The Only Just Judge
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
One of the great stories about guilt is Macbeth by William Shakespeare. In it, Lady Macbeth, the wife of Macbeth, one of the Dukes of Scotland, encourages him to murder the king so that he himself will become the king. Well, Macbeth agrees to do so, and then the two of them become king and queen of Scotland. But, steadily, the guilt begins to overcome Lady Macbeth. The guilt, in fact, was so intense that it starts to make her hallucinate. And the most famous line in Macbeth is when she sees blood on her hand at night and she can't get it out, and of course there's none, she's hallucinating, and her guilt eventually leads to suicide, and Macbeth's guilt eventually leads him to destroying himself as well. Shakespeare's moral lesson is that you might get away with a deed, but the guilt may trip you up. You may get away with the act, but the guilt in the end would destroy you. In biblical terms, "Your sin will find you out."
You know, a huge part of human life could probably be summarized with the word guilt. Guilt. Probably the way people deal with guilt explains a huge portion of their behavior, why they behave the way they do. Guilt is a massive feature of human life, and many people, the way they deal with it, they simply amuse themselves to death because they're so guilty, and so they turn to different things to distract themselves and drown out the voice of conscience in their head. And so you find them turning to this, that, and the other.
Some people medicate themselves so that the guilt goes away and they dull it that way. They don't feel it that way. They numb the pain. Some people bury themselves in more of the things that made them guilty in the first place so that they hopefully acclimatize and their conscience will no longer bother them about the thing because, you know, you're doing it so much. You become desensitized. Other people use a different approach. They try to balance the scales of guilt, you know, figuring if I do enough good on this side of the scale, then maybe the bad just kind of goes away, and so they afflict themselves. They get really, really religious, painfully strict, and self-flagellate, figuratively speaking.
But beloved, all of these things are wrong strategies, because fleeing guilt never works. It never works. Excusing yourself from your guilt also never works. Blaming others for your guilt never works. Never works. Comparing yourself with others who you think are more guilty than you never works. Never works. The only one who can help you with your guilt, the only one who can help you with your guilt is the one who is without guilt, God Himself. God is the only righteous judge. God is the only just judge. And God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the perfect judge because He is both sinless and sympathetic.
Scripture teaches us that God, the eternal Word, became flesh. He dwelt among us. He tabernacled among us. He became a man, the God-man, Christ Jesus, our Lord. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten God." And being God and man, Jesus has sympathies with both divine holiness and human weaknesses. Jesus Christ would neither mercilessly condemn you nor will He sentimentally excuse you. Jesus is neither a legalist nor a libertarian. He doesn't cruelly punish, nor does He lazily give you license. Jesus is the only just judge, perfect judge, righteous judge.
And that's what we have here before us, a passage that teaches us that Jesus is the perfect judge. Jesus, like Solomon, He is like Solomon, only better and greater, far greater. Remember Solomon was brought hard cases, very hard cases. Remember the case of the two women who claimed to be mothers of the same child in 1 Kings 3 and Solomon there, revealing his wisdom, saying, divide the child up and give half to each. And the false mother said, well, that sounds like a good plan. And the true mother said, no, no, no, just give her the child.
And Solomon's wisdom was put on display, superior wisdom to adjudicate hard cases. And likewise, Jesus can adjudicate the hardest cases, and He is greater than Solomon. He is the greatest, He is the perfect judge who sees beyond the external.
Now John is persuading us, you remember in this book, that Jesus is Messiah, that He is the Son of the living God, that He is the Christ. He's the one that you and I should place our trust in, and one of the reasons that you should do that is that He's the only just judge. He's the perfect judge. He judges perfectly. And you know a lot of people are avoiding God because they think God is a capricious judge, malicious judge. Some people avoid God because they think He will be cruel. Others, on the other side, avoid God because they think He's permissive. They think it doesn't matter, they can get away with it, but here you have a passage with the perfect balance of holiness and mercy, righteousness and grace.
I don't know where you are today as you sit in that chair. Maybe you're tending towards avoiding God, avoiding truth. Maybe it's because of unresolved guilt in your life. Maybe you find yourself secretly despising others because of their sin, and you kind of go, oh, I'm glad I'm not like that person, like the publican, like the Pharisee, saying about the publican. Maybe you despise people because of their strictness. You say, oh, I'm glad I'm not on my high horse of holiness like those people. Either way, it may be unresolved guilt in your life, and it may be you've been listening to the wrong judge, the judge of the world, the world being the judge that tells you that sin is okay, it's not a big deal, don't be worked up about it, it's nothing really. They're like glitches. Or the judge of Satan who accuses you no matter what you've done. Or it may be the judge of your own conscience which might need to be corrected and regulated by Scripture.
Because remember, because of the fall, we have, thank God for, the conscience, but it is a defective conscience apart from Scripture. It's faulty. It must be regulated by the Word of God. You see, there's only one infallible judge, and that's God. God Himself. And that's what we're going to see in this portion of God's Word here before us.
Now before we delve into the text itself, I want to address the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room has to do with this portion, this record, this account, this narrative. I'm going to do it briefly. Some of you have Bibles with a kind of footnote or brackets around this section, and often the note will say that John 7:53 to John 8:11 may not be original. Now my position is that this passage is original. It's part of the Gospel of John, and that's why I'm going to preach it today. If I didn't believe it was part of the Gospel of John, I wouldn't preach it. I would skip it. But I believe it's original.
Now some New Testament scholars believe it's not original, but I stand among those who hold that the Apostle John penned this Scripture, this portion, in his Gospel and are under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now some of you may be asking, why does he believe that? I'm glad you asked this question, so I'm going to answer it for you. Well, first of all, it's found, this portion, it's found in over 80% of ancient Greek manuscripts. As John Calvin said, this account is found in many old Greek manuscripts. Himself, he said that. It's also found in a Christian writing dating to the 200s, which was very early. The *Daskalia* is that writing. The ancient Bible translator, Jerome, included it in his Latin version in 385 A.D., and both Ambrose and Augustine quoted it. And I think it really fits the flow of the passage. If we pull it out and go from 7:52 to 8:12 there's really a jolt in the continuity.
You say, well, why would anyone think it's not? Well, the reason is because of the thousands of manuscripts that we have, there's a little family that's very old, comes from the Egyptian area of Alexandria, that doesn't have this passage. This passage is omitted in those manuscripts. Because of that, some scholars feel that, a lot of weight, and that has a lot of weight, so they believe it may not be part of the original.
However, Papias, who was the pastor of the church of Hierapolis in Phrygia, was known for collecting data set forth by the apostles around 110 A.D. He reproduces the story about this woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins. Papias said, in fact, that he actually heard John the Apostle speak with his own ears the story. I think it was, I believe it was original, but it got omitted.
Now, why did it get omitted? Well, Augustine actually tells us one of the reasons why. He said that the passage, this account, shocked some people, and they thought it gave permission to commit adultery. Listen to what he said. He said this, and I quote, "They struck out from their copies of the gospel this that our Lord did in pardoning the woman taken in adultery as if He granted leave of sinning who said go and sin no more," So Augustine says some people actually deleted it because they thought it was giving license to sin. Some of the early legalistic church leaders thought the story presented a lenient attitude towards immorality, and so they decided to keep it out. William Hendrickson is very helpful in his commentary on John's gospel if you would like to read further on this. More could be said, but I'll leave it at that. This is part of the original text, so I'm going to preach it. Let us press on considering the text itself given to us by the Apostle John under inspiration.
The scene is Jerusalem. You remember that, I trust. Jesus is in the lion's den. He's in a hive of Jesus' haters and swarm of religious rulers who are out to get Him. That's their one single purpose, to get Him. To them, Jesus is public enemy number one, and they were out to get Him. Why is He here? You remember He's here because He's obeying the law of Moses, which said every Jewish male had to go to Jerusalem three times a year, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Those are the three feasts. Deuteronomy 16:16, you'll find the reference there. This is the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. It lasts seven days, and here He is.
You remember from the previous chapter, He came in secret initially, but then went public. He went to the temple complex, which by the way, is not just the temple itself, but really the massive area. Several soccer fields can really fit into that area. There He went to a certain section where He began to teach the crowds. The crowds were listening to Him, to the greatest Rabbi ever, the Word incarnate, God in the flesh, God's greatest message.
We saw last time temple police were sent to arrest Him, and as soon as they walked up, they were actually gripped by His teaching and the authority by which He was teaching, so much so that they began to listen to Him, and they could not arrest Him because they were really arrested by His authority and His teaching. So much so that they said in 7:46, "Never has a man spoken like this." Never. He's one of a kind.
So Jesus is teaching, surrounded by large crowds of people. John 7 records a lot of the confusion we saw together about Jesus, who Jesus was, and who Messiah was. They were all mixed up. There was turmoil, there was confusion, and you remember there were several groups of people within the crowd. You have the Jerusalem dwellers, you have some religious leaders, you have pilgrims. Regardless, there was a lot of conversation back and forth, confusion and turmoil.
Some tried to seize Jesus but they couldn't. His hour had not come yet. God operates on His own timetable, not man's timetable. So they couldn't. The religious leaders were getting more and more anxious and more and more furious, and if they can't arrest Him, and if they can't discredit Him, and if they can't refute Him, maybe they can set a trap for Him. Maybe they can trap Him. They can lay a snare and provide the bait, and lure Jesus in and shut the door on Him. And that's what we're about to see.
Now we can look at this narrative, this event, happening in three phases: man's condemning trap, Messiah's convicting test, and Messiah's comforting word, or comforting truth. So let us begin, first of all, with man's condemning trap. And that's the first six verses, verses 1- 6a. You remember the previous day was the last day of the feast, and in the feast they would live in those booths to commemorate God's intervention in the wilderness and how He provided for them, and the people were supposed to be under those booths for a longer period of time, then they would sleep in their homes during that week. And so here are the people. They've been doing that for this week, and now the feast is over, and so they go to their own home. Verse 53 of John 7, "Everyone went to his home."
But then verse 1 opens up with those words, "Jesus went to the Mount of Olives." Oh how our Savior loved to go to the Mount of Olives. And you know what He did there? He often prayed. He prayed there. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He went there often to spend the night alone with His Father and our Father, His God and our God. This was a place to which He went so regularly that when Judas betrayed Him, and led a band of soldiers to arrest Him, the betrayer knew exactly where the Master would be.
So Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives, and we see yet again the primacy of prayer and the word in the ministry of Christ, something the apostles later imitated in their ministry in Acts 6, where we are told they devoted themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Early in the morning, He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him, and He sat down and began to teach them. So there He is teaching. He came to teach the Word of God, to give the Word of God. He came to proclaim and preach the Word of God. And we read as He was teaching the Word of God to the people who came to learn and to listen, and sitting at His feet, verse 3, as He was doing this, we're told the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery.
And this is the only time we find this word, scribes, “ramateos” in Greek, appearing in the Gospel of John, and it's a technical word that means these are the law experts, experts in the law of Moses. That would make sense because now this is a legal case that is being presented. They're trying to condemn someone according to the law of Moses. And so these scribes and Pharisees now have something to throw at Jesus. So picture the scene. Jesus is preaching and teaching, and He's got a rapt crowd of attentive listeners, and there's a, in the midst of that, there's a shuffle, there's noise, and now everyone is distracted as they look over and they see a small group of men, scribes and Pharisees, dragging now this humiliated woman. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that she's probably in tears. They drag her, as it were, and they shove her in the middle, interrupting the teaching. Look at verse 3: "The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court." In verse 4, they said to Him, Didascalus, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act," as if she's exhibit A in a court case. And they go on to say in verse 5, "Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?"
Here's the question that should come to your mind and my mind. Why are they asking Jesus? Why? If the law of Moses has already given detailed instructions, why are they asking Jesus? Do they need more information? Are they unsure? Is this the first time that this ever happened? No, we know that those were not the reasons. After all, if they had caught a murderer red-handed having slain someone, would they have grabbed that murderer and taken a detour to the temple and say, "Well, before we execute him, let's just go to Jesus and ask Him what He thinks"? Would they have done that? No. No. All of this smells of a setup. We need to understand this is an engineered event. This is an engineered event designed to bring about this particular moment.
After all, think about it. Adultery is not usually a public act. And in order for a crime to be punished under Jewish law, there needed to be two witnesses at least. So where are they? Where are the witnesses? And how would they have viewed this? And furthermore, where is the man, the adulterer? It takes two to commit adultery, so where is he? According to the Mosaic law, both men and women were to be punished for adultery. Leviticus 20:10, “if there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Same thing in Deuteronomy 22:22–24.
So where's the guy? Where is he? Was he really so fleet of foot, swift-footed, able to run so quickly, dart so quickly, that these witnesses couldn't grab him? Was he such a slippery fellow that before they got him, he was just simply out the door, vanished? No. No. This is an engineered event. It reeks with devious scheming. It looks like provision had been made for him to escape. Perhaps he was just a paid scoundrel who was supposed to entrap a woman that perhaps they had a particular vindictiveness towards. And at a given moment, they burst into the door and he makes headway out, and he's gone, vanished, and the woman is taken and arrested. You could just smell the reek of dirty tricks and bribery and entrapment. It's all over this.
So why are they trying this particular tactic on Jesus? Well, it was already known that Jesus was particularly the friend of sinners. It was known that He was particularly gracious towards sinners. He was known to be kind and compassionate. Of course, that's not how His enemies put it. How did they put it? Well, in Luke 15:2, look at how they put it, the way they put it: "Both the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'" And you can hear the sound of their disgust. That's how they interpreted it.
A sinful woman had been at the feet of Jesus, wiping His feet with tears and receiving pardon. And this is their response. So Jesus' enemies probably saw it as permissive weakness, impure tolerance, giving license to sinners to keep on sinning.
So they had this plan. They devised this diabolical plan. If we do this, if we get an adulteress and we throw her at the feet of Jesus and we say, is she guilty or is she not? He's probably going to say, well, she's not guilty. She's not guilty. And so this was the trap. This is what the traps look like. They're going to bring a mosaically verified adulteress to Jesus and demand that He renders judgment. And if He, as they think He will, has pity on her and says set her free, they can instantly show that Jesus violates the law of Moses. Look, the law of Moses says this. Jesus says the opposite. No Messiah could be a lawbreaker. Therefore, Jesus is not a Messiah. On the other hand, if surprise, surprise, He turns around and says stone her, now He would damage His reputation of being a friend of sinners, compassionate towards the rejects and the nobodies and the despised of society. And they'll say to Him, what about the rest of the publicans and sinners You were eating with? How come You pick and choose Your sinners to stone?
And furthermore, He would be guilty of disobeying Roman law because the power of capital punishment had been taken from the Jews; it lays with the Roman governor. No individual Jews had the right to say, well, this person should be stoned or executed. So either way, they could trap Jesus. And they thought in their mind this was an airtight trap. If He says no, He's a breaker of Mosaic law. If He says yes, He's a breaker of Roman law and tarnishes His reputation as a friend of sinners. He's either a sinner or a political rebel. It's perfect. It's the perfect trap. No wiggle room. John tells us, of course, that the reason they were doing this, verse 6, "testing Him so that they might have evidence to accuse Him." It was a trap. It was a setup. It was a scheme. They were not there to get information.
Now let me pause and say this by way of application. I don't know where you are today, but if you have false guilt, it's just like that trap. You feel guilty, but it's not honest. False guilt either excuses you when you shouldn't be excused or points a finger at you when you've done nothing wrong. False guilt is always, always unfair. And here's how you know whether you have false guilt or true guilt. False guilt always pushes you away from God. Always. Always. False guilt always makes you run in the opposite direction. True guilt leads you towards the only just Judge.
I think some of the most wonderful moments in the Gospels are when people try to trap Jesus. When I come across accounts like this, I just can't wait to read them, even though you know how they end, but you just can't help it. Because I know when God in the flesh is dealing with people who think they've got Him, it's just, you know it's going to be humorous. Remember when they thought they got Jesus by asking Him, should we pay tax to Caesar, Matthew 22? Because there they thought, we've got Him. If He says yes, then He's loyal to Rome, He's an idolater. And if He says no, well He's disloyal to Rome, He's a rebel, and He's going to get in trouble with Rome. So we got Him either way. And what did Jesus do? Remember He asked them to bring a coin and then asked them, whose likeness and inscription is this? And they said to Him, "Caesar's." Then He said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."
Well, I want you to see how He does that again here. Look at it. Secondly, Messiah's convicting test. Look at the second part of verse 6. “But Jesus stooped down with His finger, wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.”
So this clamor comes to Him as He's teaching. What do you say, Jesus? What do you say? And Jesus simply stoops down and writes on the ground. And by the way, I think if this incident had been made up, this is exactly the kind of details that would be missing. Because when people make up stories, they would either not have that or if they did have it, they would tell us exactly what He wrote. But the fact that it doesn't tell us what He wrote and yet tells us that He was writing has all the marks of a genuine eyewitness account. No fiction or elaboration, no symbolic embellishment, just the facts. Jesus stooped down, wrote with His finger on the ground.
