Jesus moves around the Galilean countryside to avoid Judea, because there were Jews there who wanted to kill him. His brothers try to convince him to do a bunch of public miracle, and Jesus declines. His brothers leave for the Festival of Booths, and eventually Jesus slips in. When he gets there, the Jewish leaders are looking for him and the crowds are divided about who he is. Jesus eventually heads to the Temple (Sadducee territory) and starts to preach. The people are amazed at his ability. Jesus say,
I do not claim ownership of My words; they are a gift from the One who sent Me. If anyone is willing to act according to His purposes and is open to hearing truth, he will know the source of My teaching. Does it come from God or from Me? If a man speaks his own words, constantly quoting himself, he is after adulation. But I chase only after glory for the One who sent Me. My intention is authentic and true. You’ll find no wrong motives in Me… (7: 16-18)
The people are like: I think this is the guy they want to kill, but nobody is challenging him. Do they think he really is the Messiah? But, he’s from Galilee so….maybe not.
You think you know Me and where I have come from, but I have not come here on My own. I have been sent by the One who embodies truth. You do not know Him. I know Him because I came from Him. He has sent Me. Some were trying to seize Him because of His words, but no one laid as much as a finger on Him—His time had not yet arrived. (7: 28-30)
Meanwhile, some of the crowd was thinking he might be the Messiah. So the Pharisees and temple authorities sent officers (Roman-backed muscle) to arrest Jesus. They don’t. We will see why in minute. On the last day of the festival, Jesus speaks again.
If any of you is thirsty, come to Me and drink. If you believe in Me, rivers of living water will flow from within you [a reference to Isaiah 41] Jesus was referring to the realities of life in the Spirit made available to everyone who believes in Him. But the Spirit had not yet arrived because Jesus had not been glorified… (7:37-39)
Rumors spread. Some want to arrest him, but no one does. The officers who failed to arrest him say,
We listened to Him. Never has a man spoken like this man. (7:46)
The Pharisees were like, “You are stupid, and this is why we are under God’s curse. (7:49) But Nicodemus (that Nicodemus) said,
Does our law condemn someone without first giving him a fair hearing and learning something about him? (7:51)
Cue the episode with the woman caught in adultery, which in this context definitely reads like a set-up to find a way to condemn Jesus.
Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. He awoke early in the morning to return to the temple. When He arrived, the people surrounded Him, so He sat down and began to teach them. While He was teaching, the scribes and Pharisees brought in a woman who was caught in the act of adultery; and they stood her before Jesus.
The Pharisees said, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Moses says in the law that we are to kill such women by stoning. What do You say about it?’ This was all set up as a test for Jesus; His answers would give them grounds to accuse Him of crimes against Moses’ law. Jesus bent over and wrote something in the dirt with His finger. They persisted in badgering Jesus, so He stood up straight.
Jesus replied, ‘Let those among you who have not sinned cast the first stone.’[2] Once again Jesus bent down to the ground and resumed writing with His finger. The Pharisees who heard Him stood still for a few moments and thenbegan to leave slowly, one by one, beginning with the older men.
Eventually only Jesus and the woman remained, and Jesus looked up. Jesus said, ‘Dear woman, where is everyone? Are we alone? Did no one step forward to condemn you?’ The woman replied, ‘Lord, no one has condemned me.’ Jesus said,‘Well, I do not condemn you either; go, and from now on sin no more.’
Again, Jesus spoke to the crowds. ‘I am the light that shines through the world[3]; if you walk with Me, you will thrive in the nourishing light that gives life and will not know darkness.’
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In the story of the Woman Caught In Adultery, we see Jesus embody God’s perspective on how to balance judgment and mercy.[4] We will first look at the context of the story, then at the person of Jesus, and finally why this story matters to us. Let’s start with some background.
· This happened on the day after thcelebration of the Feast of the Tabernacle/ Feast of Booths. The Jews lived in huts during this time to commemorate how the Israelites lived in tents during the Exodus.
· Moses had commanded that during the days of this Feast the law be read, so this was an annual, purposeful focus on the Law of God.
· The main purpose was to thank God for his provision during the past in the wilderness wanderings (Lev 23:39-43) and in the present as seen in the harvest just completed (Deuteronomy 16:13-15).
· The people were reminded of their profound dependence upon God for provision. They would recite Psalm 118:25 every day: “O Lord, defend/rescue/deliver us, and prosper us.”
