Speaker 1: 0:00

And then I just want to acknowledge all the pain in the room today. I think it goes without saying that there's not only physical pain but there's emotional pain. I think we're all kind of carrying different struggles with us into today's moment and I think that should just be named and just put out there, especially as we're talking about a very difficult sermon series over the past couple weeks and into the next couple weeks as well. The Pharisee in me. So not only are we dealing with all of our struggles and all of our pain, we also have to examine ourselves and we have to shine a mirror into our life and see what God has to say and what Scripture has to say about the Pharisee in all of us too. It's no easy job to do, but I'm excited to, at today, talk about John, chapter 8, verses 1 through 11, which is it's going to be a good, very good passage, but it's also a very challenging passage. Because what happens? Just to give you some introductory remarks before we even dive in, the Pharisees bring a woman who's called an adultery before Jesus and they expect Jesus to condemn her and, like I said, they expect him to. He doesn't do it, he shows mercy, he turns the situation around on itself very quickly. But one of the things I want to name just from the beginning is I just want to name the fact that this passage has been used multiple times to focus more on the woman's adultery than the Pharisees' judgmental hearts. That has plagued kind of the Christian culture in our world and I just want to name that from the very beginning. Even as you look in your Bible translations you get to this passage. The heading of the passage is going to say the woman caught in adultery, when really more aptly it should say the Pharisees try to condemn a woman. That should probably be a more appropriate heading as we kick off today. But I am thankful for the opportunity to anchor this story and in this moment at Madison Church in a fuller sense, to call out the Pharisee in me, to call out the Pharisee in us, rightfully balancing this passage A blend of mercy and a blend of accountability, Accountability against the Pharisees specifically.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So let's dive into the passage John, chapter 8, verses 1 through 11. We'll throw it up there on the screen and then I'll also read it out loud for us here right now. It says this in verse 1. Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back. It says this in verse 1, woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? They were trying to trap him into saying something that they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer. So he stood up and said all right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away, one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman when are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said Neither do I Go and sin no more'" For me.

Speaker 1: 3:29

I couldn't ask for a better Ordination Day passage for me, because it's so delicately balanced. We have a story embodying the gospel and a story that challenges our own hearts. It challenges our hearts of sin, where Jesus showed us mercy. But really, if we really see the emphasis here, it's challenging the Pharisee in us, Our hearts of judgment, Our hearts of gossip, Our hearts of hasty disapproval for one another. That's where this passage is taking us today and that's where I want to spend most of our time today, Uncovering the judgmental Pharisee in our own hearts. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take some time and I'm going to explain the Pharisee's goal in this passage very quickly and we'll see how Jesus responds. But the weight of the effort is going to be where we find ourselves, excusing our own judgmental behavior instead of modeling Jesus's mercy, and that's a difficult question for us to ask ourselves. It's an extremely difficult question to ask ourselves, but this is the question I'll pose to us how often do we overlook our own sin and refuse to show grace to others? How often do we choose to overlook our own sin and refuse to show grace to others? So let's dive in with the Pharisees' goal. The Pharisees' goal from the beginning is to condemn both the woman and Jesus. That is their goal.

Speaker 1: 4:52

The Pharisees are back at it again and if we remember over the past couple weeks and where this sermon series has taken us, the Pharisees are kind of these religious leaders. They're kind of the teachers when it comes to how to apply the text to the individual and the community as a whole. And then you have these religious teachers called scribes, and we see them both at play here. But Pharisees in their name means separated or set apart. So from the very beginning the Pharisees' name in and of itself shows this kind of holier-than-thou title Already. We kind of hear it as we see their name.

Speaker 1: 5:26

And what they try to do time and time again is they want to challenge Jesus and call him out for being a blasphemer. They want to say he's not a real teacher of the law, In fact he's blaspheming the law and we're going to take that and accuse him with it and arrest him with it, Leading up to John chapter 8 and John chapter seven. The Pharisees had just tried to arrest Jesus. They commissioned a couple officers and they said hey, go arrest Jesus. And the officers come back and they say sorry, I couldn't do it. No one talks like this, but we didn't really have grounds to arrest him. And so here they are again, trying a different way to get Jesus to say something that they would finally have the means to accuse him. So what they're doing is they're attempting to put Jesus in a catch-22 type situation, which is an unwinnable situation because the rules are contradictory.

