FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACE

JOHN 7:53—8:11
June 14th 2009
Second Sunday After Pentecost
Pastor Timothy Smith

JOHN 7:53—8:1153 Then each went to his own home. 1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 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. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 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. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (NIV)

If you and your family were hungry and found ten or twelve tall cornstalks growing in the middle of your front yard, bristling with fat ripe ears of corn, you might stop to ask what they’re doing there, but it would be better for your family if you just ate the corn. In the same way, this passage of the Bible is sometimes thought of as being out of place—it’s true that some of the great ancient hand-made copies of the Bible put this story in different places, sometimes in Luke, or in other places in John’s Gospel and one or two have left spaces blank because they weren’t sure where it goes. It has its own unique and sometimes warmly debated (or at least, Luke-warmly debated) place in Biblical Academia. But it’s part of God’s holy word, and we’re here because we’re spiritually hungry, and so we’re not going to debate about it. We’re just going to consume it.

We find Jesus at the Mount of Olives just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Early in the morning, as dawn, he went into the Temple courts to teach. This probably happened in the beautiful and very large covered walkway known as Solomon’s Colonnade, where Jesus liked to go—we find him there in John chapter 10 during the Hanukkah celebration. Jesus was sitting, teaching the gospel to the people, when the teachers of the law came along with some Pharisees, and they brought this woman before Jesus.

They claimed that she had been caught in the act of adultery. They reminded Jesus that the law of Moses condemned any woman caught in adultery to death by stoning, and they demanded that Jesus judge her.

The text tells us that this was a trap. The reason for this is that it was an impossible choice. It was really the same old “Are for the Romans or for the Jews?” game they played on other occasions. Here, if Jesus refused to judge the woman, then they could accuse him of opposing the Law of Moses—he would be a false teacher. But if he did judge the woman, under that same Law of Moses, she would have to be put to death, and that would mean he was usurping the authority of the Romans. Then Pilate could become involved and accuse Jesus of treason or Lèse majesté or whatever they wanted to call rebellion against Caesar.

But on top of all this, she was being wrongfully accused, because she was alone. The man with whom she had been caught in adultery should have been there with her, also facing the same charges and the same sentence.

Jesus could have slipped away from this situation on that technicality, but he chose to remain. But in the face of this unfair trap, he just stooped down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

Everyone around Jesus was sinning, and right there in front of that congregation, what was Jesus going to do?

First of all, the woman herself had sinned. We’re not going to avoid talking about that. There are other problems here but we mustn’t think that Jesus approved of what she had done. He even tells her in the end “Go away from here now”—I’m just roughly giving you the Greek—“and stop sinning the way you have been.”

Before we turn to the sins of the Pharisees and the Teachers, let’s just think about the way Jesus said that. “Go away from here,” is the way the Greek presents these words. When a Christian is tempted with most sins, the way to face them is to talk about them, to get it out in the open and share experiences with other Christians. This is why Alcoholism and other group meetings about addictions work, because people can get support from other people going through the same thing.

But with sexual sins, memories and feelings can be dredged up with the least provocation, and then the temptation is there all over again. The best way to avoid sexual sins is to “Go away from there,” too remove oneself from the situation altogether. If it’s a person, don’t hang around with the person any more. If it’s an image, don’t look. If it’s a book, don’t read. If it’s a song, don’t listen. Go away from there.

Another sin present here as Jesus was crouched down writing in the dirt was the challenge of these teachers. They’re intention was to catch Jesus in an impossible place. If he said one thing, he must be against Moses. If he said another thing, he must be against the government.

This was a little bit like a man fishing with dynamite, or deer hunting with poison mustard gas. You’d get your critter, but nobody in the world would think it was playing by the rules or being a good sport.

If the world thinks that way about hunting an animal, then what should we think of these Pharisees and their friends?

Well, what should we think of ourselves? Think of all the different sins we all commit, and then we go like these Pharisees and their friends and accuse other people of other sins, and after a while how do we think that makes God think of us?

We need to start right here with ourselves and point our own fingers at our own lives. We need to understand that every one of our sins condemns us before God the way these men were trying to condemn this one woman.

But there is Jesus, writing in the dirt with his finger. Do you wonder what he wrote? Was he writing out the text of Deuteronomy 22:23, the passage about stoning a couple caught in adultery? Was it Deuteronomy 6:16, which tells us not to put the Lord our God to the test? When I read this about Jesus writing in the dust, it just reminds me of a verse in Ecclesiastes: “All come from dust, and to dust all return” (Ecclesiastes 3:20). Dirt itself can be a reminder of our sins.

But Jesus straightened up and faced these men: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

We must not use these same words to judge those men and women who sit in our courts as judges. These men who brought the woman to Jesus were not her legal judges. In the same way, our own Board of Elders is not to be held in contempt when they contact a member of our church who is avoiding the Means of Grace.

There are two lessons we must really take home from this passage. The first is that there is forgiveness from God for all of our sins. When Jesus told her that he did not condemn her, he meant that absolutely. Our sins are forgiven by God, and that means completely forgiven.

All of the junk and the guilt and the pain we have caused other people is forgiven in Jesus. As far as the east is from the west, those sins are lifted from our account and they are gone.

The second lesson is Jesus’ parting command with this woman: “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Having been declared not guilty by God, and being his people, we now make choices in our lives and with our lives that affect us and affect other people’s lives. So we make choices with the help of the Holy Spirit, and God blesses those choices we make. But we dare never expect God to bless a choice we make in favor of sin. When we take those baby steps toward living for Christ, we will stumble and we will get scraped up and we will get burned, but God will help us. And we will grow in our spiritual lives and our spiritual strength will be built up. These are not choices that take us to heaven; Jesus did all of that for us. But these are choices we make with God in mind and with God giving us the strength and the guidance and yes even the example of how to live.

