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.