Alright. Okay, thank you. Then for those that are listening via that thing, the Gospel of John chapter 8. I'll make sure I've got my device on. Okay. Alright, the Gospel of John chapter 8 once again. Here we go. We're going to start on verse 2 for the moment. And we'll see where it goes. And early in the morning, He, that being Jesus, came again into the temple, and all the people came unto Him, and He sat down and He taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said unto Him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou? This they said tipped in him that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down with his finger. He wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and he wrote on the ground. And they which heard it being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, no man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more. We'll stop there for a reading this morning. This is a familiar story, and I'm sure I would be surprised if anybody here has not heard messages on it before, but I think there's plenty there to be reminded of. The longer I do this, the more often I consider that I do have I guess what they call a backlog, I don't know, stuff that I've saved, that I've done over the years. And so I go back and forth because there's obviously more in the Scripture than we could cover if we came every day. And yet sometimes I do feel like there are things we need to revisit. And a lot of times the topics parallel with each other. You just get a slightly different angle on them. What we have here, and we understand with the Gospel of John what his purpose is, So we want to keep that in mind and I'll touch on that in a moment. We can only imagine the different attempts that they made to try and trick the Lord. I certainly, I want to be very careful with this, I would certainly not attempt to take our president and compare him to the Lord as if he is anything like that. But it is interesting to watch how those that are against him gather and try and trick and find every little Again, I'm not saying whether I support him or not. I do because God's anointed, right? But I tell you this, it's interesting to watch when people get together, smart people, all the different things they'll do to try and bring someone down. And I only bring that up not to even think about him, but to think of our Lord Jesus. That's what they did for his entire ministry, was try and find any little inkling of a mistake. And when they saw that that wasn't gonna happen, They tried to make mistakes. They tried to find a way to entrap him. Give him a question in which there was no good answer. Yes was wrong and no was wrong. How are you going to answer this? And they did it in front of everybody so that hopefully he would embarrass himself and he would lose his following. So that's what we have as we come to this situation here. We even heard one this morning in our remembrance meeting. They're always trying to trick the Lord, find a way to mess Him up. Now, this account is in keeping with John's witness, the Gospel here. The Lord has described from the beginning of this book as the Light. And I almost read the next verse that comes right after this, where it says, I am the light of the world, because that, our brother this morning said he is the Lord of everything, including the object lesson. And I appreciated that, brother, because that's exactly what's going on here. He lets the object lesson take place, and then he goes on to comment on it. He is the light of the world. And what is the light of the world? I picture a dark house that's been deserted, and all that's in it, it's rats and roaches, and it's infested. And when you take a light and you shine on it, what do they do? They all scurry off in different directions. And that's very much what it was like when the perfect man, the man who was perfect in all morality, stepped down and then he shone his light into places that made people scurry away. And that's what we have in the keeping here. This gospel is by design. I do want to make that clear. I think we all know that, but you could come to the conclusion, I guess you could argue, although you'd be wrong, that maybe Matthew or Mark or Luke, whichever one was written first, were just a collection of stories, you know? This man was a great man. He's gone now. I would like people to remember him. I'm just gonna throw a bunch of stories as I remember them together. But they were very much coordinated and put in a certain order. That's how come as you come to them, sometimes they're not in the same order. And of course, that to me is always evidence that I need to look into it closer because if this is the chronological order and in this gospel he switched it around, well, I need to know why he did that because that may help clarify it for me. It may help me to understand it even more. And so often that has been the case when I look into these things. So John's gospel is even more so. If you wanted to argue that, John's gospel is by design. How can I say this? The other three are called synoptic gospels, right? It means at a look, at a glance. They all had a lot of similar stories. John's gospel, one is said is 90% new material, and it was the last gospel written. So why didn't he