When Shame Meets Mercy | John 7:53-8:11

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Good morning South. It's good to see you all this morning. If you're new or new-ish around here, my name's Aaron Bjork, and I'm one of the pastors here. And if that is you we have a space out in the lobby just for you. It's the new here table. It's got a wall there. It's says new here. Check that out.

It's an opportunity for you to find out if this is a community that you could find relationships grow in the way of Jesus together with us. I would encourage you to check that out. If you're tuning in online. Welcome to you as well. So one of the things I love about this church is that this church over the last.

Several years especially, has become a safe place for people to land who have questions, who have doubts, who are just maybe disillusioned by church or they're a little bit weirded out by the Bible, and yet they find themselves here and they're on a journey of faith. And maybe they're even surprised by that a little bit.

And this place has become safe. And the reason is many of you. Have made this a safe place to wrestle. I, my dream, my hope is that we continue to be a church like that because the church should be the safest place to ask questions, not the least safe place to ask questions. But one of the reasons why, I love this place is because Alex so consistently when there are weird things in the Bible or tricky things, he just points them out and he deals with them head on. And today's text is not without some controversy, so I'm just gonna deal with it. Head on, name the elephant in the room, and then we will proceed.

How many of you brought your Bibles or your physical Bibles and they look something like this when you get to this? This passage, it's, this is my Bible. I took a screenshot, the earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7 53 through eight 11. And then it goes on to explain a bunch of other little locations.

It could have been and then in maybe if you got an app. It's there too. It's right there. It highlighted for you in my Bible. If you look at the whole page, it actually like indents it and puts lines around it and it like, puts it in italics. It's like this was not part of it, right? Little nerve wracking for some of us.

For some of you, you're like, I don't believe the whole Bible. Anyway, so no big deal. Move on. Others of you, you're like, woo. What's going on here? I wish we had time to get into all the details of this because I am a nerd and I love this kind of stuff. But let me just give us a really quick overview and then we're gonna move past this.

Yes. In my study, I believe that this was not in the I don't believe it wasn't in the earliest highest quality manuscript evidence. So somewhere in the 300 400 ad this started showing up inside of the manuscripts and it moved around. It was a couple other locations in John. It even jumped over Luke for a bit.

But there's a ton of really early evidence that this story was circulating in the very early church. It was a love story. So I think my best estimation is this event took place and that this story has relevance for us today. I know that creates questions, you might just tune me out the rest of the day, but there it is.

And fortunately for us, if you're interested in all the nerdy stuff we have a place for that. It's the Red Couch Theology Podcast. You can send your questions there. We will talk a little bit about canonization. What is scripture? Why is it one thing, scripture, other thing. We might cover that in a future episode to come soon, but I'd like to move on.

Beyond that because I think the reason this story is so well loved in church history and the reason that the the scribes who were copying the text took this story that was circulating in the elite church and placed it here for us was because it teaches us something about who Jesus is and maybe more importantly who Jesus is for us today and to the characters in this story.

So let's pray.

Father, I thank you for each and every single person in this room for having a beautiful journey for each one of them, a journey of encounters with you. Lord, I pray that today would be no different, that as we read this story, you would meet with us, that you would quicken our hearts, that you remind us of your plan for each one of us that you would remind us of your goodness, your faithfulness.

It's in your beautiful, in your ma name that I pray. Amen. Amen. Have you ever been caught red handed?

So in the interest of introducing this idea, let me share a story about a time when I was caught red-handed. Last week, my family and I participated in a Friendsgiving. My wife made some pumpkin pie. My daughter made some homemade whipped cream and made way too much than we needed. So we put some in the freezer and partway through the weekend, or maybe it was like Friday or something like that, we needed this space in the freezer.

So I'm like, ah, let's take this gigantic bowl of whipped cream out. We put it on the counter, and that night after everyone went to bed.

I was, I think, maybe working on the sermon or doing homework or something. And I walked in the kitchen with the munchies and I saw this gigantic bowl of whipped cream. And so I made a bowl of whipped cream. I didn't eat the whole bowl of whipped cream, but then. My wife came down for a glass of water, so I quick put the bowl, shame.

I quick put the bowl in the corner around the fridge hoping that she couldn't see it, and she came down and we talked for just a moment, had this brief interaction, and then right before she walked up the stairs, she said,

Hey Aaron, you have something in your mustache. I. I kid you not now I did restage this for you. 'cause I immediately wiped it off in shame and agony and she just walked upstairs just giving me the side eye. She knew I'd been caught completely. And this story is a story where someone is caught red handed and maybe you've been caught red handed too.

