Reflective Bible Study

When I read the gospels, aside from the crucifixion, one event stands out in a significant way when asking ourselves or looking for examples of Jesus showing us how much He loves those who society had marginalized. I suspect that if you were asked the same question, you might pick the same event that we will be focusing our time on in this podcast episode.

However, this event in the gospels doesn’t come to us without controversy. Most Bible’s available today will include the side-note or footnote that not all the ancient manuscripts include this event. While researching this, it is clear that this event is a very old story. However, its origins are a lot less clear since its placement and addition seem to be an afterthought and not something John original included.

However, since we don’t have any original manuscripts of John left, we are left with one of two conclusions: Either this story was added later by those copying the manuscripts, or there were some who wanted to erase this event from the gospel record and they didn’t succeed.

Either way, what happens in this event is one of the most amazing demonstrations of loving sinners that any of the gospels include. If you haven’t guessed it yet, we are focusing our episode on the story of the woman caught in adultery who was dragged to Jesus for condemnation. This event has shaped people’s perceptions of God and of Jesus throughout history and it is one of the most loving actions that anyone could ever display toward another.

Let’s read what happened, and then unpack what we can learn about God, and what people thought about Him. Our passage and event are found in the gospel of John, chapter 8, and we will read it using the Contemporary English Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 3, John tells us that:

³ The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law of Moses brought in a woman who had been caught in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. They made her stand in the middle of the crowd. ⁴ Then they said, “Teacher, this woman was caught sleeping with a man who isn’t her husband. ⁵ The Law of Moses teaches that a woman like this should be stoned to death! What do you say?”

⁶ They asked Jesus this question, because they wanted to test him and bring some charge against him. But Jesus simply bent over and started writing on the ground with his finger.

⁷ They kept on asking Jesus about the woman. Finally, he stood up and said, “If any of you have never sinned, then go ahead and throw the first stone at her!” ⁸ Once again he bent over and began writing on the ground. ⁹ The people left one by one, beginning with the oldest. Finally, Jesus and the woman were there alone.

¹⁰ Jesus stood up and asked her, “Where is everyone? Isn’t there anyone left to accuse you?”

¹¹ “No sir,” the woman answered.

Then Jesus told her, “I am not going to accuse you either. You may go now, but don’t sin anymore.”

This event begins with almost certain judgment as the religious leaders brought a clearly guilty person to Jesus to hear a verdict of judgment. The way this event happens makes me believe that what happens “off-record” was a set up, primarily because the man, who is also guilty, is not present. Also, other events in the gospels draw attention onto the religious leaders staging events in order to trick or trap Jesus, and I don’t have any reason to believe this was not one more example of this.

I fully believe that these religious leaders brought this woman to Jesus in order to test, trick, or trap Him. While this woman deserved judgment, because she had sinned and broken the law, if Jesus judged her as guilty, He would have misrepresented God in the process. This event was staged as a test because the leaders wanted to find something they could use to discredit Jesus.

Because of the way these religious leaders acted towards Jesus, I suspect this is why Jesus, who can clearly see all the angles present in this situation, chose an action the religious leaders did not expect. Instead of answering the demands for a verdict, Jesus bends down and starts writing in the sand. Tradition says that what Jesus wrote were the sins of the accusers, but nothing included in the Bible story for this event confirms or denies this.

Jesus definitely could have written all the hidden, secret sins of everyone present. As people crowded around, the elders would have been closest, and a list of sins, even if Jesus didn’t credit the sin to a single sinner would definitely have challenged those able to read it to be uncertain of their right to accuse.

However, a different angle that doesn’t get much attention, is that Jesus wrote scriptures that emphasized God’s love and forgiveness. While this doesn’t expose others sins directly, it clearly would have allowed the Holy Spirit to impress on the consciences of the leaders the places where they fell short, and this would also have challenged their right to even accuse this woman.

As I share these ideas with you, I wonder if Jesus combined these two ideas. If Jesus had wrote sins in the sand that were shared among several of the religious leaders, and then wrote countering scriptures next to them showing God’s love and righteousness, Jesus would not have needed to included any names. Instead, without including names, each person reading would have understood Jesus’ writing to have been directed at himself, while every onlooker would not have known the individual or the context.