Calvin suggested that He was shaming His enemies by ignoring them, showing them that they were unworthy to be heard. I do think one of the reasons that Jesus stooped down and wrote is that He's not going to grant any credibility to this trap, to this circus. You see, if they come and say, what do you say about this matter, teacher? And He says, if He were to say, well, okay, all right. Now give me all the facts. What happened? Then He'd be jumping to their tune. He'd be giving this kangaroo court a kind of respect, a kind of legitimacy. But He wasn't about to do that. Just like when He's falsely accused before the Sanhedrin later on, six months down the line. What does He give them? Silence. Silence. Why play into the hands of people who don't care what you say and don't believe you anyway? So He doesn't give them that. He just stoops down, lets them rant, rave, and He writes.
I know what you're thinking. What did He write? What did He write? I'm going to give you the answer. Here's what He wrote. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Of course, like speculation of what He wrote has been legion, plenty, replete, really. Some say that by simply writing with His finger, He was reminding the Israelites of the fact that the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God, reminding them that He was the lawgiver. They couldn't throw the law in His face. He's the one who wrote it to begin with. Others say, well, maybe He wrote Exodus 23:1 in front of them, which says, "You shall not bear a false report. Do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness." Some think that He wrote an interesting verse, Jeremiah 17:13, that says this, "All who forsake You," referring to Yahweh, "all who forsake You, Yahweh, will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be written down because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even Yahweh." Some people suggest that He began to write down the name of the mistresses that those men had had. But regardless, the bottom line is that the text doesn't tell us. In reality, we don't know. And if we needed to know what He wrote, then the Bible would have told us. We don't know. The important thing, beloved, is not what He wrote. The important thing is that He wrote.
While they were busy clamoring for Jesus to answer their trick question, their trap, the Word incarnate, the Word Himself, was calmly stooped down, writing, showing that true words don't jump to the tune of false words. They're harassing, clamoring for justice. Jesus will operate on His own timetable. He will take His time. True justice is never hustled into an answer, never shoved into making a judgment. He's just displaying His pure authority. He doesn't have to answer them. He's showing His patience, His restraint, His calmness. He allows all their fury to be vented. He's totally unruffled, just moves His fingers through the sand.
But I imagine that didn't satisfy them. I imagine them crouching angrily. Hey, Jesus, hey, answer us. What do you say? Answer us. In fact, that's exactly what happened, verse 7, "But when they persisted in asking." They persisted. It's an imperfect tense, picturing them badgering Him over and over and over again for an answer. Verse 7, "He straightened up and said to them, 'Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.'" Again, He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Finally, the Lord straightens up. Maybe He dusts off His hands and looks at His accusers with a single reply. And it's not a yes, and it's not a no. Instead, really, it's a question of procedure with penetrating truth. The one to start the execution of this woman should himself be without sin. He says it, and He lets that statement drop. He stoops down again and begins writing again, showing again He's not being drawn into their sinister game.
What does He mean by that? What does He mean? Well, let's eliminate what Jesus doesn't mean by what He said. He doesn't mean whoever among you is completely sinless, you're authorized to execute justice. That's not what He means at all. Because in that case, no one could ever execute justice, right? The Bible says, "There is none righteous, no, not one." Ecclesiastes 7:20, "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins." If that was the case, the Mosaic law would be hamstrung, hampered. No one could ever judge. So it can't be what Jesus means here.
He also doesn't mean, hey, listen, it's wrong to judge. I want you to understand this. It's wrong to judge. Don't judge. It's wrong to punish anyone. Only the sinless can punish people, so just don't do it, period. Well, that wouldn't make sense. The law of Moses was full of judgments and punishments and full of penalties, full of actions that had to be done to sinners, including death penalty executed by other fallible human sinners. That was just understood. It doesn't mean you need to be sinless in order to make a judgment. It doesn't mean that judgment is wrong.
There was a time when it used to be people's favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." And it’s a great verse, and I hope it is one of your favorite verses today. But, you know, I think people's favorite verse today is, unfortunately, Matthew 7:1 taken out of context, "Do not judge so that you will not be judged." Don't judge. I mean, they have these t-shirts, "Don't Judge Me."
But the Bible tells us to make judgments all the time. Judge what is good. Judge what is evil. Judge what is true. Judge what is false. What the Bible tells you not to do is don't do it maliciously. Don't do it haughtily, arrogantly. Don't do it sanctimoniously. Don't judge others for ulterior motives. Don't condemn others to make yourself look good. Don't judge just to win an argument. That's just proud, haughty, false judgment. Don't judge others when you're doing exactly the same thing and acting like you're innocent. That's hypocrisy. Don't do that. That's forbidden. What Jesus does mean is this: Jesus is not teaching that no judgment should ever be made by sinners, nor is He teaching against capital punishment. What He's teaching is that judgment must be made with righteous motives. Judgments must be made with righteous motives, and people must see themselves as fallible sinners.
By making the accusers examine themselves, He exposed their real motives. So instead of Him judging the woman taken in adultery, He judged the ones doing the judging. He says to this group of men, scribes and Pharisees, whoever is qualified in respect of this execution, go ahead. Whoever is blameless with regards to this particular thing, you cast the first stone. And these men, by the way, have destroyed their own case. They claim to have caught this woman in the very act. Deuteronomy gave you the procedure for the witnesses. In Deuteronomy 17:7 the hand of the witnesses, Deuteronomy 17:7 says this, "the hand of the witnesses shall be first against Him to put Him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people." In other words, those people who claim they were witnesses of this act, they're supposed to be the first ones to cast the stone. If they were really witnesses of this adultery, why did they not bring the man as well and bring both of them to justice? And remember Leviticus 20:10 "the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Same thing in Deuteronomy 22. Clearly, as you see, they're already compromised as witnesses. They're incompetent. They're biased. They're not blameless in the very way they've gone about this trial. They could be implicated as false witnesses, and they themselves could receive the death penalty.
But beyond a mistrial, I think Jesus' statement is convicting to the sexual purity of these men. This was clearly an unequal society where women were subjected to a kind of scrutiny as to purity, virginity, faithfulness, whereas men were not. And perhaps the words of Jesus penetrated deep into some of these men that had been adulterous, at least in their hearts, if not in their actual deeds. And so they were using her very obvious, blatant guilt to cover and distract from their own much darker, hidden guilt. And so Jesus, I think on a secondary level, says, whoever among you men, is blameless in this area that you're accusing her, step forward and begin the execution.
Now here's the result of not a proud condemnation, but pure conviction. Look at verse 9. Look at what pure conviction looks like. "When they heard it," when they heard it, and conscience, of course, being convicted, "they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He, Christ, was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court." I love what Pastor MacArthur said at this point, and I quote, "Ironically, those who came to put Jesus to shame left ashamed. Those who came to condemn the woman went away condemned."
As self-righteous as these men were, they knew that they had not followed the letter of the law in this case. They knew they could likely be implicated in similar cases, and to actually begin this execution, to throw stones and rocks at this woman's head, they needed to be blameless in this, and in how they prosecuted her, and personally blameless in this area as well. But you know what happened as Jesus said these words? The sentence began to fall not only on their own heads, but on their own hearts. What sentence? Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Here they'd begun the day deciding, Jesus is guilty, and we're going to show it. We're going to expose it. And so they devised this plan. Let's set up this whole thing. Take this guilty woman to show Jesus is Himself guilty, and now the tables turn. They are the ones guilty. That's what conviction does. When finally the finger you pointed outward starts to point inward, and you say, guilty. Mine, mine is the transgression. And one by one, starting with those most responsible in Jewish culture, the oldest, down to the youngest, they walk away. The trap not only has failed, it also has ensnared them. It trapped them. Every single person there had to admit and face their own sin, and there was no one there who was without sin. The older people first to acknowledge this, and then the younger people followed. Christ's righteous arrow hit every single one of them. Every person in that instance should have fallen at the feet of Christ and asked Him for His saving grace and mercy. They have all admitted in that instance that they are sinners who cannot cast the first stone. They are guilty, guilty, guilty, but they refuse to go to the only One who can forgive their sins.
And rather than go to Him, what happens? They go home. They walk away. They go home. You see, beloved, many people admit that they are not perfect. Many people admit that they have sinned. But very few, comparatively speaking, look to the only One who can deal with their sin, who can forgive their sin. And frankly, when the Word of God is carefully and accurately taught, it exposes sin. It does. It acts like a mirror. It acts like a light that shines in the darkness and exposes the deeds of darkness.
This is why most people do not like a church that preaches the truth and makes them confront their own sinfulness, their own sin. Most like a church as long as they feel good, that tickles their ears, as long as they think they're righteous, they're okay with God. But the moment truth confronts them, they leave. They walk away. They quit. They go home. They go somewhere else.
