Well, all right, let's go to John chapter 8. John chapter 8. We've been looking at some familiar stories on Sunday nights. This one is no less familiar, I'm sure, to you. Once you get there, you'll recognize it immediately. John chapter, and I'm always excited when I, you know, when you study something and you see it in a different light. And that's kind of the way tonight's lesson is going to be for me, anyhow. I mean, it may not be anything new for you, but for me, it's like, oh, you know, I didn't really see that before. So anyhow, we're in John. We're gonna look at chapter eight. We're gonna start reading in verse one, in verse one. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 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. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act. Now in the law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What then do you say? They were saying this, testing him so that they might have grounds for accusing him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground. 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. Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones. And he was left alone and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. Straightening up, Jesus said to her, Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you? She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said, I do not condemn you either. Go. From now on, sin no more. G.K. Chesterton made this statement, and I thought it was very astute, and so I'll share it with you this evening. He said, men do not differ much about what things they call evils. They differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. He's kind of a deep thinker when he says kind of stuff like this, you know, and you have to kind of meditate on what he's saying there. But it's not that we aren't guilty, it's just that we're pretty good at excusing what we're guilty of, okay? It's called rationalization. That's the fancy word and the fancy name for it. Everybody here without exception, without exception is a rationalizer of sin. And I'm not trying to sound pious because I am in the same boat. I can rationalize my sins as much or quicker than anybody. this room. We all do it and we're all pretty good at rationalizing our sins. Now if you've got children I mean you know you live with it daily. Kids are great at rationalizing what they do you know and finding excuses for what they do. And not only that we're not above blaming somebody else. for what we do in our process of rationalizing our sins. I'll point to my wife real quickly, you know, and say, if you hadn't have said that, if you hadn't had that look on your face, you know, I wouldn't have done what I, I wouldn't have said, you know, we respond so quickly to blame other people, whether it's our wife, whether it's our husband, whether it's our children, whether it's our boss, whether it's our co-worker, whether it's somebody driving down the road, it doesn't matter if they're at Walmart, we just do it. And we're quick to do it. It's nothing new. I mean, you know, it started in the Garden of Eden. We all are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve. And, you know, they had sinned against God. It was clear that they had. God comes down. He calls Adam on a sin. You know, Adam responds and says, you know, I didn't do it. You know, I said the woman and he says the woman did it, you know, made me do it and whatever the case may be. You know, we naturally gravitate toward blaming other people. And somebody might say, well, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're all sinners. The Bible says, for all sin comes short of the glory of God, you know. Can't you make an excuse for us in the fact that we all have this bent toward sinning, you know? We all have a natural desire to sin, you know? You can't hold us too accountable. We inherited our sin nature from Adam. We can't be held accountable, can we? Since we have this natural bent That gives you understanding and that gives you knowledge of why you sin, but it does not excuse you from sinning. Because you're sinning on the basis of a choice that you make. That is where the guilt lies. Not in the simple fact that you know why you sin or that you have a sin nature, but you choose to sin and we're held accountable for that. The Bible makes it clear that we're accountable for our own sins. It says this in the Old Testament, "'Yet you say, why should the son not bear the punishment of the father's iniquity? When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all my statutes and done them, he shall surely live. The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity. The righteousness of the righteous will be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself." That's found in Ezekiel chapter 18, verses 19 and 20. The Bible says, yes, you will be held accountable for your own sins. You will stand before God and give an accounting of your lives. And we have to still have to deal with this tendency, though, to justify what we've done, even though we know it's wrong. We still want to justify it, and it's a problem for us. And people come to this particular passage of Scripture of this woman who was called into adultery, and they say, look, Jesus didn't really condemn her, so