Also, it is worth pointing out that Jesus wrote His message in the sand or dirt. He wrote it in a place where it would be easily erased with time. While these leaders were bent on publically humiliating this woman, if what Jesus wrote were the sins of these leaders, Jesus doesn’t return the favor of publicly humiliating or shaming these leaders like they were attempting to do with this woman.

The temptation present in this event is to join the crowd and judge this woman for her sins. However, Jesus is not going to fall into the trap of judging like these leaders had already judged. Instead, Jesus chooses to place His focus on each individual, beginning with the leaders. The leaders would have loved to begin with condemning the woman, but Jesus chooses to focus on the individual leader, and on the heart of each leader. This makes each leader present uncomfortable, and ultimately, they all leave their position of judgment.

Only after all the accusers leave does Jesus then address the woman individually. Jesus could easily have chosen to accuse her when everyone else had left, but instead He tells her that her future is more important to God than her past. While Jesus doesn’t excuse this woman’s sin, He minimizes its relevance.

One of the most powerful and timeless truths in this event is that our future is more important than our past. Just like Jesus told this woman, Jesus tells each of us that our future is more important in God’s eyes than our past. Jesus tells us that our heart is more important than our mistakes, and that the relationship we have with God is what matters the most of all.

Similar to how Jesus challenges the woman caught in adultery, we too are challenged to go and don’t sin anymore. This is not a statement that claims or supports the idea that we can move forward in life without ever sinning again. Instead, this is a statement to challenge us to never intentionally choose to sin and to leave sin the moment we become aware what we are doing is wrong.

In our lives, we are always making choices, and some of those choices are between sinning and not sinning. In order to make Jesus’ challenge relevant for us, He calls us to always move forward making the choice that is not sin. There are so many places in life where we stumble that it’s virtually impossible to never sin again, but in the places where we are conscious of the choice, Jesus challenges us with the truth that choosing sin is never positive from God’s perspective.

God wants you to have the best life possible, and the only things that He calls sin are things that cheapen the vision that He has for you. God ultimately wants you in heaven with Him, and He was willing to go to whatever length necessary to help you see His love for you!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and in your mind. Understand that God is interested in helping you live the best life you can live and He has a much higher vision of yourself than you can even imagine. With His help, you can become the person He created you to be.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself in order to learn and grow closer to God and to Jesus. While life is challenging, when we dedicate time to focus on staying connected with God, He is able to help us face the challenges that life brings our way.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

One of the reasons why Jesus may have caused division among those living in first-century Judea is that He fit many of the descriptions that they had for who the Messiah would be, but not all of the ones they had in focus. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, there was a growing divide between those who believed Jesus to be the Messiah and those who simply thought He was a good man and a God-supported prophet.

Our passage, which comes from the gospel of John, is one of the best examples of this division among the people. To set the stage, and transition from where we were last week, Jesus had told His brothers that He wouldn’t go up to Jerusalem with them for this festival because He knew there were people in Jerusalem who wanted to kill Him, so they left him behind. But then a day or two later, Jesus does go up, secretly, and part way into the festival, He stands up and begins preaching in the temple to everyone’s amazement.

It is at a break in Jesus’ message that our passage in John picks up. We will be reading from the gospel of John, chapter 7, using the New Century Version of the Bible. Jumping in at verse 25, John tells us:

²⁵ Then some of the people who lived in Jerusalem said, “This is the man they are trying to kill. ²⁶ But he is teaching where everyone can see and hear him, and no one is trying to stop him. Maybe the leaders have decided he really is the Christ. ²⁷ But we know where this man is from. Yet when the real Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

Pausing briefly here in the passage, we see the crowd of people talking and discussing amongst themselves. They are trying to reconcile what they see in Jesus and what they believe to be descriptive of the Messiah.

Jesus knows this, and picking back up in verse 28, John tells us Jesus’ response:

²⁸ Jesus, teaching in the Temple, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I have not come by my own authority. I was sent by the One who is true, whom you don’t know. ²⁹ But I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

³⁰ When Jesus said this, they tried to seize him. But no one was able to touch him, because it was not yet the right time. ³¹ But many of the people believed in Jesus. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”

Pausing again, we see the strong case for Jesus being the Messiah shared in the verse we just finished. Jesus performed so many miracles and He healed so many more people than anyone had ever done before, it would seem illogical for God to not have sent Him as the Messiah. I imagine that many of those present thought that if Jesus wasn’t the real Messiah, then His entire ministry would outshine the real Messiah when God’s actual Messiah would arrive. God allowing a ministry leading up to His Messiah to outshine His Messiah doesn’t make much sense in my mind.

