Thou hast the true, perfect gentleness. No harshness hast Thou, and no bitterness. Make us to taste the sweet grace found in Thee, and ever stay in Thy sweet unity. As we think about this beginning portion of John chapter 8, we see Jesus' true and perfect gentleness on display as he evidences that gentleness in dealing with the pain and the humiliation of the woman caught in adultery. And yet this itself serves, as we'll see, as a mere example, an example of what Jesus will proclaim to all of us, that he is the light of the world. And for the one who follows after him, they will never walk in darkness. And so please follow along in your Bibles as I read actually with the closing verse of John chapter 7, which is verse 53, and then read down through verse 20 of John chapter 8. This is the word of God. Then each went to his own home, But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 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, 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. 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. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. The Pharisees challenged him. Here you are appearing as your own witness. Your testimony is not valid. Jesus answered. Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid. For I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards. I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me. In your own law, it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. I am one who testifies for myself. My other witness is the father who sent me." Then they asked him, where is your father? You do not know me or my father, Jesus replied. If you knew me, you would know my father also. He spoke these words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him. because his time had not yet come. The grass withers and the flowers of the field fade and fall. But this, the word of the Lord, even from John's gospel, endures forever. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, how grim this passage is. Right off the bat, we see things that shock us and startle us and make us pay attention because there's things here that are so gritty and so real and so hard. Lord, we pray that truly your word would grip us today and it would not only be the hard things, but the glorious things, the good things, the grace-filled things, even those things that that come forth because Jesus is the light, not only for the world, but even for us gathered here today. Lord, bless us, and may the light of Jesus shine brightly through the word applied by your spirit even today. Asking as we do in Christ's name, amen. You know, there are those lessons, those things that you learn about being a parent that you wouldn't necessarily anticipate before you actually have to put them into practice. And one of the things that happens fairly routinely around our house is that one kid or another will get involved in something, get involved in a book, more likely than not, but maybe a game or another activity, and they're so involved in those things that they don't realize that the room has become darkened. It's in the evening time, it's after dinner, they're reading, and there was light to begin with, but now the room is dark. And as a parent, how frequently I've got to go in and say, you know what, kids, you don't have to sit here in the dark. You know, all you have to do is turn on a light. And as we think about this passage here this morning, really, that's the message of this passage in a nutshell. A reminder to us as those who look to the Lord Jesus that we don't have to sit in the dark. That there is light that is for us in Jesus. You know, the idea of darkness is a very gripping image, both on a popular level, but certainly on a very profound level from the scripture itself. The idea of darkness speaks to the misery and the murkiness of living in this broken world. And it has attached to it the idea of fumbling around, not knowing where you're going. It has attached to it the idea of failure and falling down on the ground. It has attached to it, especially in God's word, the idea of being at fault and being placed in a predicament, a consequence because of being at fault. To be in darkness is a really terrible thing. And what this passage shows us is that Jesus says you don't have to sit in the darkness. There is light for you. And not only does this passage show us Jesus declaring these things to be so, but in these first 11 verses, it gives us a really gripping example of what the darkness we face is all about, but also then how real it is. the light that is found in Christ truly is. And so we need to think about this passage, first of all, in terms of the reality of the darkness that we face and the way in which the first 11 verses of John chapter eight in giving us this account of the woman caught in adultery, dragged before Jesus there in a very public fashion in the courts of the temple How this reveals to us the kind of brokenness and pain and hurt that we face in this fallen world, this world that often makes us feel like we are in the midst of darkness. And we talk about darkness as surrounding us. We talk at times of being cast down into darkness. We think about darkness being deep. so deep that it almost has an existence unto itself. And we think here about the darkness that surrounds this woman as she is brought forward in this public fashion as part of a trap for Jesus. And we think about this woman and the first thing we think about in terms of the darkness that she faces is her brutal victimization, her brutal victimization. We are right to have sympathy for this woman. We think here about how it is that the reason she's being brought there in that instance is very specifically outlined. Right, they say here in verse three, John tells us the teachers of the law, the Pharisees brought in this woman caught in