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15. Caught In The Act (John 8:1-11) · The Epic Life - Bob Hallman

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Welcome to The Epic Life with Pastor Bob Hallman. We invite you to listen to
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this timeless and inspirational message from God's Word.
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May the Holy Spirit encourage and strengthen your heart today.
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Well, today we're going to continue on our study of the book of John,
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and I want you to turn there in the first verses of John chapter 8.
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If you recall last week we did talk about about
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living water and about christ calling people
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and saying are you thirsty and how the the jewish
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leaders were really very angry and upset with jesus for his claims to being
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the son of god and we're already looking for an opportunity and a way to kill
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him and chapter 8 is their answer to this dilemma of how to kill jesus how to
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get jesus in such hot water that he becomes a byword in history.
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And of course, we know that Jesus doesn't become a byword in history,
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but we're going to look at this passage and see exactly what was transpiring.
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And we're going to look at some real cruelty.
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We're going to look at some real
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grace and love and hopefully be different people when this is over today.
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So would you pray with me that God would change us and make us more like his son, Jesus Christ?
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Father, we come to you you today. And we just thank you for your word.
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Oh man, it is so rich. It's so life-changing, but they're just printed words on a page.
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They're powerful because of you, because they're your words.
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They represent and are your thoughts and your heart.
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And God, we need your word. And Lord, they refresh us.
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They encourage us. They keep us on track. They tell us how you want us to live.
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And Father, I am so grateful. I get frustrated with the English language because
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the the words are not adequate to express our gratitude and thankfulness.
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But God, look at our hearts, Father, that are overflowing with your work.
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And God, look at the praise that comes from our lips and the desire to lift
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up clean hands and live a life that's beautiful and pleasing to you,
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God, as you give us the grace.
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And Father, I pray that you'd be honored, Lord, and look at that.
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And as Scripture says in Chronicles, that your eyes range to and fro throughout
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the earth, looking to support those whose hearts are completely given to you.
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And Father, I pray that as your eyes are roaming the earth today,
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that they would stop here on this place and many other thousands and hundreds
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of thousands of worship centers all over the world.
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And God, that you would be honored as men and women and boys and girls seek
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first the kingdom of God.
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Use this time for your glory and open our eyes and open your word to us.
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In Jesus' name, and everyone said, amen.
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Oh man, I just feel so full this morning. I just, I just want to have everybody
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get up and hug each other, but I'm not going to make you do it.
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You can, we've already been doing that, but I just, that's how I'm feeling.
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I just am overflowing. God is so good.
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Well, let's read this passage and see what God has for us this morning.
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It says, Then each went to his own home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
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At dawn, he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered
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around him and he sat down to teach them.
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The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.
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They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher,
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this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
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In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. Now, what do you say?
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They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.
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But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
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When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them.
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Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
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At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first,
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until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there.
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Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
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you? No one, sir, she said.
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Then neither do I condemn you. Jesus declared, go now and leave your life of sin.
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I don't know about you, but I've done some pretty bad things in my life before I came to Christ.
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Things that I am ashamed of. Things that I don't want you guys to know about,
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although I've told practically everything in my life to this church,
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either in a sermon or personally.
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I'm not afraid to let people know my failings.
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And there are probably things in your life that you're not really excited about people knowing.
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In fact, there are probably things in your life that you hope people never find out about you.
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And here is a woman that got caught right in the act of adultery.
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And you know, is there anyone here that hasn't had fear at one point in their
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life of being caught for what they were doing.
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Just this terrible, gnawing fear that somebody's going to find out,
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that somebody's going to discover what's really going on, that someone will,
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uncover the truth and that you'll be exposed.
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And a little time passes and it doesn't happen. And there's this tremendous sense of relief.
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You know what I'm talking about? This tremendous sense that,
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oh, maybe no one will find out.
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And then we go on and then something else happens in our life.
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And we've got this terrible fear again that someone will discover what's really happening.
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And you know, so many times we're never discovered. But there's probably not
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one person in here who hasn't been discovered at some point or other.
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And you know what it's like to feel the embarrassment and the shame of seeing
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your skeletons out in the open.
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And here today, as we look at the Word of God, we find a woman who's caught
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in the very act of one of the egregious sins.
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You know, before God, sin is sin. If you break one sin, you've broken the whole law.
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But from a human standpoint, we look at certain sins and we quantify them and
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label them and we make them of different values.
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And adultery is right up there as a very egregious sin.
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And here a woman is exposed publicly in her sin.
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And the really disgusting part about this and if you get nothing else from this whole message,
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is the hypocrisy of the people who expose her and
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i want to suggest to you that i'm not that much better and i wouldn't point
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fingers at you but maybe you can look at your own heart even now and hopefully
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by the time that i'm done this morning and realize that we are so quick to judge
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one another and especially judging unbelievers for their sin,
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And yet, many of us have been guilty of some of the very things that we see
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in others. We just didn't get caught.
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And as time passes, we tend to minimize our own sin.
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And we tend to look at our own sin as not nearly as black as the sin of someone
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else that we see currently sinning.
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And we judge harshly, and we don't give them grace.
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And we certainly don't extend the kind of love and compassion that Jesus did to this woman.
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And that makes us hypocrites. That makes me a hypocrite. it.
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And I repented of that even in preparation of this sermon.
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And I hope that as you hear the heart of Christ and you hear the ugliness of
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the Pharisees and the embarrassment and humiliation of the woman this morning,
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that you'll be different today and from this point on when you see sin.
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There's a biblical way to deal with sin and there's a very carnal way to deal
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with sin. And we're going to see both today as we look at this woman.
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If you like notes, you can follow along and do the fill-in.
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Some people really appreciate that and are helped by it, and others just like
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to listen, do whatever is best for you.
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But if you're looking at the notes, I want to look at this woman first.