And maybe it wasn't something as lighthearted as this, a shameful snack in the late night hours. Maybe it was something else, or maybe you felt like you were caught by God in something. And so the question we're gonna wrestle with today is this, what happens when a Holy God encounters a sinner? And maybe more importantly, what happens when he counter encounters you or me.

'cause I is one and I know it. Even my deceptiveness in that moment was just a sign of me trying to hide in shame. You may have heard this before, you may have heard that God can't be in the presence of sin. Is that true? And if it's true, then how can he stand us? How can he interact with us? So today as we go through this story, again, I'm just gonna.

I'm gonna give us some contrast to how Jesus interacts with us, some comparison between Jesus and the religious leaders and how we interact with other humans. And then we're gonna look at the consequences of being caught red-handed. Let's dive in. So first we see a contrast because in order for us to understand how Jesus interacts with us as sinners.

We have to acknowledge the fact that he's the only one that we ever encounter, almost ever, unless someone's really behaving like Jesus. He's the only one that interacts with us in our sin the way he does in this story. And so we're gonna compare here and contrast him to the religious leaders in this passage.

So look at what they do with this sitter picture, this scene. So imagine there's a crowd and they're all inside of this temple court, and there's a murmur that. Comes with the beginnings of an event and they're talking and they're chatting, and then maybe Jesus starts weaving his way through the crowd.

And the crowd hushes a little bit because everyone knows, oh, that's Jesus. That's Jesus. He's coming in. He's coming in. Some of them had heard him teach before, some of 'em, maybe this was their first chance to hear him teach and there's like an excitement. And then he sits down, as did most rabbis when they were about to teach.

And a hush comes over the crowd. Then just in the early stages of his teaching, there's another murmur that rises because the religious leaders are coming and weaving their way through the crowd, jostling and pushing this woman forward, and they place her what the text says. They made her stand before the group.

I can picture her sort of there just, she's standing, but she is just hunched down in shame and her chin is against her chest and she's just staring at her feet. So ashamed. So ashamed. This all took place in the court of the women. This was a common place that a lot of teaching took place for the general masses because this is where the women could go and the larger population of the Israelite people could go to hear teaching.

She was allowed here. This was the place of worship. This was a church platform. This was the equivalent of me saying to one of you, come on up here. I'd like to expose your deepest, darkest secrets in front of everyone. That's where this took place. This was supposed to be a house of worship where she could encounter God.

And instead this woman is encountering the most shameful moment in her life.

And they said to Jesus, teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. And the law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman. Now, what do you say? And the crowd must have just been like, Ooh. Because they knew they, that they had Jesus between a rock and a hard place, and here's why they weren't right.

They were right. The law had commanded that this woman be stoned in Leviticus 2010 as just one of the examples of this. And so he had to deal with that and. They were not under their own law only, they were under the Roman law. And the Roman law said that the Jews were not allowed to enact capital punishment without permission from Rome.

And so Jesus is between this rock and this hard place because he if he says yes, let's stone her, then he disobeys Roman law and they'll report him to Rome and he'll be killed. But if he says no, we should be merciful to her, then they're gonna say, you don't believe in the scriptures. And the crowd must have been like, how is he gonna get out of this one?

How in the world is he gonna get out of this one? And I love this story because Jesus is brilliant, but they come to this moment. With an agenda and we hear what the agenda is in our passage. It's this, they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for Accu accusing him. And everyone in the room, or in this case, a courtyard knew it.

They knew it. They knew what Jesus was up to. So whenever this passes is taught or studied with any sense of of clarity, the question always pops up. Where's the guy? Where's the guy in this story? It takes two. And the way that scriptures dealt with adultery was a little bit different than we think about today.

But we know it, it was based upon the woman's marital status and because she's accused of adultery, we know she is at least married. And because she was accused of adultery, we know that the guy also committed adultery. Why? Because her crime was against her husband. That was the problem in that cultural day and age, and his crime was also against her husband.

Now if she had not been married and the man was, there was some weird stuff, culturally, maybe he wasn't committing adultery for various reasons. But in this case, we know because she's brought forth, she's accused of adultery. Both parties had committed the crime of adultery, and where's the guy?

Maybe the moral of the story is you just gotta be faster than the sinner next to you, right? He sneaks out the key out of the tent and scamper off into the wilderness. No.