So we leave our lives of sin, and we live for Jesus. Forgiven. Forever. For Jesus. Amen.

EZEKIEL 37:1-14
MAY 31, 2009
PENTECOST
PASTOR TIM SMITH

EZEKIEL 37:1-14 1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet– a vast army. 11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’
12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’” (NIV)

You may or may not know much about the Babylonian exile, and to understand the Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, you don’t really need to know a whole lot. At this time back in Israel, the prophet Jeremiah was calling the people of Jerusalem to repentance. They had all thought that Jerusalem would never fall; that God would never let his temple be destroyed, even though thousands upon thousands of Israelites including some of the Kings of Judah and their families were being hauled away to Babylon. And over in Babylon, men like Daniel and Ezekiel were warning people to repent of their sins. Daniel was in the court of the Babylonian Kings; Ezekiel was out among the people, among the exiles themselves in their towns and villages all up and down the shoreline of the Euphrates. And even those exiles didn’t think God would let Jerusalem fall; wouldn’t let the temple be destroyed.

I suppose that for some of them, maybe for most of them, the temple represented hope; it was something to think about and remember, and even if we couldn’t be back there lifting up our hands in prayer at the evening sacrifice, the temple was there; someone was there in the Lord’s house, doing the Lord’s work.

But then it happened. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar pulled down the walls of Jerusalem. They burned Solomon’s temple, they plundered the city, until Second Chronicles tells us there was nothing of value left (2 Chr. 36:19). It was either plundered, burned or smashed.

Now: Put yourself in the place of those folks in exile, when the word came to them that there was no more temple. Jerusalem was a pile of rocks. Cities had been destroyed before; but Jerusalem itself? How could this be? Shrines had been plundered before—that was part of being in a war, we might have supposed—but the temple itself destroyed? That was the one temple where God’s presence dwelt. That was the one temple where God had commanded us to worship. That was the one temple. The one temple. The one temple was gone.

Someone lifted up his voice and sang a lament: By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for their our captors asked us for songs; our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?

And there in the midst of our grief, this young prophet stood up and said he had seen a vision. We have cried ourselves dry; the tears have flowed and leapt from our eyes so that there are no tears left, and now he says he has seen a vision?

What Ezekiel was shown was a valley of dry bones. Not skeletons, but scattered bones, like they had been left in the desert wind for many years. We don’t have to wonder whether this was some army slaughtered someplace earlier in the Old Testament, like the army Abraham overran when he rescued Lot, or the Assyrian soldiers killed by the Angel of the Lord during the siege of Jerusalem. This was a vision. Ezekiel didn’t need to guess who they were, and neither do we.

The first thing the Lord asked the prophet was, “Can these bones live?” Like any good prophet, Ezekiel waited to be taught, and said, “Lord, you know the answer.” That’s when the rattling began—actually, the Hebrew doesn’t say whether this ‘shaking’ sound was the rattling of bones or the rumbling of an earthquake. What we do know is that the bones began to move, and they assembled into bodies. Bone connected with bone, and flesh reappeared over them. Gradually the valley was filled with a vast army of men.

But they were still dead; they still needed life. This is the same pattern God used in the original creation of Adam and Eve. First he formed them, then he breathed his breath into them and gave them their spirit; their soul. And the spirit of God is what gives us life.

Now, at the end of our text, the Lord will tell us that this army represents the House of Israel—the whole body of believers. And instantly we understand why the Lord showed Ezekiel these reassembled bones that still did not come to life. What is it that brings life into us?

Here is where we see what the Lord is talking about.

In Hebrew, the same word is used whether you are talking about the wind, or a breath, or a spirit. It is the same word, ruach. As God commands the prophet to call to the four winds to bring breath into the bones, he is talking about the spirit entering into them. Even though the same word is used all three ways in the same passage, it is clear what the Lord means. And as these bodies in the vision came to life through the Spirit, we see God’s meaning for Israel and for us.

For Israel, the point of the vision is that although there seems to be nothing left for them, God is capable of bringing them back from the exile—but for true life, even after the exile is over, they still need God; they still need his Spirit living in them. They still need faith.

For us, the point is the same. Life without the Spirit of God living in us is not life at all. When we try to live apart from God, when we set God on the back shelf, or just set his aside from the summer, we are removing ourselves from his love. We are removing him from our lives. If we think we can ever get away with monkeying around with God’s place in our lives, we need to think again. We need to repent. We need to understand what life is like apart from God.

Life apart from God is life as a skeleton. It’s a life of deadness. Think of what life would be like without forgiveness; without the peace of God. It would be a life of despair, a life of grief, a life of shame, a life of sadness.

But our sins are forgiven. Jesus has given us life. We live through Christ who lives. His resurrection is a promise of our own, and his gift of faith brings the blessing of the resurrection along with it.

Did you notice that it was the word of the Lord that was working in these bones? The word of the Lord is powerful; it is the tool God used in the Creation; it is the same tool God used when he brought you to faith in Jesus. The word of the Lord is powerful enough to accomplish anything.

And the success of that word of the Lord is up to the Lord himself to bring about.

On Pentecost, the Lord worked through special means, giving his Apostles the ability to speak in the languages of other people without first learning those foreign languages. But notice that it was still the word of the Lord that was doing the work.

That is the same word of the Lord Ezekiel preached to the dry bones. That is the same word of the Lord you have heard your whole life. That is the same word of the Lord that has given you life, spiritual life, living in you and working in you and giving you the ability to serve the Lord with everything you do.

That is the same word of the Lord that has given you the peace of God that transcends all our understanding, and keeps your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus, Amen.