I Dont Condemn You

Distribute were accurate. And then the Pharisees, they were the leaders, right? They were members of the Sanhedrin. They were leaders. And they were the ones leading the charge against Jesus.

To arrest him and to crucify him. And they seek to trap him. So what do they do? They bring a woman who is caught in adultery.

This it. This is just confusing, right? A woman.

I want to ask, where was the man?

Where was the man? If the Pharisees truly cared about justice, they put on this facade, as it were. They pretend this. Pretending to care about the laws of God. And they're even using this image that they have created for themselves, about caring about the law of God to try and trap Jesus.

And yet they only brought the woman. Why?

Have you thought about that? Why? They even said here that she was caught in the very act of adultery. I'm sorry, but if you've caught me in the act of adultery, that means you've also caught the other person.

Maybe he wasn't married or anything. She was. It's still adultery. Not if he didn't know it's still adultery. They weren't married.

It's still adultery.

No matter how you spin it. Both people would commit an adultery. Both people caught in the act.

And what do they do? They arrest the woman. They grab her and they drag her before Jesus.

And they plead to the law of Moses. I mean, look at how they even twist the very word that they claim to stand for. It says that the law requires us to stone such a woman. No, it doesn't. The law requires that you stone both people.

Both people are required to be stoned. But they left that out, right? The law requires us to stone such women. The men, they're okay, right? They're safe.

But the woman man, Moses told us, you need to be stoned, woman.

Now, what we actually see is a sinner under the law. Did the law condemn this woman to death? The answer is yes. The answer is yes. But the law condemned the man just as much.

But this is a fact of the law that cannot be denied. In fact, if we look at Leviticus 2010, it says, as for a man who commits Adultery with the man's wife, who commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the man who commits adultery and the woman who commits adultery shall surely be put to death. Again, that's Leviticus 2010. So the law condemns both people. It's a terrible fact that was there.

As far as the law is concerned, this woman is without hope. Does the law give any exception to sin? No. And we read this, we see it in the book of Romans, verse, chapter six, verse 23. What does it tell us?

It tells us that the wages of sin is death. That is the wages of sin. There's no exception in the law. The law, it's holy, it's good, it's just. But justice says if you violate what is good and holy, then you must pay the penalty.

There is no exception. So the law sees this woman as somebody who is without hope.

And even look at her accusers. There's no hope for her in the eyes of her accusers. They're prying for her death. They're just waiting to see what Jesus will say.

In fact, why do you think they're so anxious to get Jesus to accuse her, to condemn?

Wonder, you know, if one of the accusers perhaps was a pharisee. Now, we can't say that for sure, but I kind of wonder because it makes you think, why are they so putting so much attention only on her and not the man? But here they have willful ignorance.

It's willful ignorance because they have distorted the word of God to fit their narrative, to fit their needs at the time. And we see them do it. We see them do it throughout the ministry of Jesus. They constantly. They twist it.

But here's the thing we need to know about the law. The law, it is good. It's holy, it's just. But there is only one who is good, holy and just to judge, and that is God. Right, men, we are so quick to see the speckle in our brother's eye while blind to seeing the moat that stands in ours.

And we would accuse the guilty out of selfish ambition, out of selfish motive. That's never changed. When you look here, their concern is not whether or not this woman was guilty. Their concern is on what jesus will say so that they might attempt. Look at verse five.

It says, sorry, not five, verse six, it says, in order that they might have evidence to accuse him. So their accusations are not out of true concern for the word of God, for God's law, but out of concern of furthering their own agenda. That is what we see going on here. And that's what we see today as well. Today we see a lot of court cases.

We see a lot of prosecutions and other things that it's totally self centered. It's not centered on justice or right and wrong, but it's centered on a prosecutor is up for reelection and needs to make a name for himself. So whether he knows someone's right or wrong, what does he do? He prosecutes even if he knows they didn't do it, so that he has that good image for reelection or for political gain. And I might even say today, for religious gain.

