Stones and Dirt with Pastor Sherri Richard

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

MetaCurch, today we have a guest speaker, my good friend Sherry Richard.

We go way back.

We've done ministry together for a very long time.

Sherry, her husband Wes, and their kids, they are just key volunteers out at our Holotus venue.

And so, man, Holotus, make sure you guys make some noise for her today.

You guys welcome her metachurch style.

She's such a gifted teacher, a gifted preacher.

And when God puts something on her heart, I can't wait to hear it, and I can't wait for you to receive it.

So make sure you're doing your part and help her preach today.

Help her bring this word.

Man, if you've got something in your heart, say it out loud, man.

Clap when she lands a fire point.

It's all of us worshiping under the word together.

When lights come up, you make sure to make my friend Sherry feel welcome.

Hey.

Like Clayton was saying, my husband Wes, our two kids, Parker and Finley, we hang out over at the Holotus venue.

In fact, Wes is over uh playing in the band over in Helotus right now.

Our kids are over in Metakid.

So special shout out to everyone over in Helotus and those watching online right now.

I love our online ministry because when I'm traveling, our families are different places, we can still be here online.

And so special shout out to you guys as well.

And so, yeah.

And so about two years ago, I stepped away from my position as a teaching pastor at a church.

And I started a ministry called Everyday Truths.

We have a podcast and we have a kids' podcast.

I hope you'll check those things out.

But as I was stepping into this new thing, God made it really clear that in this season, I needed to take a step back from speaking so I could really focus in on what it is that He had for me.

And so this is actually the first Sunday service that I have done in two years.

I took that long off.

And the reason that I tell you this is because right as I stepped into this new thing, God laid a story on my heart from Scripture.

And I keep going back to it and again and again and again.

And each time I go back, it's like another layer gets peeled back, both in the story, but also in myself.

This story has forced me to hold up a mirror.

And I haven't always liked what I've seen, but I'm better for it.

And as we dig into this story too, if we're willing together to do the difficult thing and hold up a mirror and look at ourselves in it too, I think that we're all gonna be better for it too.

And so are you guys in?

All right, awesome, yeah.

Before we jump into that story, though, I want to talk about one of life's great mysteries.

All right, there are two kinds of people in this world.

Those who know in their bones that there is a correct way to load a dishwasher.

And those who are chaos goblins, right?

They load a dishwasher just however the mood strikes them that day.

And so since we have known each other for so long now, I'm curious which you think I am, all right?

Who thinks that I am like the orderly person?

Oh, yeah, I mean I'm not even gonna ask the other question.

Because, no, yeah, like my husband is an engineer.

He is a very orderly person, and I'm not even confident if my socks match right now.

Like I am a chaos goblin to the core.

I the only thing I care about when I'm loading a dishwasher is that I don't have to hand wash anything.

Like I will do what it takes to Tetris it in there.

I don't even care if it's dishwasher safe.

Like I just give it a pep talk and I put it in there.

Wes, on the other hand, not so much.

There is no space for whimsy and Wes's dishwasher loading.

And so one fateful day, I walked into the kitchen and Wes is standing next to the dishwasher, and the entire front of his pants are soaking wet.

Now you're probably thinking now what I was thinking then.

This man has wet his pants.

And he had.

No, he didn't.

No, what had happened was I had put a Tepperware container in the top rack, kind of a little like willy-nilly, and it had flipped over during the cycle and filled with water.

So when he opened the top rack, that thing flipped over and dumped water all over him.

And I was made aware at this moment that this was not the first time that I had booby-trapped him.

He's a super mellow guy.

He hadn't really said anything, but now I was aware of the situation.

And for everybody that is concerned about Wes's like mental and physical well-being, I would I have turned over a new leaf.

I only like occasionally booby-trap him, and he seems to be okay with it because we're actually celebrating our 15th anniversary here in just four days.

Yeah.

I tell this story because it's easy to recognize in a silly story like this how there are just different perspectives and different uh angles at any given story.

We all have our own version of the story.

Like from my side of the story, I was blissfully unaware, just chaos goblining up, shoving things in the dishwasher.

From Wes's perspective, the dishwasher was never done correctly.

He was constantly having to go behind me and fix something.

He was constantly getting booby-trapped, and perhaps worst of all, his wife seemed to be like didn't care at all about his trials and tribulations.

There's always more than one side to a story.

And in our version of a story, typically, we're the good guy.

We're not the bad guy.

We're the ones who are wronged.

We're not the ones who would wrong someone else.

We're the ones who understand what really happened.

We're not the ones who misunderstood the situation.

And we come by this very naturally because we all live inside of our own shoes.

We all stand from our own perspectives.

And seeing things differently actually makes our world a better place in so many ways.

But where it becomes dangerous is when we begin to believe that our version of events, that our perspective is the only one that matters, that our side of the story is the whole story.

We're the only ones who have it right.

This is where it begins to become problematic because when we have that posture, when we always think we're right, when we dig our heels in constantly, we stop listening, we stop challenging ourselves and evaluating ourselves and looking inward.

We stop trying to understand the person that's sitting right in front of us.

Because once I decide that I cannot be wrong, then almost anything I do to the person who I have labeled as wrong feels justifiable.

Once I have decided that I'm the hero in this story, it is not a big leap for me to start making everyone else the villain in the story, for me to start villainizing those who aren't my side of the on my side of the series of events.

And so the story that we're gonna look at today is gonna force us to stand in some different perspectives.

We're gonna stand in the shoes of some powerful men who will do whatever it takes to protect their power, who will do whatever it takes to be right.

We are going to step into the shoes of a woman who is caught in the worst moment of her life, in the most terrifying moment of her life.

We're gonna step into the shoes of a crowd who are watching all of this happened around them, being pulled this way and that by the loud voices that surround them.

And then we're gonna look at the perspective of Jesus, the only one who has the whole story, the only one who has the right perspective.

And we're gonna hold up a mirror and see what shoes we really fit in today.

And so throughout the Gospels, well, let me say this first.

I haven't, spoiler alert.

We're gonna look at the story of the woman who is caught in adultery.

And we find this story in the book of John.

We've been working through the book of Luke together.

We're gonna step out today.

This is a story we don't find in Luke, so it's gonna give us an interesting perspective.

And as we walk into the story, something we need to know is that religious leaders are really important in this story.

And if you read throughout the Gospels, you see different religious leaders show up lots and lots of different times.

Sometimes they're called Pharisees or Sadducees, priests, Levites, just experts in the law.

For the purpose of our conversation today, I'm just gonna call them all religious leaders.

And these leaders, they tended to be the most important person in the room.

They were the ones with all the power.

They were the ones with a great deal of influence.

When they spoke, people listened.

And then Jesus comes on the scene.

And what he is teaching goes against what it is that these religious leaders are often teaching.

What he is teaching is challenging their authority and challenging their power.

And many of them do not like this.

They want things to stay exactly the way that they are.

They want to stay in power, they want to stay influential.

And so they plot and they plan and they try to trap Jesus over and over and over again.

Eventually they do.

It leads to him being arrested and crucified.

But right now, in this part of the story, they're plotting to have him arrested.

They've already failed.

They've tried and failed even just the day before this story that we're gonna look at to have him arrested.

So here in this, we can see their motivation as we walk into the story.

We can see their angle, we can see what they desire for the end result to be.

And so let's jump into the story.

This is John chapter 8, verses 2 through 6.

John 8:2–6

This is what it says.

At dawn, he 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 brought in a woman caught in adultery.

They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery, and the law of Moses is commanded us to stone such a woman.

Now what do you say?

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

So we'll set the scene.

Jesus is sitting, he would have sat to teach.

That's what they did.

And he's teaching this crowd of people.

When these religious leaders come in with this woman in tow, and they take her and they put her in front of this crowd, and they call Jesus out.

What do you say?

And here she stands in the most terrifying moment of her life, surrounded on all sides by people who are talking about her, people who are judging her, whispering her, who maybe even are yelling and condemning her, surrounded on all sides.

And this is where we find ourselves right now.

Now, the trap that these religious leaders are trying to set is actually a very simple one.

For my Star Trek fans, they're trying to pull a Kobayashi Maru on Jesus, right?

They have him between a rock and a hard place.

And so the trap that they're setting is this.

All right, so the Roman Empire is who sits over them.

It's the authority over them.

And they have strict laws on who can carry out capital punishment, who can have someone killed for a crime that they have committed.

And if Jesus were to say, okay, go ahead and stone her, he would be arrested by the Romans, and the religious leaders would get what they wanted.

On the other side, if he says the law of Moses doesn't matter, no, we're not gonna stone her, then these religious leaders could call him a heretic and they could call him out in front of this crowd of people and with the under their twisted version of the law, and then they could get the temple guards to go and arrest him.

Either way, they think they have Jesus trapped here.

And on the surface, there are a couple things they are right about.

All right.

If we flip over to Exodus, where the Ten Commandments are, right?

The top ten, the big ones.

It says right here in verse 14, you shall not commit adultery.

So they have that part right.

If we flip over to Leviticus, if we get even deeper into the technicalities of the law, we can read here.

It says, if a man commits adultery with another man's wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.

And so it would seem that they have this right, right?

Like this is just a case of your friendly neighborhood Pharisees that are cleaning up the mean streets of Jerusalem.

But when we start digging in further, we find a list of issues that's just about as long as a CVS receipt.

And those are long.

They've just drug a woman here.

Where's the man?

Like it takes two to tango.

Like this is kind of how it works.

Where's the guy?

And this is no small detail because the Jewish law had strenuous requirements.

They had strenuous due process when it came to a capital offense.

Like you had to check a lot of boxes.

First, the man and the woman were to be brought in front of everyone.

Second, there was supposed to be credible testimonies from multiple witnesses who were eyewitnesses, first of all, gross, all right, who were eyewitnesses to this crime.

They had to be brought forward.

And there was an entire laundry list of other requirements in order for a consequence like this to be doled out.

The reason I tell you all of this is because we can clearly see these folks who claim to love the law, who claim to follow the law, y'all, they even added more laws so that they could be more holy and more above everyone.

These guys that said that they were all about the law, they were taking and selectively using the law to meet their own agenda.

This is not about justice, this is about an agenda.

And if we go even further into it, this punishment wasn't carried out.

Most scholars believe even back in Old Testament times, that there were so many requirements there.

And that there were even paths of redemption available, even once you were caught up in the technicalities of all of it.

Like, this isn't about justice.

This isn't about an agenda.

And so they think they have Jesus trapped.

They think they have him between a rock and a hard place.

And it's easy to look at these religious leaders and condemn them.

And to say, how terrible are they?

Like I would never, like those guys way over there.

It's easy to condemn them, but it's much, much more difficult to recognize that in so many ways we are them.

I don't think you're plotting anyone's death or wrongful arrest or plotting to, I don't know, incite a mob.

Like, and if you are free advice, stop.

Don't do that.

But it's so easy for us to walk through life and to selectively choose the things that we want and the things that we like and throw away the things that we don't like.

It's really easy for us to selectively choose moments in our life to have integrity and then other moments in our life to kind of skirt the line.

If you're somebody who has been a follower of Jesus maybe for some time and you spend time in the Word, it's very, very easy for us to jump into Scripture and to go and grab the pieces that meet our agenda and just kind of leave the other ones behind.

It's really easy to take and apply a difficult truth to someone else, but not hold up a mirror to ourselves.

It's really, really easy to walk into a church service and to grab hold of the things that we like and to leave at the door the things that we would rather not think about.

In small everyday ways, we might just be like these men who have taken and used scripture for our own games, gains, perhaps, and then thrown everything else to the side.

And this is a dangerous game, and it starts so small.

And the fact of the matter is, I'm not trying to call you a bad guy or anything like that or to say that you're just as bad as these guys.

We don't need to play a comparison game here.

That's not what we're here to do.

And we all walk into scripture and into life with our own experiences, our own preferences, our own fears, our own assumptions, and we face the temptation to do exactly what it is that they're doing.

We carry our worldview into the pages of scripture.

And this is something I love about what we've been doing here at Meta as we've been working verse by verse through the book of Luke.

Because the purpose of this is that we can come to recognize Jesus so well and that we can come to hear his voice so clearly that we aren't letting the world and the worldviews around us twist and shape our view of Jesus, but instead, we're allowing Jesus to shape who we become.

We're not shaping the words of Scripture.

Yeah.

We're not taking our worldviews and our opinions and projecting them onto Scripture, but we're letting Scripture transform us and transform our lives.

And it matters because the world is always gonna be full of voices that are gonna tell us who we should be, what we should be yelling about, who we should support, and who we should hate.

And none of that's gonna go away.

And this is why we have to learn who Jesus truly is and learn to hear his voice above the noise, because this this right here is why it matters.