Speaker 1: 6:15

In our day and age, we find ourselves in our own catch-22s. I think one of the most popular one is if you've ever applied for a job. It says in order to apply for this job, you need X number of years of experience. But you can't get X number of years of experience unless you get the job. That's a catch-22. I think we experience it in much more deeper ways too Internal catch-22s. I want to speak up for myself. I want to advocate for myself because I'm unhappy. But if I speak up and I advocate for myself, then other people are going to be mad at me and then I'll be unhappy too. So I'm just going to stay quiet and not advocate for myself, and I'll stay unhappy too. It's a deeper catch-22. I won't go too deep into that sermon series right now, but another time. For sure. I would love to talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 1: 7:04

But in our passage we have a catch-22 that has life and death implications. Jesus doesn't fear this catch-22. He's going to turn it around on itself. He sees this through heaven's eyes. He sees the situation through heaven's eyes. If he condemns the woman and he follows the law, she dies and he's not the merciful leader he's been preaching. If he ignores her sin, then he's not a true teacher of the law. The Pharisees want Jesus to condemn this woman. They know he won't, though. They know he won't, and as soon as he goes against what is written in the law, they'll finally have the means to accuse him. They can finally charge him with something. This is the catch-22.

Speaker 1: 7:44

But what I want to point out too, is how the Pharisees delighted in their judgment. In this moment, they're really happy that they've come up and crafted the scenario. See, we know that adultery would take two people in order to make that sin happen. Right, but they've singled out just the woman for this charge. She's made into the other in this scene. She's othered, she's made in strange, she's obscene, she's the one that's not like us. They thrill with their own disapproval. There's a heat of the moment. They caught her in the act. They say a rush to judgment. They have a hasty certainty about the situation. What should happen? They have a hasty certainty about the situation and what should happen, without stopping to first examine their own lives too.

Speaker 1: 8:29

I ask us today not to make the same mistakes that the Pharisees did. So let's take a moment. Let's do the work of shining a mirror onto ourselves and letting the light shine into our life, See where we might be trapped in that ourselves. So this is where we're going to spend the next phase of this the Pharisee in me, the judger and the condemner. That's where we're going to spend most of our time.

Speaker 1: 8:55

I think at some point each of us could walk up here. I could give you a microphone and you could tell me about a time where you have been created and labeled the other. I think every single one of us could do it. You're either being judged for who you are or more aptly to this story you were severely judged for a mistake that you made, and I think that we all know what it looks like when you walk into a room and you see these judgmental eyes. You hear the laughs of those who are finding commonality as they cherish their disapproval in you, as they're bonding over their disapproval in you. We even feel a physical sensation in those moments too, when we are isolated or we feel a tightness in our chest. We feel a sense of anxiety about even going to work or walking into a room. We feel a sense of depression, that isolation. We know these feelings too well.

Speaker 1: 9:46

But let me ask a more difficult question when is the last time we judged or condemned or even gossiped about someone in the name of our own morality? And that's a really tough question to ask ourselves. But make no mistake about it, the Pharisees were religiously correct with their accusations. According to their moral framework, they were correct, but it was their judgment and condemnation that Jesus fully rejected. Here's what I fear. I fear that many times we think that our judgmental views or even our gossip are justified because of a moral reason. I think we are struggling together around really positive conversations. There are really positive conversations out there about creating boundaries and holding each other accountable and accountability inside organizations. I think those are really positive topics. I think we're struggling through them. But what does it look like when that sweeps away and strays into judgment and condemnation? That is a difficult question for us to ask ourselves. So I put together a few thoughts that might highlight when we are straying into unjust judgment or condemnation.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Warning sign number one you are more upset with someone else's sin than you are embarrassed by your own. You are more upset with someone else's sin than you were embarrassed by your own. Surprisingly, this is actually what happened during the stanford prison experiment, if you're if you're not familiar with the stanford prison experiment. In 1971 there was this group of volunteers. They said I will sign up to go into a simulated prison for a social experiment. The volunteers were randomly categorized into guards and randomly categorized into prisoners. And what happened was almost very quickly, the guards became abusive. They started doing sleep deprivation. They put the prisoners into stress positions, they took away their food. But I think what you would be shocked to hear is that in some of the interviews afterwards where the guards are saying, people are asking guards, why did you go that hard? Why did you really go after them like that? They actually blame the prisoners for their actions Instead of taking accountability for themselves. They blame the prisoners for their actions. They said this, they called them weak. They called the prisoners troublemakers. They called them lazy and didn't want to follow the rules. Some guards went as far to say the prisoners deserved it. So even after the experiment is over and they're acknowledging these painful results, the guards felt like they were justified because of the other person's behavior. They were more upset about the prisoner's behavior than they were embarrassed by their own.

