John: I Don't Condemn You

So uh we want to be a church that share and comes into your suffering.

So in celebration of survival of Tuesday, we're uh we're gonna have a little competition here, and it's called Worst Commute Possible Competition.

So uh what we're gonna do, let's let's get some definition here.

Uh to participate in this competition, you cannot have stopped.

If you slept at Home Depot or the Quick Trip or you know, random person, friend of a friend, that's a good story.

But just for the sake of the competition, that's not gonna be considered commute.

So commute is to join the competition.

Commute is uh you left wherever you were, it doesn't have to be work, you left wherever you were, and then the the time from wherever you left to when you got home, you didn't stop and sleep, okay.

So the time to get home.

Uh I'm thinking we let's do it this way.

If your commute Tuesday was five hours or more, uh stand up.

Okay.

Uh six.

Oh seven.

Eight from where to where we're gonna get away.

Normally thirty minutes?

Okay.

And it took how long?

Okay.

Um we just want to give you a quick trip card.

Just it's it's not it's not a lot.

But we just wanna so Tuesday for me, nothing compared to ten and a half hours.

Uh uh, I was I was out.

I was actually trying to go to the grocery.

Christy and I just we weren't even thinking this was this horrible of a situation.

Um, and so about noon I left just to go to the grocery to get some things, just like normal.

And so uh I'm on my way there, quickly picking up on the fact that this is horrible.

I'm not sure if I should just turn around now.

And so Christy calls me says, Hey, um, they just sent an email you can pick Josie up, and I was right by her school, so I pulled right in and I picked her up and I got her, and I'm still thinking, you know, you know, run by the grocery and then curl bike around and go home won't be too bad.

And so I'm off Polk Street, just over here, and so I'm heading up Polk Street toward the Kroger off Whitlock, and Polk Street starts to back up and it's real icy at this point, and then so I said, Well, I'll cover to Whitlock, that's a bigger road, sure, that'll be moving, right?

And so I cut over to Whitlock, and that's not moving, but there's a series of parking lots, and so I think, well, let's just see how far I can get through all the parking lots.

And so we cut through a bunch of parking lots, and then we get to the end of the parking lots, and I and I look at Whitlock, and it's it's not moving, it's solid.

And I call Christy, I'm like, hey, like, are we gonna starve or what you know, what's the food situation here?

Because I think this could be a big mistake trying to get to Kroger, and she says, Yeah, just come home.

So we turn around to try to come home, and so we cut back through neighborhood and get back to Kennesaw, headed up to Tower Road and the roadblock, complete roadblock, cars backed up, and so I turn around.

I said, Well, I came through downtown to get to the school, so I'll go back through downtown because you know, 20 minutes ago it was fine.

And so I turn back around, come back through downtown, and then I'm trying to turn on the Cherokee and I sit there for the solid 20 minutes just to turn on, and and so that Cherokee's slammed, right?

Another roadblock, completely blocked.

And so eventually I get across that and go, okay, well, turn on the loop, and then I cut through neighborhood a while, and then I have to cut back over the Cherokee up to Church Street where we live right there.

And so um, so we cut through the neighborhood, and then we get to the hill right there at Chickapee and Cherokee.

A lot of Indian names going on, Chickopee and Cherokee, and and I can't get up the hill.

I'm spinning out.

So, oh great, another roadblock, and and Josie's finding this a little bit adventurous, and we always felt a measure of safety because at any point I could park and walk.

Because I mean, literally at this point, I can see my house through the woods.

And so I kind of want to get home.

I want my hat I want my car at my house, everything settled in for the storm.

And so I try up the hill a couple times, it's not happening.

So I'll cut through this parking lot, I'll cross over Cherokee, cut through that parking lot, and then I'll I'll be up at church.

And so I try to cut through the uh Brian's dentist office parking lot, and then I can't get across Cherokee just when there's cars there.

There's there's no way to get across.

And we sit there for 15 minutes and say, all right, this isn't working.

We're about to bail on it, so we reverse back, and when I reverse back, a gravel truck had pulled up to that hill, and they're dumping, I don't know what's in the mix, I don't know, dirt, salt, gravel, but I love it.

I love the mix, I love those guys as they pour all that stuff out, and all of a sudden that roadblock has been completely removed, and I just cruise right up and I cruise up to Church Street, wait a few minutes, and I turn on to our street, and we're home.

Here's the picture.

The picture I want for us to grab hold of, which is it which is a common thread for all of us, um, is we just want to get on with our lives.

We want to make some progress with our lives, we want to make some healthy progress down the road.

