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Living Rock Church is a friendly, growing Christian church, meeting each week in Stoney Stanton, Atherstone, Market Harborough & Kenya. We’ve discovered that Jesus changes lives, heals bodies, restores families and gives meaning and purpose to us all. We’re convinced that church should be positive, practical, relevant and great fun! This podcast contains audio recordings from our Sunday gatherings.
Welcome to the Living Rock Podcast. Wow. It's great to be here. And I hope you're really enjoying meeting Jesus in the gospels as much as I am. Somebody said talking about the graphic the other day, and I said, I can only say for me that graphic has been overwhelmingly helpful.
Speaker 1:I've loved our focus on Jesus this year. And we continue that over the summer. But we're just going to slightly change the focus a little bit and pick up the seven I am statements that are made in made by Jesus in John's gospel. So, the John's gospel is is a little different to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They're they're called the synoptic gospels.
Speaker 1:They kind of follow the same chronological sequence with Jesus' ministry. But John's gospel takes a different approach, and John talks about various signs that Jesus performed and seven claims he made when he said, I am something, something, something. He said, I am the bread of life. I'm the light of the world. I'm the door to the sheep.
Speaker 1:I'm the good shepherd. I'm the resurrection and the life. I'm the way, the truth, and the life. I am the true vine. So we're going to hear something about, I think, most of those over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1:But to get us started, I would like to take this theme, I am the light of the world. We're going to turn you to John chapter eight. John eight verse two. Because a lot of these I am statements are preceded by somebody encountering Jesus. And this is no exception.
Speaker 1:This is the story of a woman who was caught in adultery. And we'll read the story. I think it's from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, John eight verse two following. So here we go. At dawn, he went to the temple complex again.
Speaker 1:And all the people were coming to him. He sat down and began to teach them. And then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, caught in the act literally, making her stand in the center. Teacher, they said to him, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.
Speaker 1:So what do you say? They asked this to trap him in order that they might have evidence to accuse him. Jesus stooped down and started writing on the ground with his finger. When they persisted in questioning him, he stood up and said to them, the one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her. Then he stooped down again, continued writing in the ground.
Speaker 1:And when they heard this, they left one by one, starting with the older men. Only he was left with the woman in the center. And then Jesus stood up and he said to her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, Lord, she answered.
Speaker 1:Neither do I condemn you, said Jesus. Go and from now on do not sin anymore. And then Jesus spoke to them again. I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 1:It's a great story, isn't it? Probably one we're quite familiar with. And I thought it would be helpful this morning just to watch the story as well. So hoping the tech works, we're going to watch a very short video clip. Just want to give you a couple of things that are important for the context of the story.
Speaker 1:It takes place in Jerusalem. And when you read back in John chapter seven, it's the day after the Feast of Tabernacles. That was the feast that was going on. Jesus was at the feast. And this is dawn of the next day.
Speaker 1:And it's about six months before Jesus's final Passover feast and his death and his resurrection. It's very close towards the end of his life. And those religious people, the scribes and the Pharisees, the scribes were people that copied and interpreted the law of Moses and dealt with legal cases. And the Pharisees were a strict religious sect that followed all of the written and all of the oral law. And it wasn't just the law of Moses.
Speaker 1:It was all the bits that had been added by others as well. It's a really simple storyline, isn't it? Jesus is teaching at the temple at dawn. Crowds gather. The scribes and Pharisees bring this woman in, stand her in the front in the middle of everything, in the middle of the crowd.
Speaker 1:And they try and trap Jesus with a question. If he agrees with them, he's at risk of coming into conflict with the Romans because they reserved the right to pronounce the death penalty in the provinces. If he disagrees with them, he's seen to reject Moses and compromise on the law. So Jesus I love it. I love I just love Jesus, don't you?
Speaker 1:But I love that he feigns total disinterest in their question. Just write something on the ground. And they persist in demanding an answer. And he exposes their hypocrisy, their self righteousness. And they realize he's trapped them.
Speaker 1:He's trapped them. We were trying to trap him. And they walk away, beginning with the oldest, or St. Morrath in the moment, and the woman is left alone with Jesus. And he sets her free with a command that she sin no more.
