Our Core Values & Beliefs: Biblical Grace & Truth - John 7:53-8:11 Pastor Daniel Reese

If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in John chapter 7, chapter 8 primarily.

John 7 · chapter mention

We are in our fourth week of going through our beliefs, going through our core values

that we hold as a church.

This is who we are.

This is what we believe in.

And the truth is they're all connected.

They're all connected with the Bible being our starting point.

With the Bible being where we begin, everything else flows from the understanding that the

Bible is truth.

So it forms our beliefs about who God is.

It forms our beliefs on salvation.

It forms our beliefs on how we should live and how we should go through our Christian

walk.

Last week we looked at our core value of having Christ-centered relationships and the small

morning builds on that idea as we look at our core value of biblical grace and truth.

And the truth is there's some tension.

There's some tension in those two realities.

We want grace for us, but have a hard time giving it to others.

We want to give truth to others, but we don't like it so much when truth is given to us.

For instance, I have had my fair share of situations where I've been pulled over by a police officer

or a deputy.

I've been pulled over for speeding.

I've been pulled over for having a brake light that was out.

I've been pulled over for not having a front license plate.

Now each of those times that I've been pulled over and the lights are in my rear view mirror,

I'm hoping for grace.

I'm hoping that I'm just going to be given a warning even though the truth is I was speeding.

The truth is I did have a brake light out.

The truth is I was missing a front license plate.

I still wanted grace and many times I have received grace by just being given a warning.

But what happens?

What happens to me and potentially to you when somebody else comes flying past me down

the highway?

I think to myself, I hope there's somebody waiting up there and is going to pull them

over.

I mean, I'm going seven over the speed limit.

They got to be going at least 15 or 20 over the speed limit.

I hope they get busted for it.

Like I can't be the only one that's taught those things.

And I'm hoping that our passage this morning, as we look at it, will help us all understand

a little better between the relationship between biblical grace and truth.

This morning, Abby Coy, she here?

I haven't seen her yet.

She here?

Abby's going to read our passage this morning.

I invite you to stand as she comes.

Join us as we honor the Lord's word together.

She's going to read the end of chapter seven and 11 verses of chapter eight.

All you, Abby.

They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives early in the morning.

He came again to the temple.

All the people came to him and sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, placing her

in the midst.

They said to him, teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the law of Moses commands us to stone such woman.

So what do you say?

This they said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus spent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

And as they continue to ask him, he stood up and said to them, let him who is without

sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.

But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones.

And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Jesus stood up and said to the woman, woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

She said, no one, Lord.

And Jesus said, neither do I condemn you.

Go and now on, sin no more.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for Abby.

Thank you for the word.

Thank you for just the example of who Jesus is.

And I pray, Father, that his words will seep into our hearts this morning.

I pray that we will take his example as we apply it to our own lives.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thanks, Abby.

Great job.

Now, before we jump into this passage, we need to note a couple things real quick.

If you're using the ESV like we use here at the church, if that's the translation that

you have, you will notice a footnote that indicates that John 7.53 through John 8.11

is not included in the earliest manuscripts.

Some other translations will have a similar footnote.

Some translations remove it all together and just put it in the footnote.

This is what is known as a textual variant, which has been identified through the process

of textual criticism.

And we could easily spend our time this morning talking about whether or not this passage here

in John should even be in the Bible at all.

And if you're interested in studying more of that, you won't have any problem finding

opinions on that matter.

So then the question becomes, if that's the case, if that's the case, why have I chosen

to use this passage this morning?

I mean, but even the critics, even the critics who don't believe that this belongs in John's

Gospel almost all agree that this is an authentic account in relation to how Jesus has interactions

with religious leaders, how Jesus has interactions with women.

And even more importantly, this story is consistent with the teaching and actions of Jesus that

we find in all four other gospel accounts.

I'll use some of those other passages later to prove that point.

Now, but here's what we know.

Jesus loves with the perfect balance of grace and truth.

He loves with the perfect balance of grace and truth.

Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Boosts, and he teaches in the temple, and the people

are marveling at his teachings.

But the Pharisees and the chief priests who are worried about losing their power, worried

about the influence that Jesus is having, send officers to arrest him, send officers

to arrest Jesus.

But when those officers hear Jesus teach and see how many in the crowd believe that he

is the Messiah, they return without arresting him.

The next morning, Jesus returns to the temple to teach, and those same Jewish religious

leaders hatch a plot to trap Jesus into doing something or saying something that they can

eventually use against him.

There is a sense in which the information that is not presented to us in this passage

is just as instructive as what we do have.

When these religious leaders bring before Jesus the woman who they claim is caught in

adultery.

A lot of questions are immediately raised.

The most obvious one being, where is the man?

Where is the man?

After all, the sin of adultery involves two people.

It involves two people.

And according to what we know in Deuteronomy 22, according to what we know in Leviticus

Leviticus 20 · chapter mention

chapter 20, both the man and the woman were subject to being punished by death.

The second thing we know is that someone could be put to death for a capital offense like

this only upon the eyewitness of two or three witnesses.

Deuteronomy 17 says that one witness was not enough.

In the case of adultery, that means that no one could be put to death merely based on

the circumstantial evidence, like observing a woman leaving her house and going to another

man's house at ninth.

The act itself had to be witnessed by one or two witnesses, by more than one witness.

We also see in Deuteronomy 17 that the witnesses were to be the first ones to carry out the

death penalty.

So as this encounter progresses, we'll see that is important and very relevant aspect

of the law of Moses.

Now although we can't know for sure, there is pretty good evidence here that this was

a setup.

Since that is likely the only way this woman could have been caught, red-handed like this.

And the fact that the man isn't there brought before Jesus is a little fishy as well.

What we do know for sure is that these religious leaders didn't care a bit about this woman.

And we just saw the penalty for adultery was death for both the man and the woman, but

the method of carrying out that penalty is not stated.

So it's likely that this was a very young girl, potentially a teenage girl who's dragged

into the temple, who's dragged in front of all of these people, probably with little

or no clothing on.

And these religious leaders were merely using her as a pawn to try and trap Jesus and were

willing to publicly humiliate this girl for that reason.

But before we're too quick to criticize them, we need to take an honest look at ourselves.

We need to take an honest look at our lives.

It's very easy for us to slip into the trap of using the Bible for our own selfish ends

too.

We can use the Scriptures to judge others and to bring down our enemies while at the same

time failing to apply those same truths to our own life.

And then we justify our hypocrisy by claiming that our sins aren't nearly as bad as those

of the other person.

The Jewish leaders are just arrogant enough that they think they can outwit Jesus by using

their greatest strength, which is their knowledge and understanding of the law of Moses.

And on the surface, the trap they set for Jesus here in this story is quite clever on

a couple of different levels.

First, even though the law of Moses specified death by stoning for adultery, that sentence

was never actually carried out in Jesus' day because the Roman law forbid Jews of actually

carrying out that penalty.

That is why a short time after this, you know the story, the Jewish leaders have to take

Jesus to Pilate to have his own death penalty carried out by the Roman government.

So if Jesus said that this woman should be stoned, he would violate Roman law, and if

he said that she should be set free, he would have been accused of violating the law of

Moses, that he had previously claimed that he did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

But there's another potential conflict here that is less apparently apparent, but probably

more important.

The tension between grace and truth.

If Jesus says that the woman should be stoned, he would be upholding the truth of the law,

but he would be violating the idea of grace for sinners that he had been consistently

teaching and demonstrating during his earthly ministry.

On the other hand, if he said that she should not be punished, he would be exhibiting grace

but also disregard the truth of the law.

But Jesus doesn't fall for the trap.

He doesn't fall for it.

He just remains in the sitting position that he was already in, which is very typical for

a rabbi when he was teaching.

And it says that he just bends down and rides on the ground.

The religious leaders are getting impatient with Jesus, and so they keep asking him for

his answer.

