1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. 3 Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, 4 they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?" 6 This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.
My Comments:
If you have a study bible or some other commentary that you use when you study, you might notice that part of this week's chapter is separated out with notations stating that this story was not in the earliest copies of the scriptures that we have. I'm not going to comment on this unless the question is asked directly; otherwise, I'll let you research that issue yourself. However, if you have specific questions go to the comment section and ask; I'll do my best to answer you.
That's that, let's move on to today's reading. For the next couple of days we are going to be looking at a very familiar story, the description of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. Today in the first half of the story, Jesus is brought an adulterous woman by the scribes and Pharisees. Just that should make us stop and ponder. (You know me I like to ask "why") So, why do you think they took the women to Jesus? In their minds they had it all figured out, they were the so called experts of the Law. Why would they need Jesus' input? To me this shows a premeditated attempt to set Jesus up, to trap Him in His word. This brings another question to mind, a question that John (the Hess, not the apostle or the Baptist) brought up in class yesterday: what were the Jewish leaders worried about? Why were they so concerned with Jesus? He (Jesus) must have been a real threat to them. If He would have been simply a nuisances they would have simply blown Him off as some crazy man and maybe just quietly put Him away; instead they were afraid of Him. They had to use deceit and trickery to try and make Him look bad in the people's eyes. I think this provides even more evidence that Jesus was who He said He was and He did all the things we read about. The miracles must have been real and He must be more than just a good story teller. The Jewish leaders would not have been so afraid of just "a good man," but they had every reason to be afraid of the Son of God.
OK, sorry for the digression, let's get back to the story, So Jesus is confronted with this woman who is caught in adultery and asked what should be done with her. They didn't ask because they were interested in Jesus' opinion they asked because, as it says in verse 6, they were testing Him. If He said not to stone her then He would be breaking the Law of Moses (Lev 20:10, Deut 22:22); if He said go ahead and stone her then His teachings on compassion and forgiveness would seem hypocritical. They thought they had Him.
This situation does bring up a very good question. If God is holy and God's law is holy, righteous, and good and if the Law knows nothing of forgiveness (Rom 3:20) then how does God forgive sinners (breakers of the Law) without violating His holy law? How do we put together justice and mercy? So that is the question for today, somebody answer it. Hint: if you was at church last night, you've got the verses to back up your answer and there was even a song sang about it.
1 comment:
Some believe that Jesus wrote names of the people in the crowd in the dirt along with there sins and that is why they dropped there stones and left. I love listening to evangelist Perry Stone. He recently had this opinion on his tv show manna-fest. The book of Numbers speaks of a trail of bitter waters. this is where an adulterous female is to a priest for judgement. If the priest thinks she is guilty he would pronounce curses over her and wright them on a scroll. The priest would take some water and and pour it on the scroll. The ink would run off into the cup and then dirt from the ground would be mixed into it. The women would be forced to drink the mixture and if her belly and hip began to swell then she was guilty. This proves that the wrong seed in you affects your inner being. If nothing happened then she was innocent. During this trail the dirt was supposed to condemn the women. But Jesus uses dirt to liberate her and set her free while condemning the crowd.
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