Rockin'

"Everybody must get stoned." ~Bob Dylan~

I know some Christians who think that. Not stoned in the seed bearing herb sense, but rocking people to sleep with real rocks.

If they had their way Levitical Law would be a sharp competitor with Muslim Sharia.

John 8:4 - "Teacher, they said, This woman has been caught in the very act of adultery."

"Caught" indicates a purposeful snooping around in a persons private affairs. As if God doesn't see these things without our help.

Some people don't like leaving things up to God. They feel they need to live by the Law.

There is no Law but what is fulfilled in Jesus. He was establishing that fact.

(5) "Now Moses in the Law commanded us that such [women--offenders] shall be stoned to death. But what do You say [to do with her--what is Your sentence]?"

Jesus is The Word. He wrote and established those laws in the dateless past. 

What will He do with this sinful woman?

There's no question that what the women did was wrong. It's still wrong today. Jesus wasn't condoning adultery, but He wasn't going to be duped into playing the accusers game of trickery. They were trying to goad Jesus into making a rash decision that would have offended either Jewish or Roman Law.

How would Jesus wiggle out of this one?

(7) "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

Just following making this statement, Jesus stooped down and wrote something in the dust. It is not revealed to us what He wrote, but perhaps we might take a little liberty in venturing a hypothesis.

Take into consideration that what He wrote must have gotten the attention of the accusers. How so? By the way they responded.

Here is my theory (and it is only a theory). First of all, it is odd that they didn't bring the man she was caught with along with her for justice. He was just as guilty under the Law. Secondly, they disbanded much too quickly and without argument at Jesus basically accusing them of all being rank sinners, and not of just ANY sin, but by insinuating they were all guilty of the same exact sin as she was! Perhaps that's why the man was not accused with her. Perhaps a fellow crony? The nature of these men would have been to see themselves as just and holy men, certainly not willing to admit to any shortcoming as far as God was concerned.

It had to have something more to do with what Jesus wrote than what He said.

Perhaps what Jesus wrote exposed each of them as being adulterers themselves. Perhaps some even with this very same woman. Names and dates will make a man drop a rock. Especially if they are at risk of being embarrassed in the community.

In any event "They listened to Him, and then they began going out, conscience-stricken, one by one, from the oldest down to the last one of them, till Jesus was left alone, with the woman standing there before Him in the center of the court."

Yeah, getting caught in hypocrisy will do that to a person.

Jesus then turns to the woman and asks her where her accusers went. Is there no one left to accuse her?

"No one, Lord!"

"And Jesus said, I do not condemn you either."

The difference between Jesus and the Law is that Jesus, while acknowledging the sin, is more concerned with forgiveness than judgment and punishment.

We should be also. 

"Go on your way and from now on sin no more."

Forgiveness, love, compassion, understanding...will go farther in winning a person to Jesus than a handful of rocks...er...I mean...accusations.

Keepin' it Real,

Pastor Kevin <><

www.reallifect.com