Let's turn in our Bibles, brethren,
to John chapter 8. Let's go to the Lord in prayer
before we begin. Our Father, we ask You, if You're
willing, we ask, Lord, You would hear our great advocate and that
You would send Your Spirit and work The very thing that you
worked when you stood here on this earth in this passage. The Lord worked this in our hearts.
We ask it according to your will, according to your grace, your
mercy. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Alright, John chapter
8. Now, let's begin reading here
in verse 53. I saw something in this that
spoke very strongly to my heart, and I pray the Lord would bless
it to our hearts this morning. My subject is the discipline
of forgiveness. The discipline of forgiveness.
It begins in verse 53. It says, Every man went unto
his own house. Jesus went unto the Mount of
Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple,
and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught
them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken
in adultery. And when they had set her in
the midst, they said unto him, Master, this woman was taken
in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded
us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? This they
said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But
Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground as
though He heard them not. So when they continued asking
Him, He lifted up Himself and said unto them, He that is without
sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again
He stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard,
being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one,
beginning at the eldest even unto the last. And Jesus was
left alone and the woman standing in the midst. And when Jesus
had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto
her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned
thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus
said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. go and sin no more. Then spake Jesus again unto them,
saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Now, this passage has caused
a lot of controversy in the past. Many in the past would not preach
from this passage. Many translations from the past
even omit this passage from the Bible entirely. And the dilemma
they faced is the dilemma that the Pharisees thought the Lord
couldn't solve. The dilemma men in the past faced
is the same dilemma they thought the Lord could not solve. This
woman had sinned. She was caught in the act. She
was guilty. There was no doubt about that.
And the law said she's to be stoned to death. The law said
the man was to be brought too and they didn't bring the man.
But it did say she was to be stoned to death. So they thought
there was no way that Christ could honor the law and show
mercy. They thought that if he shows
her mercy then he's going to dishonor the law. He won't execute
justice. He'll dishonor the law. And they
thought that if he shows her mercy or if he executes justice,
then he's going to deny his own word because he said he came
to show mercy to sinners and save sinners by his mercy and
grace. That's what he declared. So they
thought they had him with this dilemma. And this is something
else that has posed a dilemma. for men of the past and folks
today. If he exercises no discipline
upon her, then it will only make her think she has a license to
sin more. If he doesn't exercise discipline
on her, it's going to make her think she can just go on and
commit adultery. And that's one of the reasons
folks wouldn't preach from this, because they said that's just
going to teach Folks, it's okay to commit adultery. Well, that's a dilemma for legal
religion that wants to practice strict church discipline. That
is a dilemma for them. And it's why many refuse to preach
from this text. But this text here shows us what
only Christ can work. What only Christ can work. And
He works this in the heart of His people. Our subject is the
discipline of forgiveness. Now listen, the discipline by
which Christ effectually brings his elect to repentance. The
discipline that brings us to repent is the discipline of forgiveness
in light of what Christ has done for his people, in light of what
he's done for us personally in putting away our sin. Mercy in
the face of Him satisfying justice for us. Free forgiveness because
of that. That's what is the discipline
of our Lord that makes His child follow Him. This is the discipline
by which He makes us repent the first hour He comes to us and
calls us out of darkness into His light. And He doesn't stop
working this. This is how He turns us every
time we need to be turned. You read in Psalm 80, I believe it is, where they keep
saying, Lord, turn us, shine the light of your countenance,
and turn us, and we'll be turned. And that's what we see here.
This is what the Scripture says, Psalm 133 says, If thou, Lord,
shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? He's going to
make us see that. affectionately, fresh, new, every
time He brings us to bow to Him and follow Him. If you mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand? Nobody. But there is forgiveness
with thee that thou shalt be feared. See, forgiveness is the
discipline that makes us bow and makes us believe and makes
us repent and makes us follow Him. That's not a one-time work. That's an ongoing work. It's
something we have to be taught over and over and over because
we never stop repenting. We never stop growing in grace
and fear of the Lord. This is a continual work. And
he has to exercise our senses to understand this. If you come out of legal religion
and you see how they operate in these situations, It's going
to cause a dilemma for you when you're amongst God's people who
are exercising grace. But it causes us personally to
experience this mercy so that it's less and less of a dilemma.