Speaker 1:And then he declares, I am the light of the world. A marvelous, beautiful moment. And I just want to dig a little bit deeper and say four simple, brief things about this story that I think are really helpful to us at the moment. So the first thing to say is that I think they're all going to come up together. It's a story about awful hypocrisy, double standards, legalism, religion, externalities.
Speaker 1:The Pharisees were known for dealing with all the external things, counting out their tithing their spices, their herbs and spices, but rejecting or not following the matters of the heart. Jesus was in constant miracles on the Sabbath, because he'd worked on the Sabbath by doing a miracle. They had a problem with that. You know the story about the Pharisees. These men with a plank in their own eye pointing out the speck in other people's eyes.
Speaker 1:In their flowing robes, they like to be seen. They like to be heard. They like to be seen to be praying and to be righteous. Luke 16 says they loved money. Well, Jesus said you can't love money and love God, so there's an issue there straight away.
Speaker 1:They regarded themselves as as the custodians of the law. The law God that gave that God gave Moses and all the laws that had been added since then. And they try and trap Jesus and expose him in public. There's no details of the specifics of her sin, no details as to whether she was the initiator of adultery or whether she was the subject of another man's lust or even whether the whole thing was a setup in order to trap Jesus. Because under the law, and you can read about this in Deuteronomy 22, both a man and a woman found in adultery were both to be stoned to death.
Speaker 1:Where's the man? Why why is it just the woman? They're parading this woman in front of the crowd. She's made to stand in the middle. Everyone's staring at her, humiliating her, exposing her, and urging the crowd to cheer for her death.
Speaker 1:It's an awful scenario, isn't it? Like she's some trophy of their own purity and their own their own righteousness. And they're not realizing their own critical, judgmental, self righteousness is just as sinful as whatever she might have done. They're demanding the death of this woman without acknowledging the need for the death of their own pride and their own ego. And they want him to pronounce a judgment on her, but instead he drives home a judgment against them.
Speaker 1:Isn't Jesus amazing? They're all sinners. Her accusers become the accused, and those who exposed her are exposed. And so with no defense and nowhere to go, they all leave one by one, starting with the oldest, who probably had more on their consciences or more in their closets. It's a story of awful hypocrisy.
Speaker 1:But it's a story of amazing grace. And this is a life or death moment for this woman. Her destiny, to a large extent, is in his hands, certainly in his words. If he answered the way they hoped he would or the way they were gunning for, she was maybe minutes, hours away from death. How he answers their question will seal her fate.
Speaker 1:And so it's a profound moment of grace. As he looks into her eyes, neither do I condemn you. Paul writes in second Corinthians about the gentleness and kindness of Christ. And here it is on display. She was trapped by the law but she was released by grace.
Speaker 1:John chapter one, same gospel, says the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And here is grace and truth on display. Now, to be absolutely clear, he doesn't condemn her but neither does he condone what she might have been doing. She's to sin no more. He's not glossing over everything.
Speaker 1:This is not cheap grace. And within six months, he will pay the penalty for her sin and for theirs. This is Jesus, Lord and savior, full of grace and truth, hating sin, loving sinners, and ready to die that we might have life. Therefore, it's a story of abundant life, A story of hope, of second chances, of fresh starts, of restoration, of abundant life. And I'm going to use some sanctified imagination in just a moment.
Speaker 1:You know, the hypocritical way of dealing with other people's sin is to contrast it with your own virtues or even how small my sins are compared with somebody else's. That's how the hypocrite deals with sin. The law deals with sin by showing no mercy. But Jesus deals with sin by offering forgiveness and a second chance and life in all its fullness. Her accusers walked away from Jesus into their sad, dark lives of self righteousness.
Speaker 1:But I think she walked into his love and began a new life free from condemnation. You know what I'm like with my visual aids and my I'm going to read from a book now. It's not the Bible. It's a book that a few of us have read. It's by Bear Grylls.