adultery. And verse six, they were using this question, what do you say about her, Jesus, in order to have a basis for accusing him? And so the first thing that we think about in terms of this woman and how she's being treated is that she's being treated merely as a thing and not a person. She is a pawn. She is a chip that the Pharisees and the scribes are trying to cash in in order to hopefully catch Jesus in some kind of answer that's going to lead him into a place where they can accuse him either of being wrong in the eyes of the Roman law or being wrong in the eyes of the Jewish law of the Bible. She's being treated as a thing. It is really very clear here that this is very likely a set up on the part of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. The rabbinical standard for being able to accuse someone of adultery was not only that you had to catch somebody in a relatively compromised situation. Why were you behind closed doors with that person of the opposite sex? You literally had to catch them in the act. which seems to be alluded to here when we're told in verse four that they said to Jesus, teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Literally, you had to, as it were, be stationed in the room or, as it were, have your eye at the keyhole to see this taking place and transpire. How could that happen aside from a setup? And then you notice, where's the man? How come he got to escape? How come he's not also being dragged here in front of Jesus so that he would be held accountable for his behavior? And you have a sense that there was this entrapment that took place in which the man was a complicit, in which the woman was a pawn. And so we find here this brutal victimization in which she is treated like a thing rather than a person. That's part of the darkness that we face in this world. Right, those moments when we feel depersonalized, when we feel dehumanized, when other people's sin against us is of such a type that we feel like that in this given relationship that we're no longer a person but a thing, we are a means to an end, we are a chip, we are a pawn, we are part of a game that they're playing and we're simply a piece on their game board. You know, maybe that happens at work. You know, the employer, you know, does their end of the bargain. Benefits are paid out and pay is given. Time off is extended. You know, but you know what it is, right? To not just, you know, meet your obligations, but to pour out yourself into the workplace. And then suddenly, when they're done with you, they're done with you. And you're reminded, you know what? I was just a part, a cog in the machine. Or we think about how that can happen In friendships, you know, you get the sense that, you know what, I thought that we had something really special here. You know, you share with me, I share with you, you lean on me, I lean on you, you know, we can support one another. And then you realize, you know what, that person really is in it for themselves. They want what I have to offer, but when I have a need, they're not there for me. We think about how sometimes that can happen in marriages. You know, how one spouse just looks to the other spouse, needing something. You know, seeing that person as a means to an end, a way of getting sexual relief, a way of having someone supply financial support just to be able to do what the spouse wants to do with life. People can use one another in marriage. We can use each other in the church. Now, I've talked with folks who have felt, as they have come out of churches in our community, that they were nothing more than a walking checkbook. The churches talk so much about money and plans and growth and giving and stewardship and guilting people into signing off on those checks that they felt like that they weren't being cared for. The only thing that mattered in that setting was that they would be able to supply the financial resources for those churches to press forward and to grow their plans and to build their buildings. We know what it is sometimes for the darkness of being sinned against when people treat us merely as a thing and not as a person. But not only is she treated here as a thing, she is treated in such a way that she is absolutely abjectly humiliated, right? She is humiliated. This involves some measure of careful speculation. But you notice here that specifically it's mentioned the law of Moses prescribes that such a woman be stoned. And if you were to go back and look at the Pentateuch and start to compare passages, you find that this then is probably because it's so explicit, a reference to a specific scenario in Deuteronomy 22. You see that the normal practice throughout much of the Old Testament economy was actually to strangle adulterers. But there are specific instances where the Bible itself says, no, stoning is what is called for. That is the censure. And the one particular way that stoning is called for has to do with then there is a betrothed woman who has sexual relationship with a man who is not the one whom she is intended to marry. And there are two scenarios, one in which the woman is not made accountable because it happens out in a deserted place and she cries out and no one's there to help her, and then it's essentially an issue of rape. But in the other instance in Deuteronomy 22, It's such that it appears consensual. She's betrothed to someone else, though not yet married. She has sexual relationship with a man who is not the one she's engaged to, and there we're told that both of them, under those circumstances, need to be stoned. And so in that regard, we are likely then talking about a young, betrothed woman. And in that culture, that means we very well could be dealing with a young one who was 12, 13, 14 years old. And here we have again a sense that if she was being entrapped, how easily it could have been arranged for there