You see, when you make God's standard your standard, you can no longer excuse, accuse, blame shift, or run away. You just have to stand before God, you and Him alone. And that's what happens to this woman next. Look with me at what happens next: Messiah's comforting truth. Messiah's comforting truth. Look at verse 9, middle part of it: "And He”, Jesus, “was left alone and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court." The conversation is not over. The two of them are left. I love what Augustine said at this point. And I was wrestling with the title of the message. My second choice would have been this: Misery and Mercy. Misery and Mercy. Listen to what He said, and I love this. He says, “misery and mercy are left - the misery of the woman and the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.” "And He was left alone and the woman, where she was, in the center." Misery and mercy. Verse 10: "Straightening up, Jesus said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' And Jesus said, 'I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on, sin no more.'"
All along, through all of this, Jesus is not looking at them, except perhaps in that one instance in verse 7, when He indicted them. But throughout all of this, He's down, He's writing. No doubt, now He hears the silence after He's made that statement in verse 7. All the clamor is over. Maybe He only hears the sound of some rocks being dropped at their feet and the sound of shuffling as they walk away. And now it's just Jesus and the woman, and perhaps along with those who were there before to hear His teaching. And Jesus stands up.
You know what I find interesting? This woman doesn't run away. Doesn't take off. Doesn't. She couldn't have. She couldn't have. When they started walking away, she could have said, well, to herself, you know, this is my opportunity. This is my chance to just run. She's been humiliated. She's been shamed. And when you've been shamed, you typically want to get out of the light, right? But for some reason, she stands there as if she feels that she cannot go until the only One with moral authority rules on her case. Only Jesus has the authority to tell her what to do next. And there she is on her own.
Picture the scene. Guilty. She's guilty. But her malicious accusers are gone, and Jesus asked her a simple question: "Woman" And we've come across this expression before. This is not being impolite or rude. This is, in our modern day, would be like saying madam or ma'am. He asked her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you? Is there no charge laid against you? Has no one found you guilty?” In other words, Jesus is not asking her if she is guilty. He's not asking her that. He's asking her if this fake court case is still going on. And she says, "No one, Lord." And Jesus' response is just absolutely beautiful: "I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on, sin no more."
Now, beloved, again understand what Jesus is saying. He doesn't mean no one would ever be condemned, or no one will ever be condemned. The Bible tells us that that will happen. And He doesn't mean guilt is baseless as if, oh, don't feel guilty, it's not good for your mental health. He's not saying that. He's not saying also judging is wrong. No, remember, back in chapter 5, He told us clearly, God the Father has given all authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. He's given Him all that authority. Chapter 5:30, He says, "As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is righteous." And we just saw back in chapter 7:24, He said, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." Furthermore, He doesn't mean you're innocent. He's not telling the woman, you're innocent. That's why I'm not going to condemn you. And we know that He's not saying this because of what He said at the end. He knows that she's not innocent.
So what does He mean? What's going on? Okay, follow closely, beloved. When Christ asked this question, "Where are they? Did no one condemn you?" she responded by saying, "No one is here to condemn me," But notice the next word out of her lips: Kyrios, “Lord.” And the reason I believe that this is an instance of a recognition of something more than a man in Him is because in verse 4, they had spoken to Him and said to Him, The Theskalos, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act." And I believe she's begun to recognize something unusual about Him. And so she says to Him, "No one,” Kyrios, “Lord." And if she recognized that the Lord Jesus was Lord, Kyrios, the only way in which she recognized that He was who He was is because the Holy Spirit has enlightened her. Remember, Paul says, "No man calls Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Now, of course, anybody can call Him Lord just using the term, but Paul means no one can call Him truly Lord, recognizing Him as such, bowing before His Lordship except by the Holy Spirit. So she recognizes who Jesus is.
This woman knows that this is the Lord. This is the only person who is in a position to acquit her. And He does. He wipes her slate clean. And when He says, "Go and sin no more," what He means is, do not get into a lifestyle of sin. Do not continue into a pattern of sin anymore. He uses a present tense form of the verb, sin. He's commanding her not to ever get into the sin from now on. This is, beloved, what grace does. It shows a person how vile and sinful he really is, and then shows how all the evil is forgiven in Christ Jesus. And when a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit enters that person, indwells that person, and they do not want to get involved anymore in the same thing again and again. They part with their sin. If a person is to be right with God, that person must, must face his or her own sin. As one commentator said, "No one is ever saved by grace until they are indicted by the law." It was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved. Here we see this beautiful display of the grace of God to a repentant sinner.
But we see something else as well. Stay with me. This is really important. We see something of the mysterious ways of God's sovereign grace. Remember, these scribes and Pharisees were doing exactly what they wanted to do, without any force or compulsion, except by their own wicked wills. Yet the Lord was sovereignly controlling all the circumstances and events of the day. He was secretly working through these wicked men to bring this poor guilty woman to Christ. Truly as the hymn reminds us,
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will."
This guilty, trembling woman was not seeking the Lord. She wasn't seeking the Lord. Ah, but He was seeking her. He was seeking her. He had chosen her. He had loved her. He was about to redeem her, just like He did with the Samaritan woman. And now the appointed time of grace had come, and she would be His. Here we see He used ungodly men to expose her sin, to expose her shame. The very men who wanted her dead and sought her destruction were used by God and as an instrument to carry the chosen object of His sovereign love into the arms of her Savior.
What a marvelous God we worship. He used her shame to humble her. He used even her loathsome sin to bring her to Himself, and He wisely and graciously and sovereignly and tenderly made her willing to embrace Him in the day of His power.
And we see also something of the true nature of repentance, true repentance. The Apostle tells us that there is a repentance that must be repented of and a repentance that brings about death. That's the one we ought to be repented of. True repentance is much more than mere reformation of life, mere tweaking of the outside. It is a change of heart and attitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ. In the presence of Christ, this woman was convinced of her sin because, look, she offered no plea in her own defense. She stood before the Lord silently in her guilt. The Pharisees were convinced of their guilt by their consciences. They left, the scribes. This woman was convinced of her guilt by the Savior, by Christ Jesus making Himself known to her. Theirs was a legal conviction of terror. Hers was a gospel conviction of brokenness and contrition before the Lord, Kyrios. She recognized Him as her Lord.
She did not ask for anything. She seems to have simply waited in submission before her sovereign Master, realizing that He had the right to damn her and the power to save her. And she refused to leave Christ. She was overwhelmed by His grace, conquered by His love. Her hope was in the Savior, and she knew it. She could not leave Him. She had nowhere else to go. And she wasn't running away from Him. She was facing Him. She submitted herself to the authority and the dominion of Christ the Lord. And from that day forth, she was instructed to go and sin no more.
You must place yourself somewhere in the story. You must. Are you like the crowd? Where do you place yourself? Are you like the crowd who stood around watching the entire scene unfold? You see, they witnessed forgiveness, but they did not enter into it. Are you like the scribes and Pharisees? They were in the place where grace was bestowed, but they were too proud, too self-righteous to seek it. They went away. Are you like the humiliated, broken sinner, crushed with guilt before God, broken with a heavy, heavy load of guilt and sin before the Son of God, guilty, dirty, exposed, naked, empty, wretched? If you can take your place with this poor, dirty, wretched, adulterous woman before the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to know, based on the Word of God, He will forgive you, too. Remember the words of Paul to the Corinthian church? He gives a list of sins, vile sins, abominable sins, and he says, "Such were some among you, but you are cleansed and justified and purified." What a comforting truth.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
The only just Judge is Jesus Christ, and He knows everything about you. He knows everything you've done, all of it. But grace is willing to free you, pardon you, and set you free to sin no more. He knows. There's nothing, nothing that you've done that will surprise Him. Nothing that you've done that you can bring to His attention that will shock Him. He knows it. He knows it beginning to end. He knows everything in between. And the most comforting truth possible is that He knows in advance what you've done, and He's willing to free you and give you forgiveness and life.
If I were to tell you the grand story of the Bible in a condensed way, it would look something like this. God created a world of people to have fellowship with Him, but man turned away and fell, and sin entered. And now there's both real guilt and false guilt, the actual judgment of God and the flawed judgment of Satan and men, either too lenient or too harsh. So Jesus came to be both the Savior and the Judge, the one who can truly pardon you and forgive you and me. He's the only one who really knows the severity of your guilt. And He knows when your accusers have got it right, and He knows when they've got it wrong. And you know why? Why He knows the severity of your guilt? Because He actually bore that guilt on Calvary's cross. He knows how guilty you are, how guilty I am, because He's felt it no more and no less, and to trust in Him is to be forgiven. And to hear Him say, "I do not condemn you. Now go and sin no more." You're set free to sin less and one day to be sinless.
