JOH 8:1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"
6 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.
7 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."
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 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.
10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11 "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

As we come to our text this morning it is noteworthy to point out that there are those who believe that verses one through eleven are not part of the original text and therefore should not be included in the Scriptures. Their basis for this is that this portion is not found in the most early Greek manuscripts.

While this is true it does not mean that this portion is not inspired by the Holy Spirit. There are later Greek manuscripts which do include this portion and while they may not corroborate with the earliest one’s we must keep in mind all of the evidence.

For instance, we do not possess the autographs, which are the original letters that Paul and the rest of the apostles wrote. But this does not mean that this passage in question was not originally written by the apostle John.

Since all of the Greek manuscripts which we have in our possession were copied by other people it is certainly possible that one or more of the earliest copies may have omitted this portion for a variety of reasons. Some of it could have been lost. A segment of it could have been damaged and instead of filling in the blanks they simply omitted the entire section of verses one through eleven so as not to be found creating a text of the word of God.

The fact that there are later Greek manuscripts which do include this section begs the question where did they copy this from? They obviously had a manuscript they were working from which had to be an earlier copy.

The other thing to consider is that the very story itself lends credence to the entire context of the life of Christ. The wisdom, the way in which Christ deals with both this woman and the Pharisees all attest to the fact that the Holy Spirit Himself was the One who moved John to record this portion of Christ’s life.

Nothing of this story contradicts anything to do with the doctrines of God’s word and instead only supports the doctrines of grace and mercy and justice.

Arthur W. Pink in his commentary on John’s gospel points out that if we omit verses one through eleven then we must necessarily pick up in verse twelve of chapter eight. If we do this there is such an abrupt break between chapters seven and eight that it is unnatural to the text.

This section has been studied for many years, going back to the second and third centuries, and most would agree that the story of the woman caught in adultery was written by John as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

JOH 8:1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.

This section shows that after the crowd broke up and the temple guard finally went back to the Sanhedrin Jesus withdrew from them to the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives was a place in Jerusalem where Jesus spent a lot of time with His disciples and the crowds. He would often spend the night there since it was centrally located and very near to the temple.

MAR 13:3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately,
4 "Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

LUK 21:37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives,
38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.

And so, verse one of our text is a natural segue from chapter seven as the scene changes to the next day where Jesus continues to teach the people.

JOH 8:2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.

It’s interesting that despite the knowledge these crowds had regarding the attitude of the Pharisees wanting to arrest and harm Jesus the regular Jew on the street in Jerusalem was not swayed from coming to Jesus to learn more as He not only taught them, but taught them in the temple courts.

This is the same temple court area where Jesus drove out the money changers and those who were selling animals almost two years earlier during the Passover time. And so, in a sense Jesus has been somewhat of a celebrity in the eyes of some and certainly an oddity in the eyes of others here in Jerusalem.

But, however one viewed Jesus, few could deny that He was making an impact on Jerusalem. And now, the people continue to come out to listen to this teacher who teaches with authority and demonstrates power as coming only from God.

And just as Jesus is expounding the Scriptures and explaining the kingdom of God and certainly encouraging people to repent and trust that He is the Messiah, a group of hostile Pharisees decide they are going to embarrass this Jesus and accuse Him for being what He is, a false teacher who waxes eloquent, but who in reality denies the law given to Israel by Moses through God.

The previous day these same Pharisees failed to arrest Jesus by force and so they come up with what they view as a masterful plan to catch Jesus in a dilemma that no one could get out of. As A.W. Pink puts it, “The roar of the lion had failed; now we are to behold the wiles of the serpent.”

JOH 8:3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

This was a very clever ploy because in the eyes of all Jews this was a black and white issue according to the law. If Jesus agrees that this woman is to be stoned He puts into question His message of love and mercy.

If He balks at putting this woman to death He then shows Himself to be out of accord with the law He professes to adhere to as a Jew. And this is why we have verse six, “They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.”

JOH 8:3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group.

Now, a little common sense needs to be brought to bear on this scene because it’s made to look like a coincidence that this woman was caught. But think about it. Who in their right mind is going to commit adultery in the middle of the street for all to see?

No. These sorts of acts are committed in secret for none to see. So, how did the Pharisees conveniently find this woman? Well, one thing is for sure, it was not a coincidence. This was planned by the Pharisees who obviously knew this woman was sleeping with a man who was not her husband. Remember, Jesus began teaching in the temple courts around dawn.

In all likelihood the Pharisees knew for quite some time where to find this woman. They simply go to the house where she is located and drag her out of bed and march her down to Jesus.

So, now picture the scene. There’s a large group of people listening to Jesus as they are all seated on the ground. All of a sudden from the back comes a parade of important people, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, who are literally dragging this woman who is probably half asleep in her night clothes.

In front of everyone she is marched right up to Jesus who is confronted with the question as to what to do with her? Now, if their intentions were true they would never have brought her to Jesus. They would have taken her themselves and dealt with her since they were the judges of Israel at this time. You don’t go to a common man on the street to decide what to do with a violator of the law.

And the law was clear which is why they confront Jesus with the question in verses four and five, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

Now, I don’t know if you see the irony and humor here, but let me point it out. These Pharisees come boldly to Jesus with the law which they claim to be on their side. The irony here is that it was the Son of God who gave Moses that law on Mount Sinai hundreds of years before this time.

They are essentially telling the law giver who stands in front of them what He needs to know about the law. And by the way, their premise is flawed from the beginning as they are exercising a selective view of the law.

DEU 22:22 If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

LEV 20:10 "'If a man commits adultery with another man's wife - with the wife of his neighbor -both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

If you’ll notice in this law, both the man and the woman caught in adultery are to be put to death. We’ve got the adulteress standing before Jesus, but where’s the adulterer? Again, note the question put before Jesus.

JOH 8:4 ... "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

What Jesus could have said, and yet doesn’t, is, “where is the man who was with her? If the law is so important to you that you would drag this woman across town and deposit her in front of me and this crowd why in the world didn’t you complete your quest by bringing the man who, according to the law, needs to be standing in front of me as well?”

As wise as that response may sound the Holy Spirit had something else in mind as Jesus is going to cut to the chase. For if our Lord had tried to argue the point they would have accused Jesus of just trying to avoid the obvious, which was this woman who was still a violator of the law.

And now, as these teachers of the law and Pharisees come to this man they call teacher, they try and show that He is no teacher at all, but one who needs to be accused and convicted of the law Himself for teaching heresy.

But instead of Jesus doing an exposition on the law He does something strange. Look at the end of verse six.

JOH 8:6 .... But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

Now, if you’re a Pharisee who is deemed to be one of the most important people in Israel, and you direct a question to a commoner, you expect their attention and a response. Jesus appears to offer neither. This had to be aggravating to these Pharisees.

Jesus obviously heard their question, but instead of looking at them or responding to them He puts His head down and begins writing something in the sand with His finger.

A lot of people have speculated as to what Jesus was writing. Some say He was writing the sins of the accusers in the sand. Others have suggested that He was writing nothing in particular but only stalling so as to give no credence to the charge.

By the way, this is not the first time that a message of the Lord is written in this way. We have another incident in the Scriptures where He wrote a very important message for a King by the name of Belshazzar.

This King was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and like his father he would not humble himself before the Lord. The prophet Daniel served Nebuchadnezzar and now he would be called upon to serve Belshazzar.

It was Belshazzar who had a big party one night and decided to drink out of the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem. And so he profaned the Lord.

DAN 5:4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.
5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.
6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.

No one was able to interpret the words on the wall, and so finally Daniel was called in by the King as he was reminded that Daniel had served his father as one who heard from God.

DAN 5:23 .... you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.
24 Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.
25 "This is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN
26 "This is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
27 Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
28 Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."
30 That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain,
31 and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

Imagine if Jesus wrote this message, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN, in the sand with his finger. “God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.” “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” “Your kingdom is divided.”

Well, it’s interesting speculation, but the bottom line is that no one knows what Jesus wrote. In fact, what Jesus wrote doesn’t seem to be quite as important as what Jesus says.

JOH 8:7 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."
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

Jesus goes back to the law that these Pharisees and teachers of the law put all of their confidence in. This is a question which now tests their knowledge of the law.

DEU 17:7 The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.

Jesus may be asking a couple of things here from these leaders who want to stone this woman. He may be asking them to consider their own sin hoping to touch what conscience they have left. This can be inferred, but there is something more direct in this question and that has to do with their claim to have caught this woman in the act of adultery.

In other words, Jesus is questioning their veracity. He is questioning their ability to tell the truth. If they are telling the truth that they personally caught this woman in an adulterous situation then they are obligated by the law to throw the first stones.

Jesus has turned the tables on them as He now exposes their hearts as well as their lies. They came to Him demanding that He keep the law by condemning this woman, but He puts the law back in their laps and says then if you are without sin, or if you are speaking truthfully concerning your claim to have found this adulterous woman, then pick up a stone and carry out the verdict, according to the law.