· They had a ceremony in which four different types of plants were brought to the altar. These four plants symbolized four different kinds of Jews. One plant had a good fragrance and a good taste, symbolizing knowledge of the Torah and good deeds. One only had fragrance (only good deeds); one only had taste (only knowledge of the Torah), and one had neither.
· There was a series of water offerings each morning in the temple, commemorating the provision of water in the wilderness. When Jesus tells them to come to him to drink (7:37-38), he is linking himself to God’s provision in the Exodus.
· Menorahs would be lit in the House of Water Drawing, which was in the Court of Women in the temple. People would dance and sing, “Blessed be he who hath not sinned; and he who sinned and repented, he is forgiven.”[5]
· Jesus' proclamation that he is the light of the world (8:12) linked him to the feast's lamp-lighting ceremonies that commemorated the pillar of fire during the Exodus. The morning that Jesus is challenged is the morning that four festival lamps in the court in the Temple ("The light of the world") were put out.
So Jesus claimed to be the Water and the Light while quoting a revered Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, all to show that he is the Messiah for whom they have been longing. The good news was that the God whom they worshipped during this feast was with them. Many of the people were starting to believe. The Pharisees want to kill him; they think he was blaspheming. But to kill him they need a formal trial and a Rome-sanctioned execution.[6]
So the next morning, on the Sabbath, they meet Jesus in the temple. The temple area was about 35 acres, and in the middle sat a courtyard surrounded on three sides by a large, covered walkway that connected the temple court to Herod’s garrison. His soldiers patrolled the courtyard by walking on top of the covered walkways in case anything bad developed. Josephus noted that during feast days, an entire legion (over 4,000 men) would patrol the temple area.
Into this venue, the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery for judgment. They most likely bring her into the Court of Women. If all went well, they might be able to trick Jesus into ordering capital punishment, and then Rome would take care of their problem because at the time the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission for capital punishment. If that didn’t happen, they figured they could show how much more they knew about the law with the hope that this crowd of simpletons would finally reject him as Law Breaker and so reject him as the Messiah.
This seems like a win/win for the Pharisees. Jesus gets arrested or his lack of knowledge of the Law gets him rejected. Things do not go as planned.
· As has often been noted, they only brought the woman. That’s unusual to say the least. Even then, it took two to tango, and the Law demanded that both be brought to the trial.
· A formal accusation required two eyewitnesses. There was no circumstantial evidence allowed in a case like this. The eyewitnesses would have warned couple ahead of time about the consequences of their action, the couple had to acknowledge this, and then the witnesses had to watch them do it. Odds are really good those standards were not met. I suspect Jesus (and perhaps the whole crowd) realized this.
· The death penalty was virtually obsolete in Jewish culture by the time of Jesus[7] (in fact, that sentence was highly unusual ever since the time of Moses). Over the centuries, the Sanhedrin had increasingly made the standards incredibly high because they believed the Law was meant to teach, not kill.[8]
· Remember: the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission.
· A legit trial had to happen in front of a duly constituted court, which included over twenty Sanhedrin leaders who sat in a semicircle so they could be sure they were all paying attention. If capital punishment happened outside of a court ruling, those who administered the punishment were considered murderers.
· The Talmudic Sanhedrin trecate (treatise), written before the time of Christ, clarified Deuteronomy’s command that the eyewitnesses should start the stoning (thus the “cast the first stone”).[9] There apparently aren't any eyewitnesses – or at least the text does not record their presence.
· Capital punishment could not be carried out on a day sacred to religion – and this was a Sabbath.
So, following a celebration in which the people prayed for God to save them, and in which they celebrated the combination of Law and Good Deeds, Jesus will show what it looks like when their longings are fulfilled. He begins by honoring the Law.
When an accusation was brought, a priest was required to write the law that had been broken, along with the names of the accused, somewhere where the marks were not permanent – which was usually the dust on the floor of the temple. Early Armenian translations of this passage claim that is the proper understanding of this passage[10] - that Jesus wrote first the name and crime of the woman in the dust on the temple courtyard floor.
After Jesus writes, he says, “Let those sinless of the same crime (which should be one of her eyewitness accusers) cast the first stone.” It’s a brilliant response. First, I suspect it reminded the crowd of the song that had been sung in that very court - “Blessed be he who hath not sinned; and he who sinned and repented, he is forgiven”. If so, Jesus’ comment reminded them of their sin and chastised them for wanting to do something that is at odds with what they just celebrated.
