JOHN 8:1-12
( https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=JOHN+8%3A1-12+&version=NIV)
As we look around us in the world today, it seems that everyone is looking for something. Everyone is chasing after some goal or prize that they think will bring them contentment and give meaning to their lives. Human beings have a need to make sense out of life and the world around us. We have an inbuilt need to understand our world, and make sense out of things. Give a little boy a screw driver and a pair of pliers, and watch him start taking everything in the house apart. He wants to know how it works, and why it works the way that it does. This is inherent within our nature. We want and need for life to have meaning and purpose. God made us this way.
One of the most rewarding, but I must admit, also mentally tiring aspects of being a parent is the constant onslaught of questions from my children. “Why is the sky blue?” “How do eyes work?” “How many seconds does it take to drive to California?” And on and on… Curious little minds want to know. All of us, no matter how old we are, need to keep that alive within us. When we finally get to the point that we think we “know it all” we become boring and irritating people!
The most miserable and desperate people alive are those who have given up on the idea that life has meaning. The most destitute of men are those who have given up on the idea that life has any real significance and value. We need for life to make sense, and we need a reason for living, whether we admit it or not. The problem is that all too often we look for the answers in the wrong place, and we come to the wrong conclusions.
King Solomon was once a man who had everything in terms of worldly success that a man could desire. He had wealth. He had political power. He had a good reputation as a fair king among his people. He was surrounded by women who were at his beck and call. He was anointed with the wisdom of God. But, as the saying goes, “Every dog has his day.” He lost his relationship with God and got lost in the maze of worldly power, and as a result his life became meaningless. King Solomon, once the anointed king over God’s people, once the envy of the kings of the nations, led astray by lust and greed, died a frustrated, bitter, disillusioned old man. Read these words from Ecclesiastes,
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:2-11, NIV)
This is a depressing place to be in life. Many of us have probably felt that way from time to time.
If you ask some people what they are looking for in life, they probably will not be able to give you a definite answer. That is because they really do not know. When I finished high school, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life. I had a vague idea about wanting to make money, and have fun, but that is as far as it went. I had a deep sense of emptiness. I was searching for something, but I didn’t have a clue about what that something was. I bounced around for years, drifting from one thing to another, looking for something to fill the hole inside my soul.
We live in a world full of people just like that. People drift from one thing to another, searching for something that they cannot identify. Men and women drift from relationship to relationship, looking for the perfect mate to fulfill the need of their heart, never really finding true happiness.
Young people drift from one experience to the next, looking for the ultimate “rush.” How many times do you have to “Do the Dew” to find the real thrill? Is it found jumping out of an airplane on a skateboard? Or snow skiing down a totally vertical mountainside, or bungie jumping off the Empire State Building? This only leads to boredom and frustration, because after the Adrenalin wears off, it is time to look for something more dangerous.
People drift from one career to the next, never finding that perfect job that will give them fulfillment. It is a shame that our society is filled with people, who have reached the years in their life when they should be reaping the fruit of the hard work of their younger years, but instead, are sold the devil’s lie about happiness, and go wrecking a long marriage or chasing quick financial success in a pot of fool’s gold.
There are going to be a lot of bitter lonely old people in the nursing homes, with no family to come visit, because men and women have bought into the devil’s lies and abandoned their spouses in search of the illusive “soul mates” that they think they have missed.
People were basically no different in Jesus’ day. When Jesus walked the earth, people in Israel flocked to Him so much that He often went into the mountains by Himself to pray and rest. People sensed that there was something about Jesus that they needed. But as we study the life of our Lord as it is recorded in the Gospels, we find that people came to Him for many different reasons. Even today, people come to Jesus for many different reasons.
Several years ago, a man that I worked with was talking to me about how he and his wife had split up. He had begun to seek the Lord. He had started going to church, and had made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior. My friend told me that he had been praying for his estranged wife. He wanted God to bring his wife back and save his marriage. There is certainly nothing wrong with that prayer. He should desire for his wife to be converted, and his marriage to be healed. However, it became evident after a while that his wife had no intention of becoming a Christian and returning to him. They eventually got a divorce. Today, as far as I know, that man has since stopped going to church and is no longer trying to live the Christian life. He gave up after he lost his wife. I tried to explain to him that God does not always change our circumstances when we come to Him. In many cases, we still have to live with the same set of circumstances that we found ourselves in when we came to God. However, if we are consistent, and obedient to God, those circumstances will change for the better over time. We cannot come to God with conditions attached. We do not bargain with God.
In spite of all that, if you are sincere, and truly seek the Lord, He will change your heart, and give you a peace within that empowers you to deal with the circumstances in a totally different way.
