TITLE: Neither Do I condemn You
TEXT: John 3:16-17; 8:2-11; Romans 8:1
Preached by Louis Bartet at Point Assembly of God, February 23, 2003
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn [judge, punish and pass sentence on] the world; but that the world should be saved through Him.
John 8:2 And 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.
3 And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the midst,
4 they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such a women; what then do You say?"
6 And they were saying this, testing Him, in order that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground.
7 But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
8 And again He stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And when they heart it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she had been, in the midst.
10 And straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?"
11 And she said, "NO one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you’ go your way’ from now on sin no more."
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
In 1994, the movie Forest Gump caught the hearts of thousands of people. The main character, played by Tom Hanks, was mentally challenged and physically handicapped. One of the reasons Forest got into our hearts was his unconditional acceptance of people. Most of the people in Forest’s life were misfits, but he loved them without conditions. Forest loved and accepted them all--Bubba, Ginny and even the embittered Lieutenant Dan. He loved them without filters.
I think all of us are looking for loving acceptance and approval.
„X From our peers.
„X From our friends.
„X From our Church family.
„X From our parents.
For Carla Barnhill it became an obsession at the young age of 12. She writes:
ILLUS: ...I remember the moment like it happened this morning. My older brother had gotten himself into trouble¡Xagain. My mom and I were folding laundry, talking about the situation and how worried she was about my brother’s actions. Then she said to me, "I know we’ll never have to worry about you, honey."
Now my mom meant it as a compliment. Her intention was to tell me she knew I was well-behaved and smart enough to avoid some of the stuff that had gotten my brother in hot water. But in my mind, her words set a huge weight on my shoulders. When she said, "We’ll never have to worry about you," I heard, "Make sure we never have to worry about you."
That simple conversation set me on a mission¡Xto be the perfect daughter. My goal was to make sure my parents never had a doubt about where I was, what I was doing or who I was with. So I never missed a curfew, never drank a beer, never hung out with anyone who might lead me into trouble.
Those few times I did get into trouble with my parents, I felt horrible. And even though I got off with a few stern words, I still felt like I’d let them down.
My desire to be perfect carried over to my relationship with God. I honestly thought God would love me more if I went to youth group, if I said my prayers, if I went to Bible camp. I believed I could impress God if I did all the right Christian things. I didn’t always do those things because I wanted to. I did them because I wanted God to think I was perfect.
And I know I’m not the only one who has felt that being a good person¡Xbeing a perfect Christian¡Xis the key to God’s heart.
[Carla Barnhill, If I Could Only be Perfect, 1998, Campus Life, May/June, Vol. 56, No. 9, Page 40.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/cl/8c6/8c6040.html]
Striving to please God is good. According to Paul, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). In Matthew 5:48, Jesus said to His disciples, "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
We should stretch toward God’s high standard, but perfectionism is "doing our best" for all the wrong reasons. It’s about us, not about God. It’s about our ability to achieve God’s acceptance and love. It’s about our performance, not His.
It is unfortunate, but many of us are laboring under the misconception that If we’re good enough, if we do all the right things, God will love us.
Surprise! God loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). God made the first move. He loved us before we became "perfect," before we became legends in our own mind.
Jesus didn’t come to earth on a soul search for a few perfect people who were acceptable to God. NO! According to Him, "The Son of Man" came "to seek and to save that which was lost [useless and ruined]" (Luke 19:10 and Matthew 18:11).
The apostle John tells us, "He appeared in order to take away sins¡K" (1John 3:5) and "that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1John 3:8).
Someone once said,
„X If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent us an educator.
„X If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.
„X If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist.
„X If our greatest need had been religion, God would have sent us a Pharisee.
„X If our greatest need had been adherence to the Law, God would have sent us a policeman.
„X But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior--JESUS.
This is exactly what John tells us¡X"¡Kthe Father has sent the Son as Savoir of the world" (1Jn. 4:14).
The angel declared, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you god tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10-11).
Jesus did not come into the world to execute judgment, but to save those under the sentence of death. To give them every opportunity to experience deliverance from death and the impartation of life.
In his inspired commentary on Jesus, John declared:
John 3:16-17 - For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved [delivered from sin’s penalty, power and ultimately its presence].
Did you hear that? God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world!
The word condemn means to declare a person guilty and worthy of punishment. Jesus did not come as God’s enforcer, but as the Lamb destined to die for the sins of humankind.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were disturbed by His fraternization with sinners. Luke tells us¡K
Luke 15:2 ¡V "And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ’This man receives [accepts and welcomes] sinners and eats with them’."
