One of the things I have had to learn as a Christian minister is that God has many ways
of bringing men and women to himself.
I think as a young Christian I had a fairly clear picture that there was only my way,
only the way in which he brought me to Christ, and that everybody had to come that way or
their coming wasn't quite decent.
It wasn't quite complete.
It wasn't quite Christ's way.
As Christian ministers we find people coming in the most surprising ways.
They come to Christ out of curiosity, and the amazing thing is that he'll take them.
They come out of a sheer sense of desolation and loneliness, and the amazing thing is that
they're glad when he receives them.
They come out of a sheer sense of intellectual interest, and the wonderful thing is that
Christ doesn't rebuff them but tells them that he's the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge,
and they find in him the way, the truth, and the life.
I think this has formulated itself for me into a principle now since I looked at the
different cases in John's Gospel, and you may have done the same.
The first two converts we're told of there are Andrew and another unnamed disciple, no
doubt the author, John himself.
These saw Jesus, they abode with him that night, and they never went back to John the
Baptist.
They were attracted to Christ.
And they went and found, you remember rather, that Jesus then called Philip, and he said,
follow me.
And Philip came on a resolve of the wind.
He was one of those who made an open public decision, we might say.
And not long after that, Philip findeth Nathanael, and you'll remember that Nathanael said, well,
let's sit down and talk about this.
How can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
And they said, very wisely, you come and see.
He's got the answer to that one.
And as Nathanael was coming, Jesus met his inquiring intellectual kind of mind by saying,
behold, an Israelite indeed, and whom is no God, Nathanael said, how do you know me?
The answer to that is that Nathanael became a Christian.
I don't want to illustrate further, but we're at the point now in John chapter 8, where
we find a person coming to Christ out of a deep sense of personal bankruptcy and sin.
It's not perhaps the only way.
It's not perhaps the common way, but this is this way, and I believe that no passage
in the whole New Testament makes the gospel message of free, full, and perfect instantaneous
cleansing from sin more clear than this case.
I mention to you the fact that in the authorized version, these 11 verses appear as part of
the text without comment.
In the revised version, they are fenced off with heavy black brackets to imply that the
textual evidence in the manuscripts is not strong.
The revised standard version has gone a step further.
It has deleted the verses from the text and relegated them to a footnote in microscopic
time.
These 11 verses, together with the last 12 verses of Mark's gospel, are the most important
queried passages in the text of the authorized version of the New Testament.
The manuscript evidence for these 11 verses is heavily against us.
It's omitted in the great Greek manuscripts, the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and the Alexandrian.
It's found in the Western or Latin manuscripts of secondary value, and in some of these it's
found only at the end of John's gospel.
Now I believe the scriptures to be the word of God, and I believe, too, with the words
of the Confession of Faith, that by the singular providence of God they have been preserved
pure, and that in the original manuscripts we have here the infallible autographs of
the Holy Ghost.
I rejoice to confess that, and I find assurance of that in the same kind of assurance as I
find concerning the forgiveness of my sins.
And there's a reason why I've referred to this difficulty of manuscript evidence.
I mentioned first of all the comment of Calvin in 1554.
It is plain enough that this passage was unknown anciently to the Eastern Church, but it was
always received by the Western Church.
It contains nothing unworthy of the apostolic spirit.
There is no reason why we should refuse to apply it to our advantage.
That's in Calvin's commentary on John's gospel.
Almost 200 years later, the Lutheran J. A. Bangle, writing in his unique five-volume
commentary called The Nomen, or Pointer, some of you will have it in your studies, says
this,
The wisdom and effectual power which Jesus evinced in the history of this woman are so
great that it is strange that this remarkable portion of the gospel story should be accounted
by many uncertain.
And then 20 or 30 years ago, Dr. Griffith Thomas, in his handbook on John, says this,
It represents a true incident in our Lord's life.
It could no more have been invented than any other incident in our Lord's life.
Well now, what is the explanation?
Apparently there's an explanation for the omission of this vital and authentic story
from our Lord's ministry.
There's a reason for its omission from the three great third-century or early fourth-century
manuscripts on which for most of our New Testament were dependent for the received text.
What is the explanation?
Augustine, in his commentary on John's gospel, says this,
He declares that this story was struck out of the text because of the growth of the ascetic
spirit in the Christian church of the fourth century, leading to a prudish fear that the
leniency of our Lord's dealing with this woman would encourage lax morality.
Bengal in the eighteenth century says, some pop to the same effect, that it was the same
reason which led successive scribes to remove the passage from the body of the gospel so
that it would not be used for the public reading of the word in church, and then to append
it to the end of the gospel so that it was there accessible but only for private edification.