When he is ready, Jesus finally speaks and he says, let him who is without sin among you

be the first to throw the stone at her.

Now I love how one of the commentators that I read this week described what happened here.

He said, the law is like a boomerang.

You aim at it others and it comes back and it knocks you in the head.

You aim at it others and it comes back and these religious leaders who are experts in

the law, who are experts in the scriptures, they aim it at this woman.

They aim it at Jesus.

But as we'll see, that same law is going to come back and knock them in the head.

Jesus is not in any way teaching here that he intends to excuse people for being obedient

to the truth of the law or that he expects us to do that either.

How many times have you heard someone who has been confronted about some sin in their

life, who have been called out on how they are living their life in this sin, and they

use this verse as a weapon claiming that the other person has no right to point out his

or her own sin because he or she isn't sinless and therefore they shouldn't be throwing stones

at me.

I mean, we've used that, right?

Jesus actually agrees in this story with the religious leaders that this woman is guilty

and deserves to be stoned.

He's not in any way giving her a pass or giving her a license to sin.

We know that Jesus does want us to confront sin in the church because he gave us specific

instructions about how we are to do that in Matthew 18.

Paul also writes frequently about the need to confront sin within the church.

What Jesus is doing in this story is to help his adversaries understand their own complicity

and sin.

Essentially, what he's saying is you are absolutely right.

This woman is a sinner.

She is guilty and she deserves to be stoned to death.

But since you are all concerned about the truth of the law here, let's make sure that

we fully apply it to this text.

The same law that condemns her also requires the eyewitnesses that testify against her

that they must be the first ones to throw the stones.

Just make sure you do that.

Make sure you are guiltless in this manner is what Jesus is telling them.

So Jesus really turns the tables on them here.

He reframes the entire debate here and points out that the question is not whether this

woman is guilty and deserves to be punished.

Jesus agrees with the religious leaders on that point.

The question is who is sinless in this manner and is qualified to carry out that punishment?

And the answer to that question is that all of the people there, out of all the people

there, Jesus is the only one who is qualified to do it.

And after speaking those words, Jesus bends down again and writes in the sin.

And we don't know what he wrote.

Don't be believing that somebody knows what he wrote.

But the text seems to indicate that these religious leaders responded to what Jesus said and not

what he wrote in the dirt.

Apparently just like the woman, they are convicted of their own sin.

They're convicted of their own issues.

But they demonstrate here that it is always more comfortable to focus on the sins of others

rather than to confront their own sin.

And so one by one, these religious leaders leave.

They drop their stones and they leave beginning with the oldest.

Perhaps it's because the older ones had committed more sins in their lives than the younger

ones.

Maybe it's because they were wiser.

We aren't really told.

We just know that they leave one by one.

And Jesus and the woman are the only ones left.

And Jesus now stands up and he addresses the woman directly.

He says, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

Where are they all going?

She looks around, she goes, no one, Lord, to which Jesus replies, neither do I condemn

you.

Go and sin no more.

Now how could Jesus do that?

How can a holy God just say, just go and sin no more?

Jesus knew that according to the truth of the law, someone had to die for her sin.

But I believe that as Jesus witnessed this entire event unfold, he knew that Jesus had

to do in his heart that very soon he would be the one to die in her place.

Her sin would not go unpunished.

But as an act of grace, Jesus would bear that penalty on her behalf.

So we see here that Jesus loves with the perfect balance of grace and truth.

So how do we do that?

How do we live with the perfect balance of grace and truth?

The first thing is we can never ignore sin.

We can never excuse sin.

There are a lot of reasons that some of us have a tendency to excuse sin in the lives

of others.

Some of us might genuinely believe that that's the most loving thing to do.

Let's just ignore that.

Let's not have any confrontation.

Let's ignore that.

I'm going to love them through it.

Others of us just don't like confrontation of any kind.

We don't want to lose friendships.

We don't want to lose relationships over it.

So we will use what Jesus says in that passage as an excuse not to address sin in the lives

of others by saying things like, I have my own sin.

I have my own issues.

