could take her and bring her to Jesus so that they could get him on something. What a horrific and abusive way to use someone to try to get this is toxic, toxic stuff by these religious people. But if you can believe it, it actually gets a little bit worse. Listen, what we're about to talk about is not actually in the scripture.
But I don't know about you, I like looking into Jewish culture when I'm reading the Bible. It makes the Bible kind of pop for us, it makes it come alive for us, it helps us to understand what's going on in a passage, right? It goes a little bit deeper than what's on the surface a lot of times. And listen, I don't want to offend anybody this morning. In fact, I asked my wife, I was like, should I even bring this part of it up?
But I believe that we need to bring this up because it's a very real possibility. And it shows us the depths that these men were willing to go to to try to get to Jesus. I mean, they were consumed. With trying to get rid of Jesus. It had become their driving passion to get him off the scene.
They were cruel, cruel people.
Now, the religious leaders here said in the passage, what did they say? We caught this woman in adultery, and then what did they say? Moses said, we should what? Stoner. All right, now I'm gonna read you.
I'm gonna read you what Moses said in Leviticus chapter number 20, verse number 10. Here's what he said about adulterers and adulteresses. He said, the adulterer and the adulteresses shall surely be put to death.
Now We don't find anything in there about where it says they should be stoned. Moses said they should die. He doesn't give the method of execution where they get stoning from. We say, well, that was kind of the common.
Well, no, no, no. There was a teaching that these religious men used, it was called the Mishnah. And there were two different types of methods for execution when it came to adultery.
Now the first one. Was between a married man and a married woman who were not married to each other coming together in an adulterous affair. Two married people having an adulterous affair. The law said that they should die, but the method of execution was to be strangled. That was from the Jewish law book, the Mishnah, said they should be strangled.
Now, I don't know if that was choked or if that was hung. I don't know.
Now the other method of execution Was involving someone who was engaged to be married, which was just as binding as a marriage in Jewish culture. And so this one right here. Would have been considered more severe in the Mishnah than two married people was a person who was engaged. In this. And then the missionist said: if there was a person who was involved that was engaged, then they should be stoned.
Now here's where it gets a little bit darker than we're even comfortable with this morning. All right, the average age for a Jewish young woman. when she was to be engaged was between twelve and fourteen years old.
Now listen, I'm not saying this is this is what happened. But we know from them saying, well, she's to be stoned. We know that from Jewish culture, it meant that she was engaged. And even if she's on the higher end of that, it could be 14 to 17 years old, it shows us the darkness. And it shows us the cruelty that these men.
are showing here. She was manipulated into this trap, possibly. This whole thing was planned. And they don't care about her. They don't care what happens to her.
The only thing that they can see is they are blinded by anger and hatred toward Jesus. And they dehumanize this woman. She was just a means to an end. We see the wickedness of these men, the conception, the twistedness of their authority. The cruelty of their attitude, but luckily, the story.
doesn't end here. The whole scenario has been played out. They've brought their accusations before Jesus. They've given their evidence to Jesus, and then they throw her at his feet and say, Hey, what do you say?
Alright, tell us, wise one. What's your verdict on this? And so I want you to see third this morning the compassion of Jesus. The love that Jesus has. Look at verse number six.
It says, But Jesus stooped down. And with his finger, he wrote on the ground as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, look at this, being convicted by their own conscience, Went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing. in the midst. Can you imagine the nightmare that this woman's going through.
Can you imagine the horror? Just the shame, the embarrassment, the regret. All kinds of emotions going through this woman as she is brought into a crowded courtyard of thousands of people and thrown at the feet of this rabbi. And all these charges are read off against her, and she's guilty of every single one of them. And by law, The law of God, she is guilty.
And she deserves to be punished. for what she's done is she knows it. She's a Jew, she knows the law, and she's thrown here at the feet of Jesus. And I bet everything inside of her is expecting this rabbi to send me to my death. But as time goes on, nothing really happens.
In fact, maybe those men that were standing there, maybe they're holding some stones, maybe she heard them start hitting the sand. And eventually they're all starting to, one by one, they're starting to walk away and it's just her and Jesus standing there. I'm sure this is a terrifying and confusing time, all in the same moment for her.
Now I want you to notice some things that Jesus did here in this passage of Scripture. I want you to see what he does in verse number six. It says, number one, it says, but Jesus stooped down. He stooped down. He gets on her level.
This is a careful and deliberate and an intentional response from Jesus. Instead of making an immediate verbal response, the Bible says he stooped down. Stooped down indicates humility. Jesus doesn't react with anger. He doesn't start yelling at her.
He doesn't even start condemning these men. He just stoops down, the Bible says. It's a low posture. Here's what this means: it means that he was identifying with the humiliation of this woman. He's identifying with her.
He's caring for her. He's trying to ease the embarrassment of this woman. If you can picture this with me for a second, the Bible says that she's there, she's down on the ground, she's upset, she's probably crying, there's all kinds of emotions going on, and everybody's pointing their finger at her, and the Bible says that Jesus just gets down in the dirt with her. He gets down here, maybe he puts a hand on her shoulder, we don't know. But in that moment, he is identifying with her lowliness.
She had nobody else, but she had Jesus. There's a there's a There's a um There's an idea here that you and I Listen. Jesus identified with our Wickedness. Bible says he stooped down. You know what else?
He stooped down when he came down to earth to become like us. He took on human form. The Bible says he literally became sin for us. Thank God. For his pity on us, thank God for his love, thank God for him coming down to us when God's law said I should die for my sins.
Listen. I'm in the same position that woman was in, or I was in that same position that woman was in. The law of God said you're guilty of sin and you're supposed to die for this, but Jesus stooped down and said, no. It's a beautiful, beautiful picture. Aren't you glad that Jesus identified with our sinful state?
Second, I want you to see what it says. It says He, with His finger, He wrote on the ground.
So while he's down there, Jesus is riding in the sand. And for centuries, Nick, centuries we've been debating what is Jesus right? What did he write on the ground? Preachers and commentators and teachers, they've argued back and forth. What did Jesus write?
Truth is, we don't know. I want to give you some of the things that people say Jesus might have wrote, and then it's up to you to decide which one you think it is. It doesn't really matter, or else God would have told us what he wrote down.
So, something that Jesus simply just started drawing in the dirt. Because this Greek word here could be used for either right, or draw.
So, Jesus could have just simply doodled in the ground. We don't know.
Some people think that he did that.
Some people think that Jesus was just simply stalling for time.
Alright, Jesus, what he says next is pretty important for this woman. Maybe Jesus is collecting his thoughts. Maybe he's figuring out what am I going to say here? How am I going to respond to this? I'm in a tough position.
She's in a tough position. How are we going to handle this? There's a lot of people think Jesus is just simply kind of doodling. Have you ever been on the phone talking to somebody and you're just doodling? Or whatever?
Anybody ever do that? No?
Okay, just me? Maybe he's just stalling for time here. All right, here's another option.
Some think that Jesus wrote the passage in the law that condemned the adulterous woman. Maybe you wrote Leviticus 20:10 in the dirt. An adulterer and adulteress are to be put to death. We don't know.
Some think Jesus wrote out a passage like Exodus 23:1 that says, Thou shalt not raise a false report. Put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. That would have accused these men because if they planned this whole thing, if they set this whole thing up, well, now they're guilty of being a false witness.
So maybe Jesus is accusing them in that moment.
Some think that Jesus wrote the names of the accusers, some think that he wrote the sins. of the accusers down.
Some people think that Jesus followed Roman protocol here and wrote out his sentence before he said it, because in Roman culture, you had to write out the sentence and have it in writing before you presented it to a person. Truth is, we don't know what Jesus wrote. That's kind of up to us to kind of think about, and maybe God just doesn't put stuff in there just to have us think about things. I don't know.
I would love to know what he wrote. One day we'll find out. But we don't know what he wrote. The third thing I want you to see is he says, as though he heard them not. As though he heard them not, Jesus stooped down, he began to write their confidence.
The greatest news that anyone can receive is the news of the free gift of salvation found in Jesus Christ. It is our desire for you to know him personally. Would you take a moment to hear this to-day? Every man is born with a sin nature. Romans 3:23 says, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
No matter how hard we try, We're not good enough to obtain God's glory. or to get to heaven. Because of that sin carries the penalty of death. Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life for the through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The wages of our sin, or the payment of our sin, only equals death and separation from God. But it's only through God's gift salvation through Jesus Christ that we can accept Him as our Savior. Jesus Christ paid for your sin debt. The Bible says in Romans 5:8, But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. All you have to do is receive Christ.
by faith as your Saviour. Romans 10.9 says That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse 13 continues, For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's as simple as admitting that you're a sinner believing that Jesus is the only way. and calling upon his name.
Bible says whosoever that's anyone can call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior? There is no greater day than today to take care of this. Would you accept Christ as your Saviour? If you have any questions, please give us a call at 336-993-5192 or visit our website at Crowin Baptist Church.
Dot com. or visits that person at one of our three service times. We hope you have a great rest of your day. God bless you. Mm-hmm.