Speaker 1: 12:15

And time and time again we see Jesus call this out in the Pharisees. Most famously, we hear this in Matthew, chapter 7, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7, 3 says this and why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? Why are you looking at someone else when you haven't taken the time to look inside first? In our passage today, what do we see Jesus say? He says let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. And then he bends down to write in the sand and we actually have a couple texts of the copies of the gospel of John from the 10th century, that kind of add on that. What he's writing in the sand are the Pharisees' sins. Now, truly, we don't know what Jesus is writing. He might just be ignoring that. We're not truly sure. But what we do know is this he asked them to consider their own lives before they condemn someone else. And if we find ourselves in a situation where we are ready to go after another person without first taking a hard look in the mirror, then we might be slipping down a slope of unfair judgment.

Speaker 1: 13:12

All right, warning sign number two you tend to cut off those who disagree with you. Now, there are certainly moments where cutting off people is the appropriate action to do. Anytime we're discussing abuse or harm, you must create a safe space and you need to cut off people in those situations. But in the context of today's message, what we're talking about is maliciously tending to cut people off because they disagree with you. Just because they have a different view, maybe they made a mistake. When you cut someone off, you were condemning them as hopeless. That's what I want to get after here. It's certainly easier this way. It's a challenge to sit at the table where there are discomfort and tension, but sometimes that is the call. Sit at the table where there are discomfort and tension, but sometimes that is the call.

Speaker 1: 13:58

The most famous examples of this type of behavior were back when religious leaders could excommunicate those who weren't being a good churchgoer. One of our most famous examples would be the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. He was excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of his own views, his own teachings around justification, Because he pricked against the system and the power structure. He was socially and physically ostracized. And again, in essence, when you cut someone off, you are labeling them as hopeless. You're saying you can't be honest with someone, you don't have restoration or reconciliation in mind.

Speaker 1: 14:31

In our passage today, Jesus does not write the woman off as hopeless. He does not cut her off. Instead, Jesus stood up again and said to the woman where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said neither do I Go and sin no more. Jesus doesn't condemn her, he commissions her. Jesus doesn't condemn her, he commissions her. He shows mercy, he has a sense of restoration in mind. Go, go into all the world. It's the same kind of word we get when we get tasked with a great commission.

Speaker 1: 15:04

And as I was talking to Steven about this, uh, the sermon in the past couple of weeks, he brought up a really good quote that I want to throw up there from Dorothy Day. It says I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least, and this is probably the one that I struggle with the most Right now. If I wanted to, I could tell you the people I love the least in life. I could tell you. I know exactly who they are. Are you watching? But that is a challenge for us right To know exactly what is inside our own lives before we go condemn someone.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Warning sign number three bonding with others by critiquing a common enemy. Now, uniting over a common enemy is a tale as old as time. So even in the Air Force they tried to get our training officers to yell at us, make our lives miserable. So what do we do with our bunkmates? We're like this person really, man, they're aggravating me. They're really awful. They're mean. They're not even good at their job. They forced us to rely on each other for our needs and it was magical. You unite really quickly when you have a common enemy in mind.

Speaker 1: 16:17

And I bring that up because I think many times we feel justified, because we feel like the other person is judging us first. We feel like we need validation for our judgmental feelings so that we know we are right. It's the other person's fault that we're doing this anyway. Now, sure, it's fun. It's fun to hear the tea sometimes and you've got to vent a little bit, especially about painful work situations. But usually we know when we are trying to change someone else's perception about another person and that's when we're slipping, slipping down the slope, when you're trying to change someone else's perception about another person, you're slipping.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Look at the Pharisees in this passage. They were thrilled to have caught this woman in the act. They had consulted each other, planned and affirmed one another's hatred for her and for Jesus' message. Now they could both condemn the woman and Jesus together. So this is a really good reminder that just because other people agree with us doesn't mean we aren't unfairly judging someone. Just because we got numbers on our side doesn't necessarily make us right. The Pharisees were the majority here. That did not make them right. We are wise to remember these words from James 4, 11, and 12. Do not speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God's law, but your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the judge. He alone has the power to save or destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? All right, warning sign number four you know the outcome you want and you use a moral framework to justify it.

