Jesus' True Judgement

Well, I give you greetings in Jesus' name this morning. I invite you to turn your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 8. I want to look at the first 20 verses of this chapter.

And if you remember, this is following right on the heels of a previous discourse that Jesus had and which the, uh, the, um, the, uh, chief priest and the Pharisees, uh, were looking for something to get on him, had actually sent some officials there to officers there to, uh, gather him up and take them to him. So we are seeing this, this kind of ongoing—it keeps ongoing here—uh, conflict between Jesus and the, uh, people who are in charge, and they really do not like what he's doing.

So they don't. They see him as being very dangerous. And the chapter—or chapter 8—continues that, that conflict. And I'm only gonna—and Jesus has a fairly long discourse in chapter 8. I'm only gonna par—um—I'm only gonna cover part of that this morning because I don't think you wanna sit here long enough for me to cover the whole thing.

So we'll, we'll at least get started with it. I'm going to actually start reading this morning, um, at verse 45 of chapter 7 because it kinda lays some of the groundwork for what's happening in chapter 8. And I guess if I was to give this a title, I really struggled with a title with this one. Oftentimes I don't, but this, this morning I really did struggle with it. And I think maybe what I landed on is Jesus' true judgment.

Jesus' true judgment. Let's read the passage. Starting in chapter 7, verse 45. "Then the officers came to the chief priest and the Pharisees, who said to them, 'Why have you not brought him?' And the officers answered, 'No man ever spoke like this man.' Then the Pharisees answered them and said, 'Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers of the Ph—or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.' Nicodemus, he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them, said to them, 'Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?' They answered and said to him, 'Are you also from Galilee?

Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.' And everyone went to his own house. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now, early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had sent her in—set her in the midst, they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act.' They said, 'Um, now Moses and the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?' This, they said, testing him, that they might have something of which to accuse him.

But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger as though he did not hear. So when they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to them, 'He who is without sin, let him throw a stone at her first.' And then—and again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last, and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, 'Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?'

She said, 'No one, Lord.' And Jesus said to her, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.' Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.' The Pharisees therefore said to him, 'You bear witness of yourself. Your witness is not true.' And Jesus answered and said to them, 'Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true. For I know where I came from, and I know where I am going. I came—uh, um—but you do not know where I come from and where I am going. You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one.

And yet if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am the one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me.' Then they said to them, 'Where is your Father?' Jesus answered, 'You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.' These words Jesus spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple, and no one laid hands on him, for his hour had not yet come.'" Now, you may have noticed as, as, uh, I was reading this passage that there are a number of times some words are used.

First of all, in, uh, chapter 7, verse, um, 50—uh, I mean, 51—Nicodemus says, "Does our law judge a man before it hears him?" Okay? And then later on, um, uh, we have this situation with the woman, and, uh, Jesus asks the, the woman, you know, "Has anybody condemned you?" Okay? And she said, "No, no one's condemned me." And then later on, when Jesus is talking about the fact that they judge according to the flesh, he judges no one, but if he does judge someone, his judgment is true.

Okay? Now, it would be really nice if in John's Gospel here, he would have used some different words. At least it would be nice if you wanted to go down a certain track and wanted to make a difference between condemnation, which is how the word is translated in, um, for that thought—that little part between the woman and Jesus—and the rest of it where Jesus said talks about judging and stuff like that. Um, but the reality is they're all the same word.

And so I think what we—uh, uh—and so we have—and it's also the same word that's used in Matthew 7 where Jesus says, "Don't judge." Okay? "Don't judge." With the judgment that you meet will be the judgment that will be, uh, meted out to you. Okay?

Um, and so, uh, one of the things, uh, that I've always noticed is that people—a lot of people—really like what that passage. It's one of their favorite parts of the Sermon on the Mount that, um, they really like where Jesus says, "Don't judge." And the reason that they like it is not because—it's not for the reason Jesus said it. They normally like it because they don't want anybody judging them.

Do you understand what I mean by that? Okay? I mean, Jesus' instruction to us is not to judge, but most people use that passage, uh, in a—in a sort of an everyday way to deflect anybody judging them. They don't want to be judged.

Okay? Which is really not what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about how you are acting toward other people, not necessarily what you're receiving. And so the irony of it is that it becomes a defense mechanism that we use to deflect anybody calling into question anything that we do.

All right? But I do want to kinda think about this term because Jesus does say that, "If I judge, my judgment is true." Okay? And this judgment has—I think that this idea of judging, the idea of cond—uh, which is sometimes the same word as sometimes, uh, carries with the idea of condemnation and so on, often I think has to be understood in the context of what is being said here.