just take up these other stories? Well, because he had a purpose, didn't he? There were certain things he wanted to show, and there were certain accounts, and he goes on to say later in his gospel, if I tried to write down everything, it would fill up all the books in all the libraries in the world. I'm not kidding, I had to choose the ones that proved my point the most by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So that's what we have here. So what are some of the, themes that we have in John's Gospel. There's a lot of words that are reused. Light, that's one we're going to kind of look at a little. Love, that's a thing that John really, he really thought about. Truth, life and death, which these are other, but the main theme, and those just served the main theme, right, was that this man truly was the Christ and the Son of God. And so every event in this book is for that purpose as well. He is introduced in this gospel, as he is not in the others, as the logos, the word. And we understand what it means. It's a thought or a concept, but it's not just the thought or the concept. It is the expression of that thought, concept. The word and the deed have become one, understand? See, we people have a problem. We're real good at the word, We have a hard time with the deed. We're big talkers, we're not big doers. He did everything he said, right? That is the Logos. He is the express image and a perfect revelation of God. Everything that was missing in the Old Testament, you can find in the New Testament in this person. It all pointed to him. So we read in the first verse, which we did not look at one, because I want to get a little bit of context. Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. Now the chapter breaks in our Bibles, does everybody know that those aren't inspired? Right? The verse numbers are not as well. But they're handy, aren't they? I mean, if I wanted to take you to a certain place in Scripture and say, turn there, it'd be a lot easier with those numbers than it would be without them. That's why we use them. They're not inspired. Sometimes the translators and the ones who put those in there put them in a spot that kind of interrupted the flow, didn't they? So let's look at the verse in the chapter before that. Right? That'd be verse 53 of chapter 7. And every man went into his own house. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now, there's some more context to this because immediately we're saying, well, at least they had a house. He didn't. But this followed on the feet. The previous day was the last day, the great day of the feast of Tabernacles, which was mentioned this morning, wasn't it? Remember, I was glad you read that verse. That'll save me having to read it now. they were commanded to go live in booths and tents. And they do this to this day. In fact, I'm being very literal, to this day, we're smack dab in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. It started Wednesday, it ends Wednesday. If you were to go to Israel, they put up these booths, these tents, and they decorate them up with their kids, just like we would do with a Christmas tree. And they go out and they stay in them every night, right? And it's to remind them, it's to remind them what, God delivered them out of. They had to go into the wilderness and live in tents for 40 years. See, I want you to remember that. But it's also, they didn't celebrate it until they entered into the land. And see, that's why it was mentioned in that portion you read, brother, in Nehemiah. That's the feast that's mentioned that they kept, of all the feasts. The Day of Atonement was only five days previous, but it's not mentioned. the Feast of Tabernacles, how appropriate it was as this nation came back into the land to celebrate this feast, which celebrated coming back into the land. It also celebrates a future event. Like so many of the emblems that we looked at this morning, we take them to remember what happened until He comes again, right? It points both directions. And this points to a future event for them, to a time when the Lord will rule. Their Messiah will come and set up a government here on earth for a thousand years. And it looks forward to that. So that's what's going on here. So now if you keep that in mind, that's what's going on. After seven days of living in these tents, they set up their tents and they go back into their own houses. But where did the Lord have to go? He had nowhere to go. He didn't have any house. He said, right, the birds, they have places to sleep. They have nests. Foxes have holes. I don't have a place. He was perfectly content though. to go to the Mount of Olives. And we read that he does that occasionally. He was intent because he had no place to call his own because he was a stranger here and he owned that. Now, when we talk about the Lord, we want to remember some of these things are things we want to apply to ourselves as well. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone go out and sell their houses, or even if you're more Christian minded, go give them away, right? No, we don't, we do have to have houses, but our mindset, that's what a lot of this is, we're going to get ready to look into it. It's about, it's about the mindset. How do we approach these things? And our mindset should be, this is a temporary dwelling. It's here just for the purpose for now. He was a stranger here and owned it. If Abraham could be a stranger and a sojourner in this world, the Lord Jesus would be more so, wouldn't He? He was in His own land and they received Him not. He was okay with that. He went to the Mount of Olives. His joy came from above. He was happy to rely moment by moment on His Father, not on the things that He could get. He lived all throughout. He didn't have any of the things we have. He didn't need homes, the things that we consider needful, phones and computers and even books. He didn't have any of them, right? He had the clothes on his back, the shoes on his feet, and he went where the Lord sent him. He stayed all night on the Mount of Olives. And then in verse two, where we start, this was his norm. He came down early, early in the morning, he came into the temple and all the people came unto him and he sat down and he taught them. The thing that's wonderful to me here, and it's very impressive to me as I watch the Lord as He walks through humanity and how we have to be aware of how we would act in that situation. I do it as a contrast to how He would act. First, He was calm. He was cool. We would say calm, cool, and collected, right? He had everything in control. Perhaps knowing, not just perhaps, he knew as he woke up that morning there were gonna be a group of very smart, very learned men that were gonna come in and their entire intent for the day was to try and trick him. You think he lost sleep over that? Tell you what, I would have. I'd have been up all night studying everything I could think of. I want this one covered. Oh, they're gonna come up this way. I better look at these verses and write them down in order. I'd have outlines and everything else. I wouldn't have slept a wink. He got up early and he went in and he started teaching. I think that's very impressive what kind of man Benny was. And yet when he walked in, what happens? He just went about doing good. That's what he did. You can imagine the scene as he's got people all gathered around him, and this takes place. He's interrupted, rudely interrupted. We can imagine how awkward that'd be. It would be very similar for someone to do that right now. Comes walking in the door, dragging a lady behind him, right? Throwing her down on the floor, saying, look at her, here's the question. Treating her like nothing more than an insect, really, isn't he? They're not even, they don't even care what happens to her. This is all about can we trick him. This tells a lot about their motives. Right? We have to be aware of their motives. Because they have a good question, but the motives are important here. Right? The Lord's never turned people away for good questions. He doesn't have a problem with questions. But He knows the motives of men. And they were wielding a sword that was a little too big for them. And they're about to find that out. So, I noticed also, we never see them lose control. We never see them get angry. Okay, let me fix that. We never see him lose control. When he gets angry, he didn't lose control. There is a time to be angry. But when we lose control, well, that is the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit, isn't it? That's what we always like to tell the girls, and I'm sure a lot of you with your kids, too. That's our favorite one, and that's our favorite fruit of the Spirit. You need to learn self-control, don't you, right? We learn that when everything else will fall into place. And yet we as adults have a hard time with that sometimes. He had self-control. This was the man who calmed the storms. With a sentence. Stop. Just stop. I don't know if you know in Matthew when it mentions the storm, the tempest, that word is seismos. It's earthquake. He stopped an earthquake. With his word. The storm was created by the earthquakes, but I believe it made the waters go crazy. This is the same man that we read about this morning that took all the fish and put them in that net and the net broke. Everybody knows why, right? Because the Lord said, get your nets, plural, go out there and catch some fish. And what did they take? They said, okay, Lord, It'll make you happy. And they took one net, they put it out there, and it broke. Lord knew what they needed. They weren't listening. He is very aware of his self-control. This is the man that we're looking at as these guys come and are going to try and trick him. They're out of their league. So they bring this woman and they throw her in front of him. The Lord Jesus was a gentleman, as we can watch through this. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but be aware of that. He didn't seek to embarrass her. Even those that are sinners, He doesn't seek to embarrass them. He wants them to be aware of their sins. He wants them to repent of their sins. He wants them to agree with Him that sin is wrong and that it offends Him. But He doesn't try and throw us out in front of the spotlight and reveal our nakedness to everyone. This must have been awkward then, as you can imagine. I would imagine you could hear a pin drop. Because of the people, all these different things going on. This poor woman, what's he going to say? How is this going to play out? They just must have been watching with open mouths and quiet. Now, what they're bringing before them is an important thing. We know what adultery means, I assume. It is the breaking of the wedding vows. The vows with another outside of wedlock. Having a relationship outside of wedlock. God instituted marriage, right? In fact, that's the first institution in scripture. He thinks it's pretty important. And we go on. He doesn't reveal what it's about. He just does it. And I like this about the Lord. He'll put something in the Old Testament and then He lets it just kind of lay dormant for 4,000 years. And then Paul comes along and he says, here's what this was about. This is what it was about all along. I told you that it was sacred. That should have been good enough because I told you. And now I'm gonna tell you why, and it's gonna be amazing to you. See, that wedding vows, what they were was they're a picture of something bigger. They're a picture of God's relationship with his people. And so this idea that his people would go and commit adultery, we can look at the book of Hosea, right? That's what it's about. Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute so God could show him this picture in action. He considers it a very important thing. And so it's no wonder that we see the attacks against it today. We could look at this woman and put it in today's context. She could have very easily said, but I don't love my husband. It was an arranged marriage. I was forced into it. He doesn't love me either. He's 40 years older than me. Whatever excuses she wanted to come up with, I don't love him. But this man, I do love him. We were meant to be. Right? Isn't that the kind of things we hear today? It was all about love. We could say the same with homosexuality. We could say the same with so many different sins today. It had a good motive, right? Now, motives are important in this, but motives have to align with God's rules. They both have to be in line. Just the rules with the wrong motives is wrong, and just the motives without the rules is wrong. They have to be in harmony. You can make the same argument with this woman before us, right? She could have said it was an act of love, but it didn't matter, it was wrong. And you'll notice she never tries to defend herself during this whole thing. The motives of the Pharisees. Now they weren't concerned with the wonderful revelations of God, were they? Or his love for his people, what marriage pictured. They weren't concerned with the woman and they certainly weren't concerned with, oh, did you notice there's something missing in this story? The man. Where was the man? She was caught in the very act. They just let him go. He was just as guilty under the law. This reveals something about their motives again, doesn't it? All they're concerned about is trying to trick the Lord. If they were concerned with the law, this would have been done legally, first of all, not dragging it in front of a bunch of people. They have courts for this purpose. It was all for trying to mess him up. They're trying to lay a trap. And we can assume that this was likely an act of collusion. They probably planned this. How do you catch someone in the act of this without knowing where people are going to be at certain times? And perhaps even they orchestrated it. And that's why the man's not there. We don't know. One of the things I want to spend a lot of time on, but this is a chapter, this portion in this chapter is a portion that has been argued over over the centuries as not being an actually part of the Word of God. There are higher critics. We don't have a lot of higher critics today. That was a word that was used for a couple centuries of people who were very learned, demented. They would come in and they would take the scripture and they would say, well, this couldn't have really happened. That doesn't really need to be in the Bible. And so you've heard of the Jesus Seminar. That was 10 years ago or so. They would go in and they would look at the words of Jesus and say, well, based on what we know and the profile we've made of this man, he could never have said this. So that's not real, right? So there are people that have suggested that this shouldn't be in here. And one of the things that they use is that very line of thinking. The Pharisees never would have done this embarrassing thing, right? And again, we can look at today and we can see how low people will go. Learn people, people that are supposedly the civilized people, how dirty they'll play, right? I don't think, I don't have a problem at all believing they would do this. But what was the trap? If the Lord condemned her, all of his talk of grace would be diminished. That was their hope, right? I mean, they'd watched his character. They'd heard what he said. They understood that he came apparently to do good things. By good, from their point of view, it was things that made people happy, right? That's the world's way of thinking, not eternal blessings. His works were intended to make people happier. So if they could show that he wasn't into making people happy, then that would hurt him. That's one way to look. But they didn't know how he would answer. They knew there was another choice. He