God makes us witness how God's grace makes his people deal with
a circumstance like this. And he makes you see, especially
if you're the guilty one or if somebody has offended you by
their sin. And you'll have your scripture
in the letter and you'll understand something of it and you've read
things about it. But when you see how God's people
treat brethren who sin and are gracious to them and cover their
sin And lead them to Christ, and trust them to Christ, and
wait on Christ to work in their hearts. And you see the effect
of that is they end up seated, hearing the gospel, rejoicing
in the gospel. When others who wouldn't bow
end up like these Pharisees going away. And it teaches you little
by little, this is how Christ really works in his people. He
is in the midst of his church working in the hearts of his
people. Now, we see how he does this by looking at the setting.
This is how Christ works this. Christ is the advocate of his
people with the Father in the Mount of God, interceding for
us, and that's how he's working this. That's why he's just to
work this. It says here, verse 53, every
man went to his own house, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
They did their week-long ceremony, finished their religion, got
done debating their scriptures, and they all went home. Christ
didn't have a place to lay His head. Where did He go? He went
to the Mount of Olives. And you know what He was often
doing in the Mount of Olives? Praying to the Father, interceding
with the Father. I don't have any doubt He was
interceding for this woman that He was working this grace for,
right here in our text. He's the advocate who intercedes
for his people with the Father. Paul said in Romans 8.34, who
is he that condemneth? The fact of the matter is, nobody
can condemn somebody for whom Christ died. It's Christ that
died, yea rather that's risen again, who's even at the right
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. He ever
lives to make intercession. He has an unchangeable priesthood.
He's able to save to the uttermost them that come to God by Him
because He ever lives to make intercession for them. Yes, He's
bringing them to Him. And so John told us, brethren,
We're writing these things that you sin not. Nobody's saying
sin. That's not the message of grace.
Don't sin. But he says, when you do sin,
also don't let anybody turn you from Christ, turn you from the
gospel, turn you out of the church. Because we have an advocate with
the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous and he's the propitiation
for our sins. That word propitiation means
he made appeasement with God, he made atonement with God and
it's his advocacy as our righteousness that brings us and makes us at
one with God and keeps us there. And then Christ works this in
our heart through the preaching of the gospel. This is predominantly
how He works this, is through the preaching of His word. It
says, verse 2, after He left that mount, early in the morning
He came again into the temple, and all the people came unto
Him, and He sat down and He taught them. He came preaching the gospel. Just what He preached in John
6, that's what He was preaching again. Except you eat my flesh
and drink my blood, you have no life in you. I'm the bread
that came down from heaven. I'm the life. I'm the righteousness. I'm your acceptance with God
through faith in me. And except you believe on me,
you have no life. This is what he's teaching over
and over and over again. I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, Paul said, for it is the power of God unto salvation. It's the power that made you
first repent and believe on Him. And it's the power of God that
makes you continue to be saved by Him. Why? For therein is the
righteousness of God revealed in your heart. It's how He makes
you know how God can be just to show you mercy. Makes you
remember how He can be just to show your sinning brother mercy. And how you can be just to show
him mercy. It's revealed from faith, from
Christ the faithful to the faith He's given in the heart. It's
revealed as He grows us from one degree of faith to another.
And this is the gospel by which He keeps those He's justified
living by faith in Him. And then we see this scene unfold
in the midst of Christ teaching the gospel. That's when this
scene all took place. He's sitting there preaching
and this all takes place. And we learn by this that not
only is it through the preaching of the gospel that he works this,
but he works this by experience. In our heart, as he's preaching
the gospel, and then in our lives. He works this by experience.
He brings us into trials to experience this. So he teaches us. He exercises
our senses more and more to see his grace and mercy. And then
immediately after this, he returned to preaching. As soon as they
walked off, he went right back to preaching. And he declares
exactly what this text is teaching us. This is what he does by this
work of grace. Verse 12, Then spake Jesus again
unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth
me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. by Christ's advocacy for His
child, by Christ revealing Himself through the preaching of the
gospel, by Christ working everything in our lives to make us experience
this free forgiveness in the face of His satisfying justice.
He shines the light into our hearts and He keeps us having
the light of life and walking by faith in Him. Now, let's look
now at the experience of Christ's mercy and forgiveness in what
happened here in this middle portion. Now, multiple times
in Scripture, God declares that the children of Israel were the
adulterous. Multiple times. Why were they
the adulterous? Because of what exactly we see
right here. They forsook Christ for the law. They thought they could come
to God by their obedience to the law. And that's what they're
doing here. And so he said to them, they
were the adulterer. That's no doubt why they bring
him a woman called an adultery. They're the adulterers, the worst
form of adultery. Rejecting Christ our righteousness
for their own so-called righteousness. I see it right here in verse
3. The scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken
in adultery. And when they had set her in
the midst, they say to him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery
in the very act. They don't call him Lord. Before
they were calling him a deceiver, now they call him master. Taken
in the very act, now Moses and the law commanded us. See how
they set Moses and the law against Christ? Moses and the law commanded
us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? This they
said, tempting him that they might have to accuse him. Now
you think of the times when people brought their loved one to Christ
to be healed. Think of how many times we see
that in Scripture. Remember the man with the palsy?
They had faith in Christ and love for this one so much, when
they couldn't get to him because of the press, they went up on
the roof and took the tiles off the roof and let the man down
through the roof to get him to Christ for Christ to heal him.
Now imagine if they had done that and brought him to Christ
and said, Lord, Master, this man has palsy, he can't work,
he's not any good for anybody. We want to stone him. What do
you say? We just stone him and kill him and get him out of the
way. Now we can see that and say, what cruelty. The man had
palsy, he's sick, he couldn't do anything, he needs to be healed.
No different for this woman caught in adultery. No different. This woman was in need of forgiveness
and healing. You know what Christ did when
he saw their faith with that menopause? He forgave him his
sin. That was what he needed most
of all. And then he healed his body. This woman is in need of
the same forgiveness. She is in need of the same healing.
Grace and love that has experienced this forgiveness of God. Grace
and love upon the sinner. looks upon the sinner as one
needing to be healed. You get what I'm saying? Grace
looks upon a brother that sinned and sees somebody just like they
looked at that man sick of the palsy and says, that person needs
to be healed. They need forgiveness. They don't
need to be stoned. And so grace endeavors to bring
the sinner to Christ. He's the great physician. He's
the only one who can do the work. He's the righteousness of his
people who can forgive in mercy and do it justly, as well as
heal. And yet the scribes and Pharisees
brought this guilty woman to Christ, not to be healed, not
to be forgiven, but to be stoned. And in their heart, they already
stoned her. Many in religion today would
have immediately sided with these men because this woman was guilty. They would have immediately sided
with these men. She's guilty, there's no doubt
she is. But there's a worse problem in those doing the accusing.
It's got to be dealt with first. If Christ sided with them against
her, he's going to justify these men and what they're doing. It wouldn't manifest the righteousness
of God. It wouldn't manifest the gospel
of Christ. If He sides with them, He's going to justify what they're
doing. What are they doing? They're guilty of a far worse
sin than what they're accusing her of. That's the focus of this
passage. They're guilty of the worst kind
of adultery there is. They had no love for Christ our
husband. No love for the sinner. only
love for self. They had no love for the gospel.
They had no love for the honor of the law. They only had love
for their own works and their own religious exercises. And
they were ruled by pride. They thought themselves righteous
by their works. They thought themselves in need
of no repentance, in need of no mercy, in need of no forgiveness. This was the majority in Israel
in that day. Sadly, it's the majority in religion
in our day. They wanted to be judged by the
law because they thought themselves righteous by the law. They wanted
to be judged by the law. They deemed themselves just judges
of the law, able to judge this woman, able to condemn her. That's
the heart that's guilty before God. What were they doing? They were
tempting Christ. They were putting Him to a test
to try to find an accusation against the Redeemer to justify
themselves for rejecting Him. Think about that. They were trying
to condemn Him so they could justify themselves for rejecting
Him. Attempting to discredit His gospel.
Attempting to sow discord and destroy the church. All in the
name of justifying themselves. That's the greatest adultery
Christ has to save us from, brethren. That's what He saves us from.
That is the adultery He saves us from. Now think of this woman. She sinned. She has sinned. And she's guilty. And she's brought
there by these men who who appear righteous to her, they appear
like they know what they're saying, and for she knows they do, and
she's brought there before this congregation, she's in the dust,
they bring her there and probably throw her down, and she's there
in the dust, she's in shame, and she hears that the law demands
that she die. And Christ reveals Himself to
her. He shines the light to her. And the way he does this is he
first deals with her accusers. He's revealing his righteousness
to her by first dealing with her accusers. The law had to
be honored by Christ. That's what we see here in these
Pharisees being dealt with first. The law's got to be honored by
Christ. The accuser of the brethren,
the devil's got to be destroyed. And a sinner, Christ says, has
to be made to behold Christ alone is the righteousness who accomplished
it. Now we see the gospel of Christ
and what he did here. We've looked at this several
times before. You see here he stooped down, he lifted himself
up, he stooped down, and he lifted himself up again. Now the lawgiver
took flesh made under his own law. That's how he worked this
righteousness. It says here, but Jesus stooped
down. 6 But Jesus stooped down, and with
his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
Now he's the lawgiver. You remember when he gave the
law, he wrote the law with his finger. And what did he write
it on? Tablets of stone, tablets of
dust. And here he is, stooped down.