I can't be calling out sins of others.

I have no business pointing out sin in someone else's life when I have my own sin issues.

And so we'll use this passage as an excuse not to confront it.

Well that might seem like the most loving thing to do.

Allowing sin to live unchecked in the lives of the people that we love.

To allow sin to continue to live in the lives of people we care for and do life with is

not loving at all.

This is why we've seen Jesus consistently point out sin in the lives of the people he

encounters.

We clearly see that with the story of the woman at the well and here again with this

woman here caught in adultery.

But and this is the key.

This is the key.

We've seen that he always does so with great compassion out of genuine concern for the

other person and not to make himself look good.

Not to be compared to anybody else but out of genuine concern he sees people walking

and sin and he points it out.

Now I've seen this executed badly so many times and I'm sure you have as well.

Years ago maybe they still do it.

It's not in the news as often but years ago there was this church Westboro Baptist Church

and they were constantly in the news for picketing something.

Remember that?

They're always in the news.

They were always picketing something.

They would be at funerals.

They'd be at abortion clinics and they'd be at parades and they'd be calling out sin.

They'd be with their megaphones as a family is putting their loved one in the ground.

They'd be on the outside of the funeral with megaphones saying hey the reason your son

is dead is because he was gay.

As women are walking into an abortion clinic on probably one of the worst days of her life

they'd be shouting things like you're a murderer at her.

This was in the news it seemed like every single week.

Now as being homosexual, bisexual, transgender or any of the other letters in that thing

sinful absolutely.

We cannot excuse that sin.

We cannot ignore the fact that our children are being maimed by doctors in this country.

It's sinful.

A kid that doesn't know his left from his right should not be allowed to decide what

his gender should be.

A kid that can't understand that and then have parents and a doctor listen to them and

put them on hormone blockers or let them transition to another gender.

That is evil and sinful.

That's the truth.

But our country is consumed by it right now isn't it?

I hate the fact.

I hate the fact that there are schools that put litter boxes in the bathrooms because

some kid is identifying as a cat.

I mean this is our reality right now isn't it?

This is our reality and we need to stop letting it happen.

I mean I felt convicted this week because we've done a great job.

If you come to our Wednesday night prayer meeting which I highly encourage any of you

to do, we do a great job of praying for our government.

We do a great job of praying for our leaders but I have not been as diligent in praying

for our school administrators, praying for our teachers, praying for our school board

members, praying for our local government.

That is where we can begin to see change.

Now in our culture right now those are the big obvious sins but we need to be just as

diligent by not making excuses for other sins.

Like some parents who let their kids decide their gender.

We can't have the same attitude towards sin that's not allowed there.

Let them do what they want to do.

I hear things often you've probably said them, I've said them we're all guilty of it.

Oh that's just them, they have a temper.

We excuse their sin.

Oh that's just who she is, she's a gossip.

You just got to take it with you.

They just live in sin because they can't afford to have two separate houses.

So we make excuses for all of these sins.

That's not what Jesus does ever.

He calls sin what it is.

I was sitting at a baseball game last night and a little outside in Waterloo.

Terrible cell phone signal.

Didn't matter I was watching the game.

Well somebody did have a good signal and finds out that our Donald Trump had been shot.

And I'm sitting with all these parents.

I got parents on my right, I got parents on my left were watching this baseball game.

They all know who I am.

They all know what I do.

They know why I'm not at the game today because I want to be here.

To my right there's people upset that he didn't die.

To my left there's people that are angry at the Democrats.

Now I'm right here in the middle of it.

Would have been loving and gracious to call those people a bunch of idiots and say you

don't know what you're talking about?

Would it have been loving and kind to go to my left and say you're part of the problem

too with all this hate going on?

No, it wouldn't have been.

So thinking of the long game, I have to just stop.

God give me what I say here because I've got to come into both ends.

Both sides want me to pick a side.

What do I do?

My family's here.

What do I do here?

I've got to do life with these people.

Many of them non-believers.

How do I speak truth and love?

