Daily Lesson for February 8, 2022

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 8 verses 2 through 7:

2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’

I once heard the legendary and very humble pastor Jim Jackson say that whenever someone came to him and confessed adultery his response was to first tell them they could never throw rocks at anyone else ever again.

I don't know what Jesus wrote in the ground. Someone once joked that he asked the question, "Where is the man?" That is a good question -- and a clue that this wasn't about adultery so much as it was politics. They were more out to get Jesus than they were the woman and her man. But they didn't mind destroying her life (literally) in order to put Jesus in a bad place. That happens all the time today. The rocks keep flying.

Another idea is that what Jesus wrote there on the ground were the sins of all those standing around him and the woman. They were written in sand -- not in stone, like the stone of Moses. They were forgiven and forgotten, but now brought to mind when the woman was brought before Jesus.

But anybody who has ever really themselves been guilty and then forgiven ought never to throw rocks, nor relish in those who do.

Our sins have been forgiven and largely forgotten, but they will always be brought to mind when we stand in the judgment seat over others. This ought to keep us from throwing rocks.

"Go and sin no more," is enough. Anything more than that and you can bet something ulterior and evil is at work.

And it's at work all the time.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.