There was no question in the minds of everyone present that God’s Spirit was working powerfully through Jesus. There was no escaping this fact. What they were trying to wrestle through was how Jesus did not fit the mold that they believed the Messiah would take.

On hearing the crowd rationalize Jesus as the most likely to be the Messiah based on the sheer quantity of miracles, we pick back up in verse 32 and learn that:

³² The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus. So the leading priests and the Pharisees sent some Temple guards to arrest him.

John tells us that this was likely the final straw for the Pharisees in the crowd. Not only had Jesus just implied equality with God and that He was sent directly from God, but the crowd was starting to rationalize that He may be the Messiah after all, simply because it was unlikely that God could support anyone more than He appeared to be supporting Jesus.

Whether Jesus said what He said next while guards were standing around, or if He continued preaching before the guards arrived to arrest Him, we pick back up in verse 33 where John continues by telling us:

³³ Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer. Then I will go back to the One who sent me. ³⁴ You will look for me, but you will not find me. And you cannot come where I am.”

³⁵ Some people said to each other, “Where will this man go so we cannot find him? Will he go to the Greek cities where our people live and teach the Greek people there? ³⁶ What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘You cannot come where I am’?”

We’ll stop reading here for our episode today because I want to draw out a key idea that is shared in this last portion of the passage.

Jesus has just finished describing that He won’t be around much longer, because He is getting ready to return to the One who sent Him. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus had described the One who sent Him as “the One who is true”. In the minds of the people, the only One who is 100% truth, or, using another word, we could say righteous, is God in heaven.

It is amazing to me that when Jesus said the initial statement about being sent by the One who is true, the people wanted to seize Him, likely to kill Him, but just a few verses later, when Jesus describes returning to the One who sent Him, the people completely miss the point that Jesus has just described returning to God in heaven.

Those present are stuck trying to rationalize Jesus’ words thinking He is traveling to some other part of the world, but then they confuse themselves with this train of thought because they know they can travel to every part of the world that He can.

But in Jesus’ words that confuse and challenge those present, we find a powerful spiritual truth: Jesus has told everyone that many will look for Him but won’t be able to find Him. This would be incredibly true on a physical sense, but what about spiritually?

In this statement, I see a challenge to everyone who calls themselves a follower of Jesus, a disciple, or a Christian. If you are someone who claims to follow Jesus, then it would be good to be constantly looking for Him. Sure, technically Jesus is in heaven, but knowing this truth, it is extra important for us to then look for Him there.

While we cannot physically go to heaven before Jesus has returned to take us home, through prayer, we are able to spiritually enter heaven and present our needs, wants, desires, hearts, and lives before Jesus. I believe there is a spiritual angle on what Jesus told the crowd, and it has to do with the state of our hearts and our attitude.

If we choose to pray filled with sin, pride, unforgiveness, or hostility in our hearts – and we are not bringing these issues to God to ask for help with them – then I believe we will be seeking Jesus but unable to find Him. It is only when we shift our attitude and the longing of our hearts to one that desires, wants, and needs Jesus’ help that our prayers will lead us directly to Jesus. This idea then challenges us with the truth that the state of our attitude and heart may keep us from finding Jesus when we seek after Him.

With this said, as we come to the close of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Before you sit down to pray or study your Bible next, pause briefly and assess the state of your heart. Are you coming to your study time in a way that is pleasing to God, in a way that is humble and selfless, or in a way that is self-serving or prideful? Before picking up your Bible or continuing to seek God, be sure you have the right attitude and motives for doing so, because searching for God will be fruitless if you are not interested in being spiritually fruitful.

Next, when you do have the right motivation and attitude, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself, and not simply be studying it through the lens of a pastor, writer, or podcaster’s perspective. While Bible study guides can be helpful, they can also limit what God wants to share with you because they can limit what parts of the Bible you focus on. Prayerfully studying the Bible for yourself, and learning how to best do so, is the best way to grow fully into the person God created you to be.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

When reading the gospels, one might get the mistaken impression that everyone who Jesus invited to follow Him dropped everything they were previously doing to follow. While dropping everything to follow Jesus appears to be the case in a number of instances, within the few verses of the passage we are focusing in on, we discover that not everyone invited has an easy decision.

