Can You Trust the Bible?

My name is Joe Stearns. I’m one of the ministers with the Broward Church. We are in a sermon series that I’m really excited about called The Ministry of Jesus. We have been looking at episodes in the life of Jesus, learning from them. I hope that you’re trying to make them, as I’m trying to make them, life changing. Amen. My text today is a really interesting text, and it is the woman caught in the in adultery. This is a really challenging text, and today’s sermon is going to be a little bit different. The reason is our text has a footnote. Our text has a footnote. May I read it to you? Here is the footnote in the NIV translation of the Bible. Let me get going here on my computer. It says, The earliest manuscripts and many other witnesses do not have John 753 through 811. Now, that’s our text, the woman caught in adultery. A few manuscripts include these verses wholly or in part after John 736, John 2125, Luke 2138, Luke 24. In other words, a lot of the first early copies of the Bible did not have this account. If you’re using a different translation than the NIV, you probably also have a footnote in the ESV, the NLT, the other translations.

I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. I believe that the Bible is inerrant. What inerrant means is it’s without error. But now we have a footnote. By the way, that footnote is probably the most famous footnote in the Bible. Now, there are many places in your Bible where there are Bible text issues, but this is the most prominent one. This is the most famous one, along with the end of Mark 16, for those of you who are aware of this issue. We’re going to do something different today, and that is that rather than step around this issue, or rather than minimize this issue, we’re going to take the majority of our time before we even get into the text of the woman caught in adultery, and we’re going to go straight at this issue. Here’s what today is going to look like. The message is going to look like. First of all, we’re going to ask this question, is this text Scripture? Is it Canon? I’ll explain what that word means. We’re going to spend 25 to 30 minutes. Class is now in session. At the end of class, we’re going to have a song, and then we’re going to have a second 10 minute, what you might call a devotional summary lesson from the woman caught in adultery, a major point that comes out of that text. Today is buy one, get one free. You guys know that Tony and me and the other people who speak up here shoot for 40 minutes, so I’m really going to try not to go long on you, but that’s the plan.

Here’s the question I want to introduce, and I want to give you guys five options. How could God make us feel good about the Bible? How can you feel confident that it is the word of God? How could you feel like, this is my Bible, this is divine, this is God communicating to me? I want to think of five different possibilities for you to consider. Some of these things you may not have thought about, so I hope this is helpful. God could have made the Bible and dropped it from heaven. I think he would have used gold pages for the original edition with a nice gold cover. I imagine maybe it would have to have been one of the Apostles walking down the road, here it comes from heaven, thump. Look, Peter, it’s a Bible. I’m trying imperfectly to be humorous, but many of us view the Bible this way, even though we never really thought about it. They’re like, My Bible has no mistakes in it. My Bible has never been touched by man. As a matter of fact, when they were making copies of the Bible, they made no mistakes ever. God protected them and shielded all the thousands of copyists over 1,500 years. Nobody made a mistake. That’s just not true. That’s just not true. That’s why you have a lot of footnotes in your Bible. This did not happen. Now, I already told you, I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, and I believe it’s inerrant, but I do think we need to do this. Let’s take a mature adult viewpoint on the canon and inspiration of the Bible, rather than a naive and juvenile viewpoint on how the Bible is inspired. I believe God has worked so that the message inside the text of the Bible is perfect without error, but the Bible has been handled by men.

By the way, a canon is not a cannon. When we say the canon of the Scripture, it doesn’t mean military artillery. The word canon comes, it’s an ancient Arabic word that means straight stick. That’s what it means, straight stick. It was absorbed into the Greek and the ancient Latin language, and it came to eventually mean, and the Arabs meant it to be used this way, a measuring rod. So eventually the idea was, what is the measuring rod of God’s truth, rather than compared to man’s opinions? What can we count on is from God so we cannot make mistakes with our own human opinions? Canon, the idea of canonization is the idea of determining what should be in the Bible, what should not be in the Bible. That’s what we mean when we say the canon of Scripture, we mean what is true divinely inspired Scripture?Let me take a sip. I’m going to be doing a fair amount of talking.

I’d like to introduce what might be a new idea to some of you. First of all, many of you have heard the idea in talking about the nature of the Godhead, that Jesus is fully divine and Jesus is also fully human. I know the math doesn’t add up. How can he be 100 % divine and 100 %? Shouldn’t he be 50 50? But I think you guys, mature adult viewpoint, you guys can understand the idea that Jesus was 100 % God. He was fully God, even though he was incarnate in the flesh and he went through all the difficulties we go through. He was fully human, fully divine.