The Christian church, only three hundred years old, already afraid to declare that it was
the diamond point of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ that the sinner, here, instantly, now,
by the authentic and authoritative absolution of Christ, is received, hardened, justified
and welcomed into the fellowship of beliefs.
The truth was already being heard in the house of its friends in the fourth century.
And it's a mysterious thing that nearly every mission field of the world disbelieves in
practice this truth.
And when a convert comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, he is kept waiting before he comes
to the Lord's Supper.
He's kept waiting before he's got time.
Or if a convert has fallen from spiritual fellowship through some gross sin, he's told,
you'll stay away from the next two communions, brother, and then you may come back again.
What kind of Protestantism is that?
What kind of gospel is that?
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, instantly, there
and then, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And the whole history of the Church has been one of accretion, whereby the initial truth
of this jewel of Protestant gospel has been encrusted by penances, clouds, rottenness,
sown on by the cautious mind of Christian men afraid to offer a free gospel to needy
men.
That's the message that I have found in this story, and that's the message I pray the
Holy Spirit will bring home to you.
Whether you know Christ and are in need to see this clearly in commending him to others,
or whether you're just a seeker and feel you've still got to go through the ascetic
hoops of a lot of preliminary preparation before you're bad enough to be saved, or
before you know you're good enough to be saved, the wonderful thing is that it's instantaneous.
It's now, however good or bad or indifferent you feel, it's now, not by some gross error
of our own delay.
Let me digress to illustrate the law of bankruptcy.
I think you all know that bankruptcy law is one of the great humane developments in English
legal history.
It doesn't come to us through the common law, like the greater body of our ancient,
inherited English law, but it dates from a statute of Henry VIII.
Bankruptcy law tells a man who is ground up to the ears in debt that his misery can
be instantaneously ended.
He can go to the official assignee in bankruptcy and he can file a petition, and the official
assignee receives the petition, the court adjudicates the petition, he is adjudicated
a bankrupt, and from that moment the processes of law which could have been directed against
him, distress bonds, rips of repleaven, judgment summonses, they're all finished.
Nothing can touch.
No creditor can go to him and say, you owe me.
He'll say, sorry, you'll have to see the official assignee.
I've been adjudicated a bankrupt, and from this moment, when I get my discharge, all
those past obligations will be wiped off the slate.
The day will come when that bankrupt will get his discharge, and every past debt, great
and small, will be gone, and he'll start with a bright future and a clean sheet.
A little bit like the gospel, isn't it?
A little bit like what happened to you and me when we came to France.
Now that's exactly what God does with sinners who are drowned up to the ears in moral death
and who can't see anywhere out of their predicament.
God makes Christ the official assignee in bankruptcy.
God puts them through the bankruptcy court as an act of mercy, grace, forgiveness.
He then hands them in writing their discharge, saying, I have blotted out as a thick cloud
thy sins, and thine iniquities will I remember no more.
Sing, O heavens, for the Lord hath done it.
Rejoice, for the Lord hath done it.
The incident.
Follow it as we go through.
The time of the incident was apparently the Feast of Tabernacles, a time of revelry in
the corrupt Jewish church.
What kind of revelry you may infer from such passages as Romans 13, verse 13.
All the old festival occasions on the Mediterranean, literal at that time, came under the heading
of this chapter of Romans 13, verse 13.
Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envy.
And every public gala and festival is an occasion when official restraint is officially removed
and license gets its short, brief hour of freedom.
The varsity has its annual capping, it does in New Zealand, and license gets a brief hour
of liberty and authority.
We don't like it, we say, well, they're students.
It was an occasion like that when this incident took place.
The place was the temple courtyard, and the audience, according to verse 2, was all the
people.
There was a great listening crowd, eager to see what would happen, first curious, and
then, we have no doubt, solemn minds.
Notice the interruption in verses 3 to 6.
These Pharisees and scribes disturbed Christ's holy teaching with a filthy tale.
They came in verse 3 with accusations, and set the woman in the midst.
In verse 4, they read out to Christ their indictment.
They said unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act.
And in verse 5, they quoted their precedence, asking for instant judicial summary, judicial
action.
Now, they said, looking at the statute book, Moses in the law commanded us that such should
be stoned.
How about you?
Care to comment on what you think?
Now, I want to make this clear, that there are very few occasions where the old Mosaic
law was invoked.
The Mosaic law was a law that the Jew liked to apply to the other fellow, but hated having
applied to himself.
We're all like that.
The most exalted ethic can be constructed from every man's views about what the fellow
next door should do, and the most degraded about every man's views about the license
he should be allowed.
The real motive in the hearts of these accusers is given to us in verse 6.
This phrase said, tempting Jesus, that they might have an occasion to accuse him.
But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them
not.
They hoped that Jesus would come out with an official manifesto directed against the
law of Moses.
They were against it, lock, stock, and barrel, in mind, body, and upon deliberation.
But they wanted Christ to put his head in the news and declare that the law of Moses
was too tough, obsolete, no longer relevant to an enlightened and somewhat worldly age.
This would stamp Christ, then, as a false Messiah.
If he bade them stone the woman, the Roman authorities would immediately object and intervene,
for the Jews had no authority in capital sentences.
If Jesus refused to uphold the law of Moses, obviously the scribes and Pharisees, who were
the stickler for religious jurisprudence, would soon get public Jewish opinion inflamed
against Christ.
That was the cunningly laid trap.
The woman's sin didn't interest these men a bit.
They wanted Christ to be caught.
She was a very convenient occasion for this little bit of subtle scheming on the part
of the Jews.
Now, I want you to notice next, Christ's knowledge of men.
We have the classic text in John 2, verse 25.
But he did not commit himself unto them, for he knew all men, and needed not that any should
testify to him of man, for he knew what was in man.
You notice Christ bent and wrote on the ground, and there have been all sorts of conjectures
as to what he wrote.
Well, he did write once on tables of stone, and they endured, and now he writes on the
fleshy tables of the heart the same commandments, and we find in them no longer a law of death,
but a law of life, holy and just and good.
Amid all the speculation as to what Christ wrote and why he wrote, I find the best common
comment of all, as so often I find in my reading, comes from John Calvin four hundred years
ago.
He says this, By this act of writing in the sands, Christ intended to show the scribes
and Pharisees that he despised them.
He despised their motives, he despised their crooked planning, he despised the baseness
of their bringing this poor woman before him.
Could we put it in one modern word?
Christ showed his utter contempt by doodling.
That's what he did.
He doodled in the sand and got them irritated, got their backs up, and the next verse showed
that they persisted.
They were cross at this studied unconcern of the Savior.
Verse seven, the first part, So when they continued asking him, older fellows, younger
fellows, the aggressive scribes, the orthodox Pharisees, won't you tell us, won't you command
them, are you scared, are you frightened?
He continued his doodling until he had them thoroughly demoralized.
Then you notice the verdict in verse seven.
When Christ had brought them to a point of demoralization and shaken them around, broken
the united front of that phalanx of entrenched hypocrisy, he was able to say, right, let
him that is without sin, yes, without this sin, counts the first stone.
That was quite right.
He was quoting actually from the Jewish law procedure in criminal trials.
Deuteronomy chapter 17 verses six and seven, you needn't look it up, you might like to
put it down.
At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses shall he that is worthy of death be put to
death, but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.
The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward
the hands of all the people, so thou shalt put the evil away from among you.
So Christ simply invoked a judicial law of the Jewish courts and said, run, who is the
man without sin, who at the same time is a witness of this crime, pick up the stone,
and in accordance with Deuteronomy 17, throw him without sin.
We remember the words of Paul in Romans chapter two verses seventeen to twenty-two, when after
pointing out that all humanity was guilty before God, the pagan world rather, of chapter
one, Paul turns his attention on the Jews who were applauding Paul's heavy blows that
he was administering to these outcast Gentiles.
Paul was saying God gave them up, and every time he said it there was a little clap of
applause from the Jewish gallery.
Paul, you're right, they're outside the pail.
And Paul suddenly swiveled on them and said this, behold, thou art called a Jew and restest
in the law, and makest thy boast of God.
You know his will.
You approve the things that are excellent.
You're instructed out of the law.
You're confident that you're a guide to the blind and a light to those who are in darkness.
Now, thou who teach'st another, do you ever take time to teach yourself?
Thou that preach'st a man shouldn't steal, do you ever steal?
Thou that say'st a man shouldn't commit adultery, do you commit adultery?
Christ was almost saying the same thing.
Let him that is without sin cast the first third.
They were convicted, we are told, in verse 9 in their own conscience.
I ask you to notice that conviction of sin does not always lead to conversion.
The woman, we don't rule anywhere as having been convicted of sin, and yet she was converted.
And here are these men convicted of their rottenness, hypocrisy, guile, and they went
away unconverted.
Calvin says this is not repentance.
We should not seek a place of concealment to avoid the presence of the judge, but rather
go direct with him in order to implore his forgiveness.
And round you remember there was the pressing audience of silent spectators and the woman
standing in the midst.
Yes, and one man who did not go out.
Inasmuch as he has suffered being tempted, he is able also to save them to the utterment
that come unto God by him.
