031914: Has No One Condemned You?

Has No One Condemned You?

I.                    Introduction

a.       Our goal this year is to see you get more rooted in Christ as we grow together

b.       One way we are doing this rooting is through sermons about questions found in the Bible.

II.                 Body

a.       Read Jn. 8:2-6a – “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.  In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women.  Now what do you say?”  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.”

                                                             a.      The leaders were trying to trick Jesus by putting him in a tight spot.  #1.  He could uphold the law and tell them to stone the woman, but the Roman government would be angered because Jews were not to carry out a death sentence.  Beyond that the woman is brought in alone, meaning there is another guilty party that is going unpunished.  She was caught in the act, which meant the guy was there too.  #2.  He could tell them to not stone her thus showing that he didn’t support the law, and turn the people against him.

                                                             b.      But Jesus sees their trap and goes a third direction.

b.       Read Jn. 8:6b-11 – “But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  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 the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  “No one sir,” she said.  “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared.  “Go now and leave your life of sin.””

                                                             a.      This is our question of the night: Has no one condemned you?

                                                             b.      Jesus gets them to not want to stone her by pointing out that they are all guilty of sin too, and probably deserve just as much punishment as she did.  The older ones realize this first and start to leave, then the younger, until only Jesus and the woman remains.

                                                             c.      He alone is without sin and could have carried out justice/judgment upon her, but instead he chooses to give her mercy and grace, choosing to forgive and telling her to stop doing the sinful things.

c.       Read Jn. 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

                                                             a.      From the beginning of Jesus coming it was his plan to not condemn, or judge, pass a sentence, execute, the world but rather to save the world through him.

                                                             b.      He came to forgive and heal, not to condemn and destroy.

III.               Conclusion

a.       Nelson Mandela taught the world a lesson in grace when, after emerging from prison after twenty-seven years and being elected president of South Africa, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. He then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with a daunting name, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mandela sought to defuse the natural pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many countries where one oppressed race or tribe took control from another. For the next two-and-a-half years, South Africans listened to reports of atrocities coming out of the TRC hearings. The rules were simple: if a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers, confessed his crime, and fully acknowledged his guilt, he
could not be tried and punished for that crime. Hard-liners grumbled about the obvious injustice of letting criminals go free, but Mandela insisted that the country needed healing even more than it needed justice. At one hearing, a policeman named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body, turning it on the fire like a piece of barbecue meat in order to destroy the evidence. Eight years later van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it. The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond.  What do you want from Mr. van de Broek? the judge asked. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement. Then she added a further request, Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real. Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing Amazing Grace as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed. Justice was not done in South Africa that day, nor in the entire country during months of agonizing procedures by the TRC. Something beyond justice took place. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, said Paul. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu understood that when evil is done, one response alone can overcome the evil. Revenge perpetuates the evil. Justice punishes it. Evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further. And that is the pattern of otherworldly grace that Jesus showed in his life and death. – Excerpted from Rumors of Another World by Philip Yancey

b.       As his followers we are called to do the same.  We are to forgive those who have harmed us, even when the deserve no forgiveness.  We are to love those around us, even when they are acting unlovable.  This can be people at your school, your friends, your relatives your parents, or even your siblings.

c.       Is there someone you need to forgive and show grace to?  Tonight is the night to do that, and to commit from this point forward to showing others grace and mercy rather than condemnation.