You see, the future of the kingdom, heaven itself, is for those who ultimately don't want their sin, they want only God. And one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture is also written by John. Listen to what it says, 1 John 3:19-21, “And by this we will know that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” Maybe today you struggle with too little guilt. God is greater than our hearts. He's greater than our self-knowledge. He knows everything.
So go to Him. Flee to Him. Go to the just, righteous Judge. Draw near to Him to be forgiven. And then go forth to sin no more.
Let's pray.
You know, a huge part of human life could probably be summarized with the word guilt. Guilt. Probably the way people deal with guilt explains a huge portion of their behavior, why they behave the way they do. Guilt is a massive feature of human life, and many people, the way they deal with it, they simply amuse themselves to death because they're so guilty, and so they turn to different things to distract themselves and drown out the voice of conscience in their head. And so you find them turning to this, that, and the other.
Some people medicate themselves so that the guilt goes away and they dull it that way. They don't feel it that way. They numb the pain. Some people bury themselves in more of the things that made them guilty in the first place so that they hopefully acclimatize and their conscience will no longer bother them about the thing because, you know, you're doing it so much. You become desensitized. Other people use a different approach. They try to balance the scales of guilt, you know, figuring if I do enough good on this side of the scale, then maybe the bad just kind of goes away, and so they afflict themselves. They get really, really religious, painfully strict, and self-flagellate, figuratively speaking.
But beloved, all of these things are wrong strategies, because fleeing guilt never works. It never works. Excusing yourself from your guilt also never works. Blaming others for your guilt never works. Never works. Comparing yourself with others who you think are more guilty than you never works. Never works. The only one who can help you with your guilt, the only one who can help you with your guilt is the one who is without guilt, God Himself. God is the only righteous judge. God is the only just judge. And God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the perfect judge because He is both sinless and sympathetic.
Scripture teaches us that God, the eternal Word, became flesh. He dwelt among us. He tabernacled among us. He became a man, the God-man, Christ Jesus, our Lord. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten God." And being God and man, Jesus has sympathies with both divine holiness and human weaknesses. Jesus Christ would neither mercilessly condemn you nor will He sentimentally excuse you. Jesus is neither a legalist nor a libertarian. He doesn't cruelly punish, nor does He lazily give you license. Jesus is the only just judge, perfect judge, righteous judge.
And that's what we have here before us, a passage that teaches us that Jesus is the perfect judge. Jesus, like Solomon, He is like Solomon, only better and greater, far greater. Remember Solomon was brought hard cases, very hard cases. Remember the case of the two women who claimed to be mothers of the same child in 1 Kings 3 and Solomon there, revealing his wisdom, saying, divide the child up and give half to each. And the false mother said, well, that sounds like a good plan. And the true mother said, no, no, no, just give her the child.
And Solomon's wisdom was put on display, superior wisdom to adjudicate hard cases. And likewise, Jesus can adjudicate the hardest cases, and He is greater than Solomon. He is the greatest, He is the perfect judge who sees beyond the external.
Now John is persuading us, you remember in this book, that Jesus is Messiah, that He is the Son of the living God, that He is the Christ. He's the one that you and I should place our trust in, and one of the reasons that you should do that is that He's the only just judge. He's the perfect judge. He judges perfectly. And you know a lot of people are avoiding God because they think God is a capricious judge, malicious judge. Some people avoid God because they think He will be cruel. Others, on the other side, avoid God because they think He's permissive. They think it doesn't matter, they can get away with it, but here you have a passage with the perfect balance of holiness and mercy, righteousness and grace.
I don't know where you are today as you sit in that chair. Maybe you're tending towards avoiding God, avoiding truth. Maybe it's because of unresolved guilt in your life. Maybe you find yourself secretly despising others because of their sin, and you kind of go, oh, I'm glad I'm not like that person, like the publican, like the Pharisee, saying about the publican. Maybe you despise people because of their strictness. You say, oh, I'm glad I'm not on my high horse of holiness like those people. Either way, it may be unresolved guilt in your life, and it may be you've been listening to the wrong judge, the judge of the world, the world being the judge that tells you that sin is okay, it's not a big deal, don't be worked up about it, it's nothing really. They're like glitches. Or the judge of Satan who accuses you no matter what you've done. Or it may be the judge of your own conscience which might need to be corrected and regulated by Scripture.
Because remember, because of the fall, we have, thank God for, the conscience, but it is a defective conscience apart from Scripture. It's faulty. It must be regulated by the Word of God. You see, there's only one infallible judge, and that's God. God Himself. And that's what we're going to see in this portion of God's Word here before us.
Now before we delve into the text itself, I want to address the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room has to do with this portion, this record, this account, this narrative. I'm going to do it briefly. Some of you have Bibles with a kind of footnote or brackets around this section, and often the note will say that John 7:53 to John 8:11 may not be original. Now my position is that this passage is original. It's part of the Gospel of John, and that's why I'm going to preach it today. If I didn't believe it was part of the Gospel of John, I wouldn't preach it. I would skip it. But I believe it's original.
Now some New Testament scholars believe it's not original, but I stand among those who hold that the Apostle John penned this Scripture, this portion, in his Gospel and are under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now some of you may be asking, why does he believe that? I'm glad you asked this question, so I'm going to answer it for you. Well, first of all, it's found, this portion, it's found in over 80% of ancient Greek manuscripts. As John Calvin said, this account is found in many old Greek manuscripts. Himself, he said that. It's also found in a Christian writing dating to the 200s, which was very early. The *Daskalia* is that writing. The ancient Bible translator, Jerome, included it in his Latin version in 385 A.D., and both Ambrose and Augustine quoted it. And I think it really fits the flow of the passage. If we pull it out and go from 7:52 to 8:12 there's really a jolt in the continuity.
You say, well, why would anyone think it's not? Well, the reason is because of the thousands of manuscripts that we have, there's a little family that's very old, comes from the Egyptian area of Alexandria, that doesn't have this passage. This passage is omitted in those manuscripts. Because of that, some scholars feel that, a lot of weight, and that has a lot of weight, so they believe it may not be part of the original.
However, Papias, who was the pastor of the church of Hierapolis in Phrygia, was known for collecting data set forth by the apostles around 110 A.D. He reproduces the story about this woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins. Papias said, in fact, that he actually heard John the Apostle speak with his own ears the story. I think it was, I believe it was original, but it got omitted.
Now, why did it get omitted? Well, Augustine actually tells us one of the reasons why. He said that the passage, this account, shocked some people, and they thought it gave permission to commit adultery. Listen to what he said. He said this, and I quote, "They struck out from their copies of the gospel this that our Lord did in pardoning the woman taken in adultery as if He granted leave of sinning who said go and sin no more," So Augustine says some people actually deleted it because they thought it was giving license to sin. Some of the early legalistic church leaders thought the story presented a lenient attitude towards immorality, and so they decided to keep it out. William Hendrickson is very helpful in his commentary on John's gospel if you would like to read further on this. More could be said, but I'll leave it at that. This is part of the original text, so I'm going to preach it. Let us press on considering the text itself given to us by the Apostle John under inspiration.
The scene is Jerusalem. You remember that, I trust. Jesus is in the lion's den. He's in a hive of Jesus' haters and swarm of religious rulers who are out to get Him. That's their one single purpose, to get Him. To them, Jesus is public enemy number one, and they were out to get Him. Why is He here? You remember He's here because He's obeying the law of Moses, which said every Jewish male had to go to Jerusalem three times a year, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Those are the three feasts. Deuteronomy 16:16, you'll find the reference there. This is the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. It lasts seven days, and here He is.
You remember from the previous chapter, He came in secret initially, but then went public. He went to the temple complex, which by the way, is not just the temple itself, but really the massive area. Several soccer fields can really fit into that area. There He went to a certain section where He began to teach the crowds. The crowds were listening to Him, to the greatest Rabbi ever, the Word incarnate, God in the flesh, God's greatest message.
We saw last time temple police were sent to arrest Him, and as soon as they walked up, they were actually gripped by His teaching and the authority by which He was teaching, so much so that they began to listen to Him, and they could not arrest Him because they were really arrested by His authority and His teaching. So much so that they said in 7:46, "Never has a man spoken like this." Never. He's one of a kind.
So Jesus is teaching, surrounded by large crowds of people. John 7 records a lot of the confusion we saw together about Jesus, who Jesus was, and who Messiah was. They were all mixed up. There was turmoil, there was confusion, and you remember there were several groups of people within the crowd. You have the Jerusalem dwellers, you have some religious leaders, you have pilgrims. Regardless, there was a lot of conversation back and forth, confusion and turmoil.