The problem for many of us is roadblock after roadblock is guilt and shame and condemnation.

And the good news this morning, no matter how long it took you to get home on Tuesday, or whether you slept at Home Depot or not, the good news is the roadblock's gone.

That roadblock.

In Jesus, God handled the roadblock of guilt and shame and condemnation.

But what we do is we rebuild the roadblock.

You know, I'll be laying in bed at night and Christy's asleep, and she falls asleep immediately, and I'm laying in bed at night, and I will replay conversations that I had during the day and go, man, I man, I should have, I didn't ask him about, you know, whatever.

I I didn't even ask her.

I mean, her kid's been sick.

I didn't even mention it, you know, or just replay.

I was like, oh man, I I know I came off as arrogant or braggy, or or I should have said, and just my mind starts to replay these conversations, or or you're just driving down the road and you're by yourself, and you're driving down the road and a movie starts to replay in your mind about something that happened or you did when you were 14 years old, and it's been it's been 20 years or 40 years or 50 years, and it's replaying again in your mind.

And instead of receiving that the roadblock has been dealt with and to get on with life, we just rebuild the road and sort of add more ice and more snow there, and we just get stuck and our tires are spinning.

We get to John chapter 8, this story in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention John 8 · chapter mention

And it's all about guilt, and it's all about shame, it's all about condemnation, it's all about how God comes into that to remove those things.

So, John chapter 7, if you were with us last week, we were in John chapter 6.

John 7 · chapter mention John 6 · chapter mention

So John chapter 7 is this chapter where Jesus comes into a feast, um, and then before long he's teaching in the temple, and he's teaching a way of trust in him and not a way in the law, and you can listen to the past couple weeks' messages and kind of figure that out.

John 7 · chapter mention

But he's gaining a following.

This way of grace, this way of knowing him as the fulfillment of the law, he is gaining a following.

And this is this is upsetting the system and the people in charge of the system, the Pharisees.

And they are livid, and they want them gone because he's upset it, he's upsetting their life, their livelihood, uh, control over all of it.

And so what they want to do is they want to set him up.

They want to catch him breaking the law so they can prosecute him.

So they set this lady up.

This is what we're gonna read about in John chapter.

They set this lady up to catch her in adultery.

So then they can bring her in front of Jesus and thinking, well, he's soft on the law.

The law says that we have to stone her.

He's soft on the law, so we're gonna catch him being soft on the law, and because he's gonna excuse her is what he's gonna do, and then we got him.

We'll have him.

And so this is what's going on when we jump in in verse 2.

At dawn, Jesus appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees, they brought in a woman caught in adultery.

They made her stand before the group.

They said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery and the law.

Moses commanded us to stone such women.

Now what do you say?

And they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus went down, he started to write on the ground with his finger.

So they're setting them up.

Where's the guy, by the way?

Everyone does like, where's the guy?

Would have taken two to make this thing happen, this adultery thing.

You know where the guy was?

I think he just cut a deal.

I mean, right?

That's how they did the setup.

Is they cut a deal with the guy.

Hey, tell us how y'all have this arrangement, and we'll we'll we'll cut a deal with you.

You you're good.

You tell us how this thing's working, and we'll show up and we'll grab her.

And they caught her in the act, which, as we know as adults, um, is in the act, and so they catch her, and maybe they let her put some clothes on, maybe they wrap her in a blanket, but nonetheless, she is dragged out of that act, and she is dragged in front of a bunch of religious people at the temple.

And it just reveals the callousness of these Pharisees.

I mean, absolute punks.

Because she didn't have to be there.

They could have held her somewhere else, and they could have come to Jesus and said, hey, we have a woman, we're holding her over here, but no, they didn't want to do that.

They didn't care.

They didn't care about her.

I mean, it would do anything.

Use people, manipulate people, run over people, kill people to get what they wanted.

That's what they're doing.

And can you imagine the shame for this lady, for this woman?

I mean, I've been caught doing a few things that I shouldn't be doing, and knowing I shouldn't do them, but do them anyways because I sort of like what I'm doing, and and and then that light comes in and it floods in, and you feel that shame, and you're, ah, why did I, you know, I shouldn't have done that.

And can you imagine this lady, the religious police show up?

And these are guys who who can make horrible things happen for her life.

And she's exposed and she's in front of everybody.

I mean, can you even imagine being in front of this crowd and being exposed like that for your most graphic, shameful things?

And we don't know her backstory.

Right?

What happened to her to get her to that point?

So we're not excusing what she did, but what what happened in her life to get her to make such risks?

