Time To Check Your Halo Series

The first thing I'd like to do today as we look at this passage is I'd like to talk to you about the

footnote in your Bible. I hope you have a footnote. Look at it. Do you see the footnote in this

passage that we're looking at today? The footnote says this: “These verses (which is John 7:53-

8:11) are not found in the earliest manuscripts.” I want to explain to you what that's all about and

why we have that written there. Because it's very important to us who are Bible-believing

Christians. We want to know when there are some challenges. Let me explain to you what's

going on here.

There are over 25,000 manuscripts of the Bible. Some in parts, some in larger parts. But when

you put them one over the top of another, they are the same, which is fascinating. Except there

are a few little variants here and there. We want to know what those variants are. And we want to

know that because we understand that the scripture is inspired. In fact, I'm going to show you the

theological terminology that we use to describe what we mean by understanding that the Bible is

inspired.

We believe it’s inspired, which means that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers as they were

writing them. But not just the thoughts and ideas and they wrote them down. We believe in the

verbal plenary inspiration of God's word. Plenary means fullness. That means equally full

inspiration. Old Testament, New Testament, different kinds of…we have poetry, we have

historical narratives, we have prophecy. All of that is fully inspired by God. But we also believe

that it's verbally inspired. Verbally means we believe that the very words that were chosen by

John and Paul and Peter and others to write down, the very words themselves are inspired by

God. The very letters that are in the text are inspired by God. The tenses of those verbs are

inspired by God. That's a pretty significant statement. I want to make sure you understand that's

what we're talking about. So it's very important for us to know if there's a variant somewhere.

When you start studying this idea of the integrity of God's word, you're impressed with the

amazing sameness that exists among all of these documents, considering they didn't have

photocopiers in those times. They took great care. The scribes took great care in meticulously

copying the scriptures knowing that this is a holy book. So they were very careful about their

writings.

So when it says that a story, like the one we're going to read today, is not found in the earlier

manuscripts, what that means is we have these manuscripts from all over. We collect them all

and put them all together. Some were very early, some were later. And it appears that maybe in

this case this story wasn't actually written by John. Maybe it was written by a scribe who

thought, hey, this is a good story to remember. Maybe it was put in the side. And then later when

another scribe came along, put it into the actual text? We don't know for sure. Maybe it was there

in the original. We're not sure.

One of the things that impresses us about the study of the text itself is that there are no variants

that have anything to do with any beliefs, or theological doctrine, or significant truths about

God's word. And whenever we see some kind of a variant like this one we're going to look at

today, did this happen? No doubt it happened in Jesus’ life. And it illustrates some other things

we find in God's word. So we're excited to see this story. We're excited to learn about it and read

about it today.

I want to take you into it so that you can understand it and see what it looks like. We come to

reading the scriptures together. Would you please stand with me as we read this whole story

together? Starting in John 7:53, it says this: They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to

the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to

him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had

been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has

been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.

So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring

against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to