The bankrupt and the judge face to face.
She felt the majesty of Jesus, and we have no doubt inwardly condemned herself.
Drowned in moral misery, she went to the only place she could go to, the only wholesome
person.
I wonder if she knew who he was.
I think she did.
Woman, for thine accusers, hath no man condemned thee?
No man, Lord.
And no one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Ghost.
That is the first sentence of a redeemed woman speaking.
That is the first action of a discharged bankrupt.
Neither do I condemn thee, implies a saved woman.
Though and sin no more, implies the power of the Savior to keep from sin.
Your old life is dead, Jesus said, in effect.
Your new life will be lived in my power, greater than your own.
There will be no taint, and your name will be suppressed in the record.
We don't know a name.
This is the bluntest of all the Gospel incidents, and if there's anybody here this afternoon
who's affronted by it, any Christian, I say to you, brother or sister, go home, get a
quiet place, and ask God to show you who thought you knew the Gospel, what the Gospel really
is.
The manuscript evidence proves that the early church couldn't take this direct head-on
truth that God in Christ can declare anyone who has given anywhere instantly, and the
whole transaction is done.
I want you to notice that this incident is an affront first to decent pagans who keep
saying, and you have this happening in your pastoral work just as I have it in mine, but
how do you know she was genuine?
We know that woman, lives down the back street, wouldn't be seen with her.
That's the decent pagan.
The fellow who doesn't use his modem though on Sunday, sends the youngsters off to Sunday
school, and he's speaking out of the heart of the natural man who objects to salvation
being instantaneous, complete, through Christ, and abiding.
And this story is an affront to the cults, for all the cults depend upon Christ plus,
and Christ will not be Christ plus anything.
Samuel Rutherford, writing in the seventeenth century, says in one of his lovely letters,
So no cults on Christ road.
True?
This will affront the modern, religious Pharisees.
I mean this in nothing but love, but the people who were the accusers of this woman were the
strict, conservative, orthodox, church folk.
They weren't the modernists.
They weren't Sadducees.
They weren't the broad churchmen.
They were the strict, conscientious, lovers of the Lord, lovers of the detail of God's
Word, and they are found doing the very thing that the early church did in the fourth century
and saying, now let's hush that out.
That's not a seemly story.
It might lead to a whole avalanche of license among Christians.
There was no evidence of self-struggle before Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee.
And yet I know many Christians who say there must be evidence of deep conviction of sin.
It's not true.
Look at all the cases in John's Gospel.
I can't find that there's evidence of deep conviction of sin.
Isn't it the case, as Vinay said, that we only know we were lost in finding that we
are saved?
Isn't it true that we only know what the darkness was when we now stand in the light
of the glory of the Gospel of Christ?
Why should we posit the necessity for this harrowing experience of conviction of sin
when Christ didn't demand it?
Instantly, now, He can save the curious.
He can save the indifferent.
He has all power in heaven on the earth.
The second thing I want you to notice is this, and I hinted at it earlier in what I said
at the beginning, that nearly every mission field errs in the application of the Gospel
at this point.
Mr. and Mrs. Williamson from the New Hebrides, who shared many years of service with us there,
are here this afternoon and will bear me out, that we went to a church which was grounded
in the strength of long and faithful Presbyterian missionary work nearly a century ago.
And we went from village to village at communion seasons, which were commonly once or twice
a year.
And when the Lord's Supper was served, there might be only a handful of Christians.
And when you inquired where so-and-so was, they said, oh, we're not quite sure.
And when you said, have you been to ask them, they said, yes, we went to ask them.
And they said, the two of them, husband and wife, had had a row in the morning, and so
they thought they shouldn't come to communion.
It wasn't right to come.
You think about that, would you?
Let not conscience make you linger, nor let fitness fondly dream.
All the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of Him.
Or we would find there that the elders, living up to the old native custom of heathen society,
had found someone who had erred morally in the village or tribe and had said to them
now, we'll punish you in the chief's court to the tune of 15 pounds.
You'll pay that today.
And then you'll stand out from the Lord's Supper for six months.
And after that, you can come back.
You see, they mixed up the secular and the sacred, because in native society there's
no such dichotomy.
They're all mixed in together.
The chiefs were the spiritual leaders.
But here's the terrible reality.
The same thing happens here.
We hold a person off.
We say now, we're not quite sure about it.
And we blunt the sharp edge of this gospel weapon with our own foolish reasoning, like
the early church.
As if you can be reconciled and brought back into communion and fellowship by the mere
reflection of time.
The gospel gives the way.
Confess now.
Be absolved now by your great high priest Jesus Christ, speaking in the scripture.