The thing that I wanna observe for us today is this, using a human being as a pawn in your, in our agenda is always evil. Even if your agenda is wrapped in scripture, we see that they come to this moment and they leverage a human being made in the image of God to accomplish an a religious agenda. And honestly, I think in some ways, in some weird distorted ways, they were like trying to do what was right.

They wanted to try and get the people of God to obey God. They wanted the people of God to be pure and holy, and they wanted. That. And Jesus shows up on the scene and he's just casting out mercy and grace, and they're like, he's being all willy-nilly with the scriptures and we're just antsy about this.

We gotta get this guy rid of this guy, because if the people of God aren't holy, God won't act on our behalf. You see the agenda? I've gotta get all the people to do the right stuff so that I can get out of God. A thing I want, which is a nation autonomy. Again, all of these kinds of things. So they come with agenda and they use her as a pawn in their religious agenda.

And this is evil. And the reason it's evil, the reason it's not okay is because of this. We were made as human creatures for a purpose. Here's the purpose. In Genesis chapter one, verse 26, then God said, let us make mankind or men and women in our image. And in our likeness, and if you study this further, it's let us make humanity to reflect.

This is called in Theo Theological Terms, the imago de the I image of God to reflect God to all of the cosmos to the world. That's what you were made for. You were designed to reflect who God is and what he's like to the world around you, and when another human being. Commandeers your identity for their agenda.

Even if it's labeled and wrapped in religious coding, you are treating them less than human. Dehumanize a person. So every human in your life was made by God for his purpose, not for ours. There is never a situation where another human being was designed for your agenda.

So using a human being as a pawn in our agenda is always evil, even if your agenda is wrapped in scripture. But let's be honest, this is what humans do to each other, and this is why it's a contrast. We're not used to not doing this right. We're not used to others not doing this to us. There's a reason why obligations and burdens do I like.

Do I send the thank you card or not the thank you card. I've gotta live up to everyone's agenda for my life. We operate and we breathe, and we live and breathe. In a world where human beings who are broken, who have fallen, start to try and leverage each other for their own ends, we don't know anything else.

This is the world we live in. It's the air we breathe. But is that what God is like? So what else can we learn from this to get to this question? It's a comparison between the difference between Jesus and the broken religion or religious leaders in this moment. Let's compare them a little bit. We already learned that they leveraged this woman, they use her.

The reason they don't bring the man before the crowd is they didn't need to. They only needed one adulterer. Might as well let the guy get off because they just need to bring one person. And the comparison continues. Look at this in verse verses six through eight. They were using his questions in a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he strained up and he said to them, let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her again. He stooped down and wr wrote on the ground. I just, one of the reasons I love the Book of John is because it portrays Jesus as just so smart.

Think about it, the crowd's thinking He's rock hard place, he can't get out. How's he gonna do it? And he just doesn't. He just kneels down and he starts writing in the ground. And so if you're wondering, what does he write on the ground today, I'm gonna clear it up for you. Incorrect. Incorrect. I wish I could, but.

It's brilliant. And he moves on and he, when he stands up, he says, let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw the stone. And I just imagine the crowd going, oh man, I didn't see a third way out. He did it. It's just amazing. Just masterclass in wisdom, potentially wisdom that only could be God.

And I think in this moment, I don't know what he writes. Scholars have said he's writing their names and or he is writing their sins or whatever it may be. But regardless, they know that this was a little bit tricky of them. They know because not only a couple chapters away from the law that they're trying to trap him with is this.

Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the Lord. And there's dozens of these all throughout the same scriptures they're trying to uphold. God is putting these preventative measures to make sure humans don't leverage this law against another human being.

And so the law is there for our good. It's not there to be leveraged against us. And so the law just does this all over the place. So I don't know what he's writing on the ground. What's he writing? Who knows? Maybe a better question is this, what would Jesus have to write on the ground? To make you walk away, that might be a better question.

And so in our comparison between Jesus and the religious leaders the difference between Jesus and the broken religion is this, Jesus heals people. Broken religion uses people. This is the difference. And man, I.

I love that South has become a, this safe place for people who are questioning and all these sorts of things. But let's be honest, some of the reasons some of us have some church baggage is because there's some using people that goes on and we try our best at South not to be a church family that does that, right?

But we're also made up of a bunch of human beings and some of the hurt. Maybe most of the hurt that you've experienced in your relationship with other human beings is because of this issue. When we sense that the church at large, or when your family member or your parent or your kid is trying to leverage you, it just breaks something in us, and that's what can be broken about religion.