Like socially, societally, you know, to make take such risk to put herself out there, such risk, to just to be to be loved by somebody for a very temporary amount of time, and then to leave and feel cheap and feel unloved again, to go and to do it again.

What broke in her, and at what point did it break, and how did it break, and who did the breaking?

They didn't care about that.

So let's talk about guilt first.

So so guilt is is more than a feeling.

It is a feeling, but it's more than a feeling.

Guilt is actually based in fact and we experience it in feeling.

So uh a couple years ago, um we're driving through, Christy and myself, and and I think Josie and Izzy, we're driving through downtown Lawrenceville, where I grew up.

You know, the red lights through downtown Lawrenceville, you know, and my all my years of driving through there, they're timed.

If you hit the first one, you get the other ones.

As long as you're going about, you know, six or seven miles per hour over speed limit, you get all of them.

They come in a package.

I mean, everybody knows this.

You've been through there a million times.

I hit the first one, I know I've done this a million times.

I'm good the rest of the lights.

And so I'm cruising through and I'm watching, I'm cruising through, and I get through that third one, and I'm I'm on the backside now of the square, and and I see and hear a motorcycle cop behind me, and I'm I immediately said, I didn't run that light turn cruise.

I did not run that light.

I didn't run it.

I'm feeling really confident about this.

And so I pull into the post office and I said, I'm not paying it.

I told you, I'm not paying that ticket.

And so he comes up and I roll down my window and says, you know, what's the problem?

I said, Well, yeah, I don't think I was speeding, was a speedin', you know.

He said, No, you you you ran that last light, it was red when you went through it.

And I said, I said, okay, well, I I disagree with you.

Um and so I you know, I I would like for you not to give me a ticket.

That'd be great.

If you give me a ticket, um, you know, just if you could also inform me how I how I fight the ticket, because I I didn't run the light.

And so he writes me the ticket, of course.

And so um, and so he tells me how I fight it.

So uh a month later, I drive from Atlanta back up to Lawrenceville, take the half day to do this whole journey to what I think I'm going to my trial to plead not guilty and get out of my ticket because I did not run the light.

And so I get up there, and this is not what that is.

This is just where you go and say you want a later date to then go, and don't you love that system, right?

So now I've spent half a day just to go tell them that I don't want to pay the ticket, so then they give me another date where I have to take another half day to drive back up there, and at that point, I hate the system so much, you better believe I'm driving back up there to not pay the ticket.

I will take a week off work to not pay the ticket at this point.

And so I drive back up there the next month, and I sit and I have all my books and I'm studying and I'm reading, and it becomes my turn, and I walk to the front of the court, and the judge is up there, and she says, you know, she reads the stuff, and how do you plead?

I said, Well, not guilty.

I didn't run the light, and and then the cop comes up and uh he had he had a video.

And if if he had just told me at the beginning of the whole thing, by the way, I have video camera the front of my motorcycle, and I know you ran it.

And I would have said, Okay, I probably would just go ahead and pay it, but instead I'm really feeling like I still did not run the light.

They show the video very clearly, it turning red, me cruising right through that red, and then the judge turns back to me and she says, uh, what would do you have to say now?

And I say, Where do I pay for the ticket?

What she didn't ask, what she did not ask is she didn't say, How do you feel guilty?

She didn't ask it when I first came up, she didn't ask it after the video, she never asked, you know, do you feel guilty?

Do you feel like you should pay?

No, no, because the guilt is based in the fact.

That's what became very clear to me when I saw the video, right?

Didn't matter how I felt about the experience, the fact was, even if no matter how I felt, I ran through the light, that guilt is based in fact.

And this is actually good news because what it means is if there's a remedy for guilt, it's not in our feelings.

It also is in fact.

This is good news because our rescue is in the fact that God provided for us in Jesus.

And so our guilt is dealt with in fact, no matter how we feel.

Romans 3, we're all fallen before God, guilty, factually guilty.

But also Christ took the guilt upon himself and gave us his righteousness, so factually we're relieved.

Back to the story that verse 4, the teachers bring the woman caught in adultery.

And this girl's guilty.

She feels guilty, feeling, she is guilty factually, legally, positionally, factually.

The Pharisees make sure everybody knows about this.

Hey, did you hear about this girl?

Make sure I speak it loud enough for everybody to know about it.

And she is humiliated.

And then this is where we get that odd behavior of Jesus, where he bends down and he writes in the sand, and everybody makes kind of like guesses of what was he doing?

What did he write?

And you know, he's drawing funny pictures of the Pharisees.