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The first thing that we can see is that she led a life of sin.
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This wasn't a one-time occurrence for her, and I'm surmising some information
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here, but I'm also taking it straight from the text.
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If you look in verse 11, Jesus says, go now and leave your life of sin.
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He wasn't saying, go now and you stumbled once, God will forgive you,
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but don't ever do it again. He said, leave your life of sin.
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So this woman led a life of sin. This wasn't a one-time occurrence.
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And I can tell you another reason why I'm pretty sure that this woman was living
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this lifestyle style and not just fallen in a single instance,
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is that these Pharisees were on the hunt for a way to stumble Jesus.
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And when they were looking, if you're looking for someone that's sinning,
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you go to someone that is a known sinner.
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You don't go hunting for somebody on the off chance that you might catch them
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on the one time in their whole life that they screw up.
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They went and they knew exactly who to go to to find, to try to stumble Jesus.
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And they found this woman. and this woman was a woman who prostituted herself to men.
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I'm not saying she was a prostitute, but she prostituted herself for whatever reason.
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We're not exactly sure why, but I'm sure in the process, she knew the standards
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of God and rationalized her immorality.
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There are a lot of reasons that people commit adultery. Some do it for money.
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She might've been a prostitute. Maybe not though. Maybe she was just a woman
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with a broken heart whose husband paid no attention to her.
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And she rationalized her adultery by saying, you know, my husband doesn't love
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me. He doesn't show me affection.
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He ignores me. He's not there for me. He never gives me what I need.
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He's just thinking about himself all the time. And maybe she rationalized it that way.
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That's very common even now for women and men to rationalize their adultery
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because of their husband or their wife's lack of responsiveness,
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both sexually and emotionally and just in every area.
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She probably also said something that people say now is like,
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you know, I'm not alone. Everybody's doing this.
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There are other people that struggle in the same area. And somehow that tends
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to mask and to soften the harshness of the reality of sin's wickedness.
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She might even have told herself if she was a prostitute that she was providing
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a needed service for the community. Has anybody ever heard this one?
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It's like, it's almost like so ridiculous. You want to laugh,
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except they're serious.
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And they say, if you've listened to talk shows or anything, is that these women
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who are prostitutes say that they're really doing this needed service for families
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because these men go home really hot for their wives.
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I'm sorry to speak so candidly, but that's what they say is that their marriage
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in their private relationship is not happening.
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And so these women provide something and prevent their husbands from having
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an adulterous affair on an ongoing basis. So they just service them them every once in a while.
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And so they're really providing an important service of keeping these family units together.
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I mean, it's just almost, it's so out of this world idiotic,
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but this is the kinds of things that people say.
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And it's possible, it's just possible that this woman might've rationalized her sin this way.
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But the fact is, is that somehow she managed to live with herself.
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She may have had a terribly guilty conscience. And my guess is she did.
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There are are very few people I know that walk in sin that don't feel the pangs of guilt.
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They may try to mask it. They may try to diminish it. They may try to cloud
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it, hide it, suppress it.
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But nonetheless, it keeps creeping up and they know this is wrong.
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This is wrong. This is wrong.
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But for whatever reason, for whatever need this woman felt that she had,
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that she wasn't able to demonstrate fidelity in her relationship with her own
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husband, she committed adultery.
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And the result is that a woman like this was completely ostracized from the
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community and the temple and everything else.
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And you get to a certain point, maybe some of you might have been there,
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where you were so on the outside of church that you just thought,
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I'm just going to go head long into this.
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Who cares what the religious folks think? Who cares what the spiritually minded
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folks think? And who cares what God thinks?
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Has anybody ever gotten to that point where you just were so far into wickedness
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that you just plunged into it and just said, who cares?
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I'm I'm going to do what I want. Almost that kind of reaction,
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rebellion against any sense of rightness or morality or ethics.
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And so I'm guessing and I'm surmising, but my guess is this woman,
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because she led a life of sin and she's in a community that's very spiritual, the Jewish community.
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They may not have been godly, but they were very spiritual, very religious,
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and they were very worried about appearances and looks.
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And in this community, this woman was a known adulterer and she led a life of sin.
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And she was on the outs with everybody that cared about God.
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And you know what? People like this serve for hypocrites a very important function.
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Because for hypocrites, we need adulterers and we need fornicators and we need
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sinners and we need alcoholics and we need people with all kinds of financial problems.
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We need these people because then we have someone we can look down on and measure
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ourselves against and say, glad I'm not like them. I'm glad I'm a lot more spiritual than they are.
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And that is wickedness. That is evil.
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But that's the purpose that this woman was serving for the Pharisees.
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And it says in this passage that if you look with me, it says that they brought this woman to her.
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I mean, of all things, if a person's caught in adultery and you really care
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about them and you really are concerned about their salvation and their eternal
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walk with God and all of these issues,
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the sin always is to to remain as private as, as, as the knowledge of that sin.
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But here, this woman is brought, they bring her out and I don't think she was
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probably without clothing, but my guess is she just probably had a sheet wrapped around her.
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I think they wanted to heighten the sense and the knowledge that she was caught in the act.
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I don't think they, you know, she said, could you just let me get dressed and
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do my hair? You know, I don't think so.
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I think they brought her out as she was.
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And they stood her in front of the whole crowd at the temple.
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This is where Jesus was teaching.
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They brought her into the temple and made her stand in front of the eyes of all of these people.
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I mean, I don't know if you can grasp the import of this, except to say,
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think about your worst wickedness, the sin that God has forgiven and yet you still regret.
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Even though you know you're forgiven, you still regret it. And imagine yourself
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being dragged in front of the church while you're involved in that sin and being
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humiliated right in front of everyone else.
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The shame and the embarrassment, I just can't even imagine what it must have
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been like for this woman.
