OPENING QUESTION

SCRIPTURE: JOHN 8:3-11, 13-25 (NKJV)

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE & HOW THE BIBLE IS BEING READ BY CULTURE

As we come to the Bible we have to be always cognizant of how to read Scripture. Slow down. Chew on it. Put yourself in the story. I hope how we started and how you studied this week has done just that—if you were there in the crowd, what would you notice, what would you say and do, where would you stand on these issues? What would you think of this Jesus? Not only do we need to put ourselves in the story but need to pull out the details that are already there—what was going on? Where were they? What’s the context, what’s the background Scripture, where is this coming from and what would people be thinking?

Every word of Scripture is important and to dig into the Bible we need to see the particular (in this case, what would first-century Palestinian and diaspora Jews at the Feast of Tabernacles be hearing and applying and why). We also need to see the universal—what is God saying to us now? Not that His message changes but how do we see the exact same thing happening and applied in our context? How does the same Truth speak to, reveal, expose, challenge, and shine into our lives and our communities and culture now?

In short, as His Kingdom people, what do we do with what our King is saying and doing? How does this lead us to be like our King and worship Him more fully?

Scripture is God speaking and His speaking does apply to us today—and it has a place and a voice to speak into all cultures at all times. I think most of you are not Jewish, you’re not rabbis, but we all might have a little Pharisee in us.

HOW OUR CULTURE HEARS SCRIPTURE

As kingdom people, we also need to be sensitive to how Scripture is being read by our culture. When people you know hear this story, what are they actually hearing and does it match what Jesus is saying?

JUDGMENT I think when people hear this story, what they hear is, “Jesus is judging the judges.” Or put another way, Jesus is telling people “don’t judge.” Our culture hears: Stop judging. Love. Accept. Promote equality. No one has a right to judge. Religion divides, love unites. If you love me, you won’t judge me. If you truly accept me, you won’t judge me but take me as I am, for who I am, and that means accepting all of me.

I think sadly, many in our culture actually see the Church as those who want to catch bad folks in the act and drag them out to expose in shame.

Not only does judging seem wrong today, you could even say judgment is the cardinal sin of our age. To err is human; to judge is diabolical, repressive, divisive and violent. To judge is bigotry.

It seems today Matthew 7:1 is better known than John 3:16 by both Christians and non-Christians. No one should judge anyone’s sin, we’re told.

SIN And that’s right where we have to pause again. “Go and sin no more.”

What is sin? Beyond semantics—sin is a muddied concept today. Far from a list of deadly sins, we’ve concocted a bucket list of to do sins. We play games with the word—it is marketing slogan now (sinfully good, sinfully delicious, Sin City). Sin is a compliment: it’s look on as wild, sexy, fun; it means you’re untamed, unbridled, and undefined, unconstrained by the archaic moral code of some outdated religion. Sin is decadent, expressive, exciting. Purity and righteousness are downright boring. What is our culture’s working definition of sin? Is it just something you feel bad after? Is it something you do? Thoughts aren’t sin right? It’s only a sin if you hurt someone else. So if no harm, then no foul? Who gets to decide what a sin is? Or is the very word sin terribly outmoded—a puritanical vestige that we have move beyond or that evolves with the desires of a culture?

I want to read something very telling: In the oral argument this week for Hollingsworth v. Perry (SCOTUS gay marriage hearing), Justice Scalia repeatedly questioned Ted Olson on when same-sex marriage became unconstitutional.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I'm curious, when—when did — when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes — sometime after Baker, where we said it didn't even raise a substantial Federal question? When — when — when did the law become this?

MR. OLSON: It was constitutional when we as a culture we determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen?

MR. OLSON: There's no specific date in time. This is an evolutionary cycle.

Friends, do you see the challenge: “Whose definition of sin? Yours? What if I don’t see that as a sin? What if sin evolves? What if there is no such thing as sin?”

There is a view inside churches, even whole denominations, that while sin might not change, our understanding of sin does. What we once thought was sin, well, we got that wrong. Now through advancements, we’re able to see clearly what the Prophets, the apostles, Paul and even Jesus could not:

Former evangelical pastor Rob Bell recently said:

What we're seeing now, in this day, is God pulling us ahead into greater and greater affirmation and acceptance of our gay brothers and sisters . . . and we're realizing [now] that God made some of us one way and some of us another and it can be a beautiful thing.

Not surprisingly, definitions of sin seem to morph on exactly the same timeline with the secular morality of twenty-first century America.

In a strange twist, when I read this pericope in our culture, what I see is a perverse inversion: While men dragged out the woman to question Jesus, “Is this a sin?” how often do we do the exact opposite, not dragging but championing people and behavior before God and His representatives to inquire demandingly, “This isn’t a sin, right?” We ask, “Jesus, you’re really down with this aren’t you? This isn’t a big deal to You. I mean You don’t even talk about it specifically in the Bible and well, it’s not mentioned that much elsewhere and well even when it is, it doesn’t fit exactly what we’re talking about today.”

The Lord doesn’t change. His laws do not disappear. His standards do not get washed away by time.

Sin is hamartia – it is a fatal flaw of missing the mark. It is an arrow or bullet shot off target. This is not an “Oops, I missed,” or “Don’t I get credit for coming close?” It means not only your action, but your whole life is off target. It is off, because it means you have missed the path of uprightness and honor, doing wrong because you headed the wrong way, wandering from God. It is off target because it takes the wrong way at the fork in the road—my way or God’s way. It violates God’s law because it violates God.

Let’s be crystal—sin isn’t I tried but I missed. It is I tried to miss. It is to wander away purposefully in rebellion—high treason against your very Creator.

We do this when we put our identity, dreams, desires, value, and glory, on anything or anyone (no matter how good”) instead of God. It is to say I will choose my definition, my happiness, my glory, and my identity myself, thank you very much.

When you get down to it, sin is saying “You’re not God, I am.” “You don’t know what is best, I do.” You don’t get to decide, I do.”

That is exactly what we’re saying every time we sin. What we’re saying is I have another way, I don’t trust your way, because I don’t trust you. Think about it: When someone makes you so angry, God has already prescribed the way to respond. But when we lash back at our enemy, we don’t just mess up, come up short, or blow it, we don’t simply try but miss a little—we have made a very conscious declaration—“God, I know what you said, but in this case you’re dead wrong. So I’m going to go ahead and do what I need to do. I have a better way. Sorry.”

When our eyes wander, when sexual lust arises and we’re tempted to linger too long or open that site, click on that picture, we’re making a choice. And that’s the key word—choice. In that moment, as kingdom people, there is a choice—and when we disobey God we wander from His law to our own. “God, I know what you said about purity and all that stuff, but right now I need this. Right now this will bring me

happiness which outweighs any pleasure I can have in following You. This trumps You. Sorry.”

And this is where things get interesting. The mob before Jesus isn’t following God’s law; they’re not even following His legal procedure. They pick up stones before a trial and try to trap Jesus into pronouncing a sentence Jews can’t legally live out. The girl’s righteousness isn’t their concern—they want to expose, not just her but Jesus, for their own purposes. Their wills are not to do God’s will but to have their ways justified, their decisions codified, their better way rubber stamped.

Jesus won’t have any of this. He isn’t soft on sin. Part of His mission is the exposure of sin; the Light shines into the darkness. And here the Light exposes more than a broken woman; He shines truth on broken humanity.

Jesus’ isn’t saying no one can judge. Nor is He saying the woman isn’t guilty. Jesus has full authority to judge given to Him by the Father. He tells us in verse 16 that He does judge. But He does so truly. The problem is not that these accusers take sin too seriously, but that they don’t take it seriously enough. They haven’t taken seriously first the hot rebellion in their own hearts.

Those who claim to have caught a woman in sin are caught out there themselves. Those who came to shame leave ashamed. Jesus lets them in on how God sees this: You’re all caught in sin. Red handed. Your life testifies to sin and you judge yourself because your will has wandered away from God’s. Your lives are off target. You can’t even live up to your own standards, much less God’s. You see her adultery but not your own.

Do you hear the echo of the serpent in Eden in the crowd’s question? “God says this but what do you say.” Do you hear that in our culture? Do you hear that echo in your own heart?

Jesus answers by writing—the finger of God writing out perhaps in the dust as He did in Exodus. Jesus wants them to see why the covenant law was there in the first place—to bring broken, sinful humanity into life with God not to separate and kill off life. He doesn’t change the law to fit sins; He wants to change sins to fit the law.

Sin is a wandering away from God, missing His mark with your entire life because you have missed Him and wandered away from the One who made you and came to redeem you.

Sin is isn’t merely doing bad but it is death. James tells us that sin is birthed when we are lured away from God by our own over desires, lusts for our own ways.

Sin then is missing what God has in store for you, what He designed you for.

ENSLAVED BY SIN The mob has a question, they have a trap. Jesus gets to the root of both. There is something going on under the adultery, idolatry, even under the angry mob violence and the murderous threats.

If you’ve taken a look around our world lately, just in the past two weeks, things look pretty bleak out there. There is a lot of brokenness, devastation, and violence; hopelessness, hatred and harm. These are interesting times when some people throw up their arms, “Where is God?” And at the same time, the Church is tempted to throw up its arms, “Ah, this wicked, hopeless generation!” But these are great times to dig—to see what’s going on down deep at the roots. To step back, ask God what He sees. Let’s not be like a mob rushing to Jesus to rubber stamp what we already believe but to ask Him honestly, “Lord, what is going on here?”

SEEING IDOLS IN CULTURE Our brother Paul was very adept at seeing the idols not only in his heart and those around him, but seeing the idols underneath cultures—Jewish and Greco-Roman. He didn’t get stuck on the surface and say “Oh my, the world is terrible, this generation is so troubled,” but dug under to expose in order to answer the culture. Paul discovered and redirected: “Oh I see you value this, you love this, and you say this is important. Well, let me direct you then to the ultimate One who can answer and fulfill what your heart is really hungering after.”

Look around. What are the values as a culture we most highly esteem, that we glorify in our songs, our media and art, our academia and in our laws and dreams? What are the idols behind our sins, and what are the false promises of those idols.

One of them for sure is “authenticity.” To live an authentic life that is true to yourself. Don’t let anyone cast you into their mold. Express yourself. Be yourself.

We’re told that to not live out how you feel in your heart makes your life a lie and inauthentic. Any obstacle to authenticity must be removed—you have to live your life as your heart dictates or you’ll be repressed.

Isn’t that what is at the heart of the Supreme Court hearing? Isn’t it at the heart of Bruce Jenner and the issue Time magazine made into a cover story with the subheading “the next challenge to cultural beliefs”?

One of Jenner’s ex-wives speaking on his decision to transition said, "He can finally realize his need to be who he authentically is, who he was born to be. That takes tremendous courage. For that I commend him."

"Bruce … has the biggest heart. I’m really happy for him that he’s living his life the way he wants to live it," Kim Kardashian told Matt Lauer this week. "I don't know what life would be like if you always felt like you weren't yourself," she said. "As long as he is happy, and he wants to live his life, however he wants to live it that just makes me happy. “And I think that when you are finally ready to be your true self then you're prepared for anything."

Our culture cries out that not only should we be free to decide for ourselves—even something as fundamental as gender identity—but that we must follow our hearts or our lives are not just unhappy but inauthentic. If we aren’t true to ourselves we are living a lie.

Those are amazing statements on which Jesus has something to say.

The opponents tell Jesus, We are children of Abraham, so how can you say we’re not free? Biologically and spiritually we have pedigree, we’re following what we should, living authentic Jewish lives.

Christianity begins with the presupposition that humanity is sinful, originally from birth and not products of our environment. I do not cheat and then become a cheater. I cheat because I am already a cheater. And as I cheat, my cheating heart is compounded, hardened to the sin, and increasingly ruled by it.

Sin isn’t something we play with and put on the shelf when we’re done. When you’re done with sin, it isn’t done with you. We think we do sin, but sin does us.

Biblically, sin isn’t something you do, it is something you are. It is a heart issue, a kingdom issue. The irony in our search for freedom is that we are never free from a Master, an overlord. If you are not ruled by the King then you’re ruled by a lesser king, but make no mistake, you are ruled.

Jesus is saying Caesar is not the true despot, sin is.

This is why Jesus will not be reduced to a political Messiah—it is not that His claims do not have social, political ramifications but that they are not limited to those relatively superficial fixes—the pursuit of social justice in itself will always prove vain unless the deeper enslavement is recognized and handled.

Think about that regarding Baltimore. Think about that regarding Jenner. Think about that in context of SCOTUS and marriage equality.

When we think we are slaves to a lesser problem, we will always find a lesser savior. We will seek to overthrow a lord only to find out we’re still enslaved by a rebellion in our broken hearts. What is underneath racism? What is underneath poverty and oppression? What is underneath gender dysphoria? What is underneath the brokenness and devastation in our world?

Jesus gives us one more startling answer to what is really going on:

I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your

father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were

Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Jesus isn’t writing them off. Actually what He is saying is just as loving as to the condemned adulteress. He is trying to win them, letting them know their biggest sin and their true master.

AUTHENTIC LIFE IS KINGDOM LIFE AND NOTHING LESS

Circling back to the idol of authenticity in our culture—the most authentic, most free life is living as you were designed by your Creator to live—in covenantal

relationship with our true, loving, freeing Lord. The most authentic life is kingdom life in worship of and mission with the one true King.

To live as if you’re free to decide, as if following the broken compass of your heart is the way to go, you march not into freedom or authenticity but into lies and murder like Satan who is hell bent on manipulating and corrupting the truth God has revealed and murdering the life God breathes.

And yet, in another very real sense, to do that—to follow not God but be enslaved by sin, is authentically human. Jesus states bluntly, “You’re living just like your father. You are authentically just like him.”

When our culture cries out, “it’s natural, it feels right, this is normal, this is OK, and this is authentic.” We have to ask lovingly, to which father are you being authentic.

DEAD IN SIN

So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”

All of this is going down at the Feast of Tabernacles, the celebration of the harvest and God’s provision throughout the Exodus. The Jewish nation is celebrating its story of deliverance and the freedom of salvation from Egypt.

In the Exodus narrative, there is a massive fear of dying in the desert. And that is exactly what happens to a whole generation. God set His people free through wondrous acts of deliverance but though liberated out of Egypt geographically, they remained slaves to Pharaoh, to the way the kingdom of the world operates, and even to the gods of Egypt.

God moved before them in a pillar of light, leading them into life in His presence, into the Promised Land, into true freedom. But they would not believe God was God and they died.

Jesus announces, "I am the light of the world, the light of life." Follow me to life; follow me out of slavery and into the presence of God, into true kingdom life through the Son. But the people will not believe.

Jesus tells them, you will seek Me in vain. Jesus is telling them something we’ve seen played out for 2,000 years. You will look for another Messiah but he isn’t coming. You will look for another Savior but there is none. I am He, Jesus reveals.

The singular sin here is unbelief. Going back to where we started in defining sin—we miss the mark because we don’t believe God is true. Our wills don’t want Him to be true.

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. Belief isn’t an intellectual issue of insufficient data – it is a heart issue of not wanting to be exposed and not wanting to bow to the true King.

In a very real sense, in Johannine theology you don’t die because you do bad things (1 John 2). You die because you don’t accept life being handed to you by Jesus Christ. Our sad refusal of His offer means we die out here in the wilderness, lost, broken, hungry and thirsty.

We all have masters, some are crueler than others. But only One has life in Himself.

DEAD TO SIN

There is amazing news for our culture and for our own hearts and those we love. John tells us But to all who did receive Jesus, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. In Ephesians, Paul tells us that in God’s grace we have been offered adoption, to be called His sons.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.]4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

APPLICATION As we head into the world today and this week, we do so as Christ’s Church—His liberating army of believers.

How will we live out this week what the Bible calls for -- a balance between what some people think are two opposing reactions--condemnation and compassion? Really, the two together are essential elements of biblical love, and that's something our enslaved world desperately needs.

We cannot love our neighbors and want to see them excluded from the kingdom of Christ (Eph. 5:5). The most unloving thing you can do is sit by or worse endorse spiritual suicide.

The Light of the world did not sit by but gave up all to step into darkness to offer life to adulterers, idolaters, rebels, to slaves. Have you accepted that offer of love and life?

Jesus did not come and die for our sins to accept as the world accepts—so people could go on living shattered lives. He loves you way too much to leave you as you are, to leave us where He found us. He came to give you life abundantly and freedom in Him. Will you follow?

If you have that life – if you’re following the King, Are you living authentically as a child of God, now not dead in sin, but dead to sin?

In this wilderness, are you abiding as a true disciple, living truly free in His good kingdom works for which He prepared you for?

Then let’s go and sin no more.