In many cases, as well as in my own life, the decision to follow Jesus involves giving certain things up from within this life. While I don’t believe God asks us to give up things of value in this life without offering us something greater in the future, too often, we find ourselves believing that following God isn’t worth it, or following Jesus is too difficult.

While it is easy to think about our own struggle with choosing to follow Jesus, it is surprising to discover that those in the first century also faced this dilemma.

Our passage for this episode is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 8, and we’ll be reading it using the Good News Translation: Starting in verse 18, Matthew tells us that:

¹⁸ When Jesus noticed the crowd around him, he ordered his disciples to go to the other side of the lake. ¹⁹ A teacher of the Law came to him. “Teacher,” he said, “I am ready to go with you wherever you go.”

²⁰ Jesus answered him, “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lie down and rest.”

²¹ Another man, who was a disciple, said, “Sir, first let me go back and bury my father.”

²² “Follow me,” Jesus answered, “and let the dead bury their own dead.”

What amazes me about the event in this passage is one detail that is often missed.

Usually, when we read this event, we think all the people who faced tension on whether to follow Jesus rejected the invitation. I suspect this is because in the most notable case, the rich, young ruler leaves sorrowfully, even if his question isn’t directly about following Jesus. However, in the case of the verses we just read, there isn’t any clear distinction about what each man chose.

That is, except for one overlooked clue that only Matthew includes. Verse 21 begins with the words, “Another man, who was a disciple, said . . .”

Now in the first century, the word disciple was common and many rabbis and teachers had followers called disciples, but when we read the four gospels of the New Testament, the authors seem to reserve this descriptive term for those who were followers of Jesus.

In Matthew’s gospel, I think we are able to see a subtle clue that this was the unassuming call of one of the less famous disciples. This man took Jesus’ words to heart and chose to follow Him and let the dead bury themselves.

Some scholars say that this disciple’s request was not about simply attending an event that lowered a corpse into the ground, but a request that was asking if Jesus would be okay with him delaying accepting Jesus’ invitation until his father, who may have been old or on his deathbed, had died.

While I can understand the logic that these scholars use to reach their conclusion, I doubt this was the case in this instance. However, regardless of how long the disciple would have delayed accepting his invitation, I actually fully agree with the conclusion these scholars reach.

In His response, Jesus bluntly tells the man to get off the fence and make a decision on whether to follow Him, and because Matthew opens this man’s invitation by calling him a disciple, I logically conclude that this man accepted Jesus’ invitation, and followed Him from that point forward.

In a similar way, the invitation Jesus gives this unnamed disciple is the invitation that He gives to each one of us.

It is crucial that we don’t let anyone or anything delay us making the choice to accept Jesus’ invitation to follow Him. Our next moments are not 100% guaranteed, and while we are able to make the decision right now, this will not always be the case in the future.

While choosing to follow Jesus will redirect the focus of your life, this choice is not one that causes you to miss anything truly significant. Even though the temptation is to feel as though following Jesus means you will give up many things, almost everything we are called to give up can be categorized as something not really worthwhile. In the rare instance that we do give up something significant to follow Jesus, He promises us exponentially more and better things in return.

In other words, by focusing on Jesus, you will miss out on some things, but as I have learned, the things that are missed probably should be missed or skipped since they weren’t really beneficial for your life as a whole.

God wants the best life possible for us, both today and in the future, and the only things He wants us to miss or skip out on are the things that cheapen our lives, our relationships, and our value in God’s eyes.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. If you haven’t chosen to live for Jesus yet, choose to do so today. At the very least, try living for Jesus for a few months or years. If you really don’t see the benefits after testing it out for yourself, nothing is stopping you from leaving. Christianity is free to join and free to leave for anyone who wants. While I don’t advocate leaving because of what God has promised to His people, God values your choice, and He loves freedom more than forcing you into a heaven that you wouldn’t want to live in.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself in order to discover what God is really like, straight from the best source we have. While there is no shortage of opinions about God or the Bible, only by studying it for yourself can you personally discover what it says. Only by studying it for yourself can you really know if it is valuable for your life or not.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

When we imagine Jesus traveling throughout the countryside healing, teaching, and preaching to the crowds, in our minds, we always see the rag-tag group of disciples traveling with Him. We don’t ever get the picture that the disciples were anywhere but with Jesus.

However, in an odd turn of events, the gospel of John gives us a glimpse into a brief moment where Jesus was not with His disciples, but instead, He was with His brothers. While I don’t know what the context for this event was, it is interesting in my mind that John chose to include this event in his gospel.