why do we need to worry about being condemned for our sins? Well, let's look at what's taking place here. Notice in verse 1. Notice in verse 1, Jesus is starting in his favorite place of all places. He's at the Mount of Olives. This is his place of meditation and prayer and devotions. And so he's beginning his day on the Mount of Olives with his prayer with his Heavenly Father and spending time with his Heavenly Father. At some point, he knows that he's got to go into Jerusalem. And so he leaves the Mount of Olives and he goes down to the temple. And the Bible says he begins to teach there. Well, in the process of his teaching, here come the scribes and here come the Pharisees bringing in a woman that was caught, they say, in the very act of adultery. And there's only one way that they could have known that, and there's only one way that it could have prepared for it, and that was to know in advance what was going on. You know, they didn't just stumble upon this woman who, you know, was caught. We didn't know what we were going to stumble upon. No, that's not what happened. They were anticipating exactly what was going to happen. So they catch her in the act of adultery. They take her. They haul her into the temple. They push their way through the crowds, and they bring her in front of Jesus, which she says in the middle of the temple, and then they broadcast her crime to all who are going to hear. We caught this woman in the very act. And don't think they whispered it. They didn't whisper. They didn't whisper what was going on. And then they piously said, the law says we should stone. You say, well, they weren't being very fair. They weren't. They didn't bring the man. They didn't bring the man. They should have. But they weren't concerned about being fair. What they were concerned about, as it says in the Scriptures here, was catching Jesus Christ. Their objective here was not fairness or justice. Their objective here was to trap Jesus Christ. And so they asked Him, what do you say? What do you say, Jesus? Now, they really thought that Jesus Christ had been cornered by this incident and by their question. Their thinking was that if Jesus said no to the stoning of this woman, that Jesus was setting himself in violation of the law of Moses. And if they could somehow or another get everybody around them to see that Jesus was violating the law of Moses, then they felt like that the people would begin to disown him and be disinterested in him and not follow him because he was not a true genuine follower of Moses like they were. And so they thought, well, if he says no, we got him. But they also knew that if he said, yeah, we need a stoner, Because that's what the law says. If Jesus would have said that, they'd have immediately run to Pilate. They said, wait a minute. We got a man out here who's a rogue. We got a man out here who's going to take the law in his own hands. What do you say? You're the Roman representative. What do you say as a representative of Caesar? Should we allow him to take law into his own hands or do we not as Romans have the law and the power to discern who's right and who's wrong and the power to decide who's going to live and who's going to die? And so they thought, well, you know, if he says yes, then we're just taking him up before the authorities, and then they'll take care of him. So it really looked like that they had Jesus' hands tied, and they really thought their trap would work. Then in verse 7, It says in verse 7, they all began to clamor. Verse 7 says, they were all up in arms and they were demanding an answer and then notice what it says in verse 7. It says, Jesus bends down and he starts writing something in the dirt on the ground with his finger. And so he's bent over here among this crowd and they're all clamoring and he's writing away and somebody in the crowd is asking him to give an answer to them. Now, I don't have any idea. I don't have one single clue as to what Jesus wrote on the ground. I would not even venture to guess what he wrote on the ground. I don't know. It's all conjecture. But finally, he stands up, the Bible says, and he gives them his answer. He who is without sin among you, Let him be the first one to throw a stone at her. Boom. I read that and I thought about Solomon. You know, when the prostitutes came in and they brought the baby that was alive and they didn't know what to do, you know what Solomon would say? You know, he says, bring a sword, we'll just cut this baby in half. Such wisdom. You know? And I'm looking at this particular statement, and I'm reminded of that great wisdom. This was a brilliant, brilliant answer. Nobody could have given a better answer. He did not violate the law of Moses, and at the same time, he did not excuse her sin, but at the same time, he did not set himself against the Roman authorities either. Once he delivers this statement, the Bible says he stoops over again, and he begins to continue riding on the ground. You know, that was one of those statements. Have you ever heard a statement said to yourself? What did he say? What? You know, I'm looking at what Jesus said here and I know the Sadducees and I know the scribes and the Pharisees had to be thinking, wait a minute, what did he just say? Wait a minute. It's one of those statements you