Who Will Be First Off The Mark? What Hypocrite Will Throw The First Stone? Part 1 Series

WHO WILL BE FIRST OFF THE MARK? WHAT HYPOCRITE WILL THROW THE FIRST STONE?

SERIES - THE CHARACTERS OF JOHN’S GOSPEL

THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY – John 8 v 1-11 PART 1

This story is not found in every manuscript of scripture, and it is believed that it was omitted for fear of encouraging immorality. It is every bit part of the Gospel and must not be questioned. The Lord was teaching early in the morning in the early light but was interrupted rudely. After they left He resumed His teaching in verse 12 about light, and the Light of the World.

John 8:1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. John 8:2 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. John 8:3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the midst, John 8:4 they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act.

The needy wanted teaching and were prepared to come early. Some people are too lazy and won’t come at all. Others come with wrong motives. Then there are the worst – those who come to destroy and are engaged in Satan’s work. In this story we have these very ones, the Pharisees, those evil self-righteous, fault-finding hypocrites.

With great haste they brought the woman, but where was the man, for they were caught in the very act whatever that might mean? Where was that man? He was excused because of expediency, and they took the woman because she was advantageous to their vile plan. In all probability, the man involved was a sinful Pharisee.

John 8:5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do You say?”

We have a nasty world. Here we see some a group of Pharisees and Scribes, so quick to condemn, and wanting to stone this woman. Also, they had devised this plan to catch Jesus out to destroy Him. I don’t know what it is in human beings that seems to take delight in another’s hurt and suffering, where some are ever so ready to bring that hurt upon another individual. People are basically cruel, and some of them, enjoy to see others having pain and suffering, and delight in torture to others. It is like those who could not get to the Colosseum and other Roman forums quick enough, to get seated in order to get a perverse pleasure out of seeing people attacked and savaged by wild beasts and eaten or partly so, or torn apart. I have read Eusebius and he details some of the most atrocious tortures done to Christians such as that gem Blandina. They were prolonged and sickening, but the people delighted in it and cried for more. Human beings are debased and Romans 3 spells that out very clearly.

In the French Revolution, there were those who stood around the guillotine in Paris, cheering, feeding their blood lust as they watched heads severed from bodies. Another group of people loves to see others getting into trouble, and will sometime assist in this to see it happen, as their natures devour the hurt of others. They love to dob others in. Sadists they are, wicked and degraded. The vile communist regime of Mao Zedong had no lack of people reporting others to the authorities as counter revolutionaries, and gloated in the harm and torture that befell these victims. The same happened in Nazi Germany as people delivered up the Jews. In the 2nd half of August 2020 the Chinese Communist Regime started offering rewards of $13 000 to people who would report house churches. It is all perverse and satanic.

Now, how, and why, does this happen? We would hope that none of this behaviour could ever be named among Christians, but for the unsaved person, his heart is as dark as night compared with the righteousness of God, and he plays out the evil that is part of his natural behaviour. 2 Thessalonians 3 v 2 speaks of perverse and evil men who do not have faith. The darkness tries to extinguish the light in its attitude to a Christian because it hates the light. In their own behaviour to one another, it stems from wickedness, because their father is the devil, the one called a murderer from the beginning, in Revelation. He is also known as Apollyon, the destroyer. People like to destroy others, though not all people do. There is no worse situation than when in crisis, people turn on one another.

This is what will happen in the Tribulation when peace is removed from the earth with the rider on the red horse of Revelation chapter 6, and there will be wars and rumours of war and civil uprisings. Man’s nature is warlike, and I am not going over the top in saying that. Just consider the shootings and wars in the world in your lifetime. Just consider the cruelty. In 2013, the last year for which government statistics are available, there were 33 000 gun deaths in the USA. Tallies of gun-related fatalities are in turn dwarfed by totals for gun injuries. Every 12 months, more than 118 000 people are shot. Many are left with devastating physical impairments and crippling health care bills. Every day in the U.S.A, an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention. One person is killed by a firearm every 17 minutes. (NBC News). People hate each other but usually show a peaceful tolerance. I used to hear that at school, and once, I remember, some girls telling me, “We hate her.” Getting others into trouble with spitefulness is well developed in kids, and is a behaviour that develops as people’s sins grow.