The Mercy Giver

John's Gospel in chapter 8. Actually the story is picked up from the last verse of the previous chapter. When we read, Then each went to his own home. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered round him. And he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.

They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this those who heard began to go away one at a time. The older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said.

Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin. Go on to the next verse.

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Let's turn in mission praise to a grand old hymn, 765.

Who can cheer the heart like Jesus by his presence, all divine? What a wonderful redemption, never can a mortal know. Every need his hands supplying, every good in him I see. On his strength divine relying, he is all in all to me.

All that thrills my soul is Jesus, 765. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father, we're grateful for all your many, many kindnesses towards us.

We have not deserved the way that you have dealt with us, but we praise you for the graciousness of your heart. Lord, some of us have watched scenes from Angola that have turned our stomachs upside down. We thank you at least we're still sensitive to the world of great need.

Help us never because we are spared these things to become immune and insular, for that is not part of your heart. You're ever toward the poor. You're ever toward the widow and the orphan.

You're ever toward those who have been exploited. Forgive us, gracious God, we pray, and help us to do what we can. We pray not just for the material needs of men and women, but Lord that even greater seemingly intractable problem, the political situation which stops in so many countries the aid that would pour in from getting through, remove men whose stomachs never seem to be empty, who never seem to have anguish in their eyes, but so often are the leaders of countries who prevent those who would ameliorate the problems of the poor in those countries from so doing.

Remove those who are an obstacle to human rights, we pray, and bring righteous government to the lands of Africa and Eastern Europe and wherever there is injustice. Hear us, O God. Bring sensitivity and a sense of responsibility to the British government, to those who have control of the taxes reaped from the population, and may our commitment to the third world honor the blessings which, despite the economic problems we have, nonetheless, we still enjoy in this country.

Bless these dear people here, this congregation. Minister now to all our hearts. Confound our fears and draw near to us.

In the beloved name of your Son, always our Savior, let's say together, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let's go to this passage of Scripture which, although it doesn't blend in too well, perhaps with the theme of Teerfun Sunday at first glance, nonetheless, does teach us something of the character of our beloved Lord, His grace and His mercy. Those of you who come to the tab regularly will know we're making our way through John's Gospel.

And we've now come to this narrative from the 53rd verse of the 7th chapter through to the 11th verse of the 8th chapter. And within the NIV, a couple of lines are drawn between the chunks that I've just identified because there are those who perhaps feel that this was not part of the original Gospel of John. Now, I don't think that you would appreciate a lecture as to why I do believe that it was part of the original Gospel.

But let me at least just tell you one or two things, which I think flow quite logically from what we were reading before, what Tim will be preaching on next week, and what confronts us now. And that is that unless those lines were drawn, you would not have appreciated at all there was any break in the narrative. For the logical flow of John's Gospel encapsulating this particular incident, it all seems as though everything is in order.

Our beloved Lord goes off at the end of a very busy, memorable day. You remember my address last week? He goes to the Mount of Olives to pray, presumably to the Heavenly Father. Those who have been condemning Him, His antagonists, they go back to Jerusalem or the nearby villages.

And then the following day, you find our Lord Jesus back again in the temple courts, resuming the ministry which He left off as recorded in the previous chapter. Then, not stealing the address or the topic for the address that will be brought next week, we find in the twelfth chapter, in the twelfth verse, on the next occasion, our Lord Jesus coming along and declaring, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

And you know, because I've just read it and many of you are aware of the contents of this passage in between, that the spotlight there falls upon a woman who really is included in that category of people to whom the Lord has a special ministry. Those who were walking in darkness, those who were walking in sin, those who needed the mercy of God. For them, says our beloved Lord, I have come into the world.

And here, in this previous incident, which now we are considering this morning, is an example of that category of person that I have come for. So I suggest to you just the very logic, the very flow of John's gospel, the flow of the narrative indicates something of the veracity, the authenticity of this particular passage. What's more, when you think about this woman, I'll talk about her a little more in a moment or so, when you think about this woman who has been so embarrassed, and then you move to the cause of her embarrassment, the men who actually made a public spectacle of her and brought her before Jesus, when you realize that these are the scribes and Pharisees, and that there is an insensitivity here, which you find in the previous chapter and in the chapters to come.

Again, you get the consistency of the narrative. There is nothing here that stands out of place, out of order. I think we satisfy ourselves with the words of A.W. Pink, who used to minister in Hove and eventually retired and died in Scotland.

He says that it is obvious to every spiritual interpreter that no uninspired pen drew the picture that you find in this incident. Well, let's think of the story. Here is a woman propelled into the center of a crowd.

The place, the temple at Jerusalem, by the colonnade near the court of the Gentiles, a busy place. Don't think of the temple as being only peopled by the priests and the Sadducees and so forth. Remember, this is a time of a feast, and the Jews would flock to the temple.

It had social significance as well as spiritual significance. When the Jews worshipped God, they had a great party. They knew nothing about being glum.

I mean, the fact that a feast day was dawning, well, that was something that they looked forward to. A holiday was a holy day. And so, the court will be thronged, this particular area.

And it's there where the rabbis go. It's there where the rabbis will deliver their sermons. And unexpectedly, at least as far as the flesh brothers of Jesus were concerned, that is, the brothers who owed their origin at the human level to Mary and Joseph, Jesus has come onto the scene.

He said He wouldn't, but He did come. And He starts to preach, and we looked at some of His ministry last week. Well, we look at it again, as this woman is propelled in front of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Taken, it is said, in the act of adultery. Now, how will He react? How does Jesus react to sinners? You see, here's the problem. He's at the temple, His Father's house.

He is an inheritor of the Old Testament scriptures, the law of God. He says He has come not to put away the law, not to put aside the law. He has come to fulfill the law.

These scribes and Pharisees, these copiers of the law, these interpreters of the law, they're directing a question towards Jesus. Isn't He really a heretic? And cannot we demonstrate the nature of His heresy by taking this woman caught in this act and getting Him to denounce her? If the law was given by Moses, and if Jesus is a proponent of the law, then what will He have to say to someone who has broken the law? After all, Deuteronomy says that if a person has committed this particular offense, they are to be taken outside the city, and those who have actually witnessed the sin are to pick up the stones, and they are to slay the individual by stoning. Now remember, John in this gospel leads off right at the beginning by saying something very important about our Lord Jesus.

There's a combination, if you like, a conjunction to which John makes reference between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of Moses. Verse 17, chapter 1, The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And what you will find in this incident, and the reason why it has to be in John's gospel, is an illustration of the law given by Moses, and Jesus, who brings grace and truth, still able to cope with the problem, so to speak, of the law.

Problem in the eyes of a sinner. Here you'll find, reconciled within this incident, the difficulty of the mercy of God and the justice of God. How can the two be harmonized without the one eclipsing the other? Here, if you like, is an anticipation of the way our beloved Lord will demonstrate what Paul will teach later in the epistle to the Romans, that where sin abounds, grace will much more abound, and grace will reign through righteousness.

You'll understand that further if you continue to plug in to what I'm having to say. If you like, here is a tremendous example that prompts the hymn writer to say on your behalf, and on my behalf, thinking of this woman, what a friend we have in Jesus. See, all these things that I've been arguing for, I reckon can be traced right back to the teaching within this narrative and the illustration of the way that our Lord handles a woman who has been taken in a sinful condition.

But there is a sense in which I don't want you to see the woman so much, as I want to see yourself. You see, you are represented. It doesn't really matter what the sin is.

The fact is that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We all, therefore, have the problem of Moses and the law. And we all desperately need a greater than Moses who can sustain the law, but introduce something else to deal with the enormity of your sin and my sin.

We desperately need not just Moses, but a greater than Moses. We need the Lord Jesus Christ. So, he's on the scene here.

At dawn, verse 2, he appears in the temple. People crowd around him, and in traditional fashion, he sits down and teaches them. These insensitive teachers of the law and Pharisees propel this unfortunate woman in front of Jesus.

There is a case at the moment, at least the judges, the legal profession in its conference in Brighton, has been discussing this business of anonymity in the question of rape cases. Should they be named? Or shouldn't they be named? The accused, but not yet convicted party. How do you handle them? Do you cloak them in anonymity? Well, there is a reason for so doing.

Someone who is innocent but charged surely has a right not to have their name draped across every tabloid with insinuations as to their guilt before the guilt has been sustained. Well, it's up to our legal brains to work out the conundrum at this present moment. But you see, such niceties were not even thought of in these days.

I mean, there's no anonymity that these scribes and Pharisees seem to suggest this woman should have. They make her. You can see this struggling, unfortunate person pushed into the center of this crowd.

They make her stand before the group. This woman was caught in the act of adultery. Actually, it doesn't really say that.

Well, it doesn't, it doesn't. It uses the word that is translated by both the AV and the NIV translators, adultery, but it's actually thievery. The woman, again, I don't want to be technical, but you can work this one out from the original, is a married woman, and the situation seems to be an affair.

It's interesting, isn't it? Let me sidestep for a moment. We don't generally touch in this area on a Sunday morning, not for any other reason, but for the fact that this subject matter rarely comes up. But it is interesting, when you consider the whole business of sexuality, as taught in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, well, it's interesting that it's taught, full stop.