What about this? Is the Bible fully divine but also fully human? I want to tell you, this is not up for debate. Statistically, measureably, the Bible has been touched by man, copied by man. There have been copying mistakes. There have been grammar errors, spelling errors. The reason I’m telling you this is not to shake your faith. It’s actually to look straight at the truth and strengthen your faith. Once again, let’s not have a juvenile, naive understanding of what the scriptures are. When people try to attack the Christian faith, they’ll point this out. People made some copying mistakes when they were doing copies of the Bible. People handled it. People lost some copies. People like, They got dirty, they got torn up. The Bible is fully divine, I believe, and fully human. How would God make us feel good about the Bible? Where he could drop it from heaven, he did not do that. He could have a really important guy certify it. Like a Pope. We could have a Pope certify the Bible.

First of all, that never happened. I’m just telling you, historically, that never happened. Our church doesn’t recognize as a legitimate position the office of Pope. But I’m just telling you, we don’t believe in the Bible or disbelieve in the Bible based on some church leader in the past. The only guy that historians could attempt to make this claim on was actually not really a church leader. In 311 AD, a Roman emperor became a Christian. By the way, that really helped with the problem of persecution. But when Constantine became an emperor, 20 years after his conversion in 331 AD, Constantine ordered that 50 copies of the Bible would be made. He gave the task to a scholar and historian named Eusebius. Guys, you can fact check me, Google is wonderful. You can just look all this up. Eusebius, the best early church historian we have, Eusebius kept the copy of Constantin’s letter to him, and you can read it. It’s in his histories. In that letter, Constantin did not tell Eusebius what books to leave in and what books to leave out. Some of you nerds, fellow nerds, along with me, know that at that time there was a famous ecumenical council, which means churchwide council, called the Council of Nicaea in 325.

They didn’t decide the Bible at the council, and Constantine did not decide the Bible. The Bible, by 331, was already there without somebody putting it there. It was already there. We believe that we have three very ancient copies of the Bible, the Codex Vaticanus, which is in the Vatican Museum, the Codex Sinaiticus, and the Codex Alexanderinus, one’s in Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the other one’s in the British Museum. You can go online and read the text if you can read ancient Greek. You can go online and read them. We think probably, maybe, those three copies were three of the 50 copies that Constantine may have ordered, and they just were already in place. The Bible was already being circulated around. Constantine did not ask for those copies so the church could have the Bible. He asked for those copies because in his city, there were so many little Christian churches popping up. He just wanted those 50 copies for Constantinople, where he lived, for the local congregations he could have because the Bible, without anybody making it so, had come into being simply from Christians making copies of what they recognized as Scripture.

Was the Bible written by a church committee? Was there a closed door secret session like did all the Apostles and their sidekicks go on sabbatical by the Sea of Galilee or on the Mediterranean and have a two week session, Hey, let’s write the Bible. We know historically that’s not how it happened. I’m going to show you in the Bible how one of the Bible books were written so you can see how our Bible came to be. We’re looking at the Book of 1 Thessaloneans. This is how the Book of 1 Thessaloneans came to be. This is the Apostle Paul. But brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you, he’s talking to the church in Thessalonica, for a short time, in person, not in thought, out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you. Certainly, I, Paul, did again and again, but Satan blocked our way. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy. When we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens.

Where was the book of 1 Thessalonians written? Athens. We sent Timothy, who was the courier that took the letter of 1 Thessalonians, it was Timothy. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ to strengthen and encourage you in your faith. This what they call internal evidence, the evidence is right in the pages of the Bible. This internal evidence shows us that 1 Thessalonians was written in Athens and was sent by letter carrier by Timothy back to the church on Thessalonica. Now, I’m going to show you a map. It’s a little bit of bright light here, but you guys always promise charts and maps, okay? I just want to show you that Paul, in his second missionary journey, he started a church over here, Derby Lister Iconium. We believe that the Book of Galatians is not written to one church in Galatia, but it’s written to these churches, Pesidian Antioch, Iconium, Derby Lister. That’s who the Book of Galatians is written to. On his journeys, he goes to Troas and he jumps for the first time in history from Asia to Europe. The gospel comes to Europe through Paul in Philippi. What happens to Paul in Philippi? They throw him in jail. After he gets out of jail, he goes to Thessalonica. He’s in Thessalonica for less… Where is this in the Bible? Acts 17. You can read it for yourself. It starts in Acts 16 in Philippi. Acts 17, he’s in Thessalonica. He gets run out of town. And trying to save his life, he flees to Berea, where that’s great passage about the Bereans who are of more noble character. So after he leaves Berea, he goes where? To Athens. So this is it. 54 AD, Paul in Athens, maybe only weeks after he has left Thessalonica, he writes a letter and fires it off back to the brand new infant church in Thessalonica, trying to keep them from dissolving and going away as a church. That’s why that letter is so encouraging. That’s why he says, We delighted to not only share the gospel, but our lives as well with you guys. It’s a wonderful book, super positive book. Then Paul goes on from Athens to spend a year and a half in Corinth. This is how the Bible was written.

I want you guys to think of the New Testament, not as a single book, even though miraculously by the hand of God, it functions like a single book. But really, the New Testament is a library of 27 different books. The Old Testament is 39 different books written at different times, written by different authors, and all of them in the stream of life, in the midst of ministry, sometimes in the midst of persecution and hardship. Brothers and sisters, and those of you who are visiting, this is how our Bible came together. It was written pretty much on the run as people were sharing the gospel. Now, listen to what Paul says about what to do with his letters. He says, After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea. Now, this time he’s not talking about the letter of 1 Thessalonians. He’s talking about the letter of Colossians, our Book of Colossians that he’s written to the church in Colossi, this is what happened in the early church. Listen, the Bible was not written by they. There’s no they that wrote the Bible. There’s individuals writing it one at a time in a historical context. These individual letters are getting copied as Paul has requested. Listen, as soon as it was finished, the inks not even dry, the early church considered it Scripture. Scripture.

Listen to what Peter says about Paul’s writings. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. With the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, Amen, which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. So the Apostle Peter, arguably, the main leader in the early church, the one who Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 16, is saying, When Paul writes stuff, it’s Scripture. Back to this map again, this is what happened. The guys in Philippi would get a letter and they’d start making copies. The guys in Colossi would get a letter. The guys in Antioch would get a letter.

The guys throughout the church in Corinth would get a letter and they’d start making copies. Paul said, We need to spread these around. As the church grew up into Asia, down into North Africa, East into India, probably with the Apostle Thomas, people were making copies and copies and copies, hundreds of copies, thousands of copies. We have right now what they call extant manuscripts. Extant means they’re still around. They didn’t get lost or destroyed. We have almost, it’s over 5,000, almost 6,000 Greek New Testament documents dating from 400 AD and earlier. Some of these copies had mistakes. Some of the people making copies would accidentally leave out a whole line of Scripture, or they’d get a word wrong, or they’d spell it wrong, or they’d misunderstand the word and give it a similar word. But the great thing is there was thousands of copies. So what happened was the good copies, you could catch the mistakes on the bad copies. Sorry, I got this mic right here. So with all these thousands of copies, we’ve been able to catch, this is what I’ve read from a couple of different scholarly commentaries, 99.4 % of the mistakes.

That’s t hat means 0.6 % of the differences in the manuscript, we’re not sure. Guess what they do? They put a footnote in your Bible. Now there’s a centralized copy of the New Testament. It’s done by two different groups. This is what they call the UBS 5, Universal Bible Society 5. They’re in their fifth edition of Correcting Mistakes, Finding improvements, Trying to Be More Accurate. There’s another group called Nestlé Alland. They’re in their 28th edition. Nestlé Alland and UBS now completely 100 % match. What we have is our best understanding of comparing all these different manuscripts. You may hear that there’s thousands of mistakes in the Bible. That’s not true. There are thousands of mistakes in all these thousands of copies because there’s one or two mistakes in each copy. Are you with me? Are you understanding this? This is how God works. Every now and then, God does an instant miracle. But usually, haven’t you seen this? God likes to work in processes. God likes organic processes. God does not make oak trees. He makes acorns and they grow into oak trees. You may initially be uncomfortable with how organic, how earthy, how grassroots the Bible is. But compared to the other choices, do you think the book fell from heaven? Do you think some guy certified it? Usda approved Bible, bump. That’s just not how it happened. I want to tell you, I’ve thought about this. I’m not an expert in these things. I’m a student of these things. I really care about these issues. I’ve been thinking about this issue for years. I can’t think of a more reassuring way that God could do this rather than having a committee authorize it, rather than have some important guy authorize it, rather than like Joseph Smith with the Book of Mormon, pretending it was miraculously given to him by an angel, in a process of hundreds of Christians, hundreds of congregations over multiple generations. Guess who gets to vet the Bible? The Holy Spirit working through individuals.

This idea that a committee approved it, that it was written by a committee is just a mistake. It’s a mistake to think that way. Well, if they made a mistake in the Bible, it’s like telephone, and that mistake is going to get worse and worse as the generations go along. There’s not one copy. There’s not one copy where you can do the telephone game. There’s 5000 and you can compare them with each other. Ain’t nobody whispering. You have to do that in the telephone game.

Was it approved by a church council? No, not really. I’m not going to go deep into this timeline, but I just want to tell you, we have an early writing called the Muratorrian fragment in 200 AD where it’s a guy writing down what he sees as the scriptures. It matches in 200 AD, about 95 % he’s debating whether the shepherd of Hermes should be included or not in the Bible. He thinks, Not yet. All you guys read it, but don’t use it in your church services. That’s the debate that all these different Christians were having. Hey, you guys, what are you putting in? What are you leaving out? Organically, the churches are coming together. Those three ancient Bibles, the Codex Vaticanus and the others, we have them from 330 AD. We have all these ancient manuscripts. We have one church council in 397 AD that was not an ecumenical council that attempted to do a canonization, but it was not recognized by all the church. Finally, the Catholic church in 1546 AD, 1,200 years after Constantine ordered all these Bibles, the Catholic church says, I don’t think we ever wrote this down, Catholic church people.

We should probably go ahead and take a vote. In 1546, there was a church council in the Catholic Church that approved our Bible 1200 years after we already had the Bible. The Church of England, realizing they might be behind the times, did the 39 articles. Presbyterians came along later. Eastern Orthodox, late to the party, had their canonization in 1672. I’ve nicknamed this the canon season when they all decided to say what they’ve already been doing for 1200 years.

Is the Bible authorized or is the Bible authoritative? Are we supposed to approve of the Bible or are we supposed to simply recognize what is already Scripture? Do you see the difference? Do we need human approval for what our Bible is? Twan, help me with that one, that little negative sign. It’s simply, look, this is not my opinion. Historically, it didn’t happen this way. We don’t have the can of the Scripture because some group or man or organization decided on it. The Holy Spirit decided on it in God’s very organic process. It didn’t fall from heaven. It didn’t do all these other things. It was vetted by many Christians and congregations over several generations.

The Bible is self authenticating. When you read it, it should authenticate itself to you. It should be genuine to you. The early church recognized the scriptures. They did not authorize the scriptures. Look, I don’t believe my Bible is my Bible because somebody told me my Bible is my Bible. I believe because I read it for myself. What about you? Are you going to wait till the Church of Christ tells you what your Bible should be? Look, that’s a good start. But when you read it for yourself, you see it. It is a miracle. The Bible is full of miracles. There’s so many things that weave the Bible together that no group of humans, who did not meet anyway, but no group of humans could have coordinated in the first place. It is transcendent. It is transcendent.

You might think, Hey, why didn’t they include the Gospel of Thomas in the Bible? Why didn’t they include the Apocalypse of Peter? Why didn’t they include the Shepherd of Hermes? Don’t forget, there’s no they. There’s no they. But I do want to tell you this, we have a lot of writings for the early church fathers. What that phrase early church fathers means is it means famous, important church leaders in the first four or five hundred years of church history.

We have copies of their writings, just like we have copies of the Bible. The guys who were writing each other, Justin Martyr, Clemont of Rome, Clemont of Alexandria, origin, Ireneus, Tertulian, Eusebius, Hippolitus, Affinacious. These guys are all writing each other and they write a lot of Bible. They don’t write a lot of Gospel of Thomas. They just don’t write about it. They don’t talk about it. There are people in the 21st century trying to make a big deal out of the lost books of the Bible when back in the first centuries of the Bible, it was a yawner. Do you know what I mean by that? Nobody cared about it. The reason is why were these books excluded? It was substandard content. You don’t believe me? Google it. You want to read the gospel? I’ve read the Gospel of Thomas. I thought it was awful. You want to read it? You can go read it. Go read the Apocalypse Peter. It’s all there. It’s all online. You can read all those, what we now come to call spurious writings. The problem with them was, and the reason they were not taken seriously, is they had substandard content out of the starting gate. I didn’t even put a bullet point for this, but many of them were written really, really late. Some of them were written 300 AD, 400 AD when we already had our Bible put together. Eventually, they were considered spurious, which means extra, which means it should not be included by the church on a grassroots level, not by a committee.

Can you forgive me the amateur drawing? Here’s an imperfect illustration, but it’s my best attempt. I view the Bible like this. Imagine if you had a metal pipe and the metal pipe was dented and the metal pipe was scratched and the metal pipe was dirty. But inside the metal pipe was pure, clean, unadulterated water. You see, the Bible is dinged up a little bit. It’s been handled by humans. It’s got footnotes all over it for a good modern translation. But when you get to the content, the Bible does not contradict itself on the nature of God, the nature of man. People contradict each other on the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of sin. But the Bible doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t contradict itself on the nature of love, the nature of nature, the nature of death, life after death, reconciliation, the content of the Bible. It’s beautiful. It’s miraculous. It’s amazing. I ain’t just saying that. I really believe that.

What are we going to do with our text? The adulterous woman text. It’s got really good content. Now, this passage of Scripture, if we’re going to call it Scripture, did not get added until after those 50 copies of the Bible that Constantin ordered. It’s not in the Codex Vaticanus. You’re not going to find it in these ancient texts. It’s really, really late. But it’s a great story. It’s a great story. How could you get one of the greatest one liners in all of history is whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone. Everything in the story of the woman caught in adultery supports principles found throughout the Bible. It doesn’t contradict, it doesn’t go against, and it does not seem out of harmony with the rest of the Bible. It’s probably why it’s still hanging around. On the other hand, it is a late interpretation. I’ll read you that definition here in a second. Coming in after 400 AD, there’s almost no way it could possibly be written by the author of the book of John, the Apostle John. Some other guy wrote it. Even in some of the ancient manuscripts, this story was tacked on even at the end of Luke instead of the Book of John. Sometimes it appears at the end of John instead of in the middle of John, some guy stuck it in. The problem was it’s such a good story, people decided instead of putting it out of the Bible, they’d let it hang around. We’re in the 21st century and we’re still doing what the church did in the second century, third century, and fourth century is, we’re trying to see if this is Scripture or not.

So you might think, I thought we had a closed canon. I thought the Bible was done. You would be correct. We do have a closed canon. Nothing that somebody’s going to say right now or right now is going to get stuck on as an addition in the Bible. You know and I know that’s never, ever going to happen. But within that closed canon, we do still have left over a few challenges, and this is one of them. I’m going to tell you my conclusion. It is not the Broward Church conclusion. It’s Joe Sterne’s conclusion as part of a grassroots movement that’s been going on for 21 years. By the way, interpolate means what I just said it means to introduce something additional or extraneous between other things or parts to interject something or to interpose something.

Should we keep it in the Bible? Great story. Should we kick it out of the Bible? It’s an interpretation. Here’s what I came up with. I’m not sure. Don’t throw stuff at me, please. You talk to me for 30 minutes and you don’t have a bottom line? I don’t have a bottom line. I’ll give you an example. Two Presbyterian, famous Presbyterian scholars, we ain’t Presbyterians. But R. C. Sproles said he thought it was Apostolically approved, and R. C. Sproles would preach the woman caught in adultery. Another super famous Presbyterian guy, John MacArthur, thought it was not Scripture and refused to preach on it. And there we are. This is where we are. Here’s my strategy. I’m going to use it as a sermon illustration. I’m going to use it as a sermon illustration. Now we’re going to sing a song. Class is over. We’re going to have a 10 minute devotional here in a couple of minutes.

Let me give you some input on the song before we sing the song. I had a stroke four years ago and my voice is a lot weaker and so I’m going to need you guys help to sing out. The worship team is not coming up on the stage. It’s you and me. We’re going to sing super simple song. I have decided in this song, many of you know it, the men start, the women echo. Now, brothers, I need you to sing strong as soon as you catch the note. You’re not going to catch the right note right away because I have to sing low and my voice is weak. Just give me a minute to catch the note. But when you catch the note, support me and help me to lead this song. So, brothers, I want you to sing, Now for the sisters who know it… Don’t make me cry, all right? For the sisters who know it, sing it confidently so that we can sing this song. It won’t take long. When we come to the fourth stanza, where we repeat the first stanza, I’ll get it started, but I’m going to try to drop out of song leading, so keep singing the parts confidently because I want to hear us sing to each other.

Let’s stand. Help me out, brothers.

Amen. Thank you. You may have a seat.

At dawn, he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharaoh brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made him stand before the group and said to Jesus, 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? I got to pause here. It says, In the law, Moses commanded them to stone such women. So if you’re a teacher of the law, you got, as they say, one job, and that’s to teach the law correctly. They’ve done one sentence and they got it wrong. In Leviticus 20, in verse 10, it says the man and the woman are supposed to be punished, not just the woman. Look how their culture of treating women worse than men has caused them to change the scriptures that they’re the experts on. Just could not pass that up.

Now, Jesus, what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. By the way, I just got to say, four years ago, Tony preached a sermon on this woman caught in adultery. I fully support that. I think this scripture is great and it could be preached on. Back at it. Verse 7, When they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you, don’t you love this? Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. Now, I got one more slide to go, but I can’t pass this. Jesus is in a dilemma that he cannot get out of. He cannot get out of this. If he says, No, don’t stone her, he has gone against the law. Jesus Christ has gone against literally the law he wrote 2,500 years before. If he says, Yes, stone her, let’s execute her. He’s in violation now of Roman law, not Jewish law, because the Jews didn’t have the authority to do executions once the Romans took over. So this guy’s going to jail or losing his credibility no matter what. No way out except who is it? It’s Jesus.

So not only with one sentence does he get out of this dilemma, he begins to teach the gospel and he begins to teach his purpose for coming. It’s so amazing. He goes, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. What he’s saying is, I uphold the law, she should be executed. Then he says, But all you guys are sinners, and you know it. And the old guys, for whatever reason, they were the smarter or more humiliated, they left early. Let’s read that. Again, he stooped down. Did I move on? No, not yet. Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time because Jesus beat them, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin.

I have one devotional point, and I don’t know if you’re going to go with me on this. We are the woman caught in adultery. We are that woman. No, I’m not a woman. No, I didn’t commit adultery on Pam. In Romans 3, verse 23, it says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Are we the same as the woman caught in adultery? Are we better than her? Is she less than us? At least I haven’t committed adultery. I’ve said that in my subconscious when I read this text. I have considered the woman caught in adultery the other. She’s not me. She’s not my people. She is the other. But I’ve come to realize she’s not the other. She’s my people. She is us. We are sinful. This woman was caught in sin. We have been caught in sin by God. Jesus said, Whatever is shouted from the rooftops, whatever you’re hiding is in secret will be shouted from the rooftops. We can’t hide our sin just like that woman in adultery wanted to.

In James 2, it says this, For whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles at just one point, is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a law breaker. Now, the natural temptation of the religious, the natural temptation of the churchgoer, you and me, is to be self righteous. So if you’re saying to yourself, Well, dog, I haven’t committed adultery or committed murder, you’re missing the point of this Scripture. The point of this scripture is not, which one of these two did you do? The point is, we are all condemned unless we are rescued by Jesus Christ. This is the first primary basic message of the gospel. We are all sinners and we have to avoid, us churchgoers, we got to avoid the temptation to think we have our own righteousness. We are the woman caught in adultery. She deserved to die, so do we. A lot of Christians don’t know this about the gospel message. They don’t know that it says that the wages, in Romans 6, it says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. We need to realize that when we sin, we don’t owe God remorse. We owe Him death. We don’t owe Him repentance. We owe Him death. What does it take to be squared with God, to cry a million tears? That’s not good enough. That is why Jesus died on the cross when the was to pay a debt we could not pay. This woman caught in adultery. Her situation was hopeless. And Jesus brought miraculous hope where there was no hope. Our situation is hopeless, but Jesus brought us hope where there was no hope. In my closing scripture, for us to meditate on, and then we’ll go to prayer and then we’ll sing a closing song, our closing thought is that of Romans chapter 5 in this beautiful scripture that I believe describes the woman caught in adultery and describes exactly the attitudes we need to hold on, stand on, and believe in.

You see, at just the right time when we were still powerless, we were still powerless, Christ died for us, the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified like we’ve never done the sin, justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath?

Yes, God is angry today. 21st century God’s angry, but through Jesus, we’ve been rescued from that wrath through him. For if while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?

From the woman caught in adultery, let’s learn to be grateful and appreciate what happened on the cross. It rescued her who was hopeless. It rescued us who was hopeless. Let us be grateful. Let us live changed lives.

Let’s pray together. Holy Father, you are so wonderful. Thank you so much through your son for rescuing that woman caught in adultery. Thank you so much, Father, through your son for rescuing us when we were powerless, when we were hopeless. We as sinners have been justified and we are thankful to you, Father. Help us to live lives that are properly grateful and changed. We love you and pray in your son’s name, Amen. Amen.