Right? Is there not persecution that religious people inflict upon other religious people for their own religious gain? So that's what's going on here. But at the end of the day, there are two facts that remain. Fact number one, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.

And fact number two, the law condemned her without any hope.

Look what jesus does in verse seven. Let's go. Seven.

Just look at verse or, sorry, still verse six, right? Jesus stooped down and started riding on the ground with his finger.

How does jesus respond? He squats and he begins riding in the ground. What was he riding? I've always wondered that. What is Jesus riding in the ground?

In all of the gospels which record this event, none of them record what he is.

You know, I think you have to think about what Jesus is actually doing here. I don't think there's significance in that he's writing. I think if there was significance in what he wrote in the ground, it would be recorded. But there is significance in what he's doing. What did he do?

He went down. What did jesus have to do to save each of us? He had to lay his life down. He had to go into the earth. He had to be buried.

He had to die. And I think there's significance because jesus is God. As the law giver, the word of God, the law of God was given by Jesus, and Jesus as God needs to uphold the law of God.

There is no salvation yet. There's no mercy or grace or anything else yet, because Jesus had not yet died for us. And then Jesus as savior, he needs to rescue her.

And I think this question that they ask him in verse five, so what do you say?

I think went to the very core of God in that moment as jesus stooped down, symbolically there, laying himself down, as he is faced with a situation to bridge the two worlds which he, not long from now is about to bridge.

And they persist.

They persist. Verse seven. When they persisted in questioning him, he stood up and said to them, the one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her. And then he stooped down again and continued riding on the ground. I think there's some mystery to this question here.

What sayest thou, Jesus? He could not answer the question by saying that. He could only do it by dying.

He couldn't answer the question because what sayeth, what Christ says is I've come to rescue you. I've come to rescue the sinners. Right? And he must do this by dying. But he's not able to answer that right now.

But he came to give his life for us. And I want to point out what he does here. He convicts them. I don't think they realized when they came to trap him with this legal question. Who they were bringing her to.

This is the man. Because he's God, who can seek your soul. He can look into the depths of your heart. And he knows what you're thinking. He knows what you've done.

He knows your motivations, and he convicts them of it. He stands up and he says, the one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her. Notice he doesn't say, that's not what the law says. And he doesn't say, well, stone her. Kill her right now.

Let's get rid of the sinner instead. He says, you are correct, but all of us have sinned. Right? All of you have sinned. Not him.

He doesn't say, us because he didn't sin. He's not including himself there. So let the one who is not guilty of sin be the one to initiate the execution.

What a very wise thing that Jesus did, right? You're all sinners. You were all guilty of the very thing that she has done. In fact, he had to convict them of that in the sermon on the mount. Because the Pharisees, they walked around thinking it was okay to look at women.

And to imagine them and fantasize. They had all in their heart, and they thought they were okay with it. And Jesus had to bring that out and tell them, hey, if you look at a woman with lust in your eyes, you've committed adultery with her in your heart. He had to bring the heart into it. And point it out to them that they are guilty as well.

So he says, you're right. She deserves death, but so do all of you. So let the one among you who does not deserve the death penalty be the one to initiate this. And he goes back to writing. Notice as we read the story.

That none of them argue with him. None of them argue. Why? Because they know he's right. They all know, oh, boy, oh, boy.

I've done stuff that is worthy of being stoned. I've done stuff that says I should be executed. But the only difference between me and her is she got caught. That's the only difference. Here's the thing.

She got caught by man. But don't be fooled. We've all been caught by God, right? All of us have been. We have all been caught.

So look what happens when they heard this. They left one by one, starting at the older men, until only he was left with the woman in the center.

They leave, but look at the order. So they leave one at a time. So there's this whole group and the beginning with the oldest among them, a person leaves after that person leaves, and some time goes on. The next oldest person who's contemplating his life, he leaves. And this crowd gets smaller and smaller until it's just the young people, the people who are ambitious, that are the upcoming leaders, and they're all that stuff.

But what they see. Where did all the older men go? Where did the wise ones among us disappear to? And then they disperse as well. Why do you think the older men left first?