If God answered prayers the way that many desperate people wanted him to, we would ultimately be worse off. If God only changed the circumstances so that we did not have to suffer the consequences of our actions, we would see no need for an inward change. Even with the problems solved, the sinful heart would remain, and that is what caused us the problem to start with. It would just be a matter of time before we created new problems for ourselves. Changing circumstances doesn’t change the man. I used to have an old preacher friend who put it this way, “You can put a mule on a train and ship him from Carolina to California, but this does not make him a horse. When he gets off the train in California, he is still a jack-ass!”
God often leaves us in the middle of trying circumstances, because those circumstances are the refiner’s fire He uses to purify us.
What were the reasons that people came to Jesus in His day? Let’s look at some of them…
1. Some people were attracted to Jesus because they wanted to see the miracles. They had heard about this prophet from Nazareth healing people and raising the dead, and they wanted to see it for themselves. Luke 23 states that “When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see Him. From what he had heard about Him, he hoped to see Him perform some miracle.”
And in John 7 we read:
“But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, ‘You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles that you do. No one who wants to become a public figure, acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.’ For even His own brothers did not believe in Him.”
Many people today are drawn to the power of the supernatural. I do believe that God does manifest His supernatural power in the world today. I do not believe that the time for miracles ended with the Apostles, as some think. That is nonsense. I believe that we are living in a day when God’s supernatural power is being poured out on the church. But there is a danger that we face here. The miracles are to draw attention to Christ, and the power of the Gospel to give us new life now, and save our eternal souls. When our attention remains fixated on the supernatural manifestation itself, we are in danger of missing the real reason for the miracle.
Satan can bring about supernatural manifestations also. The prophetic overtone of the Scriptures indicates that towards the end of time, before the second coming of Christ, and the final consummation of things on earth, there will be an extraordinary amount of demonic supernatural activity taking place. We must make sure that we are not coming to Jesus simply because we desire to see supernatural manifestations. We can be deceived.
2. Some people came to Jesus because they needed physical healing, or healing for a loved one. In Matthew 14 we read;
“And when the man of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to Him and begged Him to let the sick just touch the edge of His cloak, and all who touched Him were healed.”
And in Matthew Nine we read;
“As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, calling out, ‘Have mercy on us, son of David.’ When He had gone indoors, the blind men came to Him and He asked them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ ‘Yes Lord,’ they replied. Then He touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith, will it be done to you,’ and their sight was restored.”
I could go on and on with more examples. There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting God to heal you if you are sick, so don’t misunderstand me here. I don’t like being sick or in pain, do you? Doesn’t James say;
“Is anyone of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”
However, if wanting to be well physically is our only reason for coming to Jesus, we have some serious problems. I know too many people who have gotten sick, and in desperation, called out to God for healing. That is fine, but the minute they get back on their feet, they forget all about God and the promises that they made to Him from the hospital beds. What good does it do for a man to have a body that has been healed, if his heart and soul are still poisoned with the death of sin?
3. Some people came to Jesus because they needed to have their physical needs met. In John 6 we read that Jesus had this to say to the disciples when they came looking for him;
“I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you.”
And in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had this to say:
“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes.” … “The pagans run after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Here again, please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think it is wrong to ask God for the things that we need. But if this is your reason for coming to Jesus, again you are in for problems. God is more than our great benefactor. He is our Lord and Creator. He must heal and restore every area of our lives, not merely meet our physical needs.
In Acts, chapter three, we read of an encounter that Peter and John had with a man who was a beggar. The man was crippled, so every day he would be carried to the temple gate so that he would beg for money. We see people much like this on the traffic islands on major intersections of our cities. People who hold up signs that inform passers-by that they are homeless, jobless, etc., and they need money for food. We have all seen them from time to time. Many of them do desperately need help. But we learn a principle from Peter’s dealing with the crippled beggar. Peter did not give the man a handout. He gave him something much better. Through the power of God, Peter healed the man, and in so doing, restored to him the ability to take care of himself. If all we are doing for needy people is meeting their immediate physical needs, and not working to restore them to a position where they can become productive and self- sufficient, they are ultimately worse off, not better. The welfare state breeds laziness and self-absorption, not independence and freedom.
Why do people come to Jesus today? For many of the same reasons. Some people have a misguided idea about who Jesus is. To the Muslim, Jesus is merely a great prophet. To the Jehovah’s Witness, Jesus is a spirit being, much like a great angel, but not God incarnate. To the New-Ager, Jesus is the great mystical guru. None of these are who Jesus really is. Jesus Christ is Almighty God born in human flesh to shed His life’s blood on the cross of Calvary for the sins of the world. Jesus is to us first, Lord and Savior. Then He is our healer, our provider, and He is our counselor and friend. But it must be in that order. He must be Lord and Savior first.