to be a wily man to seduce her. and to bring her into these kinds of circumstances so that she would then subsequently be brought into this public place and thereby humiliated. And you notice, don't you, how candidly the scripture tells us she was there in the midst. They didn't need to do that. They could have brought the scenario to Jesus and left her in the abstract. They could have put her under lock and key somewhere and said, you know, Jesus, we've got this situation. What do you think about it? But no, that's not good enough. They treat her as a mere thing. She is a part in their puzzle. And so they bring her very publicly so that her humiliation would be absolutely crowned with not only fear of what's gonna happen to me, with also this sense of filthiness of what have I done. And so we understand what's on display here, the darkness that comes when we realize that there are real victims in this world. the darkness that falls on people who lose hope because there are moments when abuse really happens in this world, when the haves trample on the have-nots, when the people in power abuse those who are weak, when those who are wily in the ways of the world set things up so as to bring down and to humiliate those who are naive and needy. So we think again about those moments, then maybe we've run into abusive situations, right? In our culture, there's so much talk about everybody being a victim that sometimes we can go the opposite direction and say, no, there aren't any victims. But here is a reminder that there are victims. And you see, the problem with being a victim is that the mind begins to say, well, you know what, if that's how some people treat me, That's how everybody's going to treat me. And if that's how people are going to treat me, that's how God's going to treat me. And those who are victims of the sin of other people can feel so dirty and so beyond reclamation, even though heavy responsibility lies on someone else. Brutal victimization. But we also find here responsible transgression. You know, in the Bible, sin is not an either or proposition, but a both and proposition. You know, there is such thing as sin in the systems and institutions and in the culture that surrounds us, but that doesn't mean there's also not sin residing in my heart. Yes, there's sin when people hurt us, but there's also ways that we ourselves sin. And often what happens in our culture is that people run to one camp or another. And don't understand that it's not really an issue of sin being this or that, but sin being in both sets of circumstances. You know, very often we might understand the culture wars that we face. Those who are progressive or liberal in their mindset often see sin in terms of structures and institutions and things that need to be changed way up here on a high level. That can be true. It certainly is often true. Those who are conservative in these kinds of viewpoints often see sin as an issue of personal responsibility. And that is also true. Yes, it's in the big institutions, but it's also in my singular heart. And you notice here that though this woman has been brutally victimized, at the same time, she is held personally responsible. There's not any real argument at any stage in this passage that she hasn't done the thing she's been accused of doing. And Jesus, you notice, says there in verse 11, neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin. And so we have this sense, right, that there were big things going on around this woman, plans and efforts to trap Jesus and to try to put him into a compromise situation, things going on. But at the same time, as she's standing there in front of her accusers, somewhere in her heart, she has to realize, oh, if I had only just said no. If God's law had been to me a rock that is firm rather than sand that shifts, if God's law had been to me black and white rather than gray, if God's word to me had been a place of safety and that outside of his word a place of wilderness and danger, if I just said no, I wouldn't be standing here brutalized, trapped, considered a thing, being humiliated. And so we think in our own lives of our responsible transgression. The darkness that comes from the money that's been wasted. The darkness that falls on us because of the time squandered. The darkness that surrounds us because of health ruined. A sense of darkness and misery that attends relationships that are crippled. Opportunities that are missed. families we have misdirected, idols we have exalted, and the God whom we have far too often ignored. And sometimes we sit back and we say, how did I get where I am? I look in the mirror and I don't even recognize myself. How have I gotten here? What series of decisions could possibly have brought me from the place I was and the place I wanted to be to the place where I am at this very moment? How have I gotten here? Who am I? Why couldn't I, why didn't I just say no? The darkness can come not only because we've been victimized, but those moments when our lame excuses of blaming other people, blaming our circumstances, blaming our conditions, blaming maybe even God, the lameness of those excuses just falls away and we are left saying, I am personally responsible for the darkness I'm dwelling in right now. But here's the glorious hope of this passage. Do you see this morning as you recognize the darkness of living in this broken world? Do you see that Christ's light has broken through? Jesus says so certainly there in verse 12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. He is so certain, so unapologetic, so definite in being able to offer the reality of this light, and that this would happen mere moments as it were after this encounter with this woman brought before him, victimized, but at the same time responsible. is a reminder that yes, we live in a world of darkness, but Jesus' light is there and