could say, let her go. Oh, but then you had a whole nother sect of people, very large part of the population, if not 90% or more that says, no, that's God's law. Our entire history, our nation, everything else is based on that. You can't just dismiss a law with a word. Who do you think you are? You cannot be the Messiah if you say that. So they thought they had him in a corner. But again, they did not understand who he was. In fact, he says that later on in the chapter, verse 19, you neither know me nor my father. If you had known me, you should know my father also. See, they knew the rules of the law. They didn't know the spirit of the law. One of the things God wants from us with the relationship, I believe, is a relationship. Now, what does that mean? See, I always heard that as a kid growing up. I'm like, what in the world? How do I have a relationship? I believed in God, but I was like, okay, he talks to me through his word. That sounded a little out there. I didn't understand. But as I've grown, and I'm sure many of you have experienced it, he does do that. He talks to us through his word and through prayer. If we spend time with him, He does speak to us, not in an audible voice, but it is a relationship, very much like a relationship with your wife or your children. When you offend Him, you know it, your conscience is hurt. And you know that you need to do something about it. And that's what He wants. And He wants you to do something about it. He knows that we fail, but He wants you to do something about it. But they knew this was the corner they had Him in. Yes was wrong, no was wrong. So they asked him, they presented the law to him and said, what will we do? Verse six, it says, the Lord Jesus, he stooped down with his finger, he wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. Again, I'll point out the composure of our Lord. When someone attacks you, how do you react? I know my reaction is defense mode. And sometimes my mouth gets moving faster than my brain, right? I start trying to figure out, I may not know which angles they're coming at, so I'm trying to cover all the bases to make sure I've got them covered. He says nothing. He just ignores them. Again, there must have been an awkward silence. He turns around and he stoops down, starts writing on the ground as though he didn't even hear them. So they continue asking. He lifts them up and he says to them, He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. What was he writing? That's the question. That's the question that's probably come up many thousand times over the years. I'm going to tell you. I don't know. But I think it does do some stuff. I think there's a reason why he doesn't tell us, right? Do you remember the story in 2 Corinthians with Paul? He talks about that thorn in the flesh. Remember, we had a gentleman speak on that a couple months ago. He said, why does it not tell us what that is? We can look at all the evidence, and a lot of people think that it was his eyes he had trouble seeing. And there's mentions that I wrote with large letters and that someone wrote for me and I would give you, or he said of the Galatians, I know you would give me your own eyes. I mean, there's evidence, but it doesn't say that. It just says he had a thorn in his side. Why is that? Isn't that so we can relate to it? If we were told it was his eyes, there'd probably be a sect, there'd be a church denomination based on the eye, right? That's the way we tend to go with it. And then the other problem is, it does tend to alienate people that don't have the eye problem. He said, no, this is something you can all relate to. God gives us each something that helps keep us humble, that helps keeping us from exalting ourself above measure. So that's what he did. I think here it's a similar type thing. He could have told us what he wrote, but he wants us to think a little on this, not just have it given to us. In the case before us, do we have any precedence? No, we don't of the Lord Jesus. But do we have any precedence of the Lord in the Old Testament, maybe writing, maybe even with His finger? Well, we go to Daniel, Daniel chapter 5. We know the story of Belshazzar's feast, right? He's taking the furniture from the tabernacle and he's having a big party. And while he's doing this, and he's doing it almost in the face of God as if, you know, shaking his fists at Him, this, ha ha. And the same hour, it says, came forth fingers of a man's hand, and he wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace. And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smoked one against another. How would you like to be remembered in history like that? But he had it coming. So this is the interpretation. Mene, tekel, and perez are the three words. It means God hath numbered thy kingdom. You've been numbered, you've been weighed, you've been found wanting. Right? Would that be appropriate? I mean, I'm not gonna say that's what he wrote in the ground, but would that be appropriate to the, I think it would, it kind of fit. Maybe there's a better one though. In Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 13. Oh Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed. And they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. And they that depart from me shall be written in the earth. So maybe you wrote their names. I don't know. It is interesting in this verse that it refers to the fountain of living waters because this takes place the day after the Lord Jesus stood out in the middle of the crowd and cried, come unto me all you that thirst. And if you believe on me, out of your belly shall flow rivers of living waters. I mean, surely John, when he was repenting this, had to at least make that connection. So maybe he was writing their names. Some have suggested he was writing some of their sins down, just, you know, stealing, keeping a little extra tax money, you know, just writing it down, not saying anything and letting it have its effect on them. But I'll tell you something else that comes to mind. We noticed that he bent down two times, which we're gonna look at in just a second, but the first time that we read of God writing, it's when he wrote the law, right? with his fingers. In Exodus 31, 18, it says, He gave to Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, and written with the finger of God. Now this is after the Ten Commandments have been given, everything's been going on. This is right before he comes down the mountain to see what? See the people with the golden calf, worshiping. They've broken the law before they have even received it. Now you remember in chapter 19 when Moses explained what was going to happen, he said, okay, this is, God's going to give you some rules and this is going to be his standard, I'm paraphrasing. And they said, all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. You got to be careful putting yourself out there before you know what the, uh, rules are going to be, right? I'm one that if someone asks me, will you do me a favor? I'm usually pretty careful. I'll be probably, right? Likely, yes. I'm one that is willing to do favors if that's what you're asking, but I need to know what the favor is before I commit to it. They didn't do that. They put themselves under the law, and they broke it before it even was given to them. But that, so what happened as a result of that, by the way? A lot of people died, didn't they? Because that is what the law does. And we need to keep that in mind on the passage we're looking at. We're told in Romans, and what we're not told is, okay, I'm not gonna go there. That'd be, my sarcasm sometimes gets in my way. I won't go there. What we are told is the law works wrath. Right? That's what the law is for. It's not so we can keep it as a list of things that we have to do. And if we do them, we've arrived. We've pleased God. We now have a ticket into the entrance to heaven. No, that's not what the law did. The law works wrath. That's why when people, I mentioned this many times, that's why before the law was given, the people murmured. What happened? God gave them what they were murmured for. After the law was given, what happened when they murmured? They were punished immediately. The law works wrath. And that's what happened to them. 3,000 of them killed that day. So we have Jeremiah, we have Daniel, and we have the law. I think John maybe is wanting us to think about those things. What's going on here? What does the law mean? Is this something we have to keep? Is this woman condemned? If she's condemned, what are the implications of that? And that's where we're going next. See, these guys, like I said, they picked up a sword that was too big. See, David was smart, wasn't he? When they tried to give him a sword that was too big, what did he do? He said, I've not proved this sword. I'm gonna let that stay there, and I'll go get something small that I can handle. These guys took up a sword that was too big, and they tried to go after a guy that knew how to handle the sword. They tried to handle the sword with unclean hands. God doesn't have any use for people with unclean hands. We have to be careful as we handle God's sword, don't we? It is sharp. You probably don't want to introduce yourself. I've talked with people that are close to me about their journey to becoming a believer and telling about how when they were in their teenage years, They were up at the square here in Springfield. Most people from Springfield knows what goes on up at the square, or it used to be worse. A lot of drinking, a lot of bars, and the Christians would drive by and yell out, sinner, and you're going to hell. Okay, was that true? Well, if they weren't believers, that was very true. Is that how you bring people to the Lord? No. We have to be careful wielding the sword, don't we? It takes practice. It takes the right motives. Because if the motive is love, we're not going to go out and condemn people. See, we have a pretty good opportunity here. You know, when I was growing up, you always talked about, well, I'm afraid that if I accept the Lord, He's going to send me to a foreign mission field. Right? You've heard that. Maybe that was more true 30, 40 years ago. We're in the foreign mission field right now. I talked to people at work that couldn't tell you the difference between Moses and Noah. Who built the ark? They don't know. Jesus is a name they've heard. Maybe that's it. That's probably it. Where I came from 30, 40 years ago, everybody in my class knew the basics about the Bible. It