Some tried to seize Jesus but they couldn't. His hour had not come yet. God operates on His own timetable, not man's timetable. So they couldn't. The religious leaders were getting more and more anxious and more and more furious, and if they can't arrest Him, and if they can't discredit Him, and if they can't refute Him, maybe they can set a trap for Him. Maybe they can trap Him. They can lay a snare and provide the bait, and lure Jesus in and shut the door on Him. And that's what we're about to see.
Now we can look at this narrative, this event, happening in three phases: man's condemning trap, Messiah's convicting test, and Messiah's comforting word, or comforting truth. So let us begin, first of all, with man's condemning trap. And that's the first six verses, verses 1- 6a. You remember the previous day was the last day of the feast, and in the feast they would live in those booths to commemorate God's intervention in the wilderness and how He provided for them, and the people were supposed to be under those booths for a longer period of time, then they would sleep in their homes during that week. And so here are the people. They've been doing that for this week, and now the feast is over, and so they go to their own home. Verse 53 of John 7, "Everyone went to his home."
But then verse 1 opens up with those words, "Jesus went to the Mount of Olives." Oh how our Savior loved to go to the Mount of Olives. And you know what He did there? He often prayed. He prayed there. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He went there often to spend the night alone with His Father and our Father, His God and our God. This was a place to which He went so regularly that when Judas betrayed Him, and led a band of soldiers to arrest Him, the betrayer knew exactly where the Master would be.
So Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives, and we see yet again the primacy of prayer and the word in the ministry of Christ, something the apostles later imitated in their ministry in Acts 6, where we are told they devoted themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Early in the morning, He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him, and He sat down and began to teach them. So there He is teaching. He came to teach the Word of God, to give the Word of God. He came to proclaim and preach the Word of God. And we read as He was teaching the Word of God to the people who came to learn and to listen, and sitting at His feet, verse 3, as He was doing this, we're told the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery.
And this is the only time we find this word, scribes, “ramateos” in Greek, appearing in the Gospel of John, and it's a technical word that means these are the law experts, experts in the law of Moses. That would make sense because now this is a legal case that is being presented. They're trying to condemn someone according to the law of Moses. And so these scribes and Pharisees now have something to throw at Jesus. So picture the scene. Jesus is preaching and teaching, and He's got a rapt crowd of attentive listeners, and there's a, in the midst of that, there's a shuffle, there's noise, and now everyone is distracted as they look over and they see a small group of men, scribes and Pharisees, dragging now this humiliated woman. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that she's probably in tears. They drag her, as it were, and they shove her in the middle, interrupting the teaching. Look at verse 3: "The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court." In verse 4, they said to Him, Didascalus, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act," as if she's exhibit A in a court case. And they go on to say in verse 5, "Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?"
Here's the question that should come to your mind and my mind. Why are they asking Jesus? Why? If the law of Moses has already given detailed instructions, why are they asking Jesus? Do they need more information? Are they unsure? Is this the first time that this ever happened? No, we know that those were not the reasons. After all, if they had caught a murderer red-handed having slain someone, would they have grabbed that murderer and taken a detour to the temple and say, "Well, before we execute him, let's just go to Jesus and ask Him what He thinks"? Would they have done that? No. No. All of this smells of a setup. We need to understand this is an engineered event. This is an engineered event designed to bring about this particular moment.
After all, think about it. Adultery is not usually a public act. And in order for a crime to be punished under Jewish law, there needed to be two witnesses at least. So where are they? Where are the witnesses? And how would they have viewed this? And furthermore, where is the man, the adulterer? It takes two to commit adultery, so where is he? According to the Mosaic law, both men and women were to be punished for adultery. Leviticus 20:10, “if there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Same thing in Deuteronomy 22:22–24.
So where's the guy? Where is he? Was he really so fleet of foot, swift-footed, able to run so quickly, dart so quickly, that these witnesses couldn't grab him? Was he such a slippery fellow that before they got him, he was just simply out the door, vanished? No. No. This is an engineered event. It reeks with devious scheming. It looks like provision had been made for him to escape. Perhaps he was just a paid scoundrel who was supposed to entrap a woman that perhaps they had a particular vindictiveness towards. And at a given moment, they burst into the door and he makes headway out, and he's gone, vanished, and the woman is taken and arrested. You could just smell the reek of dirty tricks and bribery and entrapment. It's all over this.
So why are they trying this particular tactic on Jesus? Well, it was already known that Jesus was particularly the friend of sinners. It was known that He was particularly gracious towards sinners. He was known to be kind and compassionate. Of course, that's not how His enemies put it. How did they put it? Well, in Luke 15:2, look at how they put it, the way they put it: "Both the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'" And you can hear the sound of their disgust. That's how they interpreted it.
A sinful woman had been at the feet of Jesus, wiping His feet with tears and receiving pardon. And this is their response. So Jesus' enemies probably saw it as permissive weakness, impure tolerance, giving license to sinners to keep on sinning.
So they had this plan. They devised this diabolical plan. If we do this, if we get an adulteress and we throw her at the feet of Jesus and we say, is she guilty or is she not? He's probably going to say, well, she's not guilty. She's not guilty. And so this was the trap. This is what the traps look like. They're going to bring a mosaically verified adulteress to Jesus and demand that He renders judgment. And if He, as they think He will, has pity on her and says set her free, they can instantly show that Jesus violates the law of Moses. Look, the law of Moses says this. Jesus says the opposite. No Messiah could be a lawbreaker. Therefore, Jesus is not a Messiah. On the other hand, if surprise, surprise, He turns around and says stone her, now He would damage His reputation of being a friend of sinners, compassionate towards the rejects and the nobodies and the despised of society. And they'll say to Him, what about the rest of the publicans and sinners You were eating with? How come You pick and choose Your sinners to stone?
And furthermore, He would be guilty of disobeying Roman law because the power of capital punishment had been taken from the Jews; it lays with the Roman governor. No individual Jews had the right to say, well, this person should be stoned or executed. So either way, they could trap Jesus. And they thought in their mind this was an airtight trap. If He says no, He's a breaker of Mosaic law. If He says yes, He's a breaker of Roman law and tarnishes His reputation as a friend of sinners. He's either a sinner or a political rebel. It's perfect. It's the perfect trap. No wiggle room. John tells us, of course, that the reason they were doing this, verse 6, "testing Him so that they might have evidence to accuse Him." It was a trap. It was a setup. It was a scheme. They were not there to get information.
Now let me pause and say this by way of application. I don't know where you are today, but if you have false guilt, it's just like that trap. You feel guilty, but it's not honest. False guilt either excuses you when you shouldn't be excused or points a finger at you when you've done nothing wrong. False guilt is always, always unfair. And here's how you know whether you have false guilt or true guilt. False guilt always pushes you away from God. Always. Always. False guilt always makes you run in the opposite direction. True guilt leads you towards the only just Judge.
I think some of the most wonderful moments in the Gospels are when people try to trap Jesus. When I come across accounts like this, I just can't wait to read them, even though you know how they end, but you just can't help it. Because I know when God in the flesh is dealing with people who think they've got Him, it's just, you know it's going to be humorous. Remember when they thought they got Jesus by asking Him, should we pay tax to Caesar, Matthew 22? Because there they thought, we've got Him. If He says yes, then He's loyal to Rome, He's an idolater. And if He says no, well He's disloyal to Rome, He's a rebel, and He's going to get in trouble with Rome. So we got Him either way. And what did Jesus do? Remember He asked them to bring a coin and then asked them, whose likeness and inscription is this? And they said to Him, "Caesar's." Then He said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."
Well, I want you to see how He does that again here. Look at it. Secondly, Messiah's convicting test. Look at the second part of verse 6. “But Jesus stooped down with His finger, wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.”
So this clamor comes to Him as He's teaching. What do you say, Jesus? What do you say? And Jesus simply stoops down and writes on the ground. And by the way, I think if this incident had been made up, this is exactly the kind of details that would be missing. Because when people make up stories, they would either not have that or if they did have it, they would tell us exactly what He wrote. But the fact that it doesn't tell us what He wrote and yet tells us that He was writing has all the marks of a genuine eyewitness account. No fiction or elaboration, no symbolic embellishment, just the facts. Jesus stooped down, wrote with His finger on the ground.
Calvin suggested that He was shaming His enemies by ignoring them, showing them that they were unworthy to be heard. I do think one of the reasons that Jesus stooped down and wrote is that He's not going to grant any credibility to this trap, to this circus. You see, if they come and say, what do you say about this matter, teacher? And He says, if He were to say, well, okay, all right. Now give me all the facts. What happened? Then He'd be jumping to their tune. He'd be giving this kangaroo court a kind of respect, a kind of legitimacy. But He wasn't about to do that. Just like when He's falsely accused before the Sanhedrin later on, six months down the line. What does He give them? Silence. Silence. Why play into the hands of people who don't care what you say and don't believe you anyway? So He doesn't give them that. He just stoops down, lets them rant, rave, and He writes.