It's interesting that the first sexual thought that is ever mentioned in the Bible is actually part of the revelation of the mind of God as He speaks about sexual conduct amongst humankind. And you know full well that the Bible, well, maybe you don't know it full well, so let me tell you that within the context of marriage, the Bible heightens sexual experience to being one of the most remarkable and thrilling things this side of eternity. This is why the Apostle Paul, when he speaks about marriage and responsibilities within marriage at this level in 1 Corinthians 8, has no blushes at all as he lays down what basically is the responsibility of husband to wife and vice versa.

And just in case you haven't quite understood the teaching of the Bible, then you'll be taken to the Song of Solomon, and there you will find described almost erotically what God approves and what God applauds within the context of marriage. There is a sense in which you could argue that amongst the many blessings of God granted to many, though not all, people is this particular blessing, this conjugal relationship. No.

You see the point? This woman has interfered with this sort of relationship. She is a threat to it. So when you track down the etymology, the root word of adultery, it actually is thievery, quote unquote.

It is theft, taking someone who was not yours and actually devaluing what God has pronounced within the marital context as a very wonderful blessing to be expected and enjoyed. So when the Bible speaks about sexuality, it does so in a very remarkable and free way. And when it speaks about that which destroys or despoils the blessing, it uses such a word as adultery and theft to indicate the high price, the high premium, the high evaluation that God has as he considers such a relationship, so high that when he speaks of the relationship that exists between the church and the Lord, Jesus Christ, the marriage analogy is employed several times in Scripture.

That was a sidestep, but it needed to be said. Let's now come back to what is being taught here. You see, this woman who has been taken in this act of sinfulness and propelled before our Lord Jesus Christ is notwithstanding what I have just explained, being used as a pawn by the scribes and the Pharisees.

They're quite right in the fifth verse when they say, in the law Moses commanded to stone such a woman because, well, she was threatening what God had called to be a blessing between two people. Now, because of this and because of what Moses says, what do you, Jesus, say? I think that there is very little that will rival this in the New Testament in terms of an illustration of the callousness of so-called religious teachers. Look at verse 6. They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.

They weren't really concerned about the woman. They weren't really concerned about the stoning. They certainly weren't concerned about marriage.

They weren't even concerned about fairness. Why the woman and not the man? You see, these men, what they wanted to do was to catch the Lord Jesus and they will sink to any depths in order to bring about some charge that they can level, that can be fixed on Jesus and ultimately lead to his own death, his own murder. Was ever the office of preacher so prostituted as by these men who take a woman admittedly a sinner and completely ignore their even graver sin? For at the back of their minds there is murder.

They use this as a question in order to have a basis to accuse Jesus. So what does our Lord do? I mean, does he act as Moses might have done? And if he doesn't act as Moses might have done, then is he not negating the teaching of Moses? Or is there a way in which Jesus, who has already demonstrated himself to be a merciful person, can fuse together the justice of God, therefore the law of Moses, and the grace of God, the love expressed through the sending of his Son into this world? Our Lord doesn't react immediately, does he? At least not verbally to this particular predicament. He bends down and starts to write on the ground with his finger.

Why does he bend down like this? Why doesn't he immediately break the silence? Some commentators have suggested the reason he does this is to gain time. You know, he needs to think things through. I mean, here is quite a problem.

And it is good at times to think, isn't it? Some occasions when people have contacted me to benefit from my ignorance about some particular problem, I've said, look, you've told me, now just go away. Give me a chance to think. I'm not a computer.

You can't put the problem in, pull the machine, and out comes the answer. Did our beloved Lord need time? Or maybe he was seized with shame. I mean, think of the situation.

And remember who he is. What I mean by seized with shame is, you think of these religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, there is lust in their eyes. They've got him.

It's not sexual lust as far as the woman is concerned. It's a lust for power. It's a lust for getting one over this man who creates so much problem to them.

And they'll do it any way they can. Maybe our Lord couldn't cope with the embarrassment that there was in the eyes of this woman. Maybe he couldn't cope with the prurient curiosity of the crowd.

Maybe it was a Calvary moment, a Gethsemane moment, when he's stunned by a sense of the insensitivity of man and the way men will exploit situations for their own benefit, even though basic to their intentions is nothing but evil. He writes on the ground, there's no conversation now, there's no noise, the crowd are watching. And yet there is a noise.

For the antagonists, the ones who are trying to trap Jesus, they keep on questioning him. And then he straightens up. He's no longer sitting down teaching as a rabbi.

He straightens up and he speaks to them. And he will stun them. You see, he who is incarnated holiness will respond to these men.