And you can't use these terms just kind of in a blanket way. You have to really look at what's being said in the particular context. All right? Now, one of the—this passage, particularly the interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees and the scribes, um, is just full of irony.

The Pharisees and the chief priest there at the—in chapter 7, what is their beef against Jesus? He is, according to their lights, not following the law. And so they wanted him brought there, and the officials—the people they sent out to do it—didn't do it. The irony here is that, that they're arguing that he's breaking the law.

But then one of their number, Nicodemus, who, of course, we have met in chapter 3, and in that chapter there's this discourse about judgment and about condemnation and so on in chapter 3, and I'll be referring to that here. But Nicodemus reminds them that the very law that they are accusing Jesus of breaking, they themselves are breaking because they are judging this man before they give him a hearing.

All right? And it's a very curious kind of thing that's happening here. And then we come to this situation with this woman caught in adultery. All right? Now, in Leviticus 20:10, it says, "The man who commits adultery with another man's wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, and the adulterer and the adulterous shall surely be put to death." And there's a longer passage in Deuteronomy that addresses the same thing. Now, what do you notice there in Deuteronomy—in Leviticus—about that?

There's a very obvious thing.

It's for both of them. It's for both of them. Right. You know, now, if you commit adultery in your heart, that's between you and God. All right? But if you commit adultery, it always takes two. Okay? It always takes two. And the woman is the—where is the man?

Why is the man not dragged before him here? All right? Uh, there should be two people here who are in judgment. Now, the reality is that the Jews were no longer a self-governing people. They were under Roman rule. And the Romans allowed—it was a very typical Roman practice when they took over a territory—that they left the local government there. They kind of managed most things, but there were certain things that were reserved to the Roman government: taxes and capital punishment.

All right? And in Roman law, adultery was not punishable by execution. It was not a capital offense. And so the Jews could no longer—Israel—the Israelites—the Jews could no longer execute somebody for adultery. Okay? So they are really trying to put Jesus in a box. And one of the things you may have noticed is that Jesus is not very boxable.

Okay? He does not—he does not play their game. He very much takes charge of the situation. Even when they ask him a question that they think they're going to get him, he—it's not he squirrels out of it. Okay? But he feels no compunction to accept the terms of what they're doing—of what they're saying or what they're doing.

Okay? And a similar thing happens right here. Okay? But they were trying—they were trying to put Jesus in a box because if he said, "Oh, yes, go out and stone her." Okay? Well, the Jews knew they couldn't do this.

Okay? But if, on the other hand, Jesus—if Jesus said, "Don't stone her." Okay? Then they said, "Well, you don't believe Moses." And then they could get him in trouble that way too with, um, um, with the, um, Sanhedrin Song because he was denying something that Moses' law said to do.

All right?

One wonders. It says here that, um, the woman was caught in adultery—this—they say this woman was caught in adultery in the very act. They caught her red-handed. All right? And notice that they address Jesus as a teacher. He said, "Teacher." That means to say, "Rabbi." And in another sense, what they were doing here was something that Jewish people did very typically, and I think they still do very typically, is that when it comes to matters of the law, they go to a rabbi and they ask him, "What does this thing mean? How should this be worked out?" And the interesting thing is the rabbis did not always say the same thing. In fact, the Mishnah, which is a commentary on the Torah, and then the Talmud, which is a commentary on the Mishnah, is made up of all these rabbis arguing with each other about what a particular verse or passage means.

Okay? So in some sense, what they're doing here is something they would kinda have done typically. But the real purpose of what they're doing here is they want to cat—they want to set a trap for Jesus, and he knows that. Okay?

They wanted to find something with which to accuse him. What is Jesus' response?

It's a no response. There's no response here. He does not respond to them. He stoops down and he starts writing in the dust. Now, you know, commentators and preachers and so on over the years have, you know, speculated, "What is Jesus writing here in the dust?"

Okay? "What's he writing in the dust?" "I don't know. Maybe he's just doodling." He's saying, "Maybe he's just thinking that let's get through this." I think in some sense he's ignoring them. He is not answering their question because he knows what they're about.

And it says that as though he didn't hear them. And they're not to be denied. They want Jesus to give them an answer that they can use against him. And so what does he say to them? He says, "He is without sin among you. Let him throw a stone at her first."

Now, according to Deuteronomy, when a person committed a crime, a capital crime, and idolatry would fall into that—certain types of murder and so on like that, adultery, of course, so on—it had to be established by two witnesses. And if it was established by two witnesses, then the—and then the judgment was given. If it was execution by stoning, which was not the only one, but in some cases it was, the people who witnessed against them had to cast the first stones, and then everybody else joined in.

Okay?

But one of the—one of the speculations—and this is just pure unadulterated speculation—one of the speculations some people like to make is that Jesus was writing out in the dirt the sins of the various people who had brought this woman before them. Maybe so. Maybe not. If you like that one, you can take it. If you don't, that's all right.

But notice their response.

And you know, you kinda—I kinda have to admire them for their response.

They could have blustered their way through this. They could have insisted upon it again. But it says that they were convicted by their conscience. They knew that they were not without sin. They knew they were not without sin.

And one by one, starting from the oldest to the youngest, they walked away. So there's nobody else here now testifying or claiming that this woman is an adulterous. And so this is a failed trial. Okay? Their attempt to catch—to bring some kind of judgment on this woman has failed. Their attempt to put Jesus in a box has failed because Jesus simply told them, "If you don't have any sin in your life, you can cast a stone."

Okay? But they knew that was not who they were. So I think in some sense what Jesus said to them did cut them to the quick. It did hit their conscience, and they realized that they really had not a foot to stand on.

And then Jesus was left alone with whoever he was teaching and so on, but the people who were there had left one by one. And Jesus raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, and he said, "Woman, where are your—where are the accusers?

Has no one condemned you? Has no one accused you and proven that you've done something worthy of death?" That's what he's saying there. And notice how she addresses Jesus.

Jesus, for them—for the folks who brought her to them, he's just a—he's a teacher, one of many teachers, and one that they particularly don't care for and they would like to catch in a trap. Okay? But you notice what she says to Jesus. She says, "Lord."

She says, "Lord."

"No one, Lord." And Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you. I'm not going to bring a judgment of condemnation, a judgment of death on you." And then he instructs her, "Go and sin no more." Now, I just would like to make the point here.

In this particular case, what does Jesus offer this woman? Does he offer her forgiveness? No, he does not offer her forgiveness. He offers her mercy. And there's a difference. Forgiveness is dependent upon our repentance. Okay? It is dependent upon our response to the mercy that God gives us.

And if we don't repent, we will not be forgiven of our sins. But mercy lays the groundwork for repentance and forgiveness. And here Jesus gives her mercy by saying, "I do not have the—I am not going to condemn you." And you know the interesting thing? Who was it who was standing there without sin? Jesus.

And Jesus is saying, "I am not going to condemn you. I'm not going to implement the law here against you." He was the only person who had the authority and the wherewithal and the character, the sinlessness, to do exactly what he had said to them. He could have thrown the first stone, but he did not throw the first stone. He gave her mercy instead.

And I think the instruction to go and to sin no more is an instruction to repent. Okay? So it's not that Jesus is saying, "Oh, adultery doesn't matter because it does." Okay? But he offers her mercy with the instruction to repent and to sin no more.

Okay? And that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Now, Jesus then spoke to them again, the crowd that's still there, and he says, "I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of light."

Now, I think this probably reminds us of what Jesus had said earlier, particularly in chapter 1 and chapter 3 and so on. In fact, some of the themes that we looked at in those chapters are cropping up here again. Jesus is referring back to them and enforcing them here. "I am the light of the world." In the beginning, in the prologue, it says, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."

I don't remember—I don't know if you remember—but in chapter 6, Jesus tells them, "I am the bread of life." All right? He tells them that—and he makes this comparison or he draws from the imagery of the manna in the wilderness where God fed the children of Israel in the wilderness. And he says, "I am the bread of life."

He is the new manna. All right? Drawing upon that Old Testament imagery. And then, if you remember in chapter 7, what does he say? He says that living waters. Okay? He's going to—he's talking about the fact that, you know, they struck the rock and there were living waters, and he is bringing refreshment. And I think here there's another incident in the whole Exodus story.

They were led by a pillar of fire by night, a light. Okay? That was what guided them. And Jesus here is saying, "I am the light of the world." I am the light of the world. I am what you can be guided by.

Okay? If you follow me and you will not—whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life. You know, one of the things we talked about this morning in Sunday school class is this whole thing of, you know, the introspection that's necessary, how we're supposed to think about ourselves, how we're supposed to examine ourselves, and so on.

We're—if we are born again and if we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, we're not doing that just simply on our own. God is working in our experience, bringing his light into the deepest, darkest recesses of our souls so that the renovation that needs to happen can happen.

All right? Jesus is a light by which we can be guided and that we can follow. Okay? That's the first "I am" here in this chapter. It's the first "I am." And I want you to notice that. In my next message, we're going to look at the last "I am," which is the most profound "I am" of this discourse. But here he says, "I am the light of the world."

Okay? Now, the Pharisees were having this. All right? And they, again, pull out from Moses' law, and this kind of—this follows along with what had been said earlier because—I said earlier because it was out of the mouth of two or three witnesses that a thing was to be established. And so they're harking back to that. Well, they're saying, "Well, this is not a valid testimony because Moses says whatever you're saying has to be confirmed by two persons. That's the only way we know if something is true."

And you know, even in our legal system today, you have the he said, she said kind of stuff, or he said, or he said kind of thing where you have two people giving you a different story. Well, what's the truth of the matter?

Okay? And that's why God established that principle of two witnesses in the old law. Okay? And so they're saying, "Your witness is not true." Now, from a legal standpoint, they might have a case. They may have a case.

But it is not necessarily so that just because one person said it, it's not true. Okay? Even when you have a he said and another he said, maybe one of them is actually saying the truth. Okay?

And Jesus responds to them, "Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true." And why? Because what I'm saying comes from a particular source. I know where I came from, and I know where I'm going. Now, that is confidence. I know where I came from, and I know where I'm going.

Okay? I don't know if any of us—in fact, I don't think any of us can say something like that with the confidence that Jesus is saying here. He knows that he's come from his Father. He knows, as John says elsewhere, that the Father and I are one. I do not speak anything but what the Father has given me to speak. He knows that. Okay? He knows that.

All right? And he also knows where he is going. He knows what his task here is on earth. He knows what's going to be the result of that. He knows what is going to be the course of everything that he is doing.

But they do not know where he comes from. And they do not know where he is going. Why do they not know? Because they do not believe. They do not believe. And since they don't believe, there's nothing inside of them that bears testimony. There's nothing in their spirit that bears testimony to the fact that Jesus is speaking the truth.

Okay? To hear that second witness, to hear that second confirmation that what Jesus is saying, where do you hear it? You cannot see God the Father. In fact, today we can't even see Jesus because he ascended unto his Father.

Okay? But we know it because we put our trust in it, and that trust has resulted in a change in our lives, and that means that we can hear that voice of God speaking to us and saying, "This is true.

This is true." And that's how we can figure out anything in this world. We have to put our trust in Jesus, and then we have to listen to that voice that speaks to us and our being and confirms that this is true. There's a second testimony here, a second witness. Jesus says, "You judge according to the flesh," which I think means you want two human beings standing here testifying that, "I am the light of the world."

Well, you know, it wouldn't matter if you had a thousand people saying that Jesus was the light of the world. Okay? That wouldn't necessarily make it true. Okay? It would not necessarily make it true. What makes it true is the witness of the Father.

That's what makes it true. And then people who have encountered Jesus, who have put their trust in him, and then have that voice that speaks to them, that still small voice, that motion of the Holy Spirit, the Father speaking into their lives, then they can also hear that testimony and know that it's true.

All right? You know, I remember years ago, a lot of people these days are really kind of interested in apologetics, which I think is good.

It has its place. But I remember years ago reading something that C.S. Lewis said, who spent quite a bit of time in writing about trying to explain the truthfulness of the gospel, the truthfulness of Jesus' claims, and so on. And he said about those efforts, their purpose is to dismantle the intellectual objections to the gospel so that people can hear what Jesus has to say.

And I think that's the reality, what Jesus has to say to them in their hearts and in their beings because it's not just simply a matter of intellectual knowledge. It's a matter of whether or not you're willing to put your trust and surrender your life to this one who bears witness, who says to us, "I am the light of the world, and that light brings life."

All right? But they want some people standing there to testify, but they wouldn't believe it anyhow. Jesus says, "I judge no one." Now, what's he mean by that? "I judge no one." Well, we just saw a case where he decided that he was not going to condemn a woman for doing something that was wrong. He was going to instead show her mercy and then have that be an avenue that opens her up to repentance and not sinning anymore.

Okay? Remember what Jesus—what John 3:17-19 says, "For God did not come—did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness more than light because their deeds are evil."

Okay?

Several years ago, Peter Hitchens, a British journalist who is a professing Christian, participated in a debate in Oxford in which the proposition of debate was, "God does not exist." And he was on the side of the debate in which was arguing about—was arguing against that proposition.

And in that, he made the observation, he asked the question, "Why do these people not want there to be a God? Why do they not want there to be a God?" Okay? He said they don't want there to be a God essentially because they don't want there to be any consequences for the things that they do.

They do not want there to be a judgment day. They want to live their comfortable lives pleasing themselves and so on without much concern about anything beyond themselves. That's why they want there not to be a God. God is a very inconvenient ideal for people who want to do what they want to do.

All right? And Jesus tells us here, "Why do they not believe? Why do they not love the light? Why do they not gratify toward the light?" Because their deeds are evil, and they wish to continue in those evil deeds.

All right? So Jesus says, "I'm not bringing condemnation into the world. That's not my purpose. Okay? That's not my purpose. I've actually come to bring life. I've come to bring light. I've come to bring holiness. I've come to bring everything that you need." And the reality is Jesus does not have to condemn anyone because if we don't believe in him, we are condemned already. The only way to be rescued from the condemnation that all men are under because all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is to believe in Jesus, to put our trust in that light, that light that lightens every man, that speaks into the heart of each one of us and tells us, "Yes, this is true."

Like I said, you can have all the arguments you want, and those are important. I'm not dismissing them. But unless that light is working in the heart of each individual and each of us say yes to it, we will never see what is true. And that's why these men couldn't do that. That wasn't really their idea. They were not interested in the truth. They were interested in doing Jesus in. And that's the point that he's trying to make in the rest of this passage here.

Okay? He says, "If I do judge, my judgment is true."

You know, one of the things I think that we often struggle with, and sometimes people raise the questions, you know, "What about those who'd never heard the gospel? What about this extenuating circumstance? And this extenuating circumstance? Is Jesus going to condemn somebody, and that is God going to condemn somebody for that thing?" And you know, the nice thing is we don't have to answer that question because why? Judgment belongs to God and not to us. But we can know that whatever God judges, whatever Jesus judges, it will be a true judgment, and people will, in the end, be judged according to a true judgment.

Micah says, "What does the Lord God require of you? To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

And I think that, in the end, all of us will be judged by that criteria. Have we done justly? Have we loved mercy? Have we walked humbly with our God? Okay? I think, in the end, because we're told repeatedly in the scriptures that we will be judged according to the deeds that we have done in the flesh.

All right? What Jesus makes possible for us is through his forgiveness, through his sacrifice on the cross where he paid the price of our sins, through the new birth that he gives us, through the renovation that goes on, what he has done for us is to love that justice, to do that mercy, and to walk humbly before our God. He's made it possible.

And those persons who respond to that, who see him as the light that has come into the world and know him to be that, they also then hear the witness of the Father. They do not need a man to stand here and witness to it, but they know in their hearts that that witness is true. These men did not know that, and so they could not recognize the fact that the Father was witnessing to the truth of what Jesus did. Some of the miracles that Jesus did that we saw, there are signs and miracles here, and some of those were done for the purpose of helping to jog people, in a sense, to kind of jerk them up, to make them realize something that this man is somebody unusual, and maybe we ought to pay attention to him.

In a sense, I think those miracles were things that God did to demonstrate to persons who are not inclined to believe that there's something here that they want to pay attention to. But you know, when God does a miracle, it does not necessarily mean that people are going to believe that miracle.

In fact, you can find almost any explanation about it. I remember reading a commentary years ago when it talked about the feeding of the 5,000. The commentator said, "Well, you know, all these people, you know, they actually brought their lunches with them and so on, and they were so struck by what Jesus had to say that they, you know, reached in and they started sharing it, and here, you know, after a while, there was so much leftover."

Okay? That's a naturalistic way of explaining away something that God did in a miraculous kind of way, and that can always be done.

Okay? It can always be done if people refuse to believe.

They said to him, "Where is your Father?" And Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also."

Okay?

We cannot see the Father. We can know him. We have a capability, a light that's planted in each one of us that makes it possible for us to recognize God's work in our life, to sense his leading, his guidance, his truth, and so on. But if we turn our back on that, there's no other recourse if we turn about that, and that's what these people have done.

And that's why Jesus says, "You don't know the Father, and so you don't know me." But those who had their conscience, and I wonder about those men who brought that woman before them. Their conscience was pricked. I wonder how many of them went home open to the possibility that Jesus was who he said he was.

I think that's entirely possible. Okay? I think that's entirely possible. But then there are other Pharisees here, and the interesting thing is the Pharisees are making this claim to be the ones who have this special knowledge of God. They know the law. They're experts in the law.

But they do not know the Father. They do not know God.

So my invitation to you this morning is to know the Father, to listen to that voice, to not crowd it out by any pursuit after evil, to let the light that is Jesus shine in your heart and continue that renovation that needs to happen in all of our lives so that, in the end, we will not hear any words of condemnation from Jesus, but we will hear, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joys of the Lord prepared for you." Any response to that?