Because if we misunderstand Jesus, we will misrepresent Jesus.

And when we misrepresent Jesus, it will be at the detriment of those around us, those that we're called to love, those that we're called to be the hands and feet of Jesus too.

They will bear those consequences when we misrepresent Jesus.

And so as we step back into the shoes of these religious leaders, it's easy to condemn them, like I said.

But if we take a really big step back, we can imagine these men as young boys who sat at the feet of their fathers and their mothers and their teachers, and they heard over and over again stories and prophecies about a Messiah that was to come, someone who was to come to fix everything that was wrong with the world.

And they knew he was coming and they were eagerly awaiting him.

And now he is standing right in front of them and they can't see him.

Because they are so tethered to their agenda.

They are so tethered to being right, they are so tethered to having their own way, and when we do this, we can miss Jesus standing right in front of us, too.

We have to be willing to let Jesus shape our worldview and not let our worldview shape our views of Jesus.

And so let's go back to the courtyard.

Because the woman is still standing there, and the crowd is still watching, the leaders are still demanding an answer.

And Jesus hasn't said a word.

If I didn't know what happened next, right now I would expect Jesus to give an eloquent speech.

Maybe even to hold the fire under the feet of these men who have drugged this woman here to give an insightful parable.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, let's look at what Jesus does right here.

It says, but Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

Everyone else was moving quickly.

Everyone else was moving with an urgency.

They grab this woman, they pull her through the streets, they throw her down in front of Jesus.

They demand an answer.

And Jesus slows everything down.

He takes a moment to reflect.

They demand urgency.

Jesus creates space.

They want a spectacle, and Jesus creates silence.

They want him to react on their terms, to play their game.

And he refuses.

And Jesus is Jesus.

Like he has the right answer in his back pocket or in this back robe.

He has the answers.

But he doesn't immediately jump into those answers.

He doesn't immediately give a response.

And this should be a great lesson for us to walk around away with because not every demand deserves an immediate answer.

And not every accusation requires that immediate response, that clap back.

And not every argument deserves participation.

Sometimes the most Christ-like thing that we can do is refusing to let someone else's urgency or their escalation determine our posture.

His pause was an indifference.

He cared deeply.

It was intention.

Now, there's a lot of theories on what it is that Jesus was writing in the dirt.

All right, some theories say that he was writing the names of the men who were also guilty of adultery.

Cool theory.

Some people say that he was down in the dirt and he was writing down the sins of the men that were standing there.

Also a cool theory.

But at the end of the day, we have no idea what Jesus was writing down in the sand.

We don't know.

The text doesn't tell us that.

But let me tell you something that we can know for certain is that when we go back and we read, right, they're talking about the law of Moses.

Right?

Moses went up on top of a mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God.

And it says that it was the very finger of God that wrote the law onto the tablets.

And now in an incredible and a beautiful image of Jesus' humanity and his humility, we see the very same finger of God in human flesh kneeling down in the dirt as he is confronted by a perverted version of the same law that he authored.

And he does it all while kneeling in front of a hurting person.

We don't know what he wrote, but we do know who he is.

And so the religious leaders, they're acting as if they have greater authority over the law than Jesus.

The one who's kneeling on the ground is the one who wrote it.

And so let's look at what it says next.

It says, when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

Now I can't say this enough times because somebody's gonna get caught on this detail right here.

And so let's be clear that Jesus is not saying that sin should not be addressed.

Jesus is not saying that accountability doesn't matter.

Grace and accountability are not mutually exclusive.

What he's doing here is he is exposing people who have confused accountability with condemnation, who have confused justice with the court of public opinion.

Go ahead.

If you're perfect, pick up a stone.

Notice he doesn't say, if her sins are greater than yours, go ahead and pick up the stones.

He doesn't say if your sins are itty bitty, go ahead and pick up a stone.

He doesn't say if your sins are better hidden, go ahead and pick up a stone.

No, he says, if you are without sin, pick up a stone.

So often this is why we throw stones.

It's because we believe that what someone else has done is worse than what it is that we've done.

That's why we pick up stones.

We believe that the way that they have wronged us is worse than the ways that we have wronged them.

And so we feel justified in picking up a stone.

It's almost like we kind of create an exchange rate for sin, as if there's this hierarchy, and we rank them and we compare them.

And once we have decided that another person is more at fault, we begin to believe that we are justified in doing whatever it is that we want, of saying whatever it is that we want.