He goes down where she's at. He goes down where she is, and
he takes his finger and he writes in the dust. That first table was broken,
you remember? Before Moses gets down out of
the mouth, they made a golden calf and they're dancing around
it. Moses threw the tablets down and broke them, showing us we've
all broken the law of God. We're all guilty before God.
What happened with that next tablet? When he came back up
and the Lord wrote again the law, what did he do with that
tablet? He went down and put them in the ark under the mercy
seat. And what happened? The ark came
down. Christ came down and took flesh
with the law in His heart. He took dust. Here He is stooped
down in the dust. Christ came down for His bride,
for His chosen bride who had played the harlot, who was the
adulteress. He came down for us. Stooped
down and said, the law is in my heart. Made Himself under
His own law to honor it for His people and fulfill it for His
people. And then Christ lifted Himself
up on the cross. And He bore the wrath of God
in place of His people and He satisfied His own justice by
His death and went down to the grave. Here we see Him lifted
up and then He stooped down again. Look, verse 7. So when they continued
asking Him, they weren't going to let up on this. The law was
not going to stop condemning us, brethren. It had to be answered.
He lifted up Himself. And he said to them, He that
is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they
which heard, being convicted by their own conscience, went
out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even to the last.
By Christ lifting himself upon a cross, being made sin for his
people, this one who knew no sin, bore the justice of God
and really and truly honored it, satisfied it perfectly, put
away the sin of his people forever, so that no condemnation can ever
come to his people. He put away the sin of His people.
He honored the law. He satisfied justice. And He
did it by going down to the grave. Here we see Him raise up and
He goes down. When He raised up and He spoke,
He silenced the accuser and turned them away backward. When Christ
went to the cross, when He said it's finished, He silenced the
law against His people so that the law cannot condemn His people
now. And then, now Christ is exalted
to His throne, where He, in judgment, is the righteous advocate with
His people, working this in our hearts, in our experience, working
everything in our lives, to bring us to have His light shined in
our heart to know this. It says, verse 9, And Jesus was
left alone and the woman standing in the midst. And when Jesus
had lifted up Himself, He saw none but the woman. You had him
stooped down, Christ came down and took flesh, he lifted himself
up on the cross, he went down to the grave, and then he exalted
to the right hand of the Father. And now there's nobody else he's
concerned about except for his bride, his elect, it's just him
and her, just like it was just Christ and this woman right here. He was the only one, he is the
only one, without sin, who could judge this matter and do it right,
do it justly. He's the only one. He's the only
judge. All judgment is committed to
him. He's the only one. And you know what he's going
to do in this earth? Just like he ruled right here to turn these
men away so that he could judge righteous judgment for this woman. He rules every heart in this
earth and he's going to make his people be judged in righteousness. That's exactly what he's going
to do, just like he did this woman. And he's the light that
shines in our hearts. When he does this, he does the
two things he did right here. He does this in us, brethren.
You and I, in our sin nature, are a Pharisee who is an adulterer. That's exactly what we are. That's
what we see here. We've got Pharisees and we've
got adulterers. These Pharisees' job, their occupation,
was studying the scriptures so they could blame others and justify
themselves. That man's got to be silenced.
He's got to be put down in us. And we've got to be made to see
we're the sinner. And that's what Christ does.
