Who Judges

One of the strange social phenomena, I guess, is the technical, grammatically correct way of saying that, is this idea of our fascination with no judgment. Do not judge anyone, particularly we know, regarding their preferences for male or female company, who they want to marry, and so on. So there is this, on the one hand, a deep resentment towards judgmentalism. Meanwhile, and it sort of takes all my energy not to point this out, meanwhile, we judge those who are deemed as judgmental with the most ferocious judgmentalism. If you were to go on to any sort of YouTube open forum where comments are allowed, where there might be some sort of Christian statement said, the crazy amount of expletives that are often written in those comments about how judgmental this bleeping Christian is is phenomenal.

In a time like ours, does anyone have the right to judge? Who holds that position today? Ask your non-Christian friend or your secular friend, who does have the right to make the judgment call? Does it need to be someone who is democratically voted in, who represents the broadest amount of us? Or is it the person who is the most popular?

Should it be the best educated amongst us? Is it the person with their finger on the political pulse who knows the movements in the landscape of society? This morning, we're going to look at a very profound moment in the ministry of Jesus, the famous woman caught in adultery. We're going to hear what Jesus had to say about not only that situation, but about the very reason behind why she was brought to him in the first place. We're going to see this morning a few insights into the question of who can judge.

John 8:1. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery.

And placing her in the midst, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones. And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, sin no more." This is the word of the Lord.

Few little things for us to notice. Firstly, we see a trap being sprung. The religious rulers, the Pharisees and the scribes, as they're called, in verse three, come to Jesus, and they bring with them a woman who we are told had been caught in adultery, verse three. Now the phrasing of the whole passage really suggests that there is no doubt about her guilt. She was perhaps caught red-handed, or the evidence was such that it's beyond doubt.

The question is, why do they bring her to Jesus? Verse six indicates that they do this to see if they can trap Jesus. They are said to have tried to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Basically, the trap is this, that if Jesus was to judge in favour of the woman, releasing her, he violates the clear prescription of the law of Moses. Leviticus 20:10 makes it clear that the civil laws for Israel called for the punishment of adultery, and the punishment was a capital one, death.

Now if Jesus goes the other way and he orders her to be stoned, which would have been the method of her execution, literally being pelted to death by rocks, then Jesus would have been in trouble with the Romans, under which the Jews were living. The Romans had outlawed the Jews from handing out capital punishment themselves. So either Jesus becomes the enemy of the state, the Romans, or he becomes an enemy of the religion he said he believed in. And you can see that is a tantalising trap. Now we see how Jesus responds to the trap.

We notice that Jesus doesn't react immediately when they bring this woman to him. The second half of verse six tells us that having been propositioned with the question of what he would do to her, Jesus stoops down and he starts scribbling in the sand. Now there's been, of course, sufficient debate about what he was scribbling. What was he drawing? Some have speculated that Jesus was writing down the names of the Pharisees and a list of their sins.

Others think that Jesus wrote a warning from scripture that was aimed at them. The truth is, of course, we just don't know. In God's providence, in God's wisdom, we don't need to know. We don't know what Jesus wrote, but simply that Jesus was writing something. Now given the context, given that God always tells us the details we need to know, my opinion, and this you can take very lightly, is that Jesus is probably doodling something unimportant.

Either to let the heated moment sort of simmer down a little bit or to give weight to what he's about to say. Whatever the reason, God hasn't given us what he wrote. After a significant time, however, verse seven indicates they keep prodding him. They keep saying, "What do we do, Jesus? What do we do?"

And he's just standing there drawing in the sand. After a significant time, Jesus now finally, we're told, stands up. And that, you can imagine, just adds weight to what he's about to say, that posture of standing up. Everyone is on tenterhooks. They're waiting for his judgment.

And with a single sentence, Jesus deescalates the whole situation. He gives a response that only he can give. "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone." Jesus, in other words, is saying true justice can only be measured out by those who are just. Now, many people today have, from this sort of statement, created a caricature of Jesus as a very progressive, liberal Jesus, who now is very permissive, or at least indifferent towards all sorts of sins, especially sexual ones.

But Jesus is not saying that every magistrate today, every judge, every church elder must be sinless in order to enact justice. Otherwise, Jesus would be nullifying every office of judge that ever existed. What Jesus is doing here is taking on the vile attempt of these Pharisees. He sees what they're doing and that they are using the law of God, God's very word, for their own gain. The situation stinks to high heaven.

They reference the law of Moses in this act of adultery, but if you were to go to the respective passage in Leviticus 20:10, you can turn there if you have the time. This is what it says: "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Question? Where is the man?

