If I Messed Up?
Will God Still Love Me If... • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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2 At dawn he went to the temple again, and all the people were coming to him. He sat down and began to teach them.
3 Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, making her stand in the center. 4 “Teacher,” they said to him, “this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. 5 In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 They asked this to trap him, in order that they might have evidence to accuse him.
Jesus stooped down and started writing on the ground with his finger. 7 When they persisted in questioning him, he stood up and said to them, “The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Then he stooped down again and continued writing on the ground. 9 When they heard this, they left one by one, starting with the older men. Only he was left, with the woman in the center. 10 When Jesus stood up, he said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”]
A Sinful Woman...
A Sinful Woman...
It was against the Law of Moses (Jewish law) to commit adultery, punishable by death.
If you were caught with a woman or man who was not your spouse, you could be stoned to death.
Now they had to actually catch you, not just assume you were doing something. Someone had to witness the infidelity.
Jesus is teaching in the temple when a group of religious folks bring a woman they say was “caught in adultery”, meaning someone walked in on her and a married man.
Notice they didn’t bring the man, only the woman, likely because they had set up this scenario in order to see how Jesus would handle it.
Jesus understood their intentions and John records that fact (vs 6).
No one really knows what Jesus wrote in the dirt, but I always giggle when I read it, Jesus was pushing their buttons.
The One Without Sin...
The One Without Sin...
We love Jesus’s response don’t we?
I imagine all the religious guys standing around this woman with stones in their hands.
When Jesus says what He says, one by one they drop their stones and walking away.
There are a Couple reasons we love this passage:
1) It is a picture of God’s grace to people who mess up or are living in sin.
1) It is a picture of God’s grace to people who mess up or are living in sin.
That is so important to see in this passage, how God sees our sin when we seek His forgiveness.
The woman never asks for forgiveness in the passage, but Jesus understood her shame and her guilt.
Everybody in this room has done something, or are in the middle of some kind of struggle right now in their life, that brings guilt and shame.
We are the woman on the ground in front of Jesus. ---we are also the judgmental religious guys too at times.
So we can see that Jesus recognizes our shame and our guilt, and yet He offers grace.
The woman deserved what the scribes and Pharisees were expecting to happen to her.
Jesus would have been just to let her be punished.
But He shows her grace.
2) It puts judgmental people in their place.
2) It puts judgmental people in their place.
No one likes to be judged or feel shame or guilt.
We try to avoid feeling shame or guilt in a few different ways:
We hide it behind doing good things and trying to convince people we are good people.
We lessen it by attempting to change or explain away something God has deemed sinful. (Basically saying God doesn’t care anymore or people have misunderstood what God was saying.
Or we excuse it by giving reasons that we are justified in our sin.
We like when Jesus puts the religious guys in their place, because who are they to judge anyone.
And that is true, Romans 3:23 “23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;”
No one really has the right to judge but Jesus and He doesn’t
But there is another really important thing we need to see in this story…
Yes Jesus forgives the woman
Yes Jesus shows her grace
Yes Jesus out the judgmental religious leaders in their place.
But He doesn’t leave the woman to continue in her sin.
11 “No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”]
He calls her to stop sinning, to live differently, and to pursue purity and righteousness.
Jesus wants her to understand that she is a sinner.
He doesn’t ever tell her that what she has done isn’t bad or that she is a good person even though she has made bad decisions.
His grace isn’t an affirmation (meaning just because He forgives doesn’t mean He approves or doesn’t care about what we do.
Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sin, so His forgiveness cost something.
But He died for us because He loves us.
And He forgives us because He loves us.
And even though we are all sinners and we will continue to sin, He will continue to love us.
But He also loves us enough to call us to not continue to sin.
remember Romans 3:23— does anyone know what Romans 3:24 says?
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
The question we are asking this week is: Will God still love me if I mess up?
And the answer is a resounding YES!
And not only will He forgive you, He will continue to love you and shape you into a new creation.
God doesn’t want you to continue to sin because He loves you and desires you to have abundant life in Him. You can’t enjoy that kind of life and continue to live in sin.
