New Beginnings Series

If you have your Bibles with you, please open up to the gospel of John, chapter 8. If you are using the red pew Bibles in front, it is page 1059. We have been looking through the gospel of John, the ministry of Jesus, and the miracles of Jesus. We come across this story today in John 8 that may be familiar to some of you. It is the story about the woman who was caught in adultery. While you are looking at the passage, you may want to refer to your Bible, especially if you have the NIV, because it has a little disclaimer at the top of chapter 8. It says the earliest and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53 to 8:11. You may say what does that mean. It pretty much means what it says. The earliest manuscripts do not contain this particular story. Contrary to popular belief, the Bible did not fall out of the sky one day. The Bible traces its roots all the way back to lots of ancient manuscripts. About 5,000 that are relatively close when you compare them, and they can be traced almost all the way back to the original gospel writers, including the apostle John. With archaeological digs, there are new manuscripts that were found. Some were found up to 100 years later and contained this particular passage where John didn’t contain it. Some suggest that maybe this was an insertion later on. They are not saying that the story is not true. What they are saying is the story may not belong in the gospel of John. Some scholars won’t even comment on the whole passage because they believe that maybe it is not part of John. There are scholars and theologians and preachers who enjoy this particular passage because to guys like me it is really a picture of Christ. It sounds so much like something Christ would do and say. To me, particularly it is a great picture of the gospel message. The message that we all have sinned and we have a loving father up there who wants to forgive us. He sent his son and because of that we have the opportunity for eternal life; to begin a new life. Hopefully, you will begin to see that gospel message and hopefully you will begin to see as we go through this a little bit of the connection between the story and the story of the woman in the video. Once again, we are reading from John 8. We will start back at 7:53 because it ties to it. (Scripture read here.)

This story is probably familiar to a lot of you, but it is a pretty straightforward story. Here we have Jesus going into the temple courts where he would appear and he began to teach. Most likely, he was teaching on what we would call the Old Testament, particularly the first five books that they would call The Law. Here is Jesus in the temple courts. The people are starting to surround him to sit at his feet and hear of his teaching. In the middle of this, and this is early in the morning, the scribes, which were basically teachers and Pharisees, they dragged this poor woman in. They bring her out into the middle of this courtyard in front of all these people and onlookers. They make her stand up before them and begin to accuse her. They say “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.” Then they go on to say in the law, their law, the law that Jesus is teaching on, Moses commanded us to stone women such as these. They say to Jesus, now what do you have to say about this? On the surface, it looks like an open and close shut case. The Pharisees think this woman is guilty of something. She probably feels she is guilty of something. Even Jesus may feel that she is guilty of something.

But the story sounds a little bit fishy. Especially when you understand that in the Old Testament there was a law like this, but it required two eyewitnesses to the event, which you wonder where they got the witnesses and how they happened upon this woman. Not only that, this is something you women may appreciate, the man was supposed to be stoned alongside of this woman. He was nowhere to be found. The whole story sounds like a bit of a setup. If we look at John 8:6, they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. What could they accuse him of? At that particular time, they were under Roman rule, and you couldn’t just drag people out and stone them. They were somewhat of a civil society. If he was to say she is guilty, take her out, and stone her; then they would have dragged him to the Roman authorities and they would have a basis for accusing him. If he says, let her go. I am all about compassion. Then they would drag him back to the Pharisees and say this man is in direct violation of the moral law of Jesus. In a sense he was in a trap. So what does Jesus do? Jesus does whatever he feels like doing. In this particular case, he bent over and started to write on the ground with his finger. There are all sorts of speculation as far as what he was writing on the ground. Some suggest maybe he was writing out the sins of the people around him or the sins of the Pharisees. Some suggest that maybe he was writing out the commandment that spoke of adultery. Do not commit adultery. Some suggest that maybe he was doodling. He was just passing the time away while he was thinking of an answer. The reality is we just don’t know what he was writing. The best thing that I have heard is that it was more of a symbolic gesture. A gesture that would tie Jesus back to the writing of the original commandments. You may recall that the Jewish people, male and female, were taught about the Ten Commandments, and they actually believed that the commandments were written by the finger of God. In fact, if we go back to Exodus 31, we see where the Lord finished speaking to Moses at Mount Sinai. What happened then was he gave him the two tablets of the testimony, which are the Ten Commandments. The tablets of stone inscribed with the finger of God. I think what Jesus is doing is making a subtle reference that he is possibly involved in the authorship of these commandments.