Dr. Ron Sumners
March 8, 2009
There are some passages in the Bible which good people feel uncomfortable, and they wonder if they should be there at all. The story of the sin of Onan, the drunkenness of Noah and several others. The story of the woman caught in adultery is one such story.
At first glance, for some, it seems that Jesus is simply lenient on sexual sin. For the Pharisees of His day and ours, Jesus was always with the wrong people and saying the wrong things. Those folks took the Sabbath seriously. He didn't seem to. There are people uptight about drinking alcohol. That didn't seem to bother Him. He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. The Pharisees, old and new, never understand that Jesus was all about people not man-made rules and regulations and qualifications.
This story demonstrates that Jesus was God and that in the midst of moral darkness, He was the light filled with grace and truth. This story reveals a great deal to us about Jesus and the Father who sent Him!
I don't doubt that this event actually took place. What is more, I think I know why it is included here. If no one else understood Him that day, if no one else saw His light, one woman did. It has always been true that the people who have two strikes against them have a clearer understanding of who Jesus is than the people who think of themselves as home-run hitters.
In this story the woman is exposed. These religious leaders bring her sin to light and cast her into darkness. Jesus deals with the darkness of her sin, but she comes to see the light.
People from all over Israel had gathered in the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the most joyous of all the feasts - the Feast of tabernacles, more commonly known as the Feast of Booths. The Mosaic Law required all men who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem to go up to the city for the feast. People poured into Jerusalem from all over the country.
The Feast of Booths commemorated God's gracious dealings with His people. There was a time when the nation of Israel had lived in booths; temporary dwellings in the wilderness. They subsisted on quail and manna that God provided day by day. But then, God brought His children into a land of milk and honey, where they enjoyed prosperous harvests and a permanent homeland.
So, at harvest time each year, the Jews came together in Jerusalem to give thanks to God for His blessings to them. As a reminder that life had not been so pleasant, the people built booths to live in during the week of the feast. These structures were similar to the dwellings their forefathers had built in the wilderness - makeshift shelters of palm fronds and willow branches with thatched roofs. Jerusalem looked like a happy shantytown during the week-long festival. Temporary shacks sprang up in every available place, in the streets, in public gardens, on the flat rooftops of houses all over the city.
The fields of barley and wheat had been harvested and stored for winter and the people were ready to celebrate and give thanks to God. Many came to give praise and offer sacrifices at the Temple. But as often happens with religious holidays observed year after year, the Feast of Booths had become, for the average Jew, a week-long bash, devoid of much significance. It's the same with our great holidays, isn't it? For most Americans, Thanksgiving has become merely a day for gluttonous eating and football games. And at Christmas, while some still remember the Christ child, most simply look for brightly wrapped presents under the tree. Just as our great occasion for worship and thanksgiving have degenerated into times for food and booze and commercialism, so the Feast of Booths represented, for the majority, a week of revelry, drunkenness, and debauchery. It resembled a modern-day Mardi Gras, which is a religious festival, believe it or not!
It is here that our story takes place; at the end of a week-long carnival in the city of Jerusalem. As dawn broke that day, most of the city could be found in their flimsy booths, sleeping off hangovers. There were some, however, who had come to Jerusalem to worship and they were making their way to the Temple. There was one particularly curious group who came to the Temple that morning.
“At dawn He appeared again at 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” (vv. 2-3a).
What a scene! Who was this woman? How was she caught in the very act of adultery? There is really no indication that she was a prostitute by trade. The text merely calls her “a woman caught in adultery,” not a “harlot” or a “prostitute”. It is doubtful that the Pharisees had fished her out of the local red light district. She was just a woman who had made a terrible mistake.
The text indicates that she was guilty of adultery, so she was probably married. Perhaps her husband was out of the country on business. He may have been a merchant closing a deal in Egypt or Syria. Transportation was slow in the first century and long trips took months. He may have been away for weeks with several more weeks until he got home. And he had left his wife home, alone, at one of the most festive times of the year.
I am not creating an excuse for the woman's sin, there is none; just speculating on how she got to the feet of Jesus.
Perhaps she went with friends to a party. They sang and danced into the late hours of the evening. Such parties were the order-of-the-day at Festival time. There she may have met a man who took away her loneliness.
He was young, handsome and told her that she was pretty. He was alone and had come to Jerusalem for the Festival. They talked and he held her hand and for the first time in weeks she felt attractive, energetic and happy.