What I'm hoping he wrote, I'm hoping he wrote in like really big letters.

Matthew 5, 28.

Anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Can you imagine if he wrote that in really big letters for all the Pharisees to see?

And they had to come to grips that they are the same as her.

I mean, this would have been their their oh no moment.

And it came because in verse 7, when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up from writing, whatever, drawing, whatever he did.

And he said this, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her, and then he again stooped back down and he wrote on the ground again.

And at this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, and the woman was still standing there.

Can you imagine for the woman what it must have felt like to hear those stones fall?

Maybe she has her head down.

She's got to have her head down, right?

Maybe she has her eyes closed.

But but for her to be there and she is she is ashamed, she's been exposed.

Um maybe they let her get clothed, probably a blanket, something's covering her, and she's ashamed, her eyes are closed, and she just begins to, she hears Jesus say that, and she's got to get some hope when she hears Jesus say that, and then and then just to start to hear people drop their stones.

And then uh the only people left is her and Jesus.

She would have had some hope at this point, she would have had some hope because he said some really great things for her, but but also he's a pretty well-known rabbi at this point.

And she's just a lowly girl caught in adultery.

And so she's still in her shame.

So let's talk about shame for just a moment.

Shame is a place of unworthiness.

It's not just guilt, guilt is I I did something bad.

Shame is I I am bad.

It's a place of unworthiness and it's full of fear, and it's full of uh rejection, and it's full of disconnection.

Shame is the belief that if I'm really known, if you really know me, you will reject me.

And maybe you say, ah, I don't think so.

I don't think that's me.

I'm a pretty balanced guy, I'm a pretty balanced lady.

It's all under control.

Okay, okay, bear with me.

I've been reading this book, uh, Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown, who's a researcher of shame.

What's clear by data and research, what's clear is we all have shame.

Now, some of us spend much more time ignoring it and covering it up in all different ways.

But deep under our drive and under our behaviors, there is this feeling of I am unworthy, therefore I go and I do whatever.

So in men, from the data, from the data, for men, shame is about failure.

I can't fail at work, I can't fail in marriage, I can't fail in bed, I can't fail with money, I can't fail with my children.

Everything has to be running smoothly, and the perception of me needs to be running smoothly.

I can't be wrong and I can't be defective.

Shame is weakness for men, shame is incompetence for men, shame is not having the answers.

That's why we love to answer and fix things.

But the reality is we're not always strong.

And we're not always competent.

And so what happens, the data speaking, is we get angry.

Or we get distant.

And we don't connect.

And women, in our culture, it looks like I'm not pretty enough.

And in our culture, it's like I'm not thin enough.

If I'm overweight, I'm not thin enough, and if I'm thin, I'm not thin enough.

I need to be perfect, and I need to do perfect, and anything less, and you are ashamed.

And by the way, you're being judged by all the other mothers.

How you mother, how many children you have, what order you had in it, how close you had them.

Oh, you have no children?

Oh, that's an interesting decision.

You have no children.

How you discipline, whether you work or you don't work, how much you work.

And there's all this shame that women live in out of that.

And shame is there because you feel like you are never enough.

Not at home, not at work.

And shame says no matter what goodness you have in your life, you will always be what you have done and what was done to you.

That's what shame says.

And this girl in John chapter 8, she's in front of this crowd and she has that voice.

John 8 · chapter mention

Of Shane whispering to her.

And so Brene Brown in the book on Shane, she talks about this voice is a gremlin.

You remember gremlins in the 80s?

It started off that little lovable little animal.

Was it uh gizmo?

Okay, gizmo, and gizmo got wet, and then and then a gremlin came out.

And a gremlin was a little monster, and he was a monster.

And they reproduced by getting more wet.

I'm asking Aaron, he seems to know about the gremlins.

Okay.

So they reproduced by getting wet again.

But then in the morning when the light hit them, they died.

Correct?

Okay, thank you.

And shame is a little gremlin in us that causes havoc.

And it's there speaking to you about your guilt and about your shame and speaking to you through condemnation, and as one goal to get you to live in your shame and to live out of your shame.

And this is the flesh and this is the enemy, but this is not.

This is not the spirit and the voice of God in your life.

Here's the twist in this story.

The very thing these Pharisees, religious, callous punks, the very thing that they, the very thing they did to her was the best thing that could happen.

Right?

She gets exposed.

Now they think this is going to lead, hopefully, to her death.

But actually it led to a life because maybe for the first time she was forced to face herself.

Forced to get honest about her life and her.

