Have you ever tried to set a mouse trap, only to have it spring before you were ready? Maybe it was when you were latching it, or as you were putting it down in a tight corner. Pow! It snapped at you, and perhaps even bit your finger. No wonder people have been looking for the better mouse trap all these years.
In this scripture, the enemies of our Saviour were trying to entrap Him. They had made crude attempts before, by asking Jesus various theological questions. And every time, His answer was better than the questions themselves. But this time they thought that they had come up with the better mouse trap. This one was fool proof; not even they could mis-manage this one. There were just two possible answers, and either one could be turned to their side. If Jesus answered one way they could condemn Him before the Romans. If He answered the other way, they could condemn Him for despising the law of Moses. He would be trapped; there would be no escape. And this time those crafty serpents had a real, live sinner for bait – a transgressor of the Law of God. “Moses’ law says that this woman should be stoned to death, but what do you say?” If Christ replied that she should be freed or given some lesser punishment, then they would shout that He could not be a servant of God, because he had forsaken the law of Moses. But if He said that she should be stoned, then they could accuse him before the Romans, who had taken from the Jews the right of capital punishment. But Christ looked through the trap and tripped the spring, catching the poachers rather than the prey. There are some devotional lessons in this.
Notice first of all, the source of the plot against the Lord.
They were not so much interested in the answer to their question, as to the trap itself. Part of the plot was dishonesty – which of course is sin. “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” How many of those seven sins did these scribes and Pharisees commit? Their attack was based on sin and designed for further sin.
Then we see that when Jesus broke through the vanilla icing of their own souls, they should have seen themselves to be as sinfully guilty as the woman. Their trap was as much about hypocrisy as it was dishonesty. They had two standards for moral conduct; one for themselves and another for others. “Your anger is sin, but mine is only nervous irritability. Your worry is sin, but mine is justifiable concern about possible consequences. Your goals for the future involve greed, but mine are only for the security of my family.” “Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest does the same things” … despite your change in nomenclature.
Quite obvious is the absence of the man with whom this woman had been committing the alleged adultery. Is she any more guilty than that man? Could it be that this whole plot was a conspiracy from the beginning; that some worldly wise man thought out-loud, “What if?” These Jews may have set this woman up to be a trap for the Saviour. They might have used one of their own men for this terrible crime. Without a doubt the men in all this were as guilty as the woman, if not even more so if that is possible.
Can we say that 21st Century society is still trying to entrap the Lord and His servants? They often catch those servants, but they have yet to snare the Lord. They twist the scripture and try to ambush Jehovah, but the scripture cannot be broken. They say, “It’s been 2,000 years, where is the promise of His coming? But He is coming.” They pull out the often defeated arguments for evolution & try to ensnare the Lord, without success. They think that they find life in a rock from outer space and shout, “We’ve got you now, God.” But they haven’t.
From where do all these attacks and entrapments come? They emerge like puss out of decrepit hearts. No sinner wants to acknowledge the supremacy and sovereignty of the Lord. The very presence of God throws their hearts into a panic. Like the people of Gadera, even when they know the grace of God, they plead for His departure. “Away with Him, crucify Him, crucify Him. We will not have this man to reign over us.”
Isn’t this what society is crying today? We fill our bodies with cocaine and Coors so that we don’t have to think about God. We fill ourselves with marijuana and Mogan David to silence our consciences. We play our football & baseball games on the Lord’s day, to give us an excuse for attending on the Lord. We tear down our barns and build bigger replacements to store all our toys and diversions. The scribes and Pharisees were out to trap the Lord Jesus, because they were filled with fear and hatred towards God. But when they were putting the trap down before Him, it exploded on their own fingers.
Why did their plot fail?
I don’t need to dwell on this very long, because it is quite obvious. Those wicked men misjudged their Adversary. They compared themselves to midgets and believed that they were as tall as Goliath. They looked at the Lord from a distance and thought that He was just an ignorant Galilean. “Can any good thing come out of Galilee?”
But simply put, Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the God-head. And God cannot be beaten, not by man, not by man’s sin, not by Satan – He is the King. “Hath God said, and shall he not do it?” There is nothing impossible to the Lord. Furthermore, “there is nothing secret that shall not be revealed; nothing hid that shall not be made known.” What man may whisper in secret is heard distinctly in the throne-room of God. The plot of these men was better known to the Lord the day before it was attempted, than you can remember what you had for supper tonight.
And then we come to the wonderful results illustrated here.
One thing which flows from the deity of Christ is the grace with which He sovereignly covers sinners. Once, a very sick woman crept up behind Him as He walked down a crowded narrow street. She reached out in desperation and touched His seamless robe and was instantly healed. Perhaps a dozen others touched him that day, but they walked away unchanged. The body of a dead young man was touched by the Saviour and his life was immediately restored. A few fish and loaves of bread were stretched and multiplied until a huge multitude were all fed. Jesus put a bit of mud on the eyes of a blind man and his sight appeared.
These spiritually dead Jews reached out to touch the Lord and went away different from what they were. I am not implying they had become converted, and they were now disciples of Christ, but they were changed men. The primary evidence of that change was in their consciences. The conscience can be a wonderful tool, if it is well maintained, sharpened and cleaned. That was not the condition of the collective conscience of these men as they approached the Lord. But after the Lord spoke to them of righteousness & wrote in the sand, their scruples were recharged. They slowly backed away from their seine, and the scene – their net and the circumstances. When their black hearts were exposed to the light of Christ’s righteousness they were forced to reconsider their attack – they changed.
Generally speaking, consciences cannot be forced into change by their owners. I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with passing legislation demanding morality. But laws alone will not change the heart or the conscience of any populace about that morality. Our society needs the change that came over these hypocrites, but it came by exposure to the Saviour. The same effect will come over people when they are exposed to and by the Word of God. The Bible is the tool that the Lord uses to sharpen the human soul. The Bible is the means of that all important conviction of sin.
Curious people often ask, what it was that Jesus wrote in the sand that day, and I am one of them. All we have is useless speculation, because it appears that the Lord doesn’t want us to know. He might have written the names and sins of the woman’s accusers. He might have jotted down some of the Old Testament scriptures which accused the accusers. We don’t know what He wrote, but it was effective.
A second lesson we have here is about righteous living. When the fault-finders departed and Jesus was left only with the woman and the crowd, Jesus told her that she could leave too, but that He didn’t want her to sin any longer. Obviously, Jesus was just as aware of HER sin as He was of the sins of her antagonists. “Go,” says the Saviour, “but sin no more.” Did she have the means by which to obey?
Perhaps the greatest blessing of this story is the object lesson about grace. The law may have indeed demanded the death penalty for this woman – and for us. But the grace of God, sovereignly dispensed, supercedes the Law of God. That does not mean anyone can toss away the law of the Lord and shout, “Long live King Grace.” “Shall we continue in sin that grace may appear; God forbid.” The law has a very important function, ie. to bring us to the grace of the Lord.
So here is a woman, whom the law has condemned. She has been caught in the very act of adultery, and is worthy of death. But the Saviour said to her, “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” And here comes another sinner, named Oldfield — Kenneth David, to be exact He too is worthy of death, for “the wages of any and all sin is death.” But the Lord has said to me as well, “Neither do I condemn thee.” No matter what our sin might be, if we have let the law do its perfect work, and we know ourselves to be condemned, the Saviour is standing close by with His perfect saving grace. “Neither do I condemn thee.” “There is therefore now, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” I am reasonably sure that this adulteress was made a child of God that day – by the Lord’s great grace. Wouldn’t Jesus’ exhortation to “go and sin no more” be pointless if she were not forgiven?