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And this was done in the name of God, by the way, in the name of spiritual life.
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So she was caught in the act and
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I'm assuming was experiencing agonizing humiliation and paralyzing fear.
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Probably two of the worst emotions that are known to mankind.
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Humiliation and fear. fear.
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She was humiliated because of her circumstances, and she was afraid because
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she knew the consequences for her sin.
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Because if you look in Leviticus 10, 2010, under she was condemned for her sin,
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that the sentence upon her was death by stoning.
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That was the sentence upon a person who committed adultery.
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It says in Leviticus 10, 2010, if a man commits adultery with another man's
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wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
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That was God's standard, is that that kind of evil, that kind of wickedness
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was not allowed to go unpunished, and God punished it severely.
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But the really evil thing, you know, I don't want to quantify the evil of the
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woman or the evil of the Pharisees, but it seems to me that Jesus is much more
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concerned about the evil of the Pharisees than he is of the evil of the woman,
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although both are addressed by him. The trap was set.
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The Pharisees and teachers of the law, the scribes, they were constantly trying
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to trap Jesus because they wanted to kill him. They wanted to eliminate him.
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They wanted to eliminate his ministry.
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They were threatened. As I spoke last week, they were guarding their turf, their territory.
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And even though the promised Messiah who they'd waited for thousands of years
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to come had finally arrived,
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they disdained him and rejected him because they had built such a platform for
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their own lives and their own ministry that they didn't want to give it up to
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anyone, one, even the Messiah, and they weren't ready for him.
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And so they were constantly setting traps. In Luke 11, it says that they were
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waiting to catch him in something that he might say. And that's why they're
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always asking him questions.
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They're not really interested in hearing the answers.
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They're not interested in spiritual growth. They're interested in catching Jesus
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in something he might say that they might accuse him.
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In Luke 20, they sent out spies who pretended tended to be honest.
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I mean, this is how bad it got. They were liars. They were spies.
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They hoped to catch Jesus in something he might say so that they could hand
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him over to the power and authority of the governor, the Roman authority who
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they hated, they detested, but they became partners with the Roman authorities
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in trying to eliminate Jesus.
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But the psalmist says regarding Jesus that those who seek my life set their traps.
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Those who would harm me talk of my ruin. All day long, they plot my deception.
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And that's exactly what the Pharisees were doing.
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Now, if you look in your notes, their objective was to discredit Jesus.
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They wanted to discredit him. And a lot of us may not have completely grasped
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the tremendous bind that Jesus is in when they brought this adulteress to him.
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You know, we think, oh, you know, if he's mean to her, people are going to be
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upset. And if he's not mean to her, he's going to be kind of a softie and that's
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going to discredit him. That's not what was happening.
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What was happening is that if Jesus said stone her, which would have been in
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accordance with scripture, they would have been in conflict with Roman law.
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Roman law did not allow capital punishment.
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And for a Jew to exercise capital punishment outside of Roman law was punishable by death.
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And so if Jesus said stone her, he would be siding with Roman law and also be
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guilty of causing a riot that would eventually lead to his arrest and possible death.
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Now, on the other hand, if he said, let her go, he would have been in violation
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and conflict with the Old Testament law.
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And they would have had reason to accuse him of being a sinner and a violator of scripture.
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And so here Jesus is, if he says stoner, he's in trouble. If he says,
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let her go stoner, and there is no in between, he can't, you know,
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a lot of people try to ride the fence, but there there was no opportunity.
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There was no room for that.
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And so Jesus starts writing on the ground.
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He is so wise. He's incredible. He's amazing. But he wants to point out their hypocrisy.
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And I want to point that out to you as well. A couple of things that are wrong
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with this picture is that they only brought the woman.
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You notice there's no man that's brought forward. In that passage I read earlier from Leviticus 20,
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there's also in Deuteronomy 22 that it says if a man is found sleeping with
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another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die.
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You must purge the evil from Israel.
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And the hypocrisy of just bringing the woman is sickening.
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The man is who knows where and I'll tell you why because I believe that as scripture
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teaches and I'm going to read to you in a few minutes that Jesus confronts the
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Pharisees and says you who want to stone the adulterer do you commit adultery?
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You who want to kill the murderer do you murder? and he goes down this laundry
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list of sins and the reason he's asking them is because they're guilty of the
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very same offenses and isn't it just like human nature.
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When, I'm going to get myself in a heap of trouble here, and I wasn't planning
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on saying this, and I probably should stop, but I won't.
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Isn't it the case when you get a group of guys together and we're committing
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the very same sins, and what happens is that we bring the woman out and make
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her stand ashamed in front of the crowd.
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And I can almost guarantee you that some of these people that were pulling this
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woman out had so calloused themselves that maybe a woman like this,
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maybe maybe even this woman, if not other women, were servicing these guys because
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of their own hypocrisy. They had gotten to that point that they could do this.
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And so they didn't bring the man, a clear red flag of hypocrisy.
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And then the other thing that they did that is just sickening is they use this
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woman as a pawn for their own evil purposes.
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They had no concern for her. They didn't desire to see her reconciled with God.
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They didn't desire to see the law done, executed properly.
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They just wanted to humiliate her. They wanted to trap Jesus.
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The third thing that they did that is a sign of their hypocrisy is they failed
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to meet their own standards for conduct and living.
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I think I've kind of flipped your references around here slightly,
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but in Romans 2, it says Paul is accusing the Jews and he says,
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you therefore have no excuse.
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You who pass judgment on someone else for whatever point you judge the other,
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you are condemning yourself because you who who pass judgment do these very same things.
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He also says in Romans 2, a little longer, a little later, he says,
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you, and he's referring to the Pharisees and teachers of the law,
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you who teach others, do you not teach yourself?
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You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should
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not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?