didn't mean they were all believers. We are in a mission field. We're in a foreign mission field. Don't worry about the Lord sending you anywhere. He needs you to do what you're supposed to do here, right? And it's very important because people's eternity depends on it. He's given us his word, you know, and he's given us the law. The law does have a purpose. How many have listened to Ray Comfort before? I like his approach. I'm not finding anything wrong with it. What I like is that he uses the law for its intended purpose. Now, again, you have to use discernment. This man has a gift of humor that he helps use in it, and I think he's able to talk to people without offending them, although it does offend sometimes. But he'll get in a conversation, and he'll use the law. Have you ever lied? Well, everybody's gonna say yes, pretty much. Well, yeah, everybody lies. What does that make you? Makes me someone that lies. No, what does it make you? It makes me a liar. He makes them say the words, right? Have you ever stolen? Well, no. Well, you just told me you were a liar. That's what he does. He said in the New Testament, the Lord says, if you ever looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. Have you ever done that? Now, He's letting the law do its perfect work, isn't He? It's convicting. He's not saying, I'm better than you, which is what these guys are doing, by the way. He's saying, God's law is a high standard and you can't keep it. Now, is there a remedy? Yeah, then He gives them the remedy. After He's brought conviction, and that's what the law is for, is to bring conviction, right? Again, we're not to go on with a sword swinging, cutting everybody down. We need to use discernment, but that is, we need to understand the law and what its purpose was. So, so far we have, the Lord was teaching the people. They were interrupted. He seemingly ignores them. He stoops and he writes on the ground. He stands up, he says this phrase, and then he bends down and starts writing again. So he wrote again, and I think this might be another clue that it has to do with the law, because if you remember, How many times was the law given? Twice. Why twice? Because the first time it was broken, right? God had to write it again. With his finger, he wrote the law again. I think, to me, at least, it brings my mind to the law. That's what's before us. Now, notice when God rewrote the law, he didn't say, well, obviously they can't keep this one, so I'm gonna modify it so it'll be a little easier. Same law. Yep. and it works the same wrath. The law does not change. The law is inflexible. It's unbendable. If God says you are not supposed to do this and you do it, you can't talk your way out of it. It is wrong. You're a sinner and you're going to hell. That's what it means. Well, God loves you. Yes, He does love you. He's provided a remedy. But you have to accept the remedy. Moses threw the tablets down, threw them out, and they were broken, and has a long talk with God, and he gives them the law again. And I think that's what the reference is. When the Lord lifts himself up, now the law did its perfect work. Whatever he wrote, the words that he said did what they needed to do. They did conviction. Now the Lord, I believe, gives us what many call a free will. I think we're free moral agents is a word I like better. Free will to me has some implications. I just, whatever. He gives us choices. These men had a choice and this woman had a choice. The men, they didn't like the light shining on him. So what'd they do? They scurried away. The woman, who probably was the most embarrassed person there, the most guilty person there, at least on the surface, she could have scurried away too. I think the Lord turned away, went down to right and ignored, so to speak. and let it play out. She could have left and nothing else would have been said, but she stayed there. She never cries defense that I, the love issue I talked about, she doesn't try and say I wasn't, it wasn't as bad as you think. She was caught in adultery. And she freely accepts that responsibility. The Lord stands up and He says unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. After He asked, Who are those that accuse her? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. He said, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. So the big question is, Did He break the law? No. Moses brought the law, didn't he? The Lord came with truth and grace. Grace and truth. I believe He forgave her based on a future event, right? I don't really believe it, I know it. In fact, every miracle that He does in His Gospels, every time He forgives a person, it's all based on a future event. Every person forgiven in the Old Testament, based on a future event. Our salvation, based on a past event. All based on one event, right? The Lord Jesus says, think not, in another place, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill the law. See, they understood all the penalties of the law. Don't do this, don't do that. A whole list of things that you can train your dog to do, right? Am I right? Can you train your dog not to go take food out of the other dog's bucket, steal? Yeah. God wants us to understand He's not just got a list of no's, He's got a list of yeses for