There is no place that Jesus is more wonderful than in those moments when He takes sides with losers and down-an-outers.
QUOTE: Former Foursquare Pastor, Doug Murren wrote:
I am convinced that Jesus’ inclination to attend parties shows us what church should be: a joyful group of people partying with the must unsuspecting types.
Jesus would probably have declined an invitation to your home or mine in order to keep a social engagement with Jack Kevorkian or John Gotti and his friends. He would have visited with O. J. Simpson or spent the weekend matching wits with students at a notorious fraternity.
¡Ktoo often we in His church get so overly serious about ourselves and so zealous about our mission that we end up crushing those we are trying to help. We drown them with wordiness; we prescribe too many prohibitions that benefit no one.
Doug Murren, Churches That Heal, p. 12.
This wasn’t the case with Anne Lamott. Anne is a best-selling author and commentator for National Public Radio. According to Christianity Today, she is "funny, nutty, fast-talking, born again," and to the people in her liberal circles, "Jesusy."
ILLUS: Some 12 years ago, Anne started attending what she calls, "this funky little church" or "the church in the wild hood." According to her, she "did not mean to be a Christian," but Jesus wore her out. "I was tired and vulnerable and he won. I let Him in," she says.
As a young Christian she got pregnant, but the father of her soon to be born son wasn’t interested in having a family and she had no money. Although she had been attending the little church in the wild hood for a few weeks, she was not sure how they would respond to her news. She says¡K
"When I announced during worship that I was pregnant, people cheered. All these old people, raised in fundamentalist houses in the Deep South, cheered.
It was so amazing.
¡Kthey set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they brought furniture, they brought me soul-food casseroles to keep in the freezer, they brought me assurance that he was going to be a part of this family. And they began slipping me money.
Now, a number of the older black women live pretty close to the bone financially, on small Social Security checks. But routinely they sidled up to me and slipped bills in my pocket: 10’s and 20’s. It was always done so stealthily, so surreptitiously, that you might have thought that they were slipping me bundles of cocaine, or blueprints for [a top secret] submarine. One of the most consistent donors was a very old woman named Mary Williams, who is in her mid-80s now, so beautiful in her crushed hats and hallelujahs, who always slipped me plastic baggies full of dimes, noosed with little wire twists.
Eventually Sam was born. I brought him to church when he was five days old, and they all passed him around, from one set of arms to the next¡XI’ve said somewhere else that it was a little like watching a team of champion dwarf-tossers in action. They very politely pretended to care how I was doing but were mostly killing time until it was their turn to hold Sam again. They called him "our baby" or sometimes "my baby." "Bring me my baby!" they’d insist. "Bring me my baby now!"
I believe that they came to see me as Sam’s driver, or roadie, or sherpa, the person who brought him and his gear back to them every Sunday.
Mary Williams always sat (and still sits) in the very back by the door, and during the service she praises God in a non-stop burble, a glistening dark brook. She says, "Oh, yes." "Uh-huh." "My sweet Lord."
After 12 years of attending the little church in the wild hood, Anne says¡K
¡K just when I think we’ve all grown out of the ritual, she [Mary Williams] brings us another stash [of dimes].
She doesn’t know that I am semi-famous now, even semi-affluent, and no longer really need people to slip me money.
But what’s so dazzling to me, what’s so painful and poignant, is that she doesn’t bother with what I think she knows or doesn’t know about my financial life. She just knows we need another bag of dimes.
And this is why I make Sam go to Church.
Anne Lamott, Why Sam Goes to Church, Leadership, Vol. XXIV, Number 1, pages 89-92.
Instead of declaring Anne to be guilty of sin and worthy of punishment, instead of ostracizing her, instead of refusing her the love she had been experiencing, the little church in the wild hood just kept on loving and accepting her. Instead of being confirmed in her sin she says, "I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame, or dereliction." The unconditional love of the Church in the wild hood cleared her vision so she could see Christ unhindered.
Jesus makes an astonishing statement in John 12:47. He says, "If anyone hears my sayings, and does not keep them, I do not judge him¡K" Like me, you probably expected Him to say, "If anyone does not keep my sayings, I deem him guilty of sin and worthy of the fires of eternal punishment." Instead, He says, "I do not judge him." I do not press his guilt, ostracize him or sentence him to hell forever.
To be sure, the negligent hearer will be judged¡X"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day" (John 12:48).
According to 1Timothy 5:24, some sins will not be evident until judgment day¡X"the last day".
Paul tells the Church at Corinth, "¡Kwhat have I do to with judging outsiders? ¡Kthose who are outside [the church], God judges" (1Co. 5:12, 13).