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You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law,
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do you dishonor God by breaking the law?
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And this is Paul's summation of the influence of the Pharisees and the teachers
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of the law. he says, as it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
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And you know, this very same thing happens today.
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One of the things that, one of the major excuses, and it's a smokescreen,
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we know it, but nonetheless, there's some justification for it,
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for people not coming to the kingdom is hypocrisy in the church.
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And the Gentile community, and for us, the unbelieving community,
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blasphemes the name of Christ because of our hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the church.
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And so the hypocrisy of the church is just, in the Pharisees, is overwhelming.
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And there's even more evidence for this hypocrisy because they block the way
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of salvation for others.
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In Luke 11, 46, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he says to them,
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you experts in the law, woe to you.
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Man, this is a heavy condemnation from Christ.
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Woe to you because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry.
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And he's talking about the law. You've got to keep all these rules,
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all these regulations. You've got to be just like us.
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And he says, you load them so heavy, they can't even carry all this stuff.
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And yet you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
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That's hypocrisy. That's a lack of love for others.
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He goes on in Luke 11, 52. He says, woe to you experts in the law,
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because you have taken away the key to knowledge.
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You yourselves had not entered, and he's referring to the salvation through
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Christ. And you have hindered those who are trying to get in.
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Those that are trying to enter the kingdom, you're hindering because you're
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making them feel so condemned and separated from God's plan for their life.
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So Jesus is confronted with this tremendous dilemma. And you know,
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have you ever, ever seen wisdom like this?
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And yet for the youngest believer, God can fill us with wisdom,
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just like the wisdom of Christ.
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That's the incredible thing, is that even the youngest believer can have the
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wisdom of God if we'll follow him. Isn't that precious?
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The Holy Spirit can work in us. So when we're trapped and we don't know which
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way to go. God will make a way.
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So Jesus is writing on the ground and, you know, I've got in your notes here,
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is it meaningless scribble?
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Well, let me answer that by saying how many things that Jesus did were vacuous in meaning?
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How many words did he utter that were wasted?
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How many actions did he, did he, was he participating in or behavior or,
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or anything did he ever waste?
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Was anything ever wasted with Jesus?
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And I would say no, especially in a setting like that. You think Jesus was,
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oh man, what am I going to do? Let's see.
23:43
If I go this way, he's writing on the ground, pros and cons.
23:47
Okay, if I go this way, they're going to catch me with this.
23:49
And if I go this way, no, not at all.
23:52
I think he's writing down a list of sins. Now I'm speculating.
23:56
I've told you many times, I want you to measure everything that I say against
24:00
the word of God and confront me if it's never biblical.
24:03
But I'm telling you right now, I'm speculating. Nobody knows what he was writing
24:06
on the ground, but I'm speculating that he was writing on the ground.
24:09
And I'm reminded of Daniel. Remember Daniel when the king was just so puffed
24:14
up with himself and he pulled out all the golden goblets and chalices from the
24:19
temple of Israel that they had taken away.
24:21
And he was so prideful and full of himself that he wanted to drink a to himself
24:28
using the instruments of Yahweh,
24:32
the God of all creation, to defile him as a God and to raise himself up as a God.
24:37
And what happened? You remember what happened? Anybody remember?
24:41
Handwriting on the wall, a finger all of a sudden appeared and his hand started
24:45
writing, many, many tickle you, Farson, which means you've been weighed in the
24:49
balance and found wanting.
24:51
And I think that's what's happening here is that Christ is writing on the ground, the hand of God.
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When Christ was writing, that was a hand of almighty God writing on the ground.
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And I think he weighed these Pharisees and these scribes and these hypocrites
25:06
in the balance and and found them wanting.
25:07
And I think he was writing down a list of sins.
25:10
I think just quietly as they were in a rage about this woman,
25:13
not caring a bit about this woman, only concerned about eliminating Jesus.
25:17
I think Jesus began to write down immorality, theft, adultery,
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fornication, drunkenness.
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I think he just went down a laundry list of all kinds of sins and he just quietly began writing.
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I think he probably may have gone as far when he started to stoop down the second
25:38
time to attach names to those sins.
25:41
I really do. Now, again, I'm speculating, but after they had their little fit about his response,
25:49
and if you look at me, look with me here, when Jesus was writing on the ground
25:53
in verse six, he bent down on the ground and started to write on the ground
25:56
with his finger and they kept on questioning him.
25:59
So they kept after him. and then he told him about casting the first stone if
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anyone is without sin and then what did he do again the second time?
26:06
He went down on the ground and started doing it again.
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I think the first list was a list of sins and I think these guys were so calloused
26:14
and had convinced themselves, maybe like us, that our sin isn't nearly as black as this woman's,
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that all of a sudden Jesus began to attach names to those sins and I think he
26:26
put down under adultery.
26:28
I hope nobody's... Anybody named here Frank?
26:31
I think he put down Frank next to adultery. And Mary Sue...
26:36
To stealing and on down the list. And I think all of a sudden it got real quiet
26:42
because, you know, it's very easy to point the finger when no one knows what you've done, isn't it?
26:47
It's very easy to be judgmental. But if someone was there, maybe like Jesus,
26:53
and all of a sudden turned to me and said, Bob, you've got a pretty harsh attitude
26:58
considering you did the same thing.
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Jesus, Jesus, excuse me? Who asked you to be a part of this conversation?
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But isn't that true? With the passing of time, we become very critical and very
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judgmental and very condemning in the very areas where we ourselves have fallen.
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And the Bible calls that wickedness. Now, before those of us who have sinned
27:21
in these areas start saying, you hear that?
27:25
Stop harassing me about my failures in the past or whatever,
27:28
and start showing a little more
27:30
compassion, compassion, because Jesus doesn't leave it there, does he?
27:34
He doesn't side with the woman and say, oh, don't worry about it.
27:36
You know, these guys are hypocrites. Just go on, you know, adultery is not so bad.
27:41
A lot of people do it. I know your heart. I know that you've been neglected
27:44
by your husband and on. No, he doesn't say anything like that at all.
27:48
So he's writing on the ground. And I believe he wrote this list of sins.
27:51
And I even think he attached these names of the offenders to these sins.
27:54
And there's a verse in Jeremiah 17, 13, that I think is very revealing because
27:59
Jeremiah the prophet says, Oh Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you
28:03
will be put to shame. Now listen to this.
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Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken
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the Lord, the spring of the living water.
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I think that's exactly what Jesus was doing. I think he was writing in the dust
28:16
their very names because the sins themselves weren't powerful enough because
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they had calloused themselves and justified themselves for so long and lied
28:24
to themselves so long that they were convinced that they were not nearly as bad.
28:30
And Jesus had challenged their hypocrisy by saying that those who are without
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sin, if you look in verse 7, if any one of you is without sin,
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let him be the first to throw a stone at her.
28:40
In Matthew 7, Jesus is so clear about judging. He's so clear about it.
28:45
He says, don't judge or you're going to be judged.
28:47
With the measure you use, it will be measured to you. you. So in other words,
28:51
the harshness, the criticalness, the quickness to judge others will be exactly
28:55
the same style measurement approach of God when he judges us.
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I don't know about you, but that frightens me.
29:03
I want to be merciful because I want to be shown mercy.
29:07
And you know what? God's plan is to show us mercy. But if we have a critical
29:10
spirit, if we're constantly shredding other people's.
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Verbally. I don't know how I did that. But if we pick people apart privately
29:20
with our spouse or with our friends or even in our own mind, that is wickedness.
29:25
And God will judge us in the same way that we judge others.
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And I hope that puts the fear of God in you not to be a part of that kind of
29:31
language, that talk, that destructive perversity of gossiping and slandering
29:37
others, whether with another person or even in our own hearts.
29:40
And so Jesus challenged that hypocrisy by saying, saying, look,
29:44
if you want to get the speck out of somebody else's eye, you better get that
29:47
log out of your own eye first.
29:48
If you've got a log in our own eye, and you know, how can somebody with a log
29:53
be worried about a speck?
29:55
But the reason is, is that they've calloused themselves for so long to think
29:58
this log is not a log at all.
30:00
In fact, they think they see with 20-20 vision spiritually, but the Bible says no.
30:05
Jesus says no. He challenged their hypocrisy.
30:09
And they grudgingly recognize their sin. And of course, it's interesting that
30:13
they go starting with the oldest to the youngest.
30:16
And Proverbs 20 says that the glory of young men is their strength.
30:19
And young men are strong.
30:21
And young men spiritually are strong and also very aggressive,
30:25
you know, if they're on fire for Christ.
30:27
Does anybody remember when you were a brand new Christian and you practically
30:29
ran people over with a gospel and your family got angry with you?
30:34
And finally you started toning down and realizing that, you know,
30:36
hitting them on the head wasn't the best way to go.
30:38
But there's this passion in younger believers where they just want to go at
30:42
it and they just want to, they want to tell everybody about Christ.
30:45
And they're not always tactful in the process.
30:47
There's this exuberance, but sometimes without knowledge. And so I'm.
30:52
The glory of young men is your strength, but gray hair is a splendor of the old.
30:55
And it's not that, you know, if you got gray hair that, hey,
30:58
cool, you know, that looks good. No, it's not that.
31:01
It's that gray hair is associated with wisdom in Hebrew literature.
31:06
And so it's the splendor of older people to have gray hair, not because you've
31:10
got gray hair, but because hopefully attached to gray hair underneath the gray
31:14
hair is a mind of wisdom and a heart of wisdom, and that they go together.
31:18
And when you've walked with the Lord a long time and you've just lived a long
31:21
time, all of a sudden you realize that you don't want to be measured by the
31:25
same standard that a young person, an exuberant person might want to measure people.
31:31
And so the older men start leaving first because they realize that if they were
31:37
to cast a stone, they can't do it because they're not without sin.
31:40
And gradually the passion and the anger and the zeal of the younger men begins
31:44
to subside as they see all these old guys leaving. And they're thinking, and boo.
31:49
Something's wrong here with this picture. Everyone's here except a handful of
31:53
us zealots who want to stone this woman.
31:56
But they too then began to acknowledge. And I don't think publicly,
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I don't think there was a big revival and people started confessing sins and
32:04
bowing down before Jesus.
32:05
And I don't think there was an altar call and everybody started weeping about
32:07
their sin and everybody started hugging each other and confessing and turning from sin.
32:12
No, they weren't there, but they they were there far enough to realize that
32:16
they had sinned and weren't in a good position to be judging someone else.
32:19
And so they left. Now, Jesus' response to this woman, I think is really instructive.
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And I hope that you catch this.
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And I hope I can live this because he spoke kindly to her.
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That's how he addressed her, kindly. And most of us have the version and it says woman.
32:37
And we're thinking, you know, that sounds like a Tim Allen phrase,
32:40
you know, woman, woman, you know, or caveman term, you know,
32:43
but, but the fact is, is this was a term of, of, uh, respect.
32:47
So it wasn't inappropriate for that day and time to, to address this woman as
32:52
woman. It was respectful. It wasn't degrading at all.
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And so this unthinkable behavior for the Pharisees addressing this woman became what Jesus did.
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And for the Pharisees, the reason that they couldn't talk to this woman this
33:03
way is that they were completely wrapped up in themselves. They were were concerned about cultural norms.
33:08
You remember where the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus was talking to her
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and how even his disciples were shocked. It was like, what is he doing?
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You know, is this guy losing his mind? He doesn't realize this is really going
33:20
to taint his popularity.
33:22
I mean, this is going to hit the papers and his ministry's over.
33:25
If people find out that he's talking not only with a woman, which guys never
33:29
talk to women in this time, privately like that, much less a Samaritan who was
33:34
a hated half-breed by the Jews.
33:36
But here Jesus was talking. So he violated the cultural norms.
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But you know, what's interesting about Jesus is he's not too constrained by man-made rules.
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And he talked to her. He was willing to talk with this woman.
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Other thing that they were concerned about, they were concerned about appearances.
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In Luke 11, you remember when Jesus confronted the Pharisees and he said,
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look, you're all worried about the outside of the cup.
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And all the while, the inside is full of dead men's bones.
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The inside is defiled. And what he's talking about when he says the cup,
34:04
he's talking about their hearts, their lives.
34:07
The outside, oh, clean and sparkly, polished, beautiful. Oh, wow.
34:11
Impressive. But on inside, it's defiled. It's got like, you know,
34:15
we just termite treated our house and we came in and and found cockroaches and dead lizards.
34:19
And it's like a cup full of that, of defiling things. You wouldn't want to drink
34:25
out of a cup that's full of those kinds of things.
34:27
And yet, that's what Jesus says these hypocrites are like, all clean and polished
34:32
on the outside and full of evil on the inside.
34:34
And so they weren't really concerned about spiritual purity.
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They were concerned about how people perceive them. And you know what?
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Aren't we kind of a little bit like that sometimes? times.
34:42
Aren't we just a little like that? Even now as Christians, we're sometimes so
34:47
concerned about appearances that we will even be deceptive when people ask us
34:53
how we're doing and what's God teaching you?
34:56
Oh, we're doing good, you know, but inside we're defiled and we know it and
34:59
we're afraid to let on and to really get prayer and really get help and really
35:03
get accountability because then someone will know that our cup is really not as clean as it looks.
35:08
We're also concerned about defilement in Matthew 9. You remember when Jesus
35:12
went to the tax collector's house for dinner and publicans were there and just
35:17
regular old folks with regular sin in their life.
35:20
And what did Jesus say?
35:23
What did the Pharisees say? They were like, how can Jesus do this?
35:27
Be around these evil, wicked, perverse people. Doesn't he realize?
35:32
And Jesus says, hey, I didn't come for the righteous.
35:36
I didn't come for the self-righteous. I didn't come for the people who think
35:39
they've got it all together. I came to save the lost.
35:42
I came as a physician to the needy, to the broken.
35:45
And that's the way Jesus says. And you know what? He has not changed.
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And I want to say something just as clearly as I can, and I'm speaking it to
35:53
myself too, is that we have got to be so careful not to be Pharisees.
35:58
We have got to be so careful not to fall into this comparing thing with ourselves,
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comparing ourselves with other sinners. sinners, you know, there's a certain
36:06
delight that we get in finding out that someone's fallen, don't we?
36:10
There's a certain delight, even though we know it's perverse,
36:12
but when somebody that we don't really get along with has troubles or falls
36:16
in an area, there's a certain delight that kind of leaps in us.
36:19
And we want information, you know, we don't want to come across as wanting information
36:22
because we're Christians.
36:24
We know that's wrong, but we don't stop it either.
36:26
You know, and the information comes and we're like, there's a certain perversity.
36:30
It's kind of like walking by and seeing an accident by the side of the road.
36:33
It's kind of like we slow down and look.
36:34
And that's kind of what it's like even in the Christian community sometimes.
36:38
And that's why people are terrified sometimes to come into the church is that
36:41
they're afraid we're going to slow down and gawk and look. Not love, not care.
36:46
We'll just kind of go, ooh, right?
36:51
Am I wrong? No, I'm not wrong.
36:55
And then Jesus questions the woman about these folks that were trying to stone her.
37:00
And he says, where are they? Has no one condemned you? It's like almost like
37:03
he's completely lost sight of what's going on. He's just down on the ground writing.
37:07
And all of a sudden he stands up. It's not like he's writing on the ground and
37:11
going like this and, you know, checking out.
37:13
Okay, yeah, Frank left now. Okay, who's left?
37:17
Okay, there's Mark. And, you know, it's not like that. I imagine Jesus almost
37:21
lost in this writing that he's doing on the ground.
37:26
And all of a sudden he stands up and it's like, wow, you know,
37:29
have you ever had that happen where you're doing something and you stand up?
37:31
I've had this happen with church.
37:33
Even just a couple of weeks ago, we were praying for a couple here and the church
37:36
was full after the service.
37:37
And it's like, I looked around, all of a sudden it was just us.
37:41
You know, there wasn't any, where did everybody go?
37:43
And I think that's kind of what happened with Jesus. He was doing what God called
37:47
him to do on the ground there.
37:48
He wasn't wasting time. God called him to do that. He only did what the father told him to do.
37:52
And he was down on the ground writing and he, and he got up and he says,
37:55
woman, where are they? What, where are your accusers?
37:58
And she says that they've left.
38:00
They're not here. And now Jesus deals with the woman.
38:04
He's dealt with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And you know,
38:07
the interesting thing is, is that the turn of events that took place here is
38:10
remarkable because what was the objective of these Pharisees and teachers,
38:14
they came to trip up Jesus, right?
38:17
But they also came to humiliate and just ruin this woman.
38:22
And then what happened? This woman didn't get ruined.
38:26
Now, maybe from a social issue, yes, but only temporarily because I think later
38:30
she probably came to Christ and was raised to a high position in terms of God's
38:37
kingdom because of his value that he placed on on a repentant sinner.
38:41
And yet these men wanted to ruin her and ruin Christ and ruin her in the process.
38:47
And they bring her before him. And then what happens? Their sin gets exposed.
38:52
Oh man, what a turn of the tables.
38:55
I'm sure they got really humiliated. And Jesus was always doing this.
38:59
Can you see the rage building in people that are humiliated like that,
39:02
who are trying to humiliate someone else and all of a sudden they get humiliated?
39:06
Oh wow, man, I bet these these guys went home and they were seething.
39:10
You know, they just wanted to kill him.
39:12
They wanted to do whatever they could to end his ministry.
39:16
Jesus turns the tables on people like that. And I'm telling you,
39:19
I'm warning us that he will do the same to us too.
39:22
And if we judge harshly, God has a way of pulling the rug out from us,
39:28
not to harm us, but to discipline us. So we need to be so careful.
39:32
But he confronted this woman's sin.
39:34
And in the notes there, he didn't condone her sin.
39:37
In fact, in Matthew 5, 17, some people were thinking that Jesus was going to
39:41
throw the law out and throw everything out.
39:42
But he says, says, no, I didn't come to abolish the law of the prophets.
39:45
In fact, I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
39:48
So Jesus wasn't ready to throw anything out, including the commandment that adultery was sin.
39:54
In Matthew 5, 27, he goes on and he expands our concept and our understanding
39:59
of adultery to include lust.
40:01
He says, if a man even looks at a woman and lusts, has this prolonged desire.
40:08
I mean, over here, especially for you visitors, you know what it's like on the beaches.
40:13
It's hard. It's hard for guys. There are so many women that are scantily clad.
40:18
There's nothing wrong with seeing and being tempted. But if we start focusing
40:22
in like that, that becomes lust.
40:24
And the Bible says, according to Jesus' words, that that person doing that becomes
40:29
guilty of the very act of adultery as if they had completed the whole act.
40:34
And so that pretty much includes all of us, I think. And the women in different
40:38
areas, in different categories, the same thing, that we all are laid bare before God is guilty.
40:43
And so this woman is confronted by Jesus.
40:46
He didn't condone her sin. He didn't pat her on the back and say,
40:49
you know, these guys are really brutal and what they did to you was wrong.
40:51
He didn't say that because what they did was right with the wrong motive,
40:55
with the wrong heart, but they did the right thing by bringing her.
41:00
Deal with her sin. But the interesting thing is that although he didn't condone
41:05
her sin, he neither condemned her sin.
41:07
I mean, he didn't condemn her. In John 3.17, we have from Jesus' own words that
41:12
God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world,
41:16
but to save the world through him. So Jesus' mission isn't to condemn.
41:19
And you know what the church has become almost an expert at?
41:22
It's condemnation. I had a conversation with a friend the other day.
41:26
There's a fairly decent-sized homosexual community here on this island,
41:30
and lesbian community, and you name it. There's all kinds of isms on this island.
41:35
We are very eclectic here. We have a little bit of everything.
41:39
But this particular fellow was struggling with homosexuality,
41:43
and he was just feeling like, you know, you're a church, and churches like your
41:47
church and the church in general will never, ever accept.
41:51
All they do is condemn. All they do is come against us.
41:55
They'd never reach out to us they never love us
41:58
they never encourage us they never acknowledge us as
42:00
people but they look at us and they judge us so severely and
42:04
i will stand here or sit here as i am and say
42:07
that this is evil in the church this is
42:10
a great wickedness in the church that we have this attitude it it's not condoned
42:15
by god at all and he will judge that attitude and i don't know why it is but
42:20
there's something in us that there are these pockets of categories that we feel
42:22
somehow freely justified to condemn and to look down on. And that is evil. That is wrong.
42:30
Because even Jesus with this woman caught in adultery did not do such a thing.
42:35
The very son of God did not condemn this woman.
42:39
He didn't condone her sin, but he didn't condemn her. And we have a very difficult
42:43
time dealing with this in the church.
42:45
We're so hot up about not not condoning the sin that we, we strike out the center
42:50
and, and they have to come into a fellowship like this and they've got to go
42:53
through all the hoops and they got to put up with all kinds of, you know.
42:58
Rejection and, and withdrawal and people, you know, some, some people who are
43:02
in a lifestyle that's not honoring to God mask it very well and nobody knows,
43:06
but there are others that don't mask it very well and, and, and they're,
43:09
and they become targeted.
43:10
And, you know, I just want to say that I want this church to be a place where
43:15
a a homosexual man is totally welcome.
43:17
I want this church to be a place where a woman who's in the lesbian lifestyle is absolutely welcome.
43:24
I want this place to be a place where someone struggling with drugs or alcohol
43:28
is absolutely loved and welcome.
43:30
I want this church to be a place where anyone under any circumstances struggling
43:35
with any sin immediately comes
43:37
in here and knows that God is here because the love of Christ is here.
43:41
I'm aiming at that and And I want that for this fellowship. And I think God
43:44
is doing it in our fellowship. But we need to keep striving more and more to have that kind of heart.
43:49
Because this was the heart of
43:50
our Savior, Jesus Christ. And it's the heart that we must follow as well.
43:55
He doesn't leave this woman in this condition. He also calls her to repentance.
44:00
So he doesn't condone her sin, but he doesn't condemn her, but he does call her to repentance.
44:05
And he says to her that she's to turn away. Look in the last part here in verse
44:09
11, he says, go now and leave your life of sin. And this is what repentance is all about.
44:14
It's about turning away from that old lifestyle of disobedience to God.
44:19
It's not Jesus condemning. It's not Jesus making these people jump through hoops.
44:24
It's just saying that if you want life, if you want abundant life,
44:26
if you want freedom that you've never known before, if you want satisfaction
44:29
and abundance that you've never even imagined possible before,
44:33
then you've got to leave your life of sin.
44:35
I guarantee you this woman was not happy in her sin. I guarantee it.
44:39
She may have convinced herself a thousand times over that she was enjoying that life.
44:43
I guarantee you she was not enjoying that life. I guarantee you that most people
44:47
who have not completely so hardened themselves to sin that they can't see it
44:52
anymore, most people do not feel good about sin.
44:55
Most people feel smaller and smaller and smaller because of their sin and disobedience.
45:02
And Jesus doesn't want to leave any of us in that condition.
45:05
So he comes to the woman, he says, turn.
45:08
This is what your life of sin has led you to. and you have an opportunity now
45:12
to turn away and to find a new way, a new life. So he calls her to repentance.
45:17
It's very similar to the man that was crippled and Jesus healed this man.
45:24
And if you remember that we talked about, it's the pool of Siloam or I'm sorry,
45:29
the pool of Bethesda, thank you, where this man was healed and this guy just
45:34
disappears in the crowd, you know, and later Jesus goes and finds him.
45:37
And what does he tell him? Does anybody remember?
45:40
That? No, he already did that. He asked him, does he want to be healed?
45:44
And then he healed him, but he disappeared in the crowd.
45:46
Yeah. He said, go to the temple and make sacrifices. And when he saw him at
45:50
the temple, he said, see, you are well again, stop sinning or something worse
45:54
may happen to you. So Jesus never condones sin.
45:57
I don't care what people may say and say, Jesus cares. Jesus is love.
46:00
Jesus doesn't judge. Jesus doesn't condemn. That's absolutely not true.
46:04
Jesus calls men and women to repentance and he calls us away from a life of sin.
46:08
Jesus himself said, I've not
46:09
come to call the righteous, but I've come to call sinners to repentance.
46:13
And the thing that's so wonderful is that when a person does repent,
46:16
it says that there's going to be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who
46:20
repents than over 99 righteous persons who did not need to repent.
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And if there's anyone here that struggles with sin in any area where you just
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feel like the church judges you or condemns you, or if they knew you wouldn't
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be be welcome here. That's a lie from hell.
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That's a lie from the pit of hell. You are welcome here and you belong here because Jesus is here.
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And Jesus doesn't condone your sin and he doesn't condemn you,
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but he does call you to repentance. And he calls me to repentance as well.
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And part of repentance is not just turning away from the sin,
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but it's turning toward the Lord.
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In Acts 3.19, Peter says that we're to repent then and turn to God so that your
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sins may be Oh, man, don't you want times of refreshing when you're stuck in the cycle of sin?
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Don't you need a refreshing sometimes when you've stumbled? And that's what
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the Lord wants to bring to any man, any woman who would just turn to him. Times of refreshing.
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In Acts 26, in closing, 16.
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Scripture says, now get up and stand in your feet. I have appeared to you to
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appoint you as a servant and as a witness for what you have seen,
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for what you have seen of me and what I will show you. He's talking to Paul.
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I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.
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I am sending you to them to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to
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light and from the power of Satan to the power of God that they may receive
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forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. me.
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So God's heart, his heartbeat is to turn people from sin.
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He came not to start a little club of righteous men and women,
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but he came to meet people right where they're at in their sin,
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in their disobedience, in their wickedness, just like you and I were.
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We are no better, not a bit. And God called us and by his grace,
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here we are. And he's refreshed us, has he not?
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And he's changed us and forming us into the image of his son,
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just incredible that he's doing these things in us, wicked, vile people as we were.
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And he took us in the very middle of our sins. In fact, the scripture says,
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while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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In the very ugliness of our own sin, Christ died and paid the penalty.
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And that's when he came for you and me.
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And what he came to do was to turn us from that lifestyle of sin that is so
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destructive. There's no one here who hasn't been touched by the consequences of sin. sin.
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Sin is pleasurable for a season and then death. Every single time.
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Death, death, death, death, death. And that's not God's plan for you and it's not God's plan for me.
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But it was certainly the plan of the hypocritical Pharisees.
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Now, there are a couple of things that we can learn from this and I've already
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stated it, but I just want to summarize.
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If we condemn, we don't have the heart of Christ.
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If there are people in your life that you look at and you look at with disgust,
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because of their lifestyle, because of their ineptness, because of their wickedness,
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because of anything about them, and you look at them and you judge them, that is evil.
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And that must be repented of, and we must not participate in that anymore.
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That is a thing of the past, now that you've heard this message.
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We need to remind ourselves to not do that.
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The second thing is that if there are people here today, if there's anyone here today.
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Is struggling in an area of sin, I want you to know that God does not condone
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your sin, but he doesn't condemn you.
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But by God's grace, he doesn't leave you there either. He says, come out of that sin.
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I've got something so far better than that. It will blow your mind.
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And I want to give it to you, but you have to repent. You have to turn.
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And I want you to come. Won't you come? Won't you come to Christ?
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He loves you. He's got this incredible, beautiful plan for you,
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but you've got to come and we've got to turn and repent.
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And for those of us that have been guilty of judging, I want you to repent today
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too. And I'm going to include myself in that.
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And we need to be a church where anyone comes in this door, I pray that God
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will remind you of this message.
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Because we are an island full of people who need the Lord.
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And yet they're afraid to come in the church because of the condemnation of the church.
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The open anger of evangelical Christianity against certain pockets of our community.
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And it's sin and it's wrong and it just can't be a part of this fellowship.
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And so I'm asking you as a brother in Christ, won't you respond?
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And won't you let people in that need the Lord? Won't you let them in and reach
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out to them because they need the Lord?
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These are the people that Jesus came for. We're people just like us and we're no better.
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And we need to open our arms and give them the same grace and the same love
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and the same opportunity that God gave us.
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The epic life is a listener supported ministry designed to encourage and equip
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believers to go big for god by loving him loving others and making disciples
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you can visit our website at theepiclife.org god bless you.