Whether they conceded that they were not without sin in general, or were not without sin regarding their claims concerning how they found this woman, Jesus strikes at the heart as only He can.

The law which they tried to use as a hammer of injustice is now turned on them as it pounds them with the law they view as their savior, which now becomes their accuser. The accusers become the accused.

And though their hearts are hard and cold they cannot deny that the very vehicle they are trying to use to discredit Jesus, the law, He now takes and shows them that they cannot stand on this law without submitting to its truth regarding their own disobedience to it.

In other words, it is likely that they never personally caught this woman in adultery. That would have been beneath their dignity to go into the bedroom of a sinner and witness such a thing with their own eyes. They hired people, other sinners, to do their dirty work and Jesus exposes their lies, which they cannot deny unless they enter into more lies about that.

Whatever the truth was concerning this issue they were not willing to put their reputations on the line by picking up the first stone and throwing it at this woman. And now, one by one, they have to tuck their tails between their legs and slink off into their holes.

Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the crowd as they witness this exchange between Jesus and these leaders? They must have been amazed. But they were no less amazed than the woman herself. You see, though the Pharisees were deceptive in the way they brought her to Jesus, it appears that she was in fact an adulteress.

JOH 8:10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11 "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Notice that Jesus places the accusations in her lap. "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

In other words, as the accused she now has to come to grips with the accusations. You see simply because your accusers have all left does not automatically take away the taint of the accusations.

Just ask Bill Clinton about that. Though all of his accusers never pursued the charges that he lied to a grand jury about his dealings with Monica Lewinsky, to the degree that he was thrown out of office, we all know what his legacy will be. That stained blue dress will always be the skeleton that hangs in Bill Clinton’s closet.

Despite the fact that her accusers did not pursue the charges she was still guilty, which is really what this event is all about. This woman’s story was not about lying and cheating Pharisees. It was not about being caught in the act. It’s about being guilty before a holy God.

The one group slinked away still in their sins while this woman is going to find forgiveness from the God who gave that law to Moses regarding adultery.

Here is the beauty of salvation, and though we don’t want to limit its impact from only a legal standpoint, it is really a legal matter. Guilt has to do with violating the law and more importantly the God who gave that law.

By law this woman should have been killed. By law she stood condemned. By law God in His justice could have and should have not only taken her life in this world, but separated her from ever being with Him in eternity and sharing in His life. By law she should suffer in hell forever.

But, if we are all guilty, and by law we must suffer the consequences, how in the world can anyone ever be found not guilty? There is only one way a guilty person can have his guilt removed, and that is through a legal declaration of not guilty.

This doesn’t take away the fact that one is guilty, it only moves the guilt out of the way so that it no longer interferes with peace and freedom. The closest thing we have to an understanding of this in our legal system is what we know as amnesty which is a general pardon for offenses against a government.

The Congress, under former President Carter, enacted a law which enabled young men who fled to Canada to escape the military draft during the Vietnam war, to come back into this country without any possibility of being condemned for their violation of the law.

It was as though they never fled. However, the problem with this analogy is that President Carter never went to jail to pay the debt these men deserved. He simply made a legal declaration and wiped the slate clean for these offenders. The debt was never paid.

But when Jesus declares that He will not find her guilty He doesn’t wipe her slate clean without someone paying her debt. That someone will be Himself. In fact, six months from the time He says He does not condemn her He will be condemned to death and nailed to a cross for something He never did. Though He was guiltless He took our debt and paid it in full.

And that is what He was declaring to this woman. Her justification came from her debt being paid in full. The law would be satisfied and thus God’s justice would be satisfied, despite the fact that she didn’t have to personally pay for her own sin.

This is amazing grace. And that is what this woman received. What she deserved and what she received from Christ were two different things. And the irony is that the very thing that was offered to her could have been offered to those Pharisees who one by one left the presence of Jesus because of their guilt instead of running to Him for forgiveness.

This woman stayed until the last accuser left, probably expecting Jesus to acknowledge her guilt as well and give her a tongue lashing. Jesus does acknowledge her sin but sends her away as one who has had her guilt removed by the Messiah who would pay her debt in full. Only Jesus Christ can forgive sin and she receives it that day.

If we too have received this forgiveness found only in Christ by faith, then we need to leave our lives of sin. In other words, if we have eternal life, then we need to live as though we have eternal life, and no longer be bound to the life of this world which kept us from God in the first place.

ROM 5:20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

ROM 6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin -
7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.
10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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