In the Scripture that we first read, it says that the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought this woman whom they had caught in the act of adultery to Jesus. Why did these people come to Jesus? Was it because they wanted to become His disciples and learn the ways of God? Not hardly! If we back up and read in chapter seven of John we find that these men were really following Jesus around because they were trying to find some accusation that they could bring against Him, so that they might put Him to death. Even so today, it seems that you have individuals and groups who scrutinize everything that the Church, as well as individual Christians do, so they can find fault. They want to deliver the death blow to Christianity.
They brought this woman before Jesus and said to Him,
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Him.”
Isn’t this so typical? I have often wondered how these men caught this woman. This seems a bit strange if you think about it. Were they spying on her?
And we are so quick to want to see another person judged and brought to punishment. If God dealt with us in the way that our sins deserve, none of us would stand.
Several years ago, the hot news for a while was a story about a woman in South Carolina who had put her two small children in a car, then rolled the car into a lake, drowning her children. She then made up a story about how she had been car jacked, and the robber drove off with her children. When she finally confessed to killing her children, I heard so many people commenting on how much they wanted to see this woman punished. We later heard of another mother who drowned all five of her children in the bathtub of her home. I have heard vengeance in a lot of people’s voices. These are tragic and heart wrenching events. I know that we cannot excuse these actions. But as Christians, I think that we need to examine our own reactions to events such as these. Does this kind of thing fill our hearts with vengeance and hate toward these women? Do we want to see them suffer a fate worse than the children? (That is the sentiment that I heard expressed by at least one person.) Think about it for a moment. That is not the way that God responds to our sins. When we sin, it breaks God’s heart. It makes Him hurt. As our Heavenly Father, God is not scrutinizing our every move just waiting to say, “Aha! I’ve got you now! You really messed up and now I can send you to hell like I have been wanting to do!” These things should break our hearts, as they break the Father’s heart.
This is not God’s response to us. In John 3:16 we read;
“For God so loved the world” (not just the nice, good looking church people, not just the Americans, not just the Wesleyans or Calvinists, not just the whites, or the blacks, not just the rich and affluent, but the world. That includes the man or woman addicted to drugs. That includes the woman who has sold her body to strangers. That includes the man or woman who has left their spouse and children. That includes the one who sees the ravages of the HIV virus draining the life out of his/her body. That includes men and women caught up in dead religions. That includes a woman so distraught that she would drowned her own sons.) …”that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
How many of you have children? When your child does something that you have told him not to do, or something that is harmful to his well-being, you do not stand back and think to yourself, “Whoopy! I finally get to whip him good now!” If that is not the way we are with our own children how do we get such a twisted idea about our Heavenly Father being some cruel ogre?
As a parent, sometimes I had to spank my children. I did not enjoy it, but I did it to teach them the right way when it was necessary. It is the same way with God. He does not enjoy punishing us.
I do believe in the reality of hell. What hell is like, I have no idea, and do not want to find out. Because of the figurative language that is used to express the awfulness of hell in Scripture, people picture and think of hell as a literal burning fire Whether that is actually how hell is, is debatable. When we get into debates about whether hell is a literal burning fire or not, I believe we miss the point. When we use language we know to express something that is either so terrible or so wonderful that it goes beyond our ability to describe it, our language will always be inadequate. We use terms and word pictures that our hearers can understand and relate to, but because of the weakness of language, the descriptions are always inadequate. The point to the whole issue of hell is this: God is the source of all life, all good, everything that produces life and joy. God created us as eternal beings. When we move away from God, we move away from life and goodness, and into terribleness and despair. This continues, on a trajectory that only gets worse and worse, unless that process is stopped, and our direction is changed. That can ONLY happen through Jesus Christ. This is the ONLY way that God has presented to us. He is in charge, we are not. He is the Creator, so it is His to state what the way is, it matters not what we say or think. Since we are eternal beings, and through the Fall of mankind, on that trajectory of eternal evil, hell is the state of non-ending, progressive misery, no matter how that manifests or is described.
