Loving With Truth And Grace Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

When Mary and I were still dating, I was on my way home from her house late one Friday night. I was driving east on Orange Grove Road between La Canada Drive and Oracle Road when suddenly I saw some flashing lights behind me. When I pulled over, the sheriff deputy approached my car and asked me if I knew how fast I had been going. He then took me back to his car to show me that his radar had clocked me at 55 miles per hour in the 45 mile per hour zone.

Now you have to understand that I was driving my Ford Pinto and that I had stopped at the red light at La Canada Drive before proceeding, so I’m not even sure my car was capable of getting up to that speed in less than a quarter mile, but I was nonetheless very respectful to the deputy. I answered all his questions about why I was out at that time of night and where I was going in such a hurry.

Fortunately, he must have already reached his quota of tickets for the month, so he let me off with a verbal warning. But he also told me that if he ever caught me speeding on that stretch of road again, I could be sure he would throw the book at me. So needless to say, from that night forward I was very careful to watch my speed on my way home from Mary’s house.

TENSION

I was certainly grateful for the grace that deputy extended to me that night. But if I’m honest I sure don’t appreciate it nearly as much when I see that same kind of grace extended to someone else. I’m not going to lie to you. When someone goes flying by me on Oracle Road, I’m secretly hoping that there will be an Oro Valley policeman sitting by the road who will pull that person over and give him or her a ticket.

Now before you judge me I’m pretty sure that most of you do the same thing, too. Right?

When it comes to speeding, that desire for grace for me and truth for everyone else may not be that big of a deal. But when we have that same attitude when it comes to our relationship with God, that’s another matter.

So today we’re going to look at a conversation of Jesus that is going to help us understand how genuine love requires a perfect balance of grace and truth. We’ll see that is how Jesus loves and also how He wants us to love others.

TRUTH

So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to John chapter 8. Before I read our passage, I need to share some background. If you’re using the ESV translation like me, you will note that there is a footnote that indicates that John 7:53-8:11 is not included in the “earliest manuscripts”. Some other translations will also have a similar footnote and some translations will leave this section out altogether or only include it in a footnote.

This is what is known as a “textual variant” which has been identified through a practice known as “textual criticism”. And we could very easily spend our entire time this morning talking about whether or not this passage belongs here in John, or even in the Bible at all. And if you’re interested in studying that more, you won’t have any problem finding plenty of opinions on that.

I am not an expert by any means in this area, but it is my opinion that the preponderance of the evidence supports the position that this account was not originally in John’s gospel account. So, if that is the case, why have I chosen to include this passage in our current series? Even the critics who don’t believe this belongs in John’s gospel almost all agree that it is an authentic account of a true encounter between Jesus, some Jewish religious leaders and an unnamed woman. And even more importantly, it is clearly consistent with the teaching and actions of Jesus that we find in all four gospel accounts. In fact, we’ll see there are a lot of parallels between this account and the account of Simon the Pharisee and another unnamed woman that we studied two weeks ago.

[Read John 7:53-8:11]

Once again today I’m going to give you our gospel takeaway right up front and then we’ll use this passage to explain it further and help us apply it to our lives.