DO YOU THROW YOUR STONE?

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around Him, and He sat down to teach them. 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, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.

John 8:1-9

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Perhaps you have heard these two sayings:

“Don’t throw stones in a glass house.”

or

“That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.”

Both these well known idioms have a common meaning. Basically, one person should not be criticizing another for having faults if they have faults of their own. Anyone who does do reeks of hypocrisy.

Well, these two expressions were not around during Jesus’ time but the problem of a person condemning others when they were no better is a problem we see has existed for the ages. And as we see in today’s passage, Jesus came up with His own phrase, one that we still use to this very day. Look again at these words here from the opening verses of John 8:

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around Him, and He sat down to teach them. 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, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  John 8:1-9

You’ll recall that things had gotten rather testy in Jerusalem during the final day of the Feast of the Tabernacles. After Jesus had addressed the Jews who gathered to hear Him speak, some believed He was the Messiah while others dismissed Him as a mere prophet. The Pharisees rejected Him altogether in a show of stubborn disbelief which led them to want Jesus arrested and killed. Seeing the situation as the danger it was, Jesus decided to leave for the Mount of Olives with the hope things would cool off but as we see, He didn’t remain there long.

For the scriptures tell us that Jesus went back to Jerusalem where He taught a group who had gathered in the temple courts to hear Him teach. That teaching was interrupted when the teachers of the law and Pharisees, drug a woman accused of adultery in front of Jesus and the crowd, saying the following to our Savior:

“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?”

It was a blatant singling out of one woman for her sin by a group of sinful Jewish religious leaders, the kind of hypocrisy that made Jesus bristle. What made this situation even more upsetting was that the teachers of the law and Pharisees were doing it all on purpose to try to bait Jesus into doing or saying something they could build a charge around.

Well, if they expected Jesus to get fired up, they had to be disappointed in what happened next. For we read where Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with His finger, something that had to frustrate the Jewish spiritual authorities who were expecting Him to give them something to accuse Him of. After all, there certainly wasn’t a law against writing in the sand with one’s finger!

The scriptures show us that the Pharisees and teachers of the law weren’t about to give up for they persisted with their questioning. They wanted to hear something from Jesus and so He gave them something to ponder saying:

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And with that, He returned to writing on the ground.

With one statement, Jesus completely defused and disempowered the entire situation, raining on the parade of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. For one by one, everyone left, the older ones first followed by the younger until the only people left were Jesus and the accused adulteress.

You see, no one could throw a stone because no one was sinless. All were as guilty of transgression as the woman was. They may not have committed adultery but it didn’t matter. Sin is sin is sin and God hates anything which could be identified as an iniquity.

This leads us to several questions as we close this message:

First: Do you throw “stones” at others as if you are sinless?

Second: How could you do this when you are no less a sinner than the person you are throwing at?

and finally:

What do you think Jesus thinks about you when you are throwing your “stones” around?

Perhaps you might want to think about that. You just might just trade in throwing your “stone” for asking Jesus to help you deal with your own sinfulness.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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