You don't always have to tell the truth!

Jesus was with the Pharisees in John 8 and gave us some unbelievable truths and principles in this passage about how to decide if we go about executing judgement upon sinners.

At the beginning of this passage in John 8 the Lord Jesus is confronted by a lynch mob, the Pharisees, who have an adulteress woman that they caught in the act and the penalty is death by stoning. They are gonna use her crime to put Jesus on the spot as they are gonna ask Him what should be done with this woman. Clearly this is a trap. Jesus, knowing full well the law and the penalty it prescribes for adultery, is patient and doesn't get flustered. He bends down and writes something in the sand and doesn't immediately respond to the Pharisees' question about stoning her.

One has to wonder what he was writing in the sand - some have speculated it was the names of women that the Pharisees' were having adulterous relationships with. Other's have speculated that maybe it's various crimes or sins that the Pharisees' were currently involved in. The Spirit doesn't reveal what Jesus was writing, but in the end, the Lord agreed to the stoning but admonished them to let the one who had never sinned throw the first stone.

What's interesting to think about is that the only one there who had never sinned before was solely the Lord Jesus himself (and I think He full well knew this). Well, the accusers all left the scene one by one - oldest and probably the wisest first. Jesus asked the adulteress where her accusers were as clearly they had fled the scene. Jesus didn't turned a blind eye to this gal's sin. The fact of the matter is that, under the law of Moses, she was absolutely deserving of death for her crime, and Lord could have delivered the judgement Himself. But the Lord didn't condemn her. Instead He commanded her to go and sin no more. I bet she lived a changed life after this experience.

The Lord's tact and approach is amazing as He withheld the penalty of the law from this gal. He could have rightfully condemned her to death, but He didn't. He showed great mercy and grace to this convicted sinner.

Can you imagine this scene played out today in your church? Adultery of all things! That's usually a pretty big deal and will make headline news. Yep, did you hear that "so and so" was actually caught in the act of adultery by, no kidding, the pastors of the church. Well, there should be no questions to ask, right? Let's quickly try the poor soul and remove this cancer from the church immediately! And if your church did that, we'd probably consider it a well-handled situation for the quick and proper delivery of judgement. May this sin never be spoken among us. Am I right?

So here's the kicker. How do we know the right way to handle situations like this? Clearly if someone is sinning and is caught -- we have the right, the obligation, to extricate this sin from among us and demand the fullest penalty of the law. God rest their soul!

But as we see in this passage, there appears to be a time and a place when we need to deliver grace and mercy instead of righteous indignation? And clearly I don't think the Bible is teaching us that we should just turn a blind eye towards sexual sin. I think Christ gives us a clue later on in this passage on how these situations should be handled.

Later on in this passage, Jesus is talking to the unbelieving crowd in John 8:26 when He blows my socks off with this statement: 

I have much to say about you and much to condemn, but I won’t. For I say only what I have heard from the one who sent me, and he is completely truthful.

Jesus, the Lord Christ, the Holy Son of God who is perfect in every thought, deed, and action has much bad news He could legitimately say about the unbelieving folks He is with. He could easily lay into them with truthful condemnations. He could simply and quickly crucify them with truthful indictments, and He'd be fully justified in doing so, right! Well, maybe not...

I mean, it could get ugly really quick as He could reveal the crowds true character (or lack of character), but Christ withholds the brutal honest truth. He's not gonna nail them to the wall when clearly He has much to say? Why? Because Christ's prime directive is being obedient to the Father. Jesus says He will only say what God the Father wants Him to say. I think If God the Father wanted Jesus to cast judgments, then clearly He would have done exactly that. How do we know that? Because later in John 8:44 Jesus says to the same crowd:

For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does.

So that's a pretty contentious statement for sure. When's the last time you accused someone of being the "son of Satan?" So for Christ, it's not just a matter of always telling the brutal honest truth in every situation. Rather, the Lord's modus operandi was saying and doing only what the Father, who, by the way, is completely truthful, would have Him to say and do in that situation.

So what would my daily walk look like if I only said what I hear from the Spirit of the Living God? What would my testimony at work be like if I only said and did what my Heavenly Father wanted me to say and do. What would our churches look like if the leaders of our churches sought the direction of the Lord for how to handle scandalous situations? I'd like to think that sometimes getting to the bottom of the scandal and penalizing the perpetrators to the fullest extent of societal and Biblical law might not always be what the Lord would direct us to do -- even if the maximum penalties were clearly deserved!

The take away for me is this. I really need to be seeking to hear the Lord in all situations. And this really means that I need to learn to understand what His voice sounds like. Then when I hear his voice I need to comply. Maybe my first reaction to the flaws of my kids, or the faults of my employees and co-workers, or the sins of my fellow brother in Christ should *not* be to just barge in and demand that fullest penalty of the law, but to only do and say what I have heard from the Lord.