Speaker 1:It's called The Greatest Story Ever Told. And I recommend it. It's not that it has he he also has some sanctified imaginary moments in it, but it's very close to scripture. All this all the quotes from scripture are quotes from scripture. And he tells the story of Jesus through the eyes of I think it's four or five of his followers.
Speaker 1:And this is this is part of the story through Thomas's eyes, doubting Thomas. And I'll just read this and trust it blesses you. So this is Thomas's perspective. We were once more in Jerusalem, back in the temple. By now, the crowds were larger than ever before, to the point it was getting difficult to hear him teach.
Speaker 1:But on this day, it wasn't Jesus who was doing the talking. It was the Pharisees. They were standing there, flowing robes on display for all to see and to revere. But their faces were like thunder as they strutted towards Jesus. And they were not alone.
Speaker 1:Behind them was a terrified looking woman. She had two temple guards either side of her. Her face was bruised and her clothes were torn. The woman was violently hurled down into the dirt in front of Jesus. And for a moment, nobody spoke.
Speaker 1:Jesus was looking only at the woman. I glanced around. There were baskets of stones and coils of thick rope nearby. That only meant one thing. This woman was about to be stoned to death.
Speaker 1:I wanted to run, but the crowds were so thick that it was hard to retreat, and there was a palpable taste for blood in the air. People were hungry for violence, and as far as this crowd was concerned, this woman deserved it. Yet Jesus looked so calm. I just hope that he knew what he was doing. Classic Thomas.
Speaker 1:Teacher, the lead Pharisee said, his voice booming so that everyone could hear. This woman was caught red handed in the act of adultery. Moses in the law gives orders to such persons. He paused for effect. They are to be stoned until death.
Speaker 1:Do you not agree with our forefathers? The Pharisees looked around confidently at the Pharisee. He knew he was on solid ground. He said it again. This woman was caught red handed in the act of adultery.
Speaker 1:Moses gives orders to such persons. They are to be stoned until death. The Pharisee looked at Jesus waiting for an answer. Do you not have anything to say? It was the most obvious trap I'd ever seen.
Speaker 1:To entice Jesus to say something that they could use against him. Jesus did not say a word. He just knelt and started writing in the dirt with his finger. Teacher, the Pharisee bellowed once more, his voice now dripping with sarcasm. What do you say we should do with her?
Speaker 1:Let her go and defy Moses himself. Jesus remained crouched down, gently toying with the sand. The crowd was starting to stir. And then Jesus finally stood up, and he walked slowly over to the pile of rough, sharp stones and paused. He picked one up, and he held it out.
Speaker 1:Then he spoke in a clear voice to the entire crowd. The sinless one among you, go first. Throw the stone. Nobody moved. Jesus turned all around, holding the stone out to everyone nearby.
Speaker 1:The sinless one among you, go first, he repeated. Throw the stone. He even offered it to the Pharisees. But nobody would take it. People started to look away from his gaze.
Speaker 1:The tension was palpable. Jesus gently replaced the stone, bent down again, and went back to writing in the dirt. And the Pharisees hovered with indecision. The wind was torn from their sails, and the crowd sensed it. Some were starting to laugh at them.
Speaker 1:Eventually, the Pharisees looked at each other in frustration, turned on their heels, gathered their robes in their hands, and stormed off. People were cheering now. As for me, I was stunned. When all the Pharisees and their mob had gone, Jesus walked over to the woman. I knew she was safe for now from the Pharisees with their stones and their lust for power and punishment, but what would Jesus do and say to her?
Speaker 1:If she's being caught in adultery, then sin is sin and justice is justice. I kept thinking of the words he'd said in that remote ravine out in the countryside, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. As far as I could tell, that meant she was excluded, and we were all excluded. Jesus crouched down beside her and asked, does no one condemn you? No one must, as she replied through her tears.
Speaker 1:Jesus reached for her hand, neither do I. Go on your way, and from now on, sin no more. That was it. No sermon, no lecture, just love and mercy. I can't even tell you exactly what happened to the crowd or the woman.