Speaker 1: 17:50

One of the best examples in this category is the concept of slavery and the reality of slavery in America. For hundreds of years, enslavers used the Bible to justify the outcome that they wanted. They took stories like the curse of Ham in the Old Testament and then they took passages from the New Testament about slaves obeying your masters to justify the outcome they already had in mind to keep slavery going. They took their own moral framework and they manipulated it for their own purposes. They discarded the portions that didn't work for them and they somehow pretended it was God's intention to have a person owned by another person.

Speaker 1: 18:28

In our passage today, it comes down to how the Pharisees are weaponizing the law for their own purposes. It's about the ends they want and they're going to use the law in a certain way to make sure that judgment passes. It's not about their pure love for the law. They're speaking to the creator of law by speaking to Jesus. What they really want is their own outcome when they collaborate one on and when they have justified and in our own lives I think we feel guilty about wanting an outcome, so we seek to justify it too. So we start to look and see and listen if there's a moral reason for our desire and that outcome that we want. The problem is is that once we've already predetermined an outcome we've likely already judged and condemned the moral framework part really doesn't have much of a play.

Speaker 1: 19:12

I think it's helpful to go back to Matthew 7 in the Sermon on the Mount. It says this Do not judge others and you will not be judged, for you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. It's almost like a judgment karma. Every time we go and judge someone else, we should be thinking that someone's judging us, likely in the same way, or God is judging us. And I think, for all four of these warning signs that we have, we experience them physically in a different way too. So when we are the target, we feel that tightness in our chest, that depression and that isolation, but when we have a judging and condemning heart, we feel this anger, we feel this darkness, we have this sense of being trapped in negativity that's like oozing out of us. I think we can recognize that physical sensation too. At the end of the day, it's a heart issue. I could stand up here and I can give us 10 more prescriptive behaviors about how to identify judging in our lives and how to overcome judging in our lives.

Speaker 1: 20:13

But it was the rules and laws that stopped the Pharisees from recognizing their own hearts. So our job is to look inside and see, even if we have all the rules right, whether our intentions are right too. So let's look at Jesus's model about how he responds and what it means for our life. We'll move into our last phase. Here. It's called to or left misery and mercy. To or left misery and mercy. And so Jesus asked the Pharisees to consider their own sin. And then they start to disappear. They're ashamed, and they should be ashamed because of what they just put this poor woman through. They are literally saying they wanted her dead. And when Jesus has the opportunity to condemn her, what does he say? Neither do I, I don't condemn her. That's the gospel, that's the powerful moment. St Augustine famously calls this moment to or left misery and mercy, the woman being in the misery of her darkness of the sin, but really under the weight of the condemnation. We don't see her try to defend herself in this passage at all, but Jesus, the embodiment of mercy, meeting her not in condemnation but in commission, he did not give up on her, and it's the same principle that we can apply to our church community today.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Now, if you've been to a lot of weddings, you've heard the famous first Corinthians 13 passage about love at weddings. Love is patient, Love is kind. That is a really beautiful thing, and it is amazing for couples to think about that when they're going into marriage. But it's helpful to remember that Paul wrote that to a church community for how we should treat and love one another, and so I want to read that for us today as a reminder to love one another instead of judging and condemning one another. It says this in 1 Corinthians 13.

Speaker 1: 22:05

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy and I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, if I had such faith that could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient, Love is kind.

Speaker 1: 22:31

Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable and it keeps no records of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. Here, in the next couple of minutes, we're going to get the opportunity to partake in communion. Today, I want us to remember that when we partake in communion, we not only remember the moment that Jesus met us in our misery and was merciful, but I also want us to remember that when we take communion, we take communion to have communion with one another, a unity within the body of Christ. So let's not let our hearts lead us astray, into the pit of judgment and condemnation we ask ourselves today I judge, but do I show mercy? But do I show mercy? Instead, let's be filled with the love of God, a love that never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance.