The Adulterous Woman - Morning Devotion on Feb. 29, 2024

The Adulterous Woman

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her 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?" 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: 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:" John 8:3-7

You know the story in the Bible where Jesus spoke to the people who almost stoned the woman who had committed adultery. Do you know on whose side God stood? God stood on the side of the sinful woman. Jesus felt toward her as he would feel toward his own sister or his own aunt. To Jesus, all women were related to him as sisters, mothers, or aunts. This spirit, this ideology was what God wanted Jesus to bring to this world so that everyone could live in the center. God did not intend to have Jesus be a pastor or religious leader who only spoke in glowing terms from a big pulpit. The true religious leader is crying out to the multitudes of people who are miserably defeated in this world.

Men Are Destined to Go the Road of Restoration

March 14, 1965

Jesus and the Adulterous Woman

This story took place near the temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus had been preaching (John 8:2).

·    John 8: 3 – 11 tells the story of a woman in despair.

·    She is about to be killed in a brutal and violent way for her sin of adultery.

·    The men who brought the woman before Jesus were going to kill her, but they also were trying to test Jesus.

·    At first, Jesus did not seem to be paying attention to all the furor. He was drawing figures in the sand or dirt.

·    Finally, he spoke. He said simply, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

·    It made the men pause and think.

·    After a few minutes, they all went away, stricken in their consciences.

·    John 10: 9-11 says, “They went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus looked up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’  She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.’”

·    Like the story of the Good Samaritan, this is a story of compassion for someone who was, as Father put it in the speech we just read, “miserably defeated in this world.”

·    There was once a great preacher named Henry Ward Beecher.  Beecher said this about compassion: “Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”

·    Jesus says it to us today: “Let the one who has no sin be the first to throw a stone.”

·    As Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

·    We all need compassion.

·     As we extend mercy and forgiveness so we shall be shown mercy and forgiveness.
(Matthew 6:14 – 15)

^”For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”