have to calculate a little bit, you have to think about a little bit, you know, and the longer you think about it, the more it takes root, and the more you understand. It didn't take long, and they got the point. They got the point. They made the classic mistake, though, of noticing how terrible this woman was without first looking inside. They didn't look inside themselves. Oh, how easy for us to condemn our husband, to condemn our wives, to condemn our children, condemn our co-worker, condemn our boss, condemn our neighbor, you know, condemn the people who are on the news at night, condemn the people that we read about in the newspaper, condemn the people that wear tattoos, condemn the people that are sitting, that the cars are parked out in front of the gentleman's club, you know. Oh, we certainly wouldn't, dad. Condemn the politicians who fall short. You know, whoa, no, that's not us. Oh, yeah? Really? We wouldn't be that guilty. The Bible says one by one. It says they begin to fall out. Interestingly, it says that they started with the oldest. They're the first ones to leave. And to their credit, I will say this, to their credit, they are the ones who felt the sting of guilt first. Because you know, when you get older, and I can speak from experience to some degree, when you get older, you lose that brash, prideful arrogance that you have as a young man. And you get older and you realize that, you know, my life has some faults in it. And so I think these old guys recognized what was going on here rather readily. And they begin to drop their stones and they begin to leave. And pretty soon, the Bible says, it was Jesus and the woman. And at this point, someone is tempted to say, you know what? Jesus still didn't condemn her. Jesus, why do we have to worry about being condemned for our sins? Jesus did not condemn her. Let's look at what happens. Let's develop what's going on in this particular scene. So it says in verse 10, Jesus turns to the woman and he says, is no one there? And did no one condemn you? Isn't that amazing? Listen, listen, listen. This woman came into the scene. Her neck was on the chopping block. Don't think for one second that she did not understand the law of Moses. Don't think for one second that she did not know that the law of Moses said that if you're caught in adultery, that you should be stoned. Her heart was beating literally out of her chest. She was sweating bullets. She was breathing as hard as she could possibly breathe. She knew that she was condemned. She understood that and she knew there was a good chance and I think there was a good chance she was simply standing there in this crowd and before Jesus Christ and I think she had her eyes as closed as tight as she could possibly close them because she didn't want to see what was going on around her. And then Jesus said, is no one here? And did no one condemn you? And I think when he said that, for the first time, she opened her eyes. And she looked around. The only person she saw was Jesus for the first time. She realized she couldn't see what was really going on until Jesus Christ asked that question. And when she opened her eyes and saw that it was only Jesus that was standing there, can you imagine the physical relief that must have come over her body because it dawned on her she was not going to die today. I am not going to die today. Let me ask you something. Why do you think Jesus asked, did no one condemn you? Why do you think Jesus asked that question? Because he was ignorant? Because he didn't know? Because he needed some information that he didn't have? And so he's going to ask this woman, would you give me some information? I just don't know what's going on here. Do you think Jesus asked that question because of his own ignorance and he needed some knowledge that he didn't have? No. He asked it for her sake. Not his sake. He was asking this for her benefit. What was the benefit? The benefit was in the answer that she gave to the Lord. She said to the Lord, three words, no one, Lord. Now, is she denying her guilt when she made that statement? Is she saying, Lord, I didn't do anything wrong? No, no, no, no, that's not what's going on. She knew that she had done something wrong. The fact that no one condemned her wasn't a denial of her sinfulness. That wasn't what's going on here at all. But when Jesus asked that question, it awakened within her the fact that no one condemned her a sense of mercy like she had never felt before. The grace of God at that moment overwhelmed her. She knew she was a sinner. She wasn't oblivious to that. She knew that what she had done demanded the condemnation of the law. She understood that. She knew what she deserved. She knew what the law said. But at this very second, at this very moment, there was a man who was standing before her who had just saved her life. He had just saved her life. And she knew she needed to die. But her life had been spared. In one word, that's called grace. Grace, grace, grace. You know, when you're guilty, and you deserve, you know you're guilty, and you deserve to be punished because what you did and what you said was wrong, and yet you are spared that punishment. It's called grace. It's not that you're not guilty. It's not that you did something wrong. It's that you're experiencing grace. This is such an amazing picture to me because here in this picture, you have all these guys that were standing around her and they were condemning her and calling for her judgment. And yet with one word from Jesus Christ, they stood condemned. They stood condemned and she stood in the grace of God. What a contrast! What a difference was made! They left feeling the weight of sin and condemnation, and all of a sudden she stood in the center feeling nothing but forgiveness and grace in life. What a change! What a change had been made! What a contrast! And then Jesus says, this is amazing to me, He says, I do not condemn you either. Either. Why do you think Jesus told her that he did not condemn her either? Why did he tell her that? I believe with all of my heart that Jesus knew what was going on in her heart and she needed to hear. She needed to hear that this man who was standing before her did not condemn her. Why? Because she knew that this man was not an ordinary man. She knew that this man Jesus had been talked about. She had heard about how this man Jesus had caused the lame to be healed and to walk. She had heard about this Jesus who had caused the blind to see. She had heard about this Jesus who had caused the deaf to hear. She had heard that this Jesus Christ had actually raised the dead. She knew that Jesus was different. And she knew that He was the Messiah. It came together in her mind. She got the full picture of who Jesus was. And He knew that she needed to hear from His own words as the Messiah. I do not condemn you either. I, the Son of God, I, Jesus, I, the Messiah, I do not condemn you either." I think Jesus saw the change in her heart. He saw the faith that she just now placed in Him. He saw that. He understood that. He realized she was being saved and she was putting her faith in him. And it wasn't just a saving of her physical life. No, no, no. This was a saving of her soul. She was being saved forever at this very moment. And Jesus said, I do not condemn you either. And she realized that she wasn't just being forgiven for her adultery. She realized that she was being forgiven for her sin. Period. Everything, not just an act of adultery, but a life of sin before God. And then Jesus said, go from now on, sin no more. People come here and want to use this as an excuse to get away with sin. It's true that he may not have verbally condemned her directly for the act of adultery. That's true. But when you look at the picture, you see that he did have a concept of her overall sinfulness. It wasn't her sin of adultery that he was concerned with. It was the sinful nature of her life. He wasn't telling her, go and sin no more, as in do not go and commit adultery again. That wasn't what he was saying. No. He was saying, look, you have been broken from the bonds of sin. Sin is no longer your master anymore, whether it's adultery or whether it's anything else. You have become a child of God. You are pure and holy in the sight of God. You have tasted the grace of God. You are forgiven. Go and sin no more. That's what he was saying. That's what he was saying. From this point forward, the power of sin is broken and you're free from its bondage. That's what he was saying. Everybody here, everybody here has a struggle. You have a sinful habit. We are all sinners. Nobody in this building is better than anybody else. And every one of us could have been drug up into the temple and thrust into the presence of Jesus Christ and condemned as a lawbreaker. Everybody here, Most of us have tasted the grace of God. We've tasted His grace. And rather now than use our sin nature as an excuse for getting away with sin, we understand that by the grace of God, we're driven toward Him for greater grace to avoid sin. This woman's taste for sin was changed. It was no longer pleasurable. It was no longer something she was wanting in her life. It no longer held her in bondage. That's why Jesus could say, go and sin no more. Do we fail? Do I fail? Yes. Do I fall back into sin? Yes, I do. Do I have weaknesses? Yes, I do. Do I backslide? You bet I do. But the scripture says, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. 1 John 2, verses 1 and 2. Listen, when Jesus said, go and sin no more, He wasn't trying to give her a false sense of sinless perfection. That's not what He was doing. Nobody has sinless perfection. We don't have that. What we do have, though, is an advocate when we sin, who can cover our sins with His blood, and that's to whom we run. The Bible says we're not under condemnation in Christ Jesus, and that's true. But that doesn't mean we're not under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We may not be under condemnation because we're in Christ Jesus, but that doesn't release us from the conviction of the Spirit of God upon our sins. And when we repent of that and once again renew our relationship with God through our forgiveness and the washing of the blood of Christ, we enter into that state of peace and joy once again. That's where she left Jesus, in that state of rejoicing. because of a spiritual relationship she had now with God. Well, I appreciate you being in God's house tonight. I appreciate you being here this evening, sharing God's word with me. Anything you want to share with us before we dismiss tonight?