And not only will he silence them, he will so embarrass them that they will leave the scene one by one. Yes, you're right. According to the law of Moses in Deuteronomy, the witnesses to the crime can pick up the stones and stone this woman.

But let him who is without a sinful desire pick up the first missile and throw it. Again, I give you a careful translation. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, if any of you is without sin, if any of you is without sinful desire, then go ahead and finish her off.

And from the oldest to the youngest, as Jesus on the second occasion bends down and writes on the ground, we're not told what he wrote, but it obviously brought back memories into the minds of these men. From the oldest to the youngest, they fade away from the scene. Maybe because they realize he'd outmaneuvered them.

Maybe because they recognize the logic of what he was saying. Or maybe, let's be a little bit more hurtful, or maybe a little bit more realistic. The oldest had sinned the most because they had lived the longest and they had the greatest reputations, and they therefore had the most to lose.

They move away. And the middle-aged move away. And the young men move away.

And left in the center alone, as far as the immediate conversation is concerned, but still in the arena of the crowd, is the woman. Jesus will never deal with you like the scribes and Pharisees dealt with this woman. They see her as a thing.

They see her as a pawn. They see her not with emotion. They have no feelings for her embarrassment at all.

They devalue humanity in the way that they react to the tragedy of her heartbreak. I want to tell you, the Lord Christ never deals with an individual like that. He will never deal with you as a thing.

He will never deal with you as though you are impersonal. He will never deal with you as though there is not a respect to be rebuilt into your life. That's why He can be called the friend of sinners.

The woman remains, and He says, Where are those who have condemned you? Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? And the fact of the matter is that they haven't. They haven't dared to put into words what they felt just a few moments ago was a conclusion they could draw from Moses that she should be stoned because they know that if she should be stoned, they are also voting for their own death warrant for they too have had sinful thoughts. They too have been caught out by the convicting power of the speech of Jesus Christ.

And our Lord goes on to address this woman and He says, Neither do I condemn you. He does not bring the law of Moses and dangle it in front of her and draw the conclusion. Why not? Because there is something else to say and there is something else to do.

Something for Him to say to her immediately and something for Him to do for her ultimately. Immediately? Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.

He doesn't say to her, I don't condemn you if you no longer sin. I put it another way. He doesn't say, Go and sin no more and I will not condemn you.

For had He said that, He would have told the death knell for that woman. What He says is, I don't condemn you. I don't bring in the sentence that could be expected from the law of Moses.

It's not that I suspend it. It's that I defer it for the time being. You see, our Lord is not through with His life.

When He is through with it, how will He die? Well, He dies on the cross. You know that. But why did He die? There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.

He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Why not? Because another righteousness has been revealed.

Not that of the law, the legal requirements of the law, that law which is intractable, that law which is inflexible. Ah, Jesus will die on the cross because of the way that you and I have broken ourselves against that law. But His life, when you place the law alongside it, there is nothing for which He has to answer.

He never broke the law. He fulfilled the law. And in the fulfilling of the law, He makes possible salvation and forgiveness to all those who have fallen short of God's standard.

Don't you see, encapsulated in this story is you, is me. I am the woman. I am the person on whom the spotlight falls.

And as far as the law of Moses is concerned, I have no answer. But Jesus says, I'm not going to condemn you on the basis of the law of Moses. Why not? Well, the law came by Moses.

But listen, I am a greater than Moses. Through me, into this world, has come grace and truth. The obligations of the law, I have fulfilled.

Now, with grace and with truth, I can deal with you. Therefore go, having received my forgiveness, and sin no more. Make that your goal.

Make that your objective. And remember, even when you miss it, you're dealing with me, not the scribes, not the Pharisees, not the imposters at the rabbinical seat of learning. You're dealing with the Son of God who relates to you as an individual and can take your failure and your heartache, cope with it, and grant you absolution.

The law came by Moses, grace and truth, by Jesus Christ. Thank God this story is in the Gospel of John. Let's sing more about it.

683. It's the great commentary. On this and indeed on the life of our beloved Lord, there's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea.

683. Listen to this and then I pray. How I wish that there was some wonderful place called the land of beginning again where all our mistakes and all our heartaches and all our poor selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby old court at the door and never put on again.

Father, we thank you that there is a place called beginning again. It's at the feet not of a hostile but a sensitive Lord Jesus Christ. Send us out into this world to begin again.

Our sins having been forgiven are not only forgiven but wiped off the computers of heaven. But help us to remember the enormous cost, the shed blood and the broken body of our Savior. Help us not to treat sin lightly.

Help us not to treat marriage lightly. Help us, Father, to see Him, your Son, more clearly, to love Him more dearly, to follow Him more nearly, all our lives. And the people of God agreed.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. . . . . . . . . . . . .