After Jesus says this, He begins writing again; considering the Armenian texts as well as the fact that everyone will eventually leave, it seems reasonable to speculate that he wrote the names and crimes of the Pharisees who broke the law, which was all of them.
Surely his audience remembered Jeremiah 17:13:
"All those who leave your way shall be put to shame (publicly embarrassed), those who turn aside from my ways will have their names written in the dust and blotted out, for they have departed from Yahweh, the fountain of the waters of life."
By writing, he points to himself as the Baptizer of Israel, and to the Pharisees as those whose name will be blotted out.[11]
And that was that. The crowd melts away. Jesus asks, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” She replies, “No one, Lord.” Jesus responds, “I don’t condemn you either [that is, I am not an eyewitness against you], but stop your sin.”
No one could say Jesus was a Lawbreaker, but He refused to use the Law as a tool of oppression and shame. Going back to the symbols of the previous week’s festival: He had the fragrance of the Law and the taste of good deeds.
And then, just in case the crowd was missing all the ways Jesus was proclaiming himself to be the Messiah, the Savior they longed for, he immediately says, in a courtyard in which the menorahs and the “light of the world” festival lamps had been lit and then put out,
“I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
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How do we balance judgment and mercy? How should we treat sin – and sinners – in our midst of our church community?[12] This question ought to matter to all of us, because no one in this room is exempt. You will sin; you will have to deal with the sin of others. We are all going to be in the place of either the Pharisees or the woman who sinned at some point in our life. So what do we do? How do we learn from this story?
We look to Jesus for our example.
We must exercise righteous judgment of sin and show mercy and grace to those who sin.
This is not always easy.
If we aren't careful we can get so caught up in condemning the sin that we forget to love to those who sin. Religious Pharisees think mercy is a sign of moral weakness. They think people should get what’s coming to them – especially people whose sins are so visibly public. They appoint themselves as moral watchdogs in the church trained not simply to be truthful and challenging but to tear the sinner to pieces. Their goal is not to point people who deserve judgment toward the mercy found only in Christ. They might never say that out loud, but their goal is suffering, not sanctification; punishment, not restoration.
When we look to Jesus, we see that our goal should be not to shame, humiliate, or drive to despair those around us who are caught in sin; our goal should be to bring to repentance and restoration those who have fallen. We may need to start by calling sin what it is in the lives of those who refuse to see it in themselves (as Jesus did with the Pharisees). But even if we do that so the self-righteous and proud are humbled – even if we are the self-righteous and proud who are humbled by our honest brothers and sisters in Christ - we must never lose sight of the goal of the Great Physician: to heal the sin-sick soul. The great commentator Matthew Henry wrote,
“In this matter Christ attended to the great work about which he came into the world, that was, to bring sinners to repentance; not to destroy, but to save. He aimed to bring, not only the accused to repentance, by showing her his mercy, but the prosecutors also, by showing them their sins; they thought to ensnare him, he sought to convince and convert them.”
If the first thing we have to be careful of is too much judgment of sin, the second thing is becoming so focused on extending mercy to the sinner that we forget there is a just judgment for sin. This story if often cited as an example of why we shouldn’t exercise judgment, That badly misses the point. Jesus absolutely judged. When Jesus wrote in the dust, he (presumably) wrote that they were all lawbreakers. He didn't let the Pharisees off the hook. He didn’t say to the woman, “Hey, it’s no problem. Go do what you want.” He said, “No one hear can formally accuse you, but…stop sinning.” He didn’t try to contextualize her situation. He didn’t say, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” In his mercy, he gave her the same kind of truth he gave the Pharisees: she had sinned, and she needed to repent.
Telling the truth about sin is not a bad thing. Offering sincere, honest, biblically sound judgment about sinful actions is not a sign that you are mean; it is a sign that you understand the importance of walking in the way of Christ.
Love actually requires honest judgment. Why? Because sin destroys. Someone talked last week in Message+ about people who are the “casualties of sin.” Right. It eats away at your peace with God, with others, and within ourselves. Sin corrodes relationships, it distorts love, it sows something we are going to reap, and “the wages is sin is death.” A holy, loving God must use judgment in the service of justice so that evil does not have the last word. For all of us who have experienced the sin of others crush our lives, it is heaven’s promise that evil will be held to account.[13]
But we have to be careful. If we don’t confront sin in love, we will be abrasive and mean (see 1 Corinthians 13). And if we don’t do this with an eye on the sin in our own lives, we will do this with a kind of pride that God despises.