I know what you're thinking. What did He write? What did He write? I'm going to give you the answer. Here's what He wrote. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Of course, like speculation of what He wrote has been legion, plenty, replete, really. Some say that by simply writing with His finger, He was reminding the Israelites of the fact that the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God, reminding them that He was the lawgiver. They couldn't throw the law in His face. He's the one who wrote it to begin with. Others say, well, maybe He wrote Exodus 23:1 in front of them, which says, "You shall not bear a false report. Do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness." Some think that He wrote an interesting verse, Jeremiah 17:13, that says this, "All who forsake You," referring to Yahweh, "all who forsake You, Yahweh, will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be written down because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even Yahweh." Some people suggest that He began to write down the name of the mistresses that those men had had. But regardless, the bottom line is that the text doesn't tell us. In reality, we don't know. And if we needed to know what He wrote, then the Bible would have told us. We don't know. The important thing, beloved, is not what He wrote. The important thing is that He wrote.
While they were busy clamoring for Jesus to answer their trick question, their trap, the Word incarnate, the Word Himself, was calmly stooped down, writing, showing that true words don't jump to the tune of false words. They're harassing, clamoring for justice. Jesus will operate on His own timetable. He will take His time. True justice is never hustled into an answer, never shoved into making a judgment. He's just displaying His pure authority. He doesn't have to answer them. He's showing His patience, His restraint, His calmness. He allows all their fury to be vented. He's totally unruffled, just moves His fingers through the sand.
But I imagine that didn't satisfy them. I imagine them crouching angrily. Hey, Jesus, hey, answer us. What do you say? Answer us. In fact, that's exactly what happened, verse 7, "But when they persisted in asking." They persisted. It's an imperfect tense, picturing them badgering Him over and over and over again for an answer. Verse 7, "He straightened up and said to them, 'Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.'" Again, He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Finally, the Lord straightens up. Maybe He dusts off His hands and looks at His accusers with a single reply. And it's not a yes, and it's not a no. Instead, really, it's a question of procedure with penetrating truth. The one to start the execution of this woman should himself be without sin. He says it, and He lets that statement drop. He stoops down again and begins writing again, showing again He's not being drawn into their sinister game.
What does He mean by that? What does He mean? Well, let's eliminate what Jesus doesn't mean by what He said. He doesn't mean whoever among you is completely sinless, you're authorized to execute justice. That's not what He means at all. Because in that case, no one could ever execute justice, right? The Bible says, "There is none righteous, no, not one." Ecclesiastes 7:20, "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins." If that was the case, the Mosaic law would be hamstrung, hampered. No one could ever judge. So it can't be what Jesus means here.
He also doesn't mean, hey, listen, it's wrong to judge. I want you to understand this. It's wrong to judge. Don't judge. It's wrong to punish anyone. Only the sinless can punish people, so just don't do it, period. Well, that wouldn't make sense. The law of Moses was full of judgments and punishments and full of penalties, full of actions that had to be done to sinners, including death penalty executed by other fallible human sinners. That was just understood. It doesn't mean you need to be sinless in order to make a judgment. It doesn't mean that judgment is wrong.
There was a time when it used to be people's favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." And it’s a great verse, and I hope it is one of your favorite verses today. But, you know, I think people's favorite verse today is, unfortunately, Matthew 7:1 taken out of context, "Do not judge so that you will not be judged." Don't judge. I mean, they have these t-shirts, "Don't Judge Me."
But the Bible tells us to make judgments all the time. Judge what is good. Judge what is evil. Judge what is true. Judge what is false. What the Bible tells you not to do is don't do it maliciously. Don't do it haughtily, arrogantly. Don't do it sanctimoniously. Don't judge others for ulterior motives. Don't condemn others to make yourself look good. Don't judge just to win an argument. That's just proud, haughty, false judgment. Don't judge others when you're doing exactly the same thing and acting like you're innocent. That's hypocrisy. Don't do that. That's forbidden. What Jesus does mean is this: Jesus is not teaching that no judgment should ever be made by sinners, nor is He teaching against capital punishment. What He's teaching is that judgment must be made with righteous motives. Judgments must be made with righteous motives, and people must see themselves as fallible sinners.
By making the accusers examine themselves, He exposed their real motives. So instead of Him judging the woman taken in adultery, He judged the ones doing the judging. He says to this group of men, scribes and Pharisees, whoever is qualified in respect of this execution, go ahead. Whoever is blameless with regards to this particular thing, you cast the first stone. And these men, by the way, have destroyed their own case. They claim to have caught this woman in the very act. Deuteronomy gave you the procedure for the witnesses. In Deuteronomy 17:7 the hand of the witnesses, Deuteronomy 17:7 says this, "the hand of the witnesses shall be first against Him to put Him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people." In other words, those people who claim they were witnesses of this act, they're supposed to be the first ones to cast the stone. If they were really witnesses of this adultery, why did they not bring the man as well and bring both of them to justice? And remember Leviticus 20:10 "the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Same thing in Deuteronomy 22. Clearly, as you see, they're already compromised as witnesses. They're incompetent. They're biased. They're not blameless in the very way they've gone about this trial. They could be implicated as false witnesses, and they themselves could receive the death penalty.
But beyond a mistrial, I think Jesus' statement is convicting to the sexual purity of these men. This was clearly an unequal society where women were subjected to a kind of scrutiny as to purity, virginity, faithfulness, whereas men were not. And perhaps the words of Jesus penetrated deep into some of these men that had been adulterous, at least in their hearts, if not in their actual deeds. And so they were using her very obvious, blatant guilt to cover and distract from their own much darker, hidden guilt. And so Jesus, I think on a secondary level, says, whoever among you men, is blameless in this area that you're accusing her, step forward and begin the execution.
Now here's the result of not a proud condemnation, but pure conviction. Look at verse 9. Look at what pure conviction looks like. "When they heard it," when they heard it, and conscience, of course, being convicted, "they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He, Christ, was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court." I love what Pastor MacArthur said at this point, and I quote, "Ironically, those who came to put Jesus to shame left ashamed. Those who came to condemn the woman went away condemned."
As self-righteous as these men were, they knew that they had not followed the letter of the law in this case. They knew they could likely be implicated in similar cases, and to actually begin this execution, to throw stones and rocks at this woman's head, they needed to be blameless in this, and in how they prosecuted her, and personally blameless in this area as well. But you know what happened as Jesus said these words? The sentence began to fall not only on their own heads, but on their own hearts. What sentence? Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Here they'd begun the day deciding, Jesus is guilty, and we're going to show it. We're going to expose it. And so they devised this plan. Let's set up this whole thing. Take this guilty woman to show Jesus is Himself guilty, and now the tables turn. They are the ones guilty. That's what conviction does. When finally the finger you pointed outward starts to point inward, and you say, guilty. Mine, mine is the transgression. And one by one, starting with those most responsible in Jewish culture, the oldest, down to the youngest, they walk away. The trap not only has failed, it also has ensnared them. It trapped them. Every single person there had to admit and face their own sin, and there was no one there who was without sin. The older people first to acknowledge this, and then the younger people followed. Christ's righteous arrow hit every single one of them. Every person in that instance should have fallen at the feet of Christ and asked Him for His saving grace and mercy. They have all admitted in that instance that they are sinners who cannot cast the first stone. They are guilty, guilty, guilty, but they refuse to go to the only One who can forgive their sins.
And rather than go to Him, what happens? They go home. They walk away. They go home. You see, beloved, many people admit that they are not perfect. Many people admit that they have sinned. But very few, comparatively speaking, look to the only One who can deal with their sin, who can forgive their sin. And frankly, when the Word of God is carefully and accurately taught, it exposes sin. It does. It acts like a mirror. It acts like a light that shines in the darkness and exposes the deeds of darkness.
This is why most people do not like a church that preaches the truth and makes them confront their own sinfulness, their own sin. Most like a church as long as they feel good, that tickles their ears, as long as they think they're righteous, they're okay with God. But the moment truth confronts them, they leave. They walk away. They quit. They go home. They go somewhere else.
You see, when you make God's standard your standard, you can no longer excuse, accuse, blame shift, or run away. You just have to stand before God, you and Him alone. And that's what happens to this woman next. Look with me at what happens next: Messiah's comforting truth. Messiah's comforting truth. Look at verse 9, middle part of it: "And He”, Jesus, “was left alone and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court." The conversation is not over. The two of them are left. I love what Augustine said at this point. And I was wrestling with the title of the message. My second choice would have been this: Misery and Mercy. Misery and Mercy. Listen to what He said, and I love this. He says, “misery and mercy are left - the misery of the woman and the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.” "And He was left alone and the woman, where she was, in the center." Misery and mercy. Verse 10: "Straightening up, Jesus said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' And Jesus said, 'I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on, sin no more.'"