We repeat the story that makes them look terrible.

We call them names, we write the ugly comment.

We believe that they have earned their shame.

But Jesus offers no exchange rate.

No exchange rate, only a mirror.

The next verse here says, Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

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

Imagine the silence in this moment.

An entire mob struck dumb as a mirror is turned on them.

As they have to look inside and wrestle with the things that it is that they have done wrong, how they have wronged others, the words that they have spoken in hate.

They have to evaluate their own sins.

They have to evaluate the things that they thought no one knew about.

They have to evaluate the things that they wish no one knew about.

And from the oldest to the youngest, they walk away.

Then Jesus straightens up and he asks, Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

Where are they?

Something we can't miss.

And for some of us, this may be the most important thing that we hear today.

We can't miss this.

Is that the crowd around her is talking about her.

They're condemning her, they're shaming her.

Notice Jesus never talks about her.

He talks to her.

He looks her in the face and he talks to her.

To the religious leaders, she was a pawn.

She was a problem.

She was just a game, a piece in their terrible game, their twisted game that they were using to maintain their own power.

But to Jesus, she is a person.

100%.

And we see this in Jesus over and over and over again.

When people talk about other people, when they condemn them, Jesus talks to them, the people that no one else will talk to.

He talks to the sick, he talks to the unclean.

He has conversations with people that everyone else says are sinners.

He has conversations with people that no one else will talk to.

He talks to people, he does not talk about people.

Do you talk to people?

Or do you talk about people?

It matters.

And it matters a lot.

When there's a problem at work, do you go and get other people on your side?

Or do you go have the actual conversation that needs to happen?

Right?

When the gossip is going around and everybody's spilling the tea, are you sitting there waiting for the next bullet point?

Then what happened?

Then what happened?

Or are you going and checking on somebody who's hurting, even if they're there because of the own that their own decisions that they've made?

All right, when that family member goes ahead and they do they do the thing that you said that they shouldn't do, do we stand at a distance and say, I told you so?

Or do we come alongside them and help them find a path back to who we know they can be?

This is really difficult because it's so easy to talk about someone.

And I'm not talking you, we have to have conversations realistically about people, but we have to hold in in our perspective how we're talking about them.

And there are even going to be difficult conversations that we need to have about someone, right?

Because something's challenging is going on and we need to come and we need to seek wisdom, or a boundary needs to be set, and we need to come ask people for help, or maybe even we're in an unsafe situation, and so we need to go and have conversations to ensure our safety or the safety of our kids, the safety of the people that we love.

There are so many conversations that we need to have over on the side, but how are you talking about the people, even the people that you disagree with?

And it matters so much.

Do you talk to people or do you talk about people?

The story repeated for your entertainment is a stone.

The label that reduces someone to their worst moments is a stone.

Jesus does not treat this woman as a subject for debate.

He treats her as a person.

And so we ask the question: who has accused you?

No one, sir, she said.

Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.

Go now and live and leave your life of sin.

Of everyone in that courtyard, Jesus was the only one without sin.

He was the only one who had the right to throw a stone, and yet he doesn't.

This is grace.

This is what grace is.

All right.

But grace and accountability are not mutually exclusive.

He Jesus is not pretending like her choices don't matter.

He tells her specifically go and live your leave your life of sin.

Go and live differently.

Go and be defined by something more than your worst moments.

Go and walk in a different pattern, different patterns than what you're doing now, those things that are destroying your life, those things that are keeping you chained.

Go and sin no more.

Go and live differently.

He does not excuse her sin, but he refuses to humiliate her to address it.

He offers grace and he calls her towards transformation.

He sees who she's been, he sees where she's been, but he also sees who she can be.

Really quick side tangent is sometimes this beautiful verse, and that's the last verse we're gonna look at right here, but sometimes this beautiful story is taken and it's weaponized.

Just like the religious leaders, they would take the law and they would pull it out of context for their own gains and their own agenda.

Very often this verse is kind of taken out of context and it's used, like I said, as a weapon.

Because people will take it and they go, Yeah, I understand we're supposed to show grace, but then Jesus said, go and sin no more.

So if someone continues to sin, then I'm justified in whatever it is that I want to say and whatever it is that I want to do.

If they continue that lifestyle that I disagree with or whatever that looks like, if I if they continue that, then surely, then it's okay for me to judge them.