What about life experience, right? The older you get, the more opportunity you have to sin, right? Because you've lived longer. Someone twice my age, they've had double the amount of time to sin and to do wicked things than I've had to do, right? And someone who is double that person's age, they've had quadruple the amount of time to sin that I have.

So the older people, the people who've been around the longest, who have done the most wicked things, who have sinned the most before God, they have a whole life to start thinking, well, I did this and I did that, and, oh, I guess I kind of messed up over here. They begin to leave. They're the most convicted. And the younger people, they're more likely to argue, right? They're more likely to say, well, I haven't sinned.

I haven't done wrong. The older you get and reflect on your life, the more willing and open your eyes are to look and see all the mistakes that you've made. And so we see that happen here. The older men who know they've done messed up, they've done wrong. They've had lots of mistakes to think about.

They begin to leave. And eventually it's only Jesus with the woman. And then again, does he stand up. Let's look at verse ten and eleven.

And when Jesus stood up, he said to her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She says, no one, lord, neither do I condemn you, said Jesus, go. And from now on, do not sin anymore.

That's how he begins. Where's your accusers, woman? Is anyone here to accuse you? The only person with a right to accuse was the only person left with her. And everyone else is like, but look at how she responds in verse eleven.

No one, Lord.

Look at how interesting that is. It's interesting. If you look in your bibles, you'll notice it's capitalized. It's capitalized when there's two words for Lord in the Bible. And you'll notice it makes the distinction in English as to whether or not it's capital or lowercase.

If somebody was talking to the king and said, my lord, I've come to give you news, you'll notice it's a lowercase l. But when someone's talking to or about God and says, lord, you'll notice it's uppercase. So she is addressing him not as a teacher or a rabbi or a prophet, but she is addressing him as her messiah, as her savior, as her God. No one, lord. She says, and look what jesus says.

Neither do I condemn you. Neither do I condemn you. That's a beautiful statement here in John chapter three. Feels like forever since we've actually taught through John chapter three. But I want you to see something about Jesus.

Look at verse 17 says, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Jesus did not come to seek out sinners, to condemn them and sentence them to death. If that's all Jesus wanted to do, he didn't have to come here. He did not need to come. He could have done that from the comfort of his throne in heaven, and rightly so. But he did not come here to condemn.

Rather, he came here to save. He doesn't need to condemn. Look what it says if we were to continue on. It says, anyone who believes in him is not condemned. But the one who does not believe is already condemned.

He doesn't have to condemn the unbeliever because the unbeliever is already in a state of condemnation. So jesus came here to save. He came here. He came here to reverse what man has done.

But do you know how much I hear often from people I interact with in the public? Do you know? One of the biggest roadblocks that stand in the way of us and the unsaved when we go out and we teach them is they feel like we are condemning them, we're judging them. I hear all the time, I don't need to be judged by you.

I don't need to be judged by you. I don't need to be connected. And the problem is we're doing.

I I watch videos on Facebook or YouTube of people who are out there actually condemning people. And that's not our job. It's not our role. We are not God. We're not the judge.

And do not misunderstand me. I believe 100% that we need to call sin sin and tell people it's sin. I believe that. But it's not our job to go and bash them into thinking that or condemning them already into the pits of hell. And that happens.

Here's the problem. Who are we? We're Christians. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means to be a disciple of Christ.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? It means to follow him, to do what he did.

I want to point out what Jesus did.

Somehow I ended up in the wrong chapter. There we go. I had just had to get back to the right place. I want to point out what Jesus did. He says, neither do I condemn you.

He did not come seeking to condemn. He didn't come bashing people over the heads with baseball bats to beat them into submission. He loved them. He stood up for them. He interacted with them, had dinner with them, showed them he cared for them.

But look what else he does. He says, now go and do not sin.

Jesus never misled that woman either and said, it's okay. You didn't do wrong. He didn't coddle her and sugarcoat the issue. He didn't tell her, you're good. You're good.