The morning found them together, perhaps in the “booth” he had built for the festival. The morning light not only brought her remorse for her impetuous act, it brought exposure. Passing through the streets on their way to the Temple, a band of Pharisees spied the couple and grabbed the woman from the embrace of her lover.
Startled and confused, she reached for her young man, but he was gone. He had bolted and run when he saw the robes of the Pharisees. Or maybe the whole thing was a set-up by the Pharisees in order to trap Jesus. She may have been used in an elaborate scheme to discredit Jesus. We will never know the answer to that question. She begged the men for mercy, but they dragged her from the shelter into the street.
Questions flooded her mind as she fought back the hot tears of fear, humiliation, and anger. How could he leave her alone, exposed and vulnerable? What would her husband think when he got home? He would surely divorce her. Why had they singled her out of the crowd? What would become of her? She felt cheapened, rejected and destroyed.
The religious leaders only aggravated her guilt. They called her names. There was no forgiveness or compassion in these “religious” men. A woman of her kind deserved the punishment she would get. They pulled her, sobbing and stumbling, through the narrow streets.
As they entered the temple courts, they saw a group of people around Jesus. He was sitting on the ground explaining the Scriptures, but they didn't hesitate to interrupt Him. They knew He would be there! They cast the exposed adulteress on the ground at His feet into the midst of the startled group, and demanded, “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?” (vv. 4-5).
These men were the moral pillars of the Jewish community, upholders of all that was good and holy. At least that is what they appeared to be. Listening to them, you might think they were distressed at the carnival atmosphere of the city when the people should be worshipping. You might think they had launched a campaign to clean up the streets, beginning with this woman. At least that's the way it seemed. But things are not always as they seem. Righteousness is not always as it appears to be. In verse 6, we learn, from John's commentary, that their real intent was to trap Jesus.
What kind of trap was this? How did they design it? We can only imagine. We do know that the Jewish leaders were already plotting to have Jesus put away. In fact, at the beginning of the week, they had sent their court officers to arrest Him. But they were afraid of His popularity and had returned empty-handed. The Pharisees knew that it would be no easy matter to get to Jesus so they decided that the best plan was to discredit Him with the people. That's why I speculate that the young man, the night before, was part of the scheme to have an adulteress to drag to Jesus.
The Pharisees reasoned, “Why don't we catch Jesus between His love for the rabble and His regard for the law? If He chooses the woman, the crowds will begin to question His teachings because they will be in opposition to the law. If He chooses the law, the people will abandon Him because of His lack of compassion. He will lose His following either way!”
It didn't matter to the Pharisees whether this woman was stoned to death or not. The life they wanted was not hers but Jesus'. They were not really concerned with her or her sin. She was merely “Exhibit A” in a crucial test case.
T
hat was the mood as they dragged her before Jesus that morning. That was the reason for their question. It all appeared so righteous, so theological. But the appearance was false. Their real intention was to set a snare for Jesus!
Jesus knew these men. He perceived the dilemma they proposed. Even more, He saw beyond them to that woman who lay before them all in shame and humiliation. To Him she was not “Exhibit A,” but a hurting sinner, who had indeed violated the law, but who needed grace, forgiveness and restoration. Jesus took in the meaning of the whole scene in a glance. Then He did a strange thing. As the Pharisees hurled their questions like stones at Him, Jesus stooped over and began to write on the ground with His finger.
You can imagine what the Pharisees must have thought. “Ha! We've stumped Him now. He doesn't know what to say. He's just buying time.” Jesus took the attention off the woman, shuttering in her bitter shame, and drew their attention to Himself.
What was He writing? Was He just doodling or was it something more significant? We'll never really know what He wrote. Some of the ancient manuscripts added a line that does not appear in our Bibles: “and with His finger He wrote on the ground - the sins of each one of them.” Hypocrite, liar, deceiver, gossip, dishonorer of parents, could have been a few He wrote in the sand. He would have known their sins.
His delay in answering the Pharisees only caused them to insist more loudly, “What do you say? Shall we stone her?”
He straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone at her” (v.7b). And having said that, one single sentence, He stooped down and wrote on the ground again.
The Pharisees had paraded themselves before the people as morally superior bastions of holiness and righteousness. Their facades had even fooled themselves into believing that the mask was the truth. They could tell you everything that was wrong with everyone else and everything that was right about themselves. That is the way it is with Pharisees in the first century or the twentieth; in Jerusalem or in Birmingham.