And now, know the blessedness of perfect cleansing and perfect reconciliation.
And so I hope that most of us are here this afternoon, sharing in the anthem of the true
gospel church of Jesus Christ, which can watch this woman still blushing in her sense of
discovered guilt, can watch her as she doesn't walk to Christ.
She came unwillingly.
She was dragged to Christ.
That's how much she wanted him.
Can watch this woman who hasn't uttered a single word of confession, of sorrow for sin,
of desire for the Savior.
Can watch this woman who hasn't by a depth of pleading asked for Christ's consideration
and can watch her go away clean every foot.
Have you got a gospel like that?
Have you believed a gospel like that?
Will you propagate a gospel like that?
About a hundred years ago at ninety, a young North of Ireland man turned up in Chicago
and rather naively approached D.O. Moody and offered to take a service.
D.O. Moody, who was equal to most situations, was bowled over.
And he said, well now, suppose you take the midweek meeting.
And the young man took the midweek meeting and D.O. Moody was away and he spoke on,
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
When Moody came back, he heard good reports of the young man's preaching
and invited him to occupy the pulpit, which he did.
And he preached on, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
And Moody said, young man, we want you for every night of this week.
Will you preach?
And young Henry Morehouse agreed to preach.
And on Tuesday night and Wednesday night and Thursday night and Friday night
he preached on John 3.16.
And Moody was never more moved in his life.
And he got back to the north of Ireland, back to the Ulster, which today is perhaps
the best jewel of Protestant Christian conviction and faith and life in the world.
He got back to Ulster and the little presbytery of the church to which he belonged
brought him before it to censure him for the undue simplifying of the Gospel call.
Minister after minister chided him in the presbytery for offering to people a Saviour
without first hurrying up the conscience with a sense of guilt, without first preaching
the necessity of knowing the judgment of God.
And they said, you allow them to come too simply, too easily to Christ.
And Henry Morehouse stood to make his humble defense before the fathers and brethren
of the presbytery.
And it was in a very few words, he said, moderator, fathers and brethren,
I can allow nothing to come between the sinner and Christ, not even up here.
Sunday night, a week ago, I was walking out for the last time from the service
of Papaguiro Church before coming across here to this convention.
A couple in their late thirties, the husband, an air force officer during the war,
the wife, a very gifted and talented woman who had just come into faith about two months ago
and rejoicing in Christ, walked out and as I shook hands with them at the door,
the wife opened her purse and took out a little letter.
She said, that's from Dad.
He didn't know your address.
He asked me to give it to you.
Dad was colonel of the Canterbury Regiment in New Zealand at the outbreak of World War II.
A distinguished soldier from the Indian Army and later from New Zealand.
He grew up in Anglophone as a lad, drifted into Christian Science
and later with his wife into Theosophy.
They passed through middle years and two years ago he lost his wife.
He stayed with his daughter a month ago just outside Papaguiro on Edible Farm.
And on the last night of his stay she said, Dad, what would you like to do tonight?
Would you mind, would you like Mr Miller and his wife to come down?
He said, I'd love it, I've got some questions for you.
When she rang we were glad to accept the invitation.
When we entered the lounge with the liquors and so on all around
because the old man doesn't disappear overnight, I said, he said to me,
he said to me, well now, Mr Miller, we could spend this evening rather fruitlessly, couldn't we,
in just topical conversation, but I want to spend it usefully, I have some questions.
Would you mind sitting down? Yes, sit there.
This ear isn't so good. Sit there.
And he pounded me with questions for two hours.
And at the end of the two hours I felt, well, unless God's done something that Graham Miller can't do,
there's no good being served tonight.
About the most I felt could have been done was that we got to know the Colonel
and we hoped he might come some other time and we could get a little further in explaining the way of salvation.
But this is the letter that I read as I went home from church last Sunday night.
Dear Mr Miller, I owe it to you to let you know that you made a convert that night.
We had a talk in my daughter's home.
One remark of yours I think turned the scales.
I asked if it was not sufficient if one lived up to the dictates of one's conscience.
And you replied that it could not be done without Christ's help.
I knew well it could not be done without some help,
as for years I had been struggling against lustful thoughts with many a fall.
That night I asked for Christ's help and I felt clean in an instant and have felt so to this day.
I have again taken the Bible study and yesterday felt able to take my first communion for many years.
My heartfelt thanks. Let us pray.
Gracious Father, keep us in the simplicity of this supreme message of Thy Gospel.
Save us from embellishing it, save us from destroying it and save us from ignoring it.
And if we haven't believed, Lord, we believe, we believe now.
Help Thou our unbelief. Amen.