it breaks through. Now, we don't know exactly what Jesus was doing. When we read there in verse six, that Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. A lot of different speculation as to what Jesus was doing there. You know, why did he respond that way when they brought this woman before him and pummeled him with the question, what should we do, what should we do? This is what Moses says, what should we do? A couple possibilities come to mind. Jeremiah 17 verse 13 says, Lord, you are the hope of Israel. All who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water. Maybe the names of the accusers, as it were, are being written in the dust. Maybe this idea that Jesus is bent down and looking downward is kind of a graphic description of what the scriptures say when it tells us that God is too pure even to gaze upon evil. There's so much wickedness and so much hypocrisy and so much hatred on display in the actions of these Pharisees and teachers of the law that Jesus just hunkers down to demonstrate he can't even gaze in his purity upon such folly and sin. Or maybe it has to do with the frequent biblical imagery that when God is about to judge there is silence in heaven and Jesus momentarily is silent before issuing a really wise form of judgment. But while there is much mystery in the posture and actions of Jesus, there is a sense that it is the position of the accusers and of this young woman that ultimately is most important, because after Jesus says what he says and calls upon those who have no sin to be the first to throw the stone. Those who brought this woman in shame walk away in shame. And this woman who was there vulnerable and ashamed and embarrassed is alone with her savior, surrounded by others as we'll see, but beginning to have dignity and meaning poured back into her existence. It is the reversal here. That is the most important thing. It is the change of who comes powerfully but walks away in humility and the one who is dragged in humility, who is now made dignified through Jesus. And that's the hope of the passage. If you dare to hope today and to trust the fact that not only is there light in Jesus for you as you have been hurt by others, but even the things you've done to hurt yourself will not undo you before the gracious gaze of Jesus Christ. And so we see the light here in terms of hope. This woman now has hope on a number of different levels. She has hope because these ones who are threatening to take her life have now departed. They have dropped the stones. They have left. Now, Jesus here in saying, let him who is without sin be the first to cast stone, is not rendering all judgment invalid, right? We might say that, well, none of us is sinless, so none of us could ever be engaged in a process, whether in society or even in the church, where behavior is judged. That's not what's at stake here, right? There was such rank hypocrisy on the part of these leaders. that Jesus could not tolerate it, could not condone it, could not allow it to transpire. He wanted his grace to be demonstrated even as he wanted the reality of sin treated seriously to be set forth. And so what he does is wisely put them in a bind so that they are unable to act in a judicial fashion to this woman, but she escapes their condemnation. And she is hope because she is quite possibly here restored to her community. The NIV here is not very helpful when it says in verse nine that when Jesus gets back up again, that only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Literally, the text says that Jesus is there, she's there, and she's still in the midst. So in other words, her accusers have walked away but there's still the crowd that assembled around Jesus to listen to him teaching. And that's really important because it is to say then that those who were listening to Jesus heard this glorious proclamation that he didn't condemn her. And that would have been an important step, you see, towards her being restored through her repentance and real humility. into the dynamics of her community, maybe even the one she was betrothed to, who showed up in that crowd expecting to see her bloodshed, maybe in his mind was planted that seed. You know what? There is grace. There is the possibility of forgiveness and restoration. If I simply look to this man, this one who's teaching in such powerful ways. possible restoration in her community. But we do see is absolutely hope that there is mercy available from God. You know, when Jesus says he's the light of the world, this comes with real significance, particularly at this moment in the religious celebrations of the Jewish people. Remember, we are seeing Jesus in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles. And as we mentioned last time, Jesus says, if you come to me, if you're thirsty, you'll find springs of living water. And that was a reminder of the way that the feast was celebrated when water was poured out before the altar, right? And here, when Jesus says, I am the light of the world, it's a remembrance that in the Feast of Tabernacles, there were candles that were lit that some have claimed were enough to illumine large portions of the city of Jerusalem. Well, what's going on here? The Feast of Tabernacles was about remembering the wilderness journey of God's people, those 40 years before they were able to enter the land of promise. The water, you see, was poured out because God had brought forth water from the rock so that when they were afraid that they were going to die of thirst, God had provided. And so they remembered that provision by pouring out the water. Well, then we say, well, what's the light about? Why were there candles that were lit? Well, you perhaps remember how the people of Israel got from place to place those 40 years of wandering in the desert. It was because they were guided by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God, you