Speaker 1:I remember her kissing his hands through her sobs and then getting up and just running away. The crowd soon dispersed. And that encounter was a pivotal moment for me because I started to see that Jesus was all about restoring people. It was as if he was showing that ultimately the world is meant to be complete, to be whole. When Jesus healed or helped or saved anyone, I started to see it not so much as a miracle as everyone around us kept saying, but more as him restoring people to how earth was originally meant to be.
Speaker 1:No sickness, no hatred, no envy, no cruelty, no power plays, just love and light. I am the light of the world, he once told us. Whoever lives in me will never live in darkness. The words raged like fire inside me. I began to realize that if Jesus could somehow truly forgive me and make me right, not just to the level of the Pharisees, but to the standard of heaven itself, then such forgiveness would change everything.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Lord. He would save the world. Yeshua, he who saves. I wonder what happened to her after this. Again, there are no details.
Speaker 1:But I don't think she ever forgot that encounter. She's from Jerusalem. I think she followed the news. She was aware of the talk of the town. She was aware of the crowds that followed him.
Speaker 1:And now she's no longer a random bystander. She has a vested interest. She met him in the gospels, and he saved her life. And six months later, when he was back in Jerusalem, again facing the scribes and the Pharisees, I wonder if she was in the crowds that watched his crucifixion. I think almost without doubt she heard the reports he'd been raised from the dead.
Speaker 1:I wonder if she was in the crowd on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. I wonder if she responded to Peter's appeal and Peter's challenge, repent, be baptized, be filled with the spirit. I wonder if she responded to that and became part of the church in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts chapter two. I think it's very likely. When our sin and our shortcomings and our mistakes and our disasters and our bad choices, just put your hand up if none of those things apply to you.
Speaker 1:Our sin, our shortcomings, our mistakes, our disasters, our bad choices, when they meet his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness, everything changes. And everything within us wants to follow him. I think she was in at the start of the New Testament church. I want to respond to his grace by giving myself to his church in the way that I imagine she did. It's a story about awesome light.
Speaker 1:How fitting that after this, Jesus declares, I am the light of the world. He brings light into everything. He brings all the light we need. He clarifies things. He shines a spotlight into our hearts, doesn't he?
Speaker 1:And he clarifies and he defines and he exposes in me and in us our double standards, our self righteousness, our critical spirit sometimes, all those areas of darkness. He makes it plain. He makes it simple. He opens our eyes to his grace and his mercy and his forgiveness and his restoration and invites us to follow him and know peace and know joy and know what it is to come out of darkness and into light. I don't think it's insignificant that this all happens at dawn.
Speaker 1:And I wonder whether, as the sun starts to come up and indicate and signal it's another new day, I wonder if that's the moment at which he looks maybe he looks at the sun and he turns to the crowd and he says, I am the light of the world, and offers a new day. I don't know where in the story you or I I know where I am I don't know where you are in the story this morning. It may be that there's an opportunity in the light of this story, excuse the pun, in the light, no, don't excuse the pun, in the light of this story to deal with some stuff, I just put some things right. Anything that doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like it really has a place in the light to deal with it. You can do that this morning.
Speaker 1:You can do that just talking to the Lord this morning. It may be, maybe you're here this morning and and you know the Lord, but it's, it's a day to receive fresh grace. And to know there's no condemnation. We should sin no more, but he doesn't condemn us. He loves us.
Speaker 1:He forgives us. He died for her, and he died for those Pharisees as well. And it may be this morning, there's a lot going on in our gathering today. But this might be a brand new day for you. The sun coming up on a new day.
Speaker 1:Jesus speaking to you and just telling you, he's the light of the world. Asking you to follow him, asking you to turn from your past and your sinful ways and and find his grace and his mercy and his forgiveness and and allow him to start restoring you and there's a lot happening this morning. We're going to be baptizing some couple of people in a moment. But I just and dedicating some babies. But I just want to say, if you're here this morning and this for you is a new day, and you need to respond to Jesus today, need to receive his grace, his mercy, then at the end of the meeting, please meet me here at the front.
Speaker 1:Meet Deborah and I. We'd love to spend some time and pray with you and help you make the best decision in response to the greatest story ever told. Amen. Be blessed. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1:Search for us online and get information about upcoming events and more great teaching.