He shows us that we're not without sin. He speaks into our hearts
effectually. When we're trying to justify
ourselves, when we're trying to put the blame on somebody
else and say that we're not guilty before God. before everybody
else. He speaks into the heart and
He says to us personally, you that are without sin cast the
first stone. And He makes you realize. Now
here all they heard was Him speaking to their ears and they had a
guilty conscience, a legal conscience and they went away. Because a
legal conscience won't bring you to Christ. It won't. If he
spoke to them in their heart, they would have done what Peter
did that time when he saw the Lord's power and he threw himself
down at the Lord's knees and said, Lord, depart from me, I'm
a sinful man. They would have smote upon their
breasts like the publican and said, Lord, have mercy on me,
the sinner. That's where he brings his child when he speaks this
and makes this true conviction in the heart by his light, in
light of what he's done in satisfying justice. He makes us see by His power
and grace. He puts down the Pharisee in
our sin nature and makes us see indeed we are the sinner. And then having made us know
our sin and our guilt, our curse on Him on the cross, making us
see what He did for us. This woman saw what He did for
her. This woman saw him stand between her and the accuser.
And she saw that. She did not open her mouth this
whole time until he speaks to her. And she sees that. And he turns to her and he speaks
peace into her heart. He said to her, woman, where
are those nine accusers? If no man condemned thee, she
said, here is the first time she opened her mouth. No man,
Lord. No man, Lord. Jesus said unto
her, neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. And the legalist says, but now
aren't there consequences? Our actions have consequences.
Aren't there consequences? She committed adultery. This
is just going to make her go and sin more because she thinks
she has a license to sin. If that's what I think, I've
missed it. I hadn't experienced it. The discipline Christ exercises
in the heart is the discipline of forgiveness in light of Him
laying down His life in our room instead and putting away our
sin. That's the discipline of grace. That's the discipline
that He makes effectual in the heart. This is the light whereby
He says, I'm the light of the world. He that followeth Me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. I remember
the first time I experienced this and I saw some trouble happen. And I thought, okay, now I know
according to the scriptures here how that person is going to have
to be dealt with. And I saw elders that had gone
through this many, many, many more times than I ever had. And
what I saw them do was show mercy. I saw them forgive. And I saw
them preach Christ and Him crucified more clearly and more boldly.
They didn't go to the law. They went straight to the cross
and preached Christ more boldly. Preached these things right here
of what He's done and how we have forgiveness in Him by His
grace. And a little while later I saw
it happen again, something happened to me. And again I thought, well
now they need to be dealt with. We got one weight to measure
our sin, another weight to measure the other person's sin. And again, I had the letter,
I thought I knew how it needed to be dealt with. but I saw grace
work in action. What we end up finding is what
we see in the letter has to be taken in light of all the scripture. We can't just take something
out of the scripture and apply it. It's got to be taken in light
of all the scripture. More importantly, it's got to
be worked in the heart. And in all of the time of being
in the church, I've only seen two times, I think it is, that
somebody was told to leave. And you know why? Because they
had this attitude of the Pharisees right here. That's the leaven. That'll spread through the whole
congregation. It doesn't make anybody happy.
It makes the Pharisees mad. It made them angry. It's grace
and it's mercy As long as a person is settled in hearing the gospel
and willing to hear the gospel, this is the hospital. This is
Bethesda. This is where the physician is
going to come and do the healing. He's going to do it through this
gospel. As he makes his people in his church experience these
things, this is what he's teaching us. He's teaching us we're justified
and the only thing just to do to one who professes faith in
Christ is show of mercy. That was the only just thing
to do to this woman. Why? Because Christ already justified
them. But I doubt them. You're wrong to doubt them. That's
what he says. Don't try to separate the wheat
from the chaff. You'll root up the wheat. You'll leave the chaff. Trust them to Christ. And this
is what he makes you do. You know how he does it? He first
reminds you, you're the sinner. It makes you see He's your righteousness. And that light brings you to
Him to wait and deal in mercy. And when you see this worked
out, He exercises your senses more and more. And especially
when it comes to you being the one who sinned. And you see,
brethren, be gracious. He makes you love grace. He makes
you love mercy. He makes you love forgiveness.
He makes you love Him. And this is how He's growing
us, brethren. This is how He's growing us. Alright, let's go to the Lord. Father, we thank You. Thank You
for Your grace. Thank You for this discipline
that's more powerful than anything Any man can exercise. Lord, make this gospel speak
powerfully to our hearts and make us see Your free forgiveness. Make us know it. Make us understand
it. And Lord, teach us to wait on
You and help us, Lord. We need Your grace. We need Your
power. We need Your light. Make us follow You. Forgive us,
Lord, of our sins. Forgive us for trying to usurp
your throne, and forgive us for our adultery. Lord, we ask this
in the name of that righteous, holy advocate. Hear Him. View us in Him. Receive us in
Him. Forgive us for His sake. In His
name, amen.