Some people say that we are living in hell on earth when we suffer, and that is all the hell that there is. Others will say that a loving God cannot send people to a place so horrible. People who make these statements do not understand God’s Word or His order. God created us as eternal beings when He made us in His image. That fact cannot be changed. He breathed into us the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. That means that we have conscious existence for eternity. The second death is eternal separation from God, who is the source of all good. Whether or not Hell is a literal burning fire is beside the point. Eternal separation from God in a conscious state will be absolute torment. I believe that every soul that winds up in hell is a permanent hurt in God’s heart. God does not send men to hell, they send themselves there by rejecting the provision that He has made for them to escape. I believe that every soul that winds up in hell breaks God’s heart.
We should feel the same way. We should hate sin. We must maintain s standard of holiness for the world to see, but we must love the sinner. Why? Because God loves him/her. If there is hope for me, there is hope for anyone, no matter how bad they seem. As Paul states in 1 Timothy 1:
“Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.”
These men brought this woman to Jesus for the wrong reason. But I believe that if we examine this passage, we can learn three very important things about the Christian life:
First, the Christian life does not begin with our good works, it begins with God’s grace. A lot of men that I talk to in the jails and prisons have this idea that, in order to get their lives straightened out, they have to clean up their act, and then present themselves to God. I have got news for you. If you try to do that, it will never work. None of us has the ability within ourselves to make ourselves good enough by our own efforts. You must lay down your life at God’s feet in surrender. As you yield, He will give you the power you need to change from the inside out. As the old hymn says;
”Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me,
and that thou bidd’st me come to thee,
Oh Lamb of God, I come!
Just as I am, and waiting not,
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
Oh Lamb of God, I come!
Just as I am, tho’ tossed about,
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears, within, without,
Oh Lamb of God, I come!
Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
Wilt pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because thy promise, I believe,
Oh Lamb of God, I come!
Just as I am, thy love unknown,
Hath broken every barrier down,
Now to be thine, yea, thine alone,
Oh Lamb of God, I come!
Jesus did not give this woman a lecture on the virtues of chastity. He did not point his finger at her and tell her she was a worthless whore. He spoke to her accusers first. “Okay you people think you are so righteous. You think you have it together. Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone. Ouch! I think He hit me with that one!
”Woman, where are they?” Jesus asked. “Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus said.
The Christian life does not begin with our good works, it begins with God’s grace. However, it does not end there.
This leads to the second point: It is our responsibility to maintain our relationship with God. The very next thing that Jesus says to the woman if often overlooked. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Now it is starting to look as if it does require some action on our part. We see other examples of this in Jesus’ encounters with others. In John 5 where we read about Jesus healing the blind man, Jesus’ last words to him were, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” Jesus does not say that something bad is going to happen to the man, but it is reasonable to assume that if he does not change his lifestyle, things will get worse instead of better! The thing that is required of us is repentance. Repentance is a voluntary turning away from sin. I remember talking to someone who had a problem with alcohol several years ago. He had gone through detoxification treatment and remained sober for several months. Then he started drinking again. As we talked, he made this comment, “I don’t know what happened to get me back in this condition again.” “I know exactly what happened,” I told him. “You were in a clear state of mind, and you chose to pick up a bottle of alcohol and drink it. No one forced you to. You made a choice.”
There are too many people in our society who want to believe that they can just go on and keep sinning like they want to, and all they have to do is ask God for forgiveness, and He is obligated. That is like using God to wipe the mud off your shoes, if you ask me. I for one, get tired of counsellors calling sin everything but sin. Just because we stick a cushiony label on it and refer to it in psycho-babble does not mean that it is no longer sin.
We don’t make much out of sin anymore. In an article from Christianity Today, Cornelius Planting Jr. had this to say;
”The word SIN now finds its home mostly on dessert menus. Peanut Butter Binge and Chocolate Decadence are sinful. Lying is not. The measure for sin is caloric.”
If we lose our understanding of what sin really is, or if we just don’t take it seriously, we will never make it into the Kingdom of God. God’s grace draws us, His Spirit empowers us, but He does nothing against our will. It is our responsibility to turn our hearts and minds away from sin.
This leads to the third and final point. Our life in Christ does not consist of reaching a plateau and then lying down to slumber. It is a daily surrender of our will to God’s will.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” And in Matthew 10:37, “Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
And 1st John 1:6-7 says, “If we claim to have fellowship with Him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.”
We must first come to Him in faith, believing Him for pardon. We must repent of all our sin as best we know how, and we must continue to follow Him daily.
That is the real reason that we should come to Jesus. That is the only thing that is going to make life make sense and have meaning. Unless the church puts that before the world. the world has no hope, just a meaningless drifting from one sensation to the next until we fall into eternity, where we remain on that eternal trajectory of misery and despair. It does NOT have to end this way. Jesus is THE doorway to eternal joy in the presence of God!
Danny's Stump 