We can see the seeds of Phariseeism planted in the soils of our own lives. A businessman can be incensed with the bribery that goes on in Washington, yet not think twice about cheating on his income tax. We take note of some friend who is a gossip and overlook completely that we are gossiping to someone else about the gossip! The sins that we are quick to recognize in others may blind us to the sin in our own life. We can be so angry at other people's sins that we are tempted to reach down and pick up stones, only to be brought up short when we hear Jesus say to us, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone. . .”
That's all He had to say. There was no sermon; no long indictment. A single sentence was all He uttered. Then He went back to writing on the ground.
“At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first. . .” (v.9). Had Jesus said, “Let the respectable cast the first stone,” many would have qualified. If He had said, “Let the most religious cast it,” the majority would have felt qualified to begin the slaughter. But Jesus did not say that. No one could qualify to cast the stones that they probably already held in their hands. The only sound was the soft “plop” as stones fell to the ground.
Stunned by Jesus' words and snared in their own trap, the Pharisees and scribes filed out, leaving the woman behind them. She had never been important to them anyway. Their test had backfired. They had lost another bout with the masterful young teacher.
When Jesus shone His light upon their lives, they were exposed as no better than the sinners they used their laws to condemn. The truth they claimed to uphold had defeated them. Had they responded to the light that Jesus offered, they would have found His grace. For Jesus loved the Pharisees as much as He loved the woman.
What was He scribbling this second time? Perhaps He thoughtfully sketched the figure of the cross through the list of sins that stared up at Him from the dirt; hypocrite, liar, gossip, adulteress. His thoughts may have raced forward to the days to come when He would bear each of these sins and more. While He would commit no sin, He would become as dark as sin itself in the sight of the Holy God, His Father.
We do not know, of course, that He scratched the symbol of the cross in the sand, that is only my speculation, but we do know that all His life the shadow of the cross hung over Him. He came to die for that woman, those Pharisees, me, and each of you.
As the last of the religious leaders left the temple court, Jesus slowly straightened up and faced the woman for the first time. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir.”
No doubt she was a bit bewildered by the whole thing. She had been caught in her sin. She knew that she was guilty. These religious men who were so moral and upright; now gone. They could hurl verbal stones, but before God they could not even throw a pebble. She was confused. She was frightened. What would He do with her now? She was, after all, guilty. Surely, she was due some punishment for her sin.
It's strange, isn't it, the things that sin can do to us. Somehow, it has an unbalancing effect on our lives. On the one hand, we may regard our own sin too lightly, as did the Pharisees, and focus on the worst in others. At that point, we're tempted to cast stones at other sinners and disregard our own hidden deeds. On the other hand, our sin can overwhelm us so that we can see nothing else. Hounded by guilt, we look for punishment and chastisement. Inwardly we sense that all those around us have a perfect right to hurl stones and stinging abuse. We almost cry out for punishment. Sin does that to us. It throws us out of balance.
The only one who could have stoned the woman that morning was Jesus. He was without sin. He could have stoned her, but He did not.
“Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
As she looked into His face, she knew for certain that she was a free woman, fully forgiven. There was not the slightest trace of condemnation in His eyes or in His voice. She stepped into the light of day feeling whole, feeling clean, feeling restored. She may not have fully understood how He could send her away forgiven. But that He had the power to do so, she never doubted. The only man who could stone her; forgave her. Her story that began with sin and failure, ended in triumph and forgiveness.
When the light shines its spotlight on your soul, you have a choice in the way you'll respond. Like the religious leaders, you can go in the darkness. Like roaches exposed to the light, you can flee from its brightness. Or like the woman, you may see yourself as totally exposed by the light of His truth and feel as she must have felt.
Today you may feel deeply uncomfortable because of a sin that you have committed. You may be embarrassed to be with friends or to face the people around you because somehow you sense that if they knew about your sin, they would hurl stones of judgment and rejection at you. But look again. All your accusers have left the room. Not one of them can condemn you.
But now, like the adulteress, you may be face to face with God. You may be so overwhelmed with the burden of guilt for your sin that deep inside you wonder if even God could forgive you. Your sins are too dark, too evil, too many, too often. Listen carefully to the words Jesus spoke to the woman in the Temple long ago. Listen very carefully, because He not only speaks them to her; He speaks them to you. Whatever your sin, hear Him as He says to you, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” If you respond to Him in faith and trust in this word of complete forgiveness, you can walk into the light without fear.
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