Then it's okay for me to say whatever it is that I want to say.

If the things that they believe in are completely counter to what it is that I believe in, then certainly, then it's okay to pick up a stone.

It's a we we ask the question, when can I throw my stone?

And this is so problematic.

It's like we draw a line and we say we show grace up to this line and no further.

And we've all done it.

Right?

This is the line.

You've crossed the line.

It's like grace has a line.

And there is no greater example of this than our world, and none of us love to talk about it.

But the greatest example of this in our world right now is politics.

Because we draw a line, typically it goes right down the middle of the aisle.

And do not think about the people on the other side of your aisle.

Remember, we're holding up a mirror to ourselves because the world has told us that if somebody sits on the opposite side of the political aisle than we do, we can say whatever we want about them.

We can call them all kinds of names.

We can sit there and tear them apart a piece at a time because of the things that they believe in are counter to the things that we believe in.

And that is absolutely nonsense.

Like what we're I most of my work is online, and so I see way too much of this.

I cannot tell you how often I see Christians who take and who sacrifice their testimony on the altar of politics, who take their opportunities to love people and sacrifice them on the altar of their agenda.

They go and they sacrifice the opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our world, and they go and sacrifice it on their desires to be right, if their desires to be the smartest person on the room, in their desires to have the quickest clap back.

What are we doing?

Even if you're not politically active or you're not chronically online, a great litmus test is by simply asking ourselves the question: where are we calling names?

Where are we calling people names?

Because when we call someone a name, we are taking and we are reducing them down to a single characteristic about themselves.

And it's typically not very flattering.

I don't care if it's your worst enemy, your coworker, that family member, or simply someone who's riding your bumper on the highway, calling people names is a very slippery slope because it means that we are reducing someone down to less than who they are as a whole person created in the image of God.

And it is a very slippery slope because if I can see you as less than a person, then I can feel justified in talking to you however I want, and treating you however I want, in throwing stones at you as much as I want.

And if you think I'm making too big of a deal out of this, if you flip over to the gospel of Matthew and you look at the Sermon on the Mount, you can go find this in Matthew 5.

Jesus compares name-calling to murder.

And it may seem extreme.

But the thing is, the words that we say, they are in our heart and they move from our hands to our feet.

Contempt in our heart is a stone in our hand.

It matters how we talk about people.

We can't play the game where we ask where the line is.

And if we're still wondering where the line is, I want to just give us a hypothetical to kind of put this to bed because people will ask the question, how far?

Like, how far do I need to show grace?

All right, so let's just think about this hypothetical for a second.

Let's pretend like this same woman was drug in front of Jesus the very next day, right?

For the very same sin.

And then the day after that, she's done it again, and the day after that, and so on and so on and so on.

We have no idea what Jesus would have said if this was the case.

I'm confident he would have had plenty to say to her.

But I think we can say with confidence that under no circumstances would Jesus have gone, all right, boys, she's finally done enough.

Warm up your arm.

Pick out a good stone.

It wouldn't have happened.

Because it is never our job to pick up a stone.

We shouldn't be asking, when can I throw my stone?

When have they done enough?

The question should be asked, we should be asking ourselves is how do we put our stones down?

Not when can I throw my stones.

Shouting insults to prove a point will never lead people towards Jesus.

Demanding our own way won't lead people towards Jesus.

Throwing hateful words won't lead people towards Jesus.

It's not how it works.

And when we do this, we've completely lost the plot line.

We've completely lost what matters most.

And so we started out talking about the different perspectives in this courtyard.

So I want us to step in one more time back into this story.

And I know your clothes don't really like match the aesthetic, but pretend you're there anyway, all right?

And you're standing in the middle of this scene.

On one side, there are confident people shouting passionate arguments.

And you might even agree with what they're saying.

Like some of what they're saying may even confirm some of the things that you believe in your heart.

And you stand here in the middle of a crowd.

And let's just start by saying that the crowd is a very, very comfortable place to be.

You might be surrounded by people who believe what you believe and who think the way that you think.

The crowd is a very, very comfortable place for us to be.

There's comfort in knowing who to point your finger at.

There's comfort in knowing who's at fault.

There's comfort in knowing who the bad guy is.

There's comfort in the relief of not having to examine yourself.

There's comfort in being lost in the crowd because it becomes really, really easy to do whatever it is that we want when everybody else is talking about others that way.