us. He added some things into the law that were a workaround, if you want to call it that. It was the sacrifices, and we've looked at the sacrifices. I very much appreciate the sacrifices because I think the New Testament gives us the ultimate sacrifice. The Old Testament explains that ultimate sacrifice. But he gave it to him in the Old Testament, and these men were remiss in that they weren't aware of that, that there was one gonna come, and he was gonna offer a sacrifice that would enable the Lord to righteously forgive this woman. Can the Lord righteously forgive us? He can't unless we have a sacrifice. And what happens if he tries to forgive us without that sacrifice? Do you realize what the implications of that are? We're told that his throne is founded on righteousness. That's essentially saying, if I be a little figurative here, His throne, the legs, are made of righteousness. You start kicking the righteousness out from under the chair, what happens? It falls. His throne goes. Satan now has full recourse to take over heaven. He must remain righteous. How can you forgive sins and remain righteous? It is only by that perfect sacrifice. A substitution. Romans tells us that love is the fulfilling of the law. Did Christ not show us the greatest love? Greater love hath no man than this. We read in Romans 10, Christ is the end of the law, and it doesn't stop there, right? Everybody remember the verse? I know I've used this verse a lot. I'm sorry, these are verses that come to mind. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. In the Old Testament, you can read at the end of chapter six of Deuteronomy, this shall be your righteousness if you keep these things. He doesn't say, by the way, it'll be God's righteousness. This'll be your righteousness. If you complete these, you can say to yourself, you're righteous. Still doesn't put you in God's territory, but you can say that. They couldn't keep it anyway, so it didn't matter. Christ is the end of the law for that purpose, to who? because that's important to us, not to everyone. See, there's those out there. We've got this movie out now that teaches universalism, The Shack. Everyone's gonna get saved. God is so loving that from Hitler and Stalin and all these rulers, every person that's ever done anything, they're all gonna get saved because God's love. What else could he do? No, he's righteous as well as love. He must take care of both. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth, right? He's offering us a free offer of salvation, but you have to take a hold of it. And then he goes on, and I wanna, as we close, I wanna turn there to Romans chapter 10, because he goes on. Romans chapter 10 says that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And let's go down there. to verse 9. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And Paul goes on to explain, as a result of this you're going to bear fruit, right? You're not gonna bear fruit first to please God. As a result of this, you're gonna bear fruit. This is how a person gets saved. Now to this woman, Christ did not condemn her. It doesn't tell us what went on in our mind, but I can only assume that she left saved. At the very least, she left in a very immediate way saved, right? Because she was facing stoning. So when she left, you can be assured she didn't go back to her normal daily duties. She had a lot to think about, didn't she? She had been saved. These men, they had the perfect work of the law on them. They left convicted of whatever it was that the Lord wrote. So I would just say, we need to be aware of these things. As we yield the sword of God, we need to be careful how we use it. That's one of the main things I take away from this. We don't go in there and use it for our own motives, for our own purposes. That doesn't mean we don't use it. It doesn't mean we say, watch someone do something wrong and say, well, I don't wanna say anything that would insult them. No, if it's wrong, it needs to be dealt with. But if the motive is love, it's gonna be dealt with in a lot better way, isn't it? Let's go ahead and close in prayer. Father, we give you thanks for this small portion and we thank you that there's so many places in your word that we are familiar with and there's always things to be reminded of and we thank you for what you've reminded us of this morning. We thank you for our Lord Jesus, who we remembered in our first meeting, and we've even remembered a little this morning, and we thank you for His grace, His love that we see. As we look at the Old Testament, one could conclude that you are just a God of judgment, but we read that judgment is a strange thing to you. It is not something you desire. You want fellowship. You want the judgment to be passed, and it is. The Lord took that judgment for us. We just ask that you would help us to Remember that there is still judgment coming to this world for those who have not believed and that we do have works before us as we leave these doors today and go back to our work in school or wherever it may be and That we would handle your words. You would give us wisdom to handle your word efficiently safely With a motive of love and we give you thanks for all these things in the name of your son the Lord Jesus Christ Amen