Neither Do I Condemn You

let's pray father we love your word we love your word we would be utterly lost and undone without it it is our life it's our hope it's our joy it's our food it's our drink because only by it do we have any sure access to you what you're like what you've done and so may I be faithful to your word and I thank you for the promise in your word that what is possible what is impossible with man is possible with you there are impossible desires I have for this message and so I ask that you would bring them to pass I ask this in Jesus name Amen well this is one of those messages that I will give once every 10 or 20 years I even wonder if I should call it a sermon and you'll see why in a moment the reason for the rareness of the kind of message it is is because of the rareness of the kind of text we're dealing with here in this passage most New Testament scholars don't think this text belongs in the Bible let me give you a few examples and you need to know ahead of time I agree with them and that raises really strange questions for us so you see how strange and rare a sermon would be from a text that if they're right doesn't belong here so what are you gonna say okay Don Carson who I think is one of the world's greatest and most faithful New Testament scholars says despite the best efforts to prove that the narrative was originally part of John's Gospel the evidence is against them and modern English versions are right to rule it off or put it in a footnote and you'll notice in your text unless you have perhaps the King James that it's got a double bracket around it or it's in the footnote bruce metzger one of the world's most authoritative scholars on the text of the New Testament until he passed away in 2007 said the evidence for the nan joha 9 that means doesn't belong in the Gospel of John origin of this prick api-- which is a fancy word for paragraph of of the adulteress is overwhelming Leon Morris has gone to be with the Lord also but one of my teachers and a great great scholar the textual evidence makes it impossible to hold that this section is an authentic part of the gospel ondrea's Kirsten burger who teaches oh dear south eastern or southern what South Eastern yeah and and I love I love this commentary I use it and get so much help from it this represents he says overwhelming evidence that the section is non Johan E and one last one Herman Ritter boss whose commentary I also love wrote written a couple of decades ago the evidences point to an unstable tradition that was not originally part of an ecclesiastical II accept accepted text so there they are these are the these are the best that you can have in my judgment and and they all agree and I think they're right that this text that was just read is not originally in the Gospel it got added centuries later that's the position I think is accurate so one of the things this gives me a chance to do now and and I don't think Sunday morning is Saturday night is the best place to do this on a weekend but I think it has to be done when we're faced with something like this namely I'm gonna talk for half the time about the kind of scholarly work that is behind this and the situation of textual transmission for the last 2,000 years that brings about situations like this so pretend like you're in school for a minute to and and and I will close by preaching and I will get a point from this text and I will warrant it by saying that it agrees with everything else in the New Testament so that's the way we're gonna handle it so and I do believe that I can worship as I do this and I think you will see reasons to worship as I try to open the situation for you so let me summarize first of all the reasons that all of these scholars give for why they don't think this story was in the gospel when John wrote it but got added later let me summarize those and then give you some background about the transmission of the text in the New Testament and and then draw out a lesson for us both biblically for its Authority's sake and and spiritually for ourselves here the reasons number one the story is missing in all the Greek manuscripts before the 5th century number two the earliest Church Fathers omit the passage and commenting on John and pass directly from 752 to 812 third the text flows amazingly well if you drop the story and connect 752 with 812 number for no Eastern Church father site the passage until the 10th century when dealing with this gospel number 5 when the story starts to appear in biblical texts surprisingly it occurs in 4 other places besides the one here some manuscripts put it after 736 some put it after 744 some put it after 20 125 and some have it in the Gospel of Luke after 2138 and number 6 the style and the vocabulary are more unlike the rest of the gospel than any other paragraph in the gospel those are the reasons that scholars think it didn't belong and doesn't belong in John's Gospel as he wrote it now saying all that I've used even language that assumes so much of you expect so much of you so much more than you should be expected to bring to the table right now and I don't expect you to bring to the table much knowledge about the history of the transmission of texts at all so this will be a very basic introduction and a hope not to burden you but to to help you just have enough knowledge so that what they're saying makes sense and doesn't undermine your confidence in the Bible it involves at the upper levels this science called textual criticism which is what it's called when you're trying to figure out what's original and what's not at the upper levels this requires not only a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew which the original manuscripts of the Bible were written in but it requires the ability to read them in the way they were handwritten and preserved in the tab found in libraries all over the world which aren't very difficult to read in many cases this is a really high-level kind of scholarship that has to trickle down to us ordinary ordinary folks and so let me try to introduce you to it the New Testament as we have it was originally written in Greek most of you know that probably the first printed Greek Testament coming off a printing press happen in the year 1516 which means that for 1500 years the texts that John and the others wrote was handed down by handwritten copies for 1,500 years it was copied by hand and passed on and on and on that's significant when this was printed in 1516 when the New Testament was printed in 1516 it simply turned the world upside down and I should just pause here and say if you want to read one of the best biographies that I've ever read read David Daniels biography of William Tyndale to read about that era and the heroism and sacrifice and Reformation that this printing so that anybody could read it not just a few monks tucked away making faithful copies but anybody who would take the time could have it in their hand it simply turned the world upside down at the in 1516 and just beyond but for 1500 years it came down to us in hand written form we do not have the original manuscript of any of the New Testament books that is the very piece of parchment or paper that John or Paul or Matthew Mark and Luke wrote on we don't have that piece of paper everything we have is copies and the question is did they get it right were they faithful with it and frankly I think it's probably just as well that we don't have those originals because we make idols out of them charge money probably for people to come worship at the shrine of the original manuscript of the Apostle Paul so the books of the New Testament are all preserved by these faithful hard-working scribes copyists for all those centuries let me describe those manuscripts to you and and give you some amazing facts there are four ways that those manuscripts appear one is a group called unseals and I'll risk three or four technical words on you we got some sim guys in the room and we're talking about unseals mean capital letters in the Greek and and these are very old manuscripts I'll tell you how many in a minute the next group is menu schools and they're the little Greek letters so some were written in all caps and some were written in little letters and then there's a group called papyri these are the oldest and and fragments and written on papyrus which was a plant common along the Nile in Egypt very precious manuscripts and then the other group is lectionaries collections of texts used in public worship not in the order they were written necessarily but just here's what you read this on you here you read the next Sunday so we've got all those now here's what's simply amazing the abundance of those manuscripts in those four different forms is so startling compared to the oldest manuscripts of any other manuscript coming from the first century it's simply breathtaking and give you some comparisons here so you can see what these so-called text critics that the scholars who are working on this have do with and how that is a problem and a solution Caesar's Gallic Wars written about 50 BC has ten surviving manuscripts in the language in which it was written and all of them date from the 10th century AD and after Livy the historian his Roman history dating from the time of Christ 20 manuscripts survived of Livy's which are all late to manuscripts survived of Tacitus histories and annals written about AD 102 manuscripts and they're off on the 9th and 11th they're both from the 9th and 11th century 8 manuscripts exists for lucidity --zz history who is writ which is written in in 400 or so BC so that typically when you're a historian working with manuscripts that come from the period that we're talking about very early for century or so you have a - 820 manuscripts to work with and they're all 9th 10th century not earlier and virtually all those historians working in universities around the world are confident they're interpreting Caesar vicinities and Tacitus compare the numbers of the manuscripts that we have of the new testimonies numbers are come from Minster the there's one main large think tank called the Institute I'll give T in English for New Testament textual research in Muenster Germany who have the data all collated these manuscripts existing in libraries around the orbit of course they've been digitized now and and the numbers of these are plain for everybody to see and if you have the energy you can go look at them there are three hundred and twenty two of those unsