Busted!

So last night at our college group we talked about something pretty good so I figured I would just pass that on to you today...

We talked John 8:1-11... this is the passage of the woman who gets caught in adultery.

^1-2 Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the Temple again. Swarms of people came to him. He sat down and taught them. ^3-6The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, "Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?" They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.
 ^6-8Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, "The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone." Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.
 ^9-10Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. "Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?"
 ¹¹"No one, Master."
   "Neither do I," said Jesus. "Go on your way. From now on, don't sin."

Lets look at what just happened here... First of all we have a woman who was caught in an act of adultery and she has been brought out in public in a mob and thrown in front of Jesus so she is emmediately humiliated in front of all of these people.

The Pharisees didn't do this because they were interested in keeping the law but because they wanted to trap Jesus. The Law says that if someone has commited adultery, they are to be stoned to death.

So what does Jesus do? He bends down and starts writing in the dirt.... we don't know what He was writing. Some people think it was scripture, others think it was the secret sins of the Pharisees... we don't know and it doesn't much matter. I think it is crazy that these guys make this big deal and are trying to trap Jesus and are totally humiliating this poor woman and he just bends over and starts writing in the dirt.

He has taken the attention off of this woman and then while writing just says "If any of you haven't sinned, go ahead and start throwing..."

Thats the thing about Jesus (and God) is that to Him, sin is sin. As people we create this scale of sin. All sin is bad, but some is kinda bad, some is pretty bad, some is horrible... and yes, while telling a lie is probably not as big of a deal as killing someone, it is still sin. It is seperation from God. It is death.

Jesus knows the Law and he knows what it says, but he also knows this woman and he knows these Pharisees. He knows their hearts.

So what happens? The whole crowd leaves... no one is left and its just Jesus and this woman.
"where did everyone go?" He says... "they all left? no one wants to kill you anymore? neither do I..."

Wow. He tells her to go and not sin any more.

We have two distinct things that Jesus showed this woman. He showed her mercy and He showed her grace.

Mercy is when you don't get what you deserve and grace is when you get what you don't deserve.
This woman deserved to be punished for her sin, but Jesus showed her mercy and didn't give her what she deserved.

He then showed her grace and forgave her which she did not deserve.

This is the God that we worship and this is the way that we are supposed to live our lives.

Does it mean that we turn a blind eye to all of the sin in the world? Not a chance.
What it does mean is that we are supposed to be graceful and merciful. These aren't easy things to do, because our God is a just God and we were created in His image. Justice is something that we value and strive for, so we want justice, which gets in the way of mercy and grace. We need to understand that it is not up to us to judge the people of this world. When we were talking last night, Ron mentioned that people say that Christianity is the only organization that shoots their wounded. Instead of helping people when they screw up we throw them to the wolves. We are so quick to crucify people that we feel have failed to live up to our standards of moral living... I have news for you... we all screw up! we have all sinned and we are all seperated from God and it is only through His grace and mercy that we are saved.

The challenge is to live our lives out in a way that reflects those gifts that have been given to us.

Why isn't it easy to trust?

Why is it so hard for us to put our trust in others? It seems like something that we are supposed to do, and we are advised to do and people want us to do, but its not something that we want to do. People let us down. They fail, they screw up, the betray us. It isn't easy to put your trust in someone else because you can't control what that person. In order to be able to trust someone you need to be able to fully rely on them and many times you have take things out of your control and put the situation in their hands. For most of us this is something that we really just aren't willing to do... why is that?... CONTROL.

As human beings we hate giving up control. Think about it. when do we like to let someone else be in control? One thing i don't really like to do is let other people drive, especially if I don't feel like they are the best driver. I know a lot of bad drivers. I'll be riding with someone and they will not be paying attention or whatever or just not realize how the rules work and just do really stupid things and almost kill you. TV... we like to be in conrtol of the TV that is being watched. Maybe your sister wants to watch something that you don't want to watch, but she is bigger than you so you have no choice but to watch that stupid show. Its not fun becuase we aren't in control. Its not about the TV. If you really didn't want to watch that show you can just leave... but you don't. You stay and you are miserable.... why? because you don't have control.

Trust is all about control. We don't want to trust other people because we know that when it is on us we have the control. Whether something succeedes or fails is irrelivant. That doesn't matter. If we fail, its our fault and we are letting ourselves down and if we succeed, great! We did something right. But when we give up control to someone else we have to put our total trust into that person to take care of everything.

The problem with this is that historically, people suck at following through on things. We all do it. We all fall short. We all let someone down at some point. There is no escaping it. We are just failures. Every one of us has at some point put our trust in someone that has let us down. Maybe its just a dissapointment because something didn't work out to well and you are bummed out. Unfortunately though a lot of times the the let down is so hurtful and so deep that we feel like we can never trust that person again and maybe we probably shouldn't.

Trust is also not something that we should take lightly. It is very important to know who you can trust. You probably shouldn't trust everybody, because not everybody is trustworthy. We need to be selective about who we trust.

It makes sense that we have a hard time trusting other people, but why is it so hard to trust God? When has he let us down? I think this comes back to the control issue. We like to be in control of our lives and if you are going to completely put your trust in God that means you are giving up control of your life to him. That doesn't mean that you are no longer responsible for your actions. You are still in control ultimately of what you do, but when we trust in Him it means that we stop thinking we know what is best and we start listening...

Psalm 9:10 says "those who know your name will trust in you, for you, oh Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you."

Its that simple. We need to seek him.
Matthew 6:33 says "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

The Bible is so explicit when it tells us to seek him. It so straight forward. there is no keep your eyes open and if you see God make a note of it. Its not a passive act. You are supposed to be seeking him out. Looking for Him. When we do that we are listening and looking. Not talking not wasting time with other things that distract our sight from Him.

For whatever reason I was asked to come out to California to be a volunteer worship leader at a church and for whatever reason i said yes. There was no job security out here, there was no garuntee that it would work out. I prayed about it and thought about it and very quickly I got the sense that this is what God wanted. I came and within the first three days He has taken care of things as only he can.

So many times we here stories about people being faithful to God and getting provided for in crazy ways, but all of those people are taking the conrtol out of their hands and putting it in God's. This doesn't mean that you have to pack up and move accross the country with no job or house, but it means that in order to fully realize God's plan for you, you need to stop relying on yourself to make everything work and put your trust in God. Not an easy task.

Romans 8:28 says "And we know tha in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called accroding to his purpose." The cool thing is that we have all been called according to His purpose. We just need to follow and pursue that purpose. When we do that, God works in amazing ways and he orchestrates things in a way that we could never pull off on our own.

Go out and seek Him. listen to Him. Trust in Him. its not easy to give up control to him, but it is without a doubt the greatest thing that you can do. when we do this and realize that he is working for us because he loves us, then the world that he opens up to us is amazing!