see, was leaving them personally and powerfully. He was sheltering them, he was protecting them, and he was guiding them by his own immediate and glorious presence. Oh, so when Jesus then says, I am the light of the world, what he is saying is, I am the very personal presence of God standing here in the midst. And so at the end of the day, it's fine that those men didn't accuse her and they dropped their stones. But how much more important is it that Jesus says, I condemn you neither. Neither do I condemn you. Because here is the possibility, the prospect, the promise of the hope that we can have of being accepted by God, of not being condemned. of not in our sense of dirtiness when someone else has hurt us, being rejected by him. Neither then in those moments when we realize we are responsible for the pit into which we have fallen. Then God saying, no, I turn my back on you. But the hope of being accepted by God himself. Oh, what a hope that is. And the light of Christ breaks through to give us truth. Yes, truth to know ourselves. To be able to see ourselves in spite of the fact that there is sin all around us and circumstances that make us stumble and fall. To be able to own at the end of the day that we are responsible for our sin. To realize that in our thoughts and our words and our deeds we are constantly defying the God who has made us and who has shown us the way of life and his law. To know that truth about us. And yet I can certainly say, as I deal with Christian folk, as I deal with my own heart so often, we're the last to admit it. We're always saying, no, it's because of this, it's because of that person, that circumstance. But to own our sin, that's the light that Jesus comes to shed into our lives. But if we know ourselves, even more important to know who Jesus is. He says in verse 15, I pass judgment on no one. Not that he has not been appointed by God to judge at the end of the age, but as we saw earlier on in John's gospel, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. His ministry as he came into the world in his first advent was to proclaim life and grace and healing through faith in his work on Calvary's cross. And in fact, Jesus goes so far as to say here that indeed, You do not know me or my father. That the things he came into the world to do, to impart the light of life, that he does them because this is the very heart of God for those who are broken, cast into the darkness of this world. This is not something that comes to God as kind of a momentary idea, a bright idea out of a flash. This is part of his heart to reach out to the lost. to shine light upon those in darkness. And we see here the light of Christ in terms of purity, because Jesus tells her in verse 11, go now and leave your life of sin. A glorious fresh start. A glorious beginning over again. And how wonderful that is to have proclaimed, particularly light of this specific kind of sin. The sin in sexuality, where God's standards are violated, but where Jesus says you can leave it. It no longer has to define you. It no longer has to rule over. You can leave it behind. A fresh start. But a necessary exertion. Because Jesus says here in verse 12, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. A movement, a movement towards Christ that rejects the things that once were true for us to embrace his truth and to move towards him and towards his ways. And the purity that comes with the promise of real power Because Jesus calls on her to leave her life of sin, calls on us to leave our lives of sin. He doesn't ask us to do that, which He also doesn't give us the resources to do by His Spirit. Oh, there is wonderful, wonderful light in knowing the promise of purity for all those who follow Jesus. So Jesus this morning offers you the light of life. And the call comes to leave the darkness behind. We don't know, do we, how this woman ultimately responded to Jesus' call to leave her life of sin. We have reason to be hopeful, but just like the Samaritan woman of the well and Nicodemus, when we're first introduced to them, we're not given a sense of certainty as to how they respond to the invitation that Jesus extends. And that's important because the issue is really not to satisfy our curiosity about this woman, or the Samaritan woman or Nicodemus. The purpose of the text is to extend this invitation to us and to realize that in that sense, as we think about the darkness of this world and the darkness that we have often experienced, that we have here now the opportunity to walk in the light. To realize that what Jesus is saying is that there's no reason to sit in the darkness because you can walk in His light. And that's not only a call when we're first coming to Christ. That's a call every single day as we look to Jesus and know in Him the only solution to the misery, to the mess of walking in this world of darkness through His light. Please join me in prayer. Lord God, we pray that the light of Jesus would shine upon us, not only as we have heard your word, but as we also have the reminder of his work accomplished for us on Calvary's cross, in the receiving of the bread and the cup. We pray, Lord, that whatever darkness we've experienced of our own making or inflicted on us by others, that Jesus' light would be stronger for us, and that by faith we would follow him and know that we will never walk in darkness, but have the light of life. We pray in his name, amen. Our hymn of response is hymn 475, Come to the Savior Now. Stand to sing, please. ♪ All the truth must live around me and be part of me ♪ ♪ For he bore him and loved him ♪ ♪ He gave them to me so salvation, peace, and love ♪ ♪ Through joy on earth, through hope on earth and above ♪ ♪ Call to the Savior now, ye who have wondered far ♪ ♪ The Lord is my right to call ♪ ♪ Now and for always, returning to His home ♪ Amen. Amen. Amen.