Go and continue living the way you were living. Right? He says, just don't do this anymore. It's bad for you and it is. Sin is bad for us.

So Jesus was not condemning, and he still called out sin. He still told people, don't sin anymore. As Christians, we ought to be able to do the same thing. We ought to be able to go and eat dinner with the sinner. If the sinless man can do it, why can't we?

We need to be able to care for them, to love them, to show them that we're not their enemy. Because we're not. We're not the enemy here, the world, the devil. Sin is the enemy.

But we also need to preach to them repentance. We need to teach them what is and what is not right, and they know it already. How many of you, before you knew who God was, before you said that sinner's prayer, before you accepted Christ, before he changed your life, how many of you knew what you were doing was wrong when you did it? We all did. So we need to teach them repentance.

We need to teach people to turn around from what they are doing and to follow Jesus instead.

And the message that we bring is the message that Christ brought. He says, I did not come to condemn, but I came to save. And that is our message to anyone tonight who is an earshot of this to anyone who can hear the gospel going forth right now is that Jesus is not here to condemn you, but he is here to save you.

He died that you might be saved. He left his glory.

The last song we sang today, it even talked about the glory. One day, heaven was filled with his glory. He sat upon the throne and he left it. He stepped, he got off a seated throne, and he came down from heaven into earth, took on the form of flesh, and then allowed himself to be tortured and crucified and die for you. And he did not do that to condemn you.

No, he did that to save you.

Just like the woman right here caught in adultery. The facts were clear. She is a sinner, and the law condemns her to death. And the facts are clear for us. Each one of us are sinners, and the law condemns us to death.

It does.

But Jesus has come to seek us and to save us. And he says, I do not condemn you.

I do not condemn you. Grace steps in, grace says, you deserve to die, but you're not going to. We're going to give you eternal life. So what's the catch?

What's the catch? The catch is in Matthew ten, verses 32 and 33, Jesus says, if you confess me before your fellow men, I'll confess you before the Father. And he says, and if you deny me before your fellow men, I'll deny you before the Father, which is in heaven. So the catch is that we must confess him and trust in him and follow him. That's the catch.

To put the entirety of what you are, your being in his hands, and he will not condemn you. So if you are hearing this today and you are ready if you are ready to admit that you are a sinner, which you are, if you're ready to admit the depravity of your soul, and if you believe, if you know in your heart that Jesus is God, that he came for you and that he died for you, if you know in your heart he did right, raise from the grave, raised from the dead, and you are willing to confess him as your king, as your God, as your savior, then Jesus no longer condemns you.

And I encourage you. Confess. I'll give you an opportunity here in a minute to confess him to him, but confess him right. The catch is it's a public confession. He says, if you confess me before your fellow men.

And if you're ready to do that, let's begin tonight. Let's take that step and let's confess to God that we're sinners, that we believe and that he's our Lord. Immediately after our closing prayer, we're going to partake of the Lord's communion.

It's a covenant. Not a covenant, but a token that he has given us.

It's one of the few things he's given us, the other being baptism, to participate and to show his death until he comes to remember what he has done. So I encourage everyone, let's partake of the Lord's supper today and remember what he did together. Let's pray. Father, I admit that I am a sinner. And I admit, Lord, that I cannot save myself, that my ways are evil and wicked and horrible.

But I know that you, O God, stepped into flesh, that you came down into this world that you created. And I know that you died on the cross, and you rose again the third day. And so, Lord Jesus, I confess you as my God, as my king and lord today. And I ask you, Lord, come into my heart and make me a new person.

Make me in your image. Take my life from me, that it will be safe and secure with you and save me from myself and from my sin and from the death that I deserve. And I thank you for that. Father, I pray as we go about, Lord, will you put it in our hearts to show your light and your love to this world, Lord, not condemnation, not judgment, but your love? As we call people to repentance, as we call them, to step from death into life.

I pray you'll be glorified, Father, as you work in us to mold us to the image of your son, and as we walk in that obedience. And we thank you for all that you have done for us. In the beautiful name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.