But in, in God's wisdom, he's working in and through his church. That's not how Jesus operates. He does not operate with an agenda to accomplish something. He doesn't need you to be a good boy or a good girl in order to accomplish his ends because you are his goal. Your heart encounters with you. That's his goal.

Jesus heals people. Broken religion uses people. So what's the consequence? What happens when Jesus encounters a sinner? What happens? Spoiler alert, you already heard the passage read but I wanna look at it a little bit more detail. Look at this with me at this. Those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older one first until only Jesus was left.

With the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her woman, which by the way, the last time I believe that Jesus used this term was refer was speaking to his mother. A woman, it's actually a term of endear, endearment woman. Where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir. She said maybe this is the first time she has the guts to lift her chin off of her chest and look around with a little bit of fear and trepidation.

And she's surprised that all the religious leaders, the lawyers, were gone. And she looks at Jesus in the face. No one sir. Then neither do I condemn you. Jesus declared, go now and leave your life of sin. So what does she get in this moment? What happens when Jesus or when God encounters a sinner, this is what she gets in this moment.

Shame lifted. Social and personal. Think about this. He didn't just lift her shame like religiously speaking. All the ones who could have accused her or did accuse her. Left publicly. So they like remove their accusations socially. So she's now replaced in social standing in her society. And this situation might have left her E one, she's facing potential death and if she is not killed, she would have shame forever.

But the lawyers are leave. They don't sustain their accusation. So she's elevated socially, personally. She encounters a shame free moment with this. With Jesus, she re receives a non-con condemning presence of Jesus. He looks at her, neither do I condemn you. And then finally, she encounters an invitation to transformation, to a transform life.

Look at what he says to her. Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin. So here's my question. What does the man get?

He doesn't get any of this. I don't know where he is right now.

Does he love this woman, and now she's might get killed? Was he just using her and, think about what he's experiencing. He doesn't get his shame lifted. He doesn't get the social stigma lifted. If someone knows about this, he doesn't get any of this, he doesn't get an encounter with Jesus, the savior of the world, the creator of all looking at him in the eyes and saying, neither do I condemn you.

Go and sin no more. Being caught in isn't the worst thing. Never meeting Jesus is being caught. Isn't the worst thing that could happen to you. In fact, maybe just maybe being caught was the best thing that could happen to you. Because being caught by the one who redeems us from our sin and can tell a new story with our future is the best possible outcome.

She's far better off than the man was. Amen. So can God be in the presence of sin Uhhuh. True Jesus is proof. The incarnation. The fact that God himself came to broken earth to walk on streets with sinners is proof that God can not only be in the presence of sin, but. When he is, he restores dignity and offers transformation.

This is the beauty of what Jesus does. All throughout the book of John, Alex described this series as like these little moments where yes, there's some other characters involved, but think about this moment. It zooms in on this. Interaction with this woman and right in the midst of her shame, in the midst of her deepest, darkest sin.

He is not contaminated by her sin. Instead, he breathes life into her. And he creates the potential for a new future. Now, does this lessen her sin? No. Think about her family, her kids, who knows? This adultery is devastating, and the reason Jesus can invite her to a life without sin is not because he's trying to accomplish an agenda in her life.

It's because sin hurts. Her, she was the target audience. She was the one he was trying to get after. And in his wisdom, he found a way to side skirt the trap that had been set for him and to side skirt all of these different things and get straight at the heart of a sinner, caught in sin and redeem her.

Beautiful. And the irony of this is in his question he or in his statement, whoever has no sin, cast the first stone. Who is that in the space? Only Jesus who could have cast the stone. Only Jesus. There's a reason they all slink away into the shadows. They know it's not any of them, but he could have.

Earlier in the Book of John, we read this. This is right after John three 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him. Shall not perish, but shall have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world or this woman, or you or me, but to save the world through him.

The reason he can get away with this and to not condemn her sin is because he knows he's going to pay for it thoroughly. The one who could cast the stone, chooses instead to carry your shame. Isn't that beautiful? This is our God. This is why Jesus is so compelling. It's beautiful. I want to tell you a story about the first moment I might have experienced.

Like I'd understood Grace intellectually and I'd experienced sort of a spiritual intellectual interaction about Grace a couple different times. But the first time someone embodied this kind of non-con condemning presence for me was in my first year on full-time staff here at South. What was going on is we were a little tiny staff.