Where is the other guy? It takes two to tango. We see that there is this one-eyed sense of justice happening here. This poor woman is really just a tool. And to circumvent this, Jesus simply says, "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."

So we see the trap, we see the response, and now we see the insight that Jesus gives us, that we make terrible judges. Jesus' deflating words give a warning to the Pharisees. Be careful of using God's word for your judgment because you can't stand up under those same standards. Now, of course, Jesus isn't saying that we can never make any decisions on moral, spiritual, or theological issues. The truth is the truth, whether we can live up to that personally or not.

What Jesus is pointing out is how corruptible the motives behind using God's word can be. Jesus knew the sinful motivation of using this woman as a tool to trap Jesus. This is why he deescalated this situation, and this is the insight that he gives us in our hearts. There's an ethic that Jesus teaches here of how to weigh up our judgments and to wonder, to think honestly whether there could be any sin in why we make that judgment. Could it be, if you were to reflect, could it be that in using the Bible, using it to judge someone else's actions, that a person could be secretly envious of the sin of that other person?

Have you ever been in that situation? That's a difficult one to admit if you want to believe that you are a good Christian. But is it possible to be envious of someone's sin because secretly, perhaps deep down, you would like to live that life? That's the example, isn't it, of the older brother in the Prodigal Son story. He was bitter with his father and his brother for that younger brother having spent all his father's inheritance on wild living, while he slaved away righteously and probably, in brackets, boringly for his father.

He gets the party. He gets the wild living and now he comes back? Perhaps you use God's word with another motive. You use God's word in judgment because you really just dislike a person. Happy to find any validation for your resentment, you slap the word sinful, awful, evil on them in your heart.

But the other teachings of Jesus is sobering. "I say to you," he says in Matthew 5, "that everyone who is angry with a brother is liable to judgment. Whoever says, 'You fool' to a brother, is liable to the fire of hell." Using the Bible to validate your dislike of someone is having a tainted motivation behind your judgment. But perhaps the most specifically relevant understanding to the situation here in John 8 is the motivation of wielding God's word to make someone else look less holy while you look more.

The Pharisees tried to make Jesus look like the unspiritual one. They want to have a charge to bring towards him or against him of being a blasphemer and of being a lawbreaker. They want to assert themselves as the true spiritual leaders of the Jews. Now, we hear a Pharisee and we hear religious teachers and we think they are so far removed from us. My friends, if there was ever a sinister church-destroying sin amongst long-time so-called mature Christians, it's this one.

To wield God's word for self-righteous gain. If you ever catch yourself weighing up someone's behaviour with the slightest hint of "I'll show them how much better of a Christian I am," then you've fallen into this sin of the Pharisees right here. Being motivated in this way, you'll find yourself carefully choosing your particular part of scripture in which you're not doing too badly and in which they are failing miserably. And the goal is to prop yourself up and to break the other person down. And the reason I say this destroys churches is because it is so hard to stamp out.

It is so hard to identify in isolation because all of it sounds so true. Yet, you know it is evil by its outcome. It is so far from God's truth because the purpose has been to break down your brother, to break down your sister, to revel in the gossip that comes from it, to stoke factions and dissensions which Paul, as we read again, so often warned against. And the ultimate goal is to puff up your chest with spiritual pride. Have you ever been secretly envious of someone's sinful life?

Have you ever validated your dislike of someone by using the Bible? Have you ever relished a disagreement in the church because you just knew you sounded more godly than they did? If you have ever done that, be on guard because this morning, you might just find yourself having used God's word in judgment, being judged by that very same word. The insight Jesus gives on that day is that the human heart is a terrible judge. We often make terrible judges even when we appeal to the perfect measuring stick of God's word.

Why? Not so much that the conclusion of God's word in the context, in the situation is wrong, but because the motives by which we've used it is so severely compromised. Now the question we have to ask ourselves is, what next? Do we now sort of just throw up our hands in the air and we say, "Well, what can we do as anyone that has to make a call on anything?" Do we remain permissive?

Do we let everything slide, or do we at least remain passive and see how it comes out in the end? Can any of us judge correctly? Well, of course, we don't have that despair. Of course, we're not called to that. We must, and we will, and we should make judgments.

And we must, and we will, and we should use God's word to make those judgments. But here's how we approach it. For every one instance of making a judgment, we have to have prayed about that instance ten times. Not ten times, but you know what I mean. We need to be intensely honest and reflective about our intentions.