All along, through all of this, Jesus is not looking at them, except perhaps in that one instance in verse 7, when He indicted them. But throughout all of this, He's down, He's writing. No doubt, now He hears the silence after He's made that statement in verse 7. All the clamor is over. Maybe He only hears the sound of some rocks being dropped at their feet and the sound of shuffling as they walk away. And now it's just Jesus and the woman, and perhaps along with those who were there before to hear His teaching. And Jesus stands up.
You know what I find interesting? This woman doesn't run away. Doesn't take off. Doesn't. She couldn't have. She couldn't have. When they started walking away, she could have said, well, to herself, you know, this is my opportunity. This is my chance to just run. She's been humiliated. She's been shamed. And when you've been shamed, you typically want to get out of the light, right? But for some reason, she stands there as if she feels that she cannot go until the only One with moral authority rules on her case. Only Jesus has the authority to tell her what to do next. And there she is on her own.
Picture the scene. Guilty. She's guilty. But her malicious accusers are gone, and Jesus asked her a simple question: "Woman" And we've come across this expression before. This is not being impolite or rude. This is, in our modern day, would be like saying madam or ma'am. He asked her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you? Is there no charge laid against you? Has no one found you guilty?” In other words, Jesus is not asking her if she is guilty. He's not asking her that. He's asking her if this fake court case is still going on. And she says, "No one, Lord." And Jesus' response is just absolutely beautiful: "I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on, sin no more."
Now, beloved, again understand what Jesus is saying. He doesn't mean no one would ever be condemned, or no one will ever be condemned. The Bible tells us that that will happen. And He doesn't mean guilt is baseless as if, oh, don't feel guilty, it's not good for your mental health. He's not saying that. He's not saying also judging is wrong. No, remember, back in chapter 5, He told us clearly, God the Father has given all authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. He's given Him all that authority. Chapter 5:30, He says, "As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is righteous." And we just saw back in chapter 7:24, He said, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." Furthermore, He doesn't mean you're innocent. He's not telling the woman, you're innocent. That's why I'm not going to condemn you. And we know that He's not saying this because of what He said at the end. He knows that she's not innocent.
So what does He mean? What's going on? Okay, follow closely, beloved. When Christ asked this question, "Where are they? Did no one condemn you?" she responded by saying, "No one is here to condemn me," But notice the next word out of her lips: Kyrios, “Lord.” And the reason I believe that this is an instance of a recognition of something more than a man in Him is because in verse 4, they had spoken to Him and said to Him, The Theskalos, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act." And I believe she's begun to recognize something unusual about Him. And so she says to Him, "No one,” Kyrios, “Lord." And if she recognized that the Lord Jesus was Lord, Kyrios, the only way in which she recognized that He was who He was is because the Holy Spirit has enlightened her. Remember, Paul says, "No man calls Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Now, of course, anybody can call Him Lord just using the term, but Paul means no one can call Him truly Lord, recognizing Him as such, bowing before His Lordship except by the Holy Spirit. So she recognizes who Jesus is.
This woman knows that this is the Lord. This is the only person who is in a position to acquit her. And He does. He wipes her slate clean. And when He says, "Go and sin no more," what He means is, do not get into a lifestyle of sin. Do not continue into a pattern of sin anymore. He uses a present tense form of the verb, sin. He's commanding her not to ever get into the sin from now on. This is, beloved, what grace does. It shows a person how vile and sinful he really is, and then shows how all the evil is forgiven in Christ Jesus. And when a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit enters that person, indwells that person, and they do not want to get involved anymore in the same thing again and again. They part with their sin. If a person is to be right with God, that person must, must face his or her own sin. As one commentator said, "No one is ever saved by grace until they are indicted by the law." It was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved. Here we see this beautiful display of the grace of God to a repentant sinner.
But we see something else as well. Stay with me. This is really important. We see something of the mysterious ways of God's sovereign grace. Remember, these scribes and Pharisees were doing exactly what they wanted to do, without any force or compulsion, except by their own wicked wills. Yet the Lord was sovereignly controlling all the circumstances and events of the day. He was secretly working through these wicked men to bring this poor guilty woman to Christ. Truly as the hymn reminds us,
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will."
This guilty, trembling woman was not seeking the Lord. She wasn't seeking the Lord. Ah, but He was seeking her. He was seeking her. He had chosen her. He had loved her. He was about to redeem her, just like He did with the Samaritan woman. And now the appointed time of grace had come, and she would be His. Here we see He used ungodly men to expose her sin, to expose her shame. The very men who wanted her dead and sought her destruction were used by God and as an instrument to carry the chosen object of His sovereign love into the arms of her Savior.
What a marvelous God we worship. He used her shame to humble her. He used even her loathsome sin to bring her to Himself, and He wisely and graciously and sovereignly and tenderly made her willing to embrace Him in the day of His power.
And we see also something of the true nature of repentance, true repentance. The Apostle tells us that there is a repentance that must be repented of and a repentance that brings about death. That's the one we ought to be repented of. True repentance is much more than mere reformation of life, mere tweaking of the outside. It is a change of heart and attitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ. In the presence of Christ, this woman was convinced of her sin because, look, she offered no plea in her own defense. She stood before the Lord silently in her guilt. The Pharisees were convinced of their guilt by their consciences. They left, the scribes. This woman was convinced of her guilt by the Savior, by Christ Jesus making Himself known to her. Theirs was a legal conviction of terror. Hers was a gospel conviction of brokenness and contrition before the Lord, Kyrios. She recognized Him as her Lord.
She did not ask for anything. She seems to have simply waited in submission before her sovereign Master, realizing that He had the right to damn her and the power to save her. And she refused to leave Christ. She was overwhelmed by His grace, conquered by His love. Her hope was in the Savior, and she knew it. She could not leave Him. She had nowhere else to go. And she wasn't running away from Him. She was facing Him. She submitted herself to the authority and the dominion of Christ the Lord. And from that day forth, she was instructed to go and sin no more.
You must place yourself somewhere in the story. You must. Are you like the crowd? Where do you place yourself? Are you like the crowd who stood around watching the entire scene unfold? You see, they witnessed forgiveness, but they did not enter into it. Are you like the scribes and Pharisees? They were in the place where grace was bestowed, but they were too proud, too self-righteous to seek it. They went away. Are you like the humiliated, broken sinner, crushed with guilt before God, broken with a heavy, heavy load of guilt and sin before the Son of God, guilty, dirty, exposed, naked, empty, wretched? If you can take your place with this poor, dirty, wretched, adulterous woman before the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to know, based on the Word of God, He will forgive you, too. Remember the words of Paul to the Corinthian church? He gives a list of sins, vile sins, abominable sins, and he says, "Such were some among you, but you are cleansed and justified and purified." What a comforting truth.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
The only just Judge is Jesus Christ, and He knows everything about you. He knows everything you've done, all of it. But grace is willing to free you, pardon you, and set you free to sin no more. He knows. There's nothing, nothing that you've done that will surprise Him. Nothing that you've done that you can bring to His attention that will shock Him. He knows it. He knows it beginning to end. He knows everything in between. And the most comforting truth possible is that He knows in advance what you've done, and He's willing to free you and give you forgiveness and life.
If I were to tell you the grand story of the Bible in a condensed way, it would look something like this. God created a world of people to have fellowship with Him, but man turned away and fell, and sin entered. And now there's both real guilt and false guilt, the actual judgment of God and the flawed judgment of Satan and men, either too lenient or too harsh. So Jesus came to be both the Savior and the Judge, the one who can truly pardon you and forgive you and me. He's the only one who really knows the severity of your guilt. And He knows when your accusers have got it right, and He knows when they've got it wrong. And you know why? Why He knows the severity of your guilt? Because He actually bore that guilt on Calvary's cross. He knows how guilty you are, how guilty I am, because He's felt it no more and no less, and to trust in Him is to be forgiven. And to hear Him say, "I do not condemn you. Now go and sin no more." You're set free to sin less and one day to be sinless.
You see, the future of the kingdom, heaven itself, is for those who ultimately don't want their sin, they want only God. And one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture is also written by John. Listen to what it says, 1 John 3:19-21, “And by this we will know that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” Maybe today you struggle with too little guilt. God is greater than our hearts. He's greater than our self-knowledge. He knows everything.
So go to Him. Flee to Him. Go to the just, righteous Judge. Draw near to Him to be forgiven. And then go forth to sin no more.
Let's pray.
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