Lots of things were going on, lots of activity. And I was starting to get to the place of burnout and I was just, I was burning the candle at both end. I was a grumpy mess. My family was like, reaping the harvest of my brokenness in the evenings, and we were just, I would, my Allison and I were like tense in the evenings.

I was just a jerk. And I was, couldn't seem to find my way here at work, and I was just getting more and more frustrated and more and more frustrated. So much. I was like, I don't know if I'm cut out for this ministry thing. And I was gonna burn out completely. So much so that I was like, maybe I should resign that.

And that was the first tipping point. I'm like I don't even care anymore. Maybe the best thing that could happen is I'm not working here anymore. More. And that gave me the fe the bravery to do something I could not have imagined prior. One day in a staff meeting, we were sitting there around the conference table, and I remember I had a gash on my forehead, just like a little blood mark on my forehead.

And one of our elders at the time, Chuck Malott, I love Chuck he said, Hey, what's the thing on your. On your forehead, and I was so fed up with life. I said, you know what? Last night I said this out loud to the whole staff. By the way, last night I was so angry. I headbutt the drywall and snapped right through the drywall.

I was that angry and I, it came out of my mouth publicly in front of an elder. In front of the lead pastor in front of all these pastors, I'm like, I'm not even cut out to be a peace pastor. If they knew how angry I was as a man or all of the deep dark sins I had in my life, there is no way I would be around this conference table.

And I said it out loud and then I was like, oh man, I just lost my job. And Chuck immediately said to me, I'm, if you ever need help. Fixing head shaped holes in drywall. I'm really good at it and everyone chuckled and I thing. Cool. Cool. And I went to my office and I wept because I'd received grace.

I didn't know what that felt like. I just admitted to not being a good pastor and the kind of pastor that I thought you should be, and I'd been met with someone saying Me too. And an elder saying, me too. I had never been that vulnerable before. And that from that day forward he didn't say this, go and sin no more, but in his compassion for me to just say a casual mark, like later on I've talked to him about this, he's I don't know.

I was that big of a deal for you. But later in life or later on, his invitation was to. Go and sin no more because why now? I'm way more vulnerable from that day forward. He invited me to be a different kind of human, to expose my sin more regularly to more people because what is in the light cannot survive.

Sin that is in the light cannot survive, and this woman receives the gift of having her sin exposed. And so I'm gonna invite. Megan up for this closing song. And before we go into that, I'm just, I'm gonna invite us to pray a prayer confession. I've said this a couple times as I've led worship.

I think confession gets a bad rap, and here's why. Confession is simply an acknowledgement before a God like this, Jesus. That I am broken. And in that same confession, it's like a detox for your soul. And so I'm gonna encourage this. I'm gonna put a well-known famous confession up here and we're gonna pause at a couple lines and then I'll continue us.

And I want you to fill in the blank in those lines, what's appropriate for you. Because right now there's a courtyard that you might be standing in, even in your imagination, your soul, that. What do I not want people to know about me? There's a courtyard, and what if everyone saw that thing? Now's your chance to expose it before Jesus.

Let's read this confession together. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what we have done. Let's pause here.

What's that for you?

Confess it before him. He is the right place for you to confess it.

Imagine him lifting your chin from your chest and looking you with the eyes and saying, and neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. And let's continue and by what we have left undone. Maybe it's that extension of forgiveness that you've been withholding.

Maybe it's a stingy spirit that just says, I'm gonna try to, I'm just, all my time is mine. Maybe it's the tendency you have to leverage your family to accomplish your ends, to try and manipulate your family to think a certain way or your kids, or whatever it may be, your workplace. I use people. I use them to get to my destination, whatever it may be.

Fill it in there for you. And he says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Let's continue. We've not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent for the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name.

Amen. I'm gonna have Megan sing this song over you. And here's some of the lyrics of this. And I love this song so much because it says this in the chorus. It says, your love you love me as you find me great, you love me as you find me, and all of my mess and all of my brokenness and all of my weakness.

You love me right there. And then in the bridge it says, your loves. Way too good to leave me in that state of brokenness. Your love's too good to leave me here. So let this song just wash over you and I'd like to invite the prayer team up. Maybe would you stand actually with you can sing along if you'd like, but as this time goes on, maybe you just want some prayer.

Maybe you need someone to confess us into. We can do that even though we're not Catholics. Did you know that? So we can confess our sins one to another 'cause then God can heal us. So take this time to do some business with God.