When it comes to how we relate to each other in the church, especially, our judgment and our motives need to be crystal clear. It needs to be backed by scripture. And if it is a close call, if it's sort of like "Oh, some Christians can go this way or some Christians can go that way," we err on the side of love, patience, and grace. This is what Paul is getting at in Romans 15 when he writes this. This is coming to the end of his explanation in Romans 14 about different ways that Christians were dealing with certain foods and so on.

And he says at the beginning of chapter 15, "We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak." Now these weak are not non-Christians. They are Christians. We, the strong Christians, have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak Christians, not to please ourselves. "Let each of us please his neighbour for his good to build him up.

For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God." We have an obligation to the failings of the weak among us.

We don't live to please ourselves. We strive to build one another up. We welcome each friend and each brother. Why? Because if you read this passage in Romans again, you'll see that it's all motivated by what Christ has done.

Christ did not please himself. That is why he came for you. Christ did not come with disharmony. He lived in harmony with us. Christ welcomed us, says Paul. Which is how the story of John 8 finishes.

We see the treatment of a sinner. Again, some people point to this passage to say how non-judgmental Jesus is. Everyone has walked away because no one is righteous enough to cast a stone in judgment, they point out. And then Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you." Jesus is the epitome of non-judgmentalism for us to follow today.

But read the passage again, and you'll see that Jesus never compromised on the truth. To the woman caught fair and square in adultery, he says, verse 11, "Go and from now on sin no more." Jesus doesn't wink at his sin. Jesus doesn't say, "You poor woman, if only we men knew how hard it is to be a woman in this world." He doesn't mitigate her guilt.

He doesn't soften it because of the vileness of the Pharisees' attempts. He denies nothing. The truth is that she has sinned against God, that she has sinned against her husband, and she has sinned against herself. But here's the staggering truth of this passage. The only righteous one who could have picked up a stone that day to crush this woman under the weight of her own guilt was the one kneeling down, doodling in the sand.

And standing up, probably with mock surprise, he says, "No one has condemned you? Well, then, I don't condemn you. Go in peace and sin no more." The truth is Jesus was the only person in all of existence that day who would have had the right to cast that stone. And as a visible example of what was famously said in John 3:16 and 17, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

Jesus is the only just Judge, and a time is coming for him to finally make a judgment on all of sin. But for now, while we still live here and now, we have forgiveness and grace. Three things for us to remember from this passage. Firstly, we, you and I, must be intensely honest and reflective of our motives when making any judgment calls. Secondly, we can rest from our overzealous judgments because we can trust that Jesus is the perfect Judge.

He knows what he is doing today and he will, in his final judgment, not overlook anything. And then thirdly, we can be grateful that we have come to know Jesus, not firstly as a Judge, but as a Saviour. Jesus was not the one to simply overlook our red-handed guilt. Jesus has not missed seeing our adultery. Jesus has not missed seeing our hatred.

He hasn't missed our inaction, our laziness, our love for the world, our gossip, our lies. He has not simply overlooked them as a Judge. He actually, as the Judge, stepped down from the bench, went to the dock where we should stand, and he took our condemnation. He was stoned on behalf of this woman. It was the judgment that brought us peace which was laid on his shoulders, and by his punishment, we have been healed.

So when we wrestle with the direction of our world and we wrestle with people that seemingly do the wrong things in the church, when we feel righteously angry at injustice and godlessness in our family, our friends, and just out there in the world, we can rest in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the true and righteous Judge. He has the righteousness to make the right call. Remember and believe that he is in control, that he hasn't given up on his creation and that we don't have to be the saviours and the judges of this world because it already has a Saviour and a Judge. Let's pray.

Father, we need so much wisdom in not only how to understand the world and try and steer it in a way that we think is good and godly. We need so much wisdom to know our motives behind desiring those things. Help us, Lord, not to, on the one hand, fall into despair and think, "Well, who can do this? Can anyone hold any opinion? Can anyone direct anyone to follow Christ, to live a moral life?"

And then, Lord, on the other hand, to not fall into a terrible pride that makes us the arbitrators of what is right and good in our own eyes. Help us, Lord, then to be reflective and honest, to pray more often than we make those judgment calls, to be constantly before You, actively engaged in seeking Your wisdom. Help us, Lord, to rest, to not have a self-generated anxiety that this world is out of control and that there is nothing that You are doing and we must jump in and help save it. Help us to see the folly, the foolishness, and the arrogance of that. Help us in this church to love one another with a deep and sincere love.

A love that, if we feel like we are the stronger one, we'll still love the weaker brother and their failing. Help us, Lord, however, to have the clarity to even realise when we are the weaker brother. We pray, Lord, that we, therefore, then may exhibit Your incredible grace in the life of this church to love each other so deeply and to walk with patience, kindness to everyone we might meet. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.