So I just said I just hate the state of our country right now.

I hate that hate is winning so many times because that's the truth.

I didn't condemn anybody but that's the truth, is it not?

We've got to speak truth but the next step is we've got to give grace.

As I was working on this message this week, I kept getting the feeling that God led me

to preach this passage because I needed to be reminded of this particular lesson in my

own life.

Well, I don't think I necessarily go around looking for the sin and the lives of others

or comparing the sins of others to my own as I reflect on my life.

I can see that I've often had the tendency to exercise truth rather than to exercise

grace so maybe that's you too.

But I want to address the issues I've seen with getting grace out of balance with truth.

Grace cannot be the excuse we use to appease a culture of sin.

What I mean by that is we can't become accepting of sin under the banner of grace.

There are denominations of Christians that are condoning homosexual lifestyles.

They are elevating them to positions of spiritual authority and claiming that anyone who is

against that is a homophobe, is a sexist.

That's grace without truth.

We can love the homosexual without waving the pride flag or celebrating Pride Month.

We can love the girl having an abortion without celebrating her choice.

Grace and truth do not have to be contradictory to each other.

I mean, I wish our church was filled with homosexuals because I'm going to love them

and I'm going to expose them to the truth as soon as I can.

Think about the woman at the well.

Her whole life is characterized by—that's what she was known for.

That's what Jesus calls out.

He calls her out on it.

He doesn't shy away from it.

He doesn't beat around the bush, but he doesn't condemn her either, just as he didn't condemn

the woman caught in adultery.

In both those situations, he spoke truth covered in grace.

The difference in those stories is we don't know what happened to the woman who was caught

in adultery after her interaction with Jesus.

But the woman at the well, she left rejoicing.

She left telling everyone she knew about him.

She invited people to come to him because she not only heard the truth, but she received

the grace.

Jesus always had the perfect balance between grace and truth, and we should strive.

As believers, we should strive to have the same balance.

The other night, we were leaving a baseball game—that's my whole life, if you don't

know—we were leaving a baseball game while we were driving home.

I told Sina something was wrong.

The interior lights in our van seemed brighter than—I was like, that light is bothering

me.

It's driving me crazy.

Something looked different to me.

She goes, yeah, the lights are different.

The lights are weird.

The boys in the back, they agree.

Yeah, something's off here.

Now, we were having trouble with our battery that day, so we just kind of chalked it up

to that.

Some issue, I'll have to take it in.

Maybe it's an electrical thing.

I don't know.

We're headed down the highway back home, Sina finally notices a text from Jenny Berklow.

We were just with them.

They helped jump our car because it was dead in the parking lot.

She just texted and said, hey, your headlights aren't on.

Your headlights aren't on.

When we were jumping, I turned the headlights off when we were jumping in.

I forgot to turn them back on.

It was that time of day where you didn't really need the headlights, but it's probably

a good idea to have them on.

It wasn't dark, but it's just one of those things I didn't notice.

We felt like something was off, and we're looking for a solution.

Like I'm adjusting the dimmer.

I'm looking at all the lights.

We're trying to figure this out.

I knew something was off, but I didn't realize until we got the text, hey, your lights are

off.

Sure enough, as soon as I turned them on, everything inside the van went back.

Oh, that's what it's supposed to look like.

And then not only that, but it kept others safe around us.

Jenny didn't call me an idiot.

She might have thought it, but she didn't call me it.

She didn't make fun of us.

She just simply said, hey, your headlights are off.

Sometimes we need people in a loving way to tell us that our headlights are off.

Sometimes we need to, in a loving way, tell people that their headlights are off.

I mean, that's what Matthew 18's all about.

So here at Cornerstone, I want to remind us, I want to remind all of us, this is a great

place to not be okay.

It's a great place to not be okay.

This is a great place to not pretend that you have everything in your life together,

and we expect you to have some sort of great spirituality and pretend that.

But no, but no, that we are going to love you in such a way that the truth of God's

word is going to be exposed to you, and we're going to help you not stay that way.