And when everybody else behaves this way.

On one side, we have loud voices.

In the middle, we have a crowd being swayed this way and that.

And then there's Jesus.

And while the crowd stands over the woman, Jesus gets down in the dirt.

While the crowd speaks about her, Jesus speaks to her.

When the crowd exposes her, Jesus makes them evaluate themselves.

And when the crowd wants condemnation, Jesus offers grace.

And he leads her toward freedom.

And so you and I, the question that we have to answer is what posture are we going to have?

Are we going to be people who pick up stones?

Are we going to be people who kneel down in the dirt?

People who see people as people.

People who are willing to get down on someone else's level and to see them.

Are we going to pick up stones?

Or are we going to get down in the dirt?

Getting down in the dirt does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or pretending like everything is okay.

In fact, down in the dirt is when we can have those conversations.

It does not mean ignoring injustice.

Refusing to establish boundaries.

That is not what it means at all.

What it means is we need to enter those moments the way that Jesus did.

We need to see a person not merely as a problem, but as someone who was created in the image of God.

We need to slow down instead of being swept away in a crowd.

We need to examine our hearts before condemning someone else.

We need to speak without cruelty.

And the list could go on and on and on because we cannot stand and we cannot get in the dirt with someone and we cannot love someone well with the stone behind our back.

The question is, what posture are we gonna have?

Will we pick up stones or will we get down in the dirt?

And so before we leave, I just want to challenge you on one thing.

Is I want you to look at your own hands and ask what you're carrying today?

Is it a stone?

Is it an ugly comment or clapback that you're just waiting to leave?

Is it a story that you keep repeating?

Is it a name that you have attached to someone?

Is there a person that you have reduced down to their worst moment or the worst thing about them?

Is there someone that you have talked about but never spoken to?

What are you holding in your hands?

Where in your life is becoming and being right more important than your calling to look like Jesus?

When the voices around us become loud, we have a choice.

When the world around us demands our immediate attention, we have a choice.

Are we gonna be people who listen to the hype, who listen to the yelling, who pick up stones?

Are we gonna be people who get down in the dirt?

May we always be people that get down in the dirt.

And so almost everything I've said right now has had to do with those of us who have already believed in Jesus, that are followers of Jesus, that call ourselves Christians.

This has mostly been absolutely a challenge to you so far, but there's likely someone here and someone maybe at our Holotus venue and maybe watching online right now that you've never gotten to that place in your journey.

And I just want to tell you that Jesus, when the world wants to stand around you and judge you and throw stones, when you find yourself in your worst ways, when you find yourself in the middle of your hurt, we don't have a God that yells from above us.

We have a savior who kneels in front of us and who sees you.

And you need him, and I need him, and everyone else sitting in here does too.

That is our savior, that is your savior.

And he leads us into a different kind of life, a better kind of living, and all we have to do is believe in him to receive his grace.

And so, right now, I want us all to close our eyes together.

And if you have never had a moment in time where you have made the decision to trust that Jesus is God and that he paid the price for your sins, and you're ready to make that decision today, I want to ask you, with everyone's eyes closed, we're gonna create as much privacy as we can for people.

I want to ask you just simply to raise your hand if you're ready to make that decision today.

If you're ready to step into the waters, if you're ready to believe in Jesus.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, Jesus sees and accepts your faith, which means you have been given eternal life.

And I want to help you just simply acknowledge this by saying a simple prayer together.

And I want everyone in this room to say this with me.

We're gonna say, Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins, and I believe you rose again.

Thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

And now let me pray over you.

So, God, I thank you for just every person, God, that right now is just under my voice, God.

I just thank you for each and every one of them.

And I thank you that you speak to us each individually, God.

And so right now I just pray that whatever it is that you've impressed on our hearts today, that we would hold tightly to it, that we would walk out with it, even if it's difficult, God, so that we can go into our world today and we can be people who kneel in the dirt and not people who pick up stones.

We love you, and it's in your name that we pray.

Amen.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

If you want to help get the word out about this podcast, the first thing you can do is subscribe.

You can also rate and review this on whatever platform you like to listen on, and you can share it with your friends.

If you want to know more about MetaCurch, you can go to our website, metachurch.tv, where you can find out about all things metachurch.

And if you feel led, you can contribute to help push this movement forward.

We hope that you'll join us next week on the MetaCurch Podcast.