Here’s the reality: all of us have hurt others with our words, our attitudes, our choices, our violence. A holy, loving God cannot let that evil go unaddressed. We long for justice when it’s meant for people who have done us wrong, but if God’s justice were to rain down on us all and give us the justice we deserve right now, we would all beg for mercy. There is no one righteous (Romans 3:10). If Jesus were here, and we all demanded that sin be addressed, we would all walk away as Jesus wrote in the dust on the floor of this church.
Here's the tension we must embrace: We should long for God’s justice (as we see the devastation of sin and the need for someone to hold people to account) but we should also crave God’s mercy (as we see our own sin, condemnation and need for a Savior).
When justice and mercy work together, just judgment drives us to our knees at the foot of the Cross; mercy reaches down from that cross and pulls us to our feet. This is where we look back to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), the embodiment of God’s justice and mercy.
It is on the cross that God’s holy justice was perfectly satisfied while His holy mercy was perfectly displayed.[14] Someone has to pay the price for sin, and God in his mercy said, “Let it be me.” This included the woman and her accusers - and all of us. The Israelite prayer, “O Lord, rescue us, deliver us, save us,” has come true; Jesus has come so that the world through him might be saved.
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[1] This is how Augustine described the story of the woman caught in adultery
[2] “ αναμαρτητος, meaning the same kind of sin, adultery, fornication, c. Kypke has largely proved that the verb αμαρτανειν is used in this sense by the best Greek writers.” (Adam Clarke)
[3] “So in Bamidbar Rabba: "The Israelites said to God, O Lord of the universe, thou commandest us to light lamps to thee, yet thou art THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: and with thee the light dwelleth."’ (Adam Clarke)
[4] Your Bible may note, “Many early manuscripts omit 7:53–8:11.” Eusebius, the first historian of the Church, claimed to have learned the story from Papias, who lived from about 60 AD to about 130 AD. Augustine thought the early church removed the story out of fear that adultery would be encouraged by Jesus’ display of mercy. Whatever the reasons, the event is alluded to very early. It appears to have been widely known and accepted in the early church, and it soon appears in the canon.
[5] http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/john_gospel/Chapter%208.htm
[6] At times, Rome allowed the Sanhedrin packed with their picks to use capital punishment. At the time this happened, the Sanhedrin needed Rome’s permission.
[7] (Mishnah Makkot 1:10): “A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says: they would have multiplied shedders of blood in Israel.” Read a good article here: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-death-penalty-in-jewish-tradition/2/
[8] http://www.reformjudaismmag.net/02summer/focus.shtml
[9] “With reference to two offenders subject to this penalty, the Pentateuch says, "Thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people" (Deut. xiii. 10 [A. V. 9]), and again (ib. xvii. 7), "The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people." (Sanh. vi. 4; 45a et seq.; Sifra, Emor, xix.; Sifre, Num. 114; ib. Deut. 89, 90, 149, 151). “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_and_corporal_punishment_in_Judaism#In_Rabbinic_Law
[10] https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/john-8.html
[11] The Bible does not connect those dots, but considering the audience and the context, it seems likely.
[12] I realize the ‘church’ had not started yet, but the religious Jewish community is probably the closest comparison we have before the NT church community began.
[13] So is there any place for judgment and justice when God extends mercy? First, the Bible clearly teaches that there will be practical consequences to our actions. Forgiveness does not necessarily negate the fact that we will reap what we sow. The woman’s adultery may still have ruined her marriage even thought the forgiveness of Christ was available to her. Second, there are consequences to our actions within God ordained systems of government. Those harmed by rape may extend forgiveness, but the rapist will still go to jail – and rightly so. Finally, there is an ultimate day of judgment when we will all give an answer to God for what we have done. It’s possible to the first two forms of judgment can be avoided depending on the nature of the sin, but no one will escape the final accounting.
[14] Read “The Only Thing That Counts” for a better understanding of why Jesus needed to die in order for God’s justice to be satisfied. http://clgonline.org/the-only-thing-that-counts-galatians-51-8/