I'm grateful that Jesus treats me like that.

He loves me enough to not let me continue a lifestyle of sin, but at the same time,

he extends grace to cover that sin.

And out of gratitude for what he has done for me, out of gratitude, that's where it

comes from.

I want to live in a way that I also love others with that same balance of grace and truth.

I pray that our church does too.

If you live a sinless, perfect life, I would love to meet you after this service, because

the reality is I don't need to be up here, you do.

We're all messed up people, aren't we?

We're all sinners.

None of us are perfect.

So we want to consistently speak the truth and love while evaluating our own self, while

confessing our own sin, and we want to extend grace to others while at the same time speaking

truth into their life.

Is it always popular?

Absolutely not.

Is it uncomfortable?

A lot of times it is.

But when I think back to men and my wife and other people that have called me out on my

sin, once I get past the defensive part, right, we're all there.

Once I get past the defensive part and I really evaluate what they said, it makes me value

them so much more because they did it out of love.

So you'll never see me picketing anything.

You'll never be seeing me on the street corner with my megaphone calling out speeders for

sinning.

You'll never see me at an abortion clinic with a megaphone condemning the choice that

they're making.

You might see me outside an abortion clinic when they're coming out and me just hug them

and walk with them.

And love them in such a way where they hear truth.

We need to be better.

All of us need to be better.

We want grace for others but we have a hard time giving it, right?

We want grace for ourselves but we have a hard time giving it.

And some of us just need to, in reality, like me, keep our mouth shut sometimes because

sometimes the most loving thing to do is not to speak truth in that moment.

We have to speak truth and we have to give grace and we have to let the Holy Spirit of

God inside of us lead the way.

So I'm going to pray for us.

Some of us need to repent of the times that we have kept our mouth shut.

Or we've seen sin and just flat out ignored it.

Some of us need to repent of the fact that when we saw sin and we called it out immediately

and we didn't do it in a way that was filled with grace and love, we need to repent of

that today.

But more importantly, we need to present the, we need to lay this stuff before the Lord.

And as we interact with people, non-believers and believers alike, as we interact with people,

we want to do that in a way that honors the Lord.

That's the most important thing we can do because every situation is different.

But I want to tell the people to my right that I thought they were dead wrong.

Yes.

Would that have been good for our relationship moving forward?

Probably not.

If I get the opportunity later, I will.

Maybe in a nicer way.

And so as we, as we just pray and as we worship and as we ask God to speak to our hearts and

convict us and challenge us.

Will you just trust His leading?

How is He calling you to respond?

Is He calling you to ask somebody to forgive you?

Is He calling you to point out sin?

I am, I have mentally prepared myself today for 400 of you to come say, hey, you're wrong

on this.

You're wrong on this.

I'm mentally prepared and I can handle it.

And if that's how you feel, then I'll take it.

But the truth of the matter is grace and truth aren't contradictory to each other.

They go hand in hand.

My prayer is that if 400 of you come to me today that you'll be met with grace and understand.

We'll test the waters and see.

So will you just pray and ask God, how do you, how does He want you to respond to this?

And then let's just see what happens.

Let's see what He does.

Let's pray.

Father God, we ask you.

And we ask you to be in our midst.

This topic has split denominations.

This topic has split families.

This topic has split churches.

And Father, we ask you, we ask you to speak to our hearts, that we will walk in both grace

and truth and we will walk as you lead us.

And so Father, I thank you for people in my life over the years that have said, hey, your

headlights aren't on and it's going to be dangerous.

I pray Father that your spirit in us will overcome our pride, will overcome our defense

and that you will be glorified in how we walk in grace and truth.

Help us love people well.

Help us see past actions and see that they are loved by you.

Help us walk in truth.

So Father, I pray that you speak to each and every one of our hearts this morning.

We thank you for Jesus.

It does not condemn us but loves us.

I pray for salvation to come to this place for those individuals that have just for so

long felt condemned by you.

I pray that they see your good and your better.

So Father, I pray that you move in this place as we worship.

Amen.