She receives a love that rescues her from not just this behavior, but a heart and a and a and a place where she lived that was extremely unhealthy.

Verse 10, Jesus straightened up, so she's standing there, Jesus standing there, Pharisees are gone, they've left, and the two of them are there.

And he asked her, He says, Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

No one, sir.

Then neither do I condemn you.

Go now and leave your life of sin.

Now I I I think without a doubt, that gremlin kept whispering to her.

Right?

I mean, that gremlin kept whispering, she left, and that gremlin kept whispering, you're not really lovely, you don't really belong, you're really that girl who was doing that stuff that the Pharisees caught, that's really who you are.

You're not really a good mother, you're not really competent, you're not really valued, you're not really respected.

You know what I what I hear more than anything?

I was just trying to think, what is the what do I hear?

So I was thinking this way, what do what is the gremlin always telling me?

What is that voice of condemnation that puts me in the place of shame and it's this?

And it doesn't sound all that horrible, but it has bad repercussions, and it's this.

You're not really that important.

And if you're not important, then life doesn't really matter.

So forget the values of like a simple life or like faithful to your wife and to your children.

I mean, forget those values.

What matters matters, are you are you really important?

Because if you're really important, then life matters.

And by the way, you're not really important.

And um, and in that voice of condemnation and memories of failures just puts you into a place of shame that you're constantly then trying to live out of that shame to prove yourself.

And in the spirit of God, here's what we have to do.

I don't know what that little gremlin says to you.

In the spirit of God, in the power of truth, what we say back to that little monster is we say, I hear you.

I hear you today.

But I'm not listening to you today.

My mothering, my body, my career is not the entirety of who I am.

I am not what I've done.

I am not what has been done to me.

I am much more than a series of actions.

I'm not listening to you today.

You can leave.

Can't you hear this woman is standing there, and what did that feel like for Jesus to say, no one's condemned you.

They've left, and I don't condemn you.

And he's not downplaying what she was doing, he's not dismissing it.

He's actually walking right into the reality of it, of who she is, asked to help correct the behavior.

So, I mean, look at the order of these words.

First, he tells the woman he doesn't condemn her.

He tells it, first, unconditioned, I don't condemn you.

There's no like, hey, I don't condemn you, let's check back in six months, see how you're doing.

And if you're doing okay, then maybe I'll tell you again, I don't condemn you, but maybe I'll pull it back if you haven't really kept that up.

No, what he says, he gives an unconditioned, I don't condemn you, I don't, I don't condemn you.

And go and leave your life of sin.

And this is how the gospel works.

Jesus gives her love unconditioned, it creates a new life in her, which will create a life of finding rescue, not in a temporary, sinful act, but in him.

And I'm sure that little gremlin kept whispering to her, and it's gonna keep whispering to us because belonging to God does not fix everything, and belonging to God does not make us perfect, right?

Right?

I mean, what happens when you belong to God and you still lust after that woman or after that man or after that life or that house or that job?

What happens when we belong to God and memories still fill our mind of what we've done?

What happens when we belong to God and idols of control and comfort still grip us and paralyze us?

And that little gremlin begins to speak to us as, oh no, you don't, you don't love God, and there's no way he loves you.

I mean, how could he love you like this?

That little gremlin's whispering.

What are we supposed to say?

Where do we go?

Romans 8, 33, love this.

You're gonna love it.

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?

It is God who justifies.

Who is he that condemns?

And God's saying, You're mine.

And I don't condemn you.

Keep trusting, keep believing the roadblock has been removed.

Don't give in to that voice, that little gremlin, that little monster.

Don't give in to that voice of condemnation.

Don't live out of that place of shame.

God's saying, I will never let you go.

I'm working in your heart, not unto perfection, but unto healing.

And there's no one who can condemn you.

I don't.

That's what God's saying.

I don't condemn you.

I don't condemn you for what has been done to you.

I don't condemn you for what you have done.

I don't condemn you.

I don't.

And you don't need to keep turning to lesser loves to feel love.

You can come to me because I love you.

And go and sin no more.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for the unconditioned promise that you don't condemn us.

God, it takes great courage for us, for me, to even think about shame and how we feel unworthy in some ways and how that affects us.

It takes great courage and it takes it takes you giving us courage.

Oh God, the life that can come out of it for us to go there, to go to those places of where we feel unworthy and to he when we're there to hear you say, I don't condemn you, I don't love you.

Would you increase our trust and belief and your sufficiency for us so that we might not turn to lesser loves, but we might turn to you over and over and over again.

For you are our sufficiency and our rescue and our righteousness.

Amen.