While the Church must discipline erring saints, it has not been given the ministry of condemning the world. Even here, in this legitimate area of judgment, Jesus calls us to "righteous judgment"¡X"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24). Righteous judgment deals with the errant one based on thorough knowledge, not merely superficial common knowledge.
In John 8, Jesus does not defend the woman’s innocence or her sin. Her guilt is not in question. The charges brought against her were not trumped up. She was clearly guilty of adultery. She had been nabbed by the religious police and they were right, she was deserving of death.
Moses’ Law declared:
Deut. 22:22 ¡V "If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the other man’s wife must be killed; in this way evil will be cleansed from Israel."
Again, Jesus did not defend her innocence! To the contrary, He gave conditional license to those who would stone her¡X"Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." The issue wasn’t her innocence or guilt, but who was qualified to carry out the death sentence, to be her executioner. In other words, "Yes, according to Moses’ Law, she should be stoned, but those who carry out this sentence must be free from sin.
The scene and sounds of John 8:9-11 are awesome.
9 And when they heart it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she had been, in the midst.
10 And straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?"
11 And she said, "NO one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you’ go your way’ from now on sin no more."
The woman is left alone with Jesus who asked her, "Where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you? Did no one execute the judgment against you? Did no one throw a stone at you?
When she documents the absence of those who had demanded her death, Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you" (V.11). Again, Jesus isn’t declaring her innocent, rather He is exercising His ability to forgive sin and free her from the sentence of death that she rightly deserved. Though qualified to execute her, Jesus forgave her.
This act of forgiveness would be funded by His substitutionary death on the cross. He would die for her adulterous act.
ILLUS: Ernest Hemingway wrote a story about a father and his teenage son. In the story, the relationship had become somewhat strained, and the teenage son ran away from home. His father began a journey in search of that rebellious son.
Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in a last desperate attempt to find the boy, the father put an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read: "Dear Paco, Meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father." The next day, in front of the newspaper office, eight hundred Pacos showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness. They were all seeking the love of their father.
Citation: George Munzing, "Living a Life of Integrity," Preaching Today, Tape No. 32.
Do you think the response would have been the same if Paco’s father had used the newspaper to press Paco’s guilt?
ILLUS: Karla Faye Tucker was 23 years old in June, 1983, when she and her boyfriend (Daniel Garrett) broke into a Houston home. They had been high on drugs for days when they were surprised by the residents of the home and murdered them with a pickax and a hammer. Both Karla and Daniel received the death penalty. Daniel died in prison in 1993, but Karla remained on death row for many more years.
Three months after her imprisonment, she became a Christian. The words of a stolen Bible found their way into her heart and later that night she faithed Jesus. "When I did this," Karla later wrote, "the full and overwhelming weight and reality of what I had done hit me. I realized for the first time what I had done. I began crying that night for the first time in many years, and to this day, tears are a part of my life." [Extract from Karla’s letter to Governor George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1998.]
For over 14 years Karla lived a power Christian life in prision. In 1995 she married the prison chaplain, Dana Brown.
Her Christian life was so tied to her sin that she did not live a day without reflecting on God’s forgiveness. It was the source of her life.
Like the adulterous woman, Karla was changed, not by God’s judgment, but by His loving forgiveness of her sin. Jesus forgave Karla, but the State of Texas did not. On February 3, 1998, in Gatesville, Texas, Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection.
Although God has given the state the responsibility of wielding the sword, He has not called the Church to this task. He has called the Church to publish, promote and practice forgiveness.
Like Ginny, Bubba, Lt. Dan, Anne and Paco, our world is desperately seeking love an acceptance. People in the Church are hoping that someone will love them while God changes them.
Will we?
God did not send His Son to "condemn the world," and neither has He given that task to the Church. He has imparted to us the ministry of reconciliation¡Kthe privilege of calling men into relationship with God and of loving them while we wait for their response.
Will we?
ILLUS: Corrie Ten Boom shares this true story in her book, The Hiding Place:
It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there - the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!"
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
If we refuse to practice the gospel, then how can we expect the world to believe it when we preach the gospel?
Our present task is not to condemn the world, but to proclaim God’s grace provision to the world and to love that world until they believe.
Will we?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, please forgive us for building walls instead of bridges! Please help us to practice the gospel as well as preach it! Sir, please give us the opportunity to love the unlovely while you change them into your glorious likeness. May it be said of your Church, they demonstrated their love toward us in that while we were yet sinners they accepted us as people and gave themselves for us.
INVITATION