Our event can be found in the gospel of John, chapter 7, and for our time together, we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1, John tells us that:

¹ After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. ² Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. ³ Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. ⁴ For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” ⁵ For not even His brothers were believing in Him. ⁶ So Jesus said to them, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune. ⁷ The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil. ⁸ Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” ⁹ Having said these things to them, He stayed in Galilee.

The big thing I find fascinating in this passage is what Jesus’ brothers imply through their words. In verse 4, Jesus’ brothers challenge Jesus by saying, “no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly”.

In essence, while Jesus’ brothers probably realize that Jesus is significant, and they probably grew up with the knowledge of Jesus extraordinary birth, and they also probably grew up hearing from Mary and Joseph that Jesus was the Messiah God had promised, none of these extraordinary things from Jesus’ past or present made sense to them when Jesus was not willing to be open or public about who He was.

In Jesus’ brothers’ minds, Jesus was going about the role of Messiah in the completely wrong way. If He was to be rallying people together in an effort to overthrow the Romans, staying out of Judea was not a practical plan, because, while Judea included people who wanted to kill Him, it also contained some of the people who were most likely to join a rebellion. In Galilee, which had a much higher concentration of Gentiles than other parts of the country, Jesus wouldn’t have had as much support, nor would He be as visible to the Jews that Jesus’ brothers likely believed He came to exclusively save.

But the error Jesus’ brothers make is that Jesus wanted to be known publicly. It is this error that catches many Christians and believers off guard, because while Jesus was famous because of the counter-cultural message He was sharing, and because He was able to heal almost anyone from almost anything that was bothering them, Christians today might incorrectly assume that fame was part of Jesus’ goals.

However, Jesus counters this very point by saying in verse 7, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it”. In these words, Jesus separates those present into two groups: Others and Himself. In this statement, Jesus also gives the counter-cultural message that the world hates Him.

Not everyone living in the first century hated Jesus, but a significant number of people living in the first century did. Probably the biggest source of hate towards Jesus both then and now is that His perfect life and selfless character conflict with the sin inside all of us. To reconcile this, we have to either accept Jesus’ offer of His new life, or try and fail to live up to the standard that He set through His life, or give up and not even try at all.

Jesus is hated because He calls evil by its true name, and His perfect life was modeled after the idea of loving the sinner while rejecting the sin. Jesus saw people as special, regardless of their past choices and sinful lifestyles. This love resonated with some, while it repelled a majority of others.

The majority of people who rejected Jesus did so because He either said things they did not agree with or feel they could live up to, or because they routinely built themselves up by putting others down.

Any fame Jesus received through His counter-cultural message and through the miracles He performed was not because He was trying to build a name for Himself. Instead, everything He did was because God directed Him to do so and because He wanted to give the glory to God. None of Jesus’ miracles were intended to bring glory or praise onto Himself; but every one of Jesus’ miracles was intended to focus the glory onto God who had worked in a mighty and powerful way.

In our own lives, for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, Christians, or disciples, we are to reflect Jesus in our daily lives, and the only way we can truly reflect Him is if we are focused on Him, if we regularly spend time with Him, and if we intentionally love others like Him. The only way we can hope to accomplish anything for God is by doing what Jesus did and living like Jesus lived: Jesus depended on God for direction, guidance, power, love, humility, and He gave up self at every opportunity He could. When tempted, Jesus always pointed the focus elsewhere, and He never directed glory towards Himself.

Jesus’ brothers did not understand this because His brothers didn’t understand what God’s Messiah would be like. Similar to most everyone living in the first century, Jesus’ brothers believed He would be the military leader who would overthrow the Romans.

Only after Jesus’ death and the mold for their idea of who the Messiah would be was broken, do His closest followers, friends, and family realize that God’s Messiah came in a different way than they had imagined.

As we come to the close of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Continue to place God first and seek to do His will. Commit each day to living as selflessly as Jesus lived and loving others like Jesus loved. Know that you cannot succeed without God’s help, so lean on Him for the strength to reflect Jesus each day.

Also, prayerfully study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow more like Jesus. The only way for you to truly be like Jesus is to learn and discover who Jesus was, and who Jesus is. While you could take a podcaster’s or pastor’s word for it, it’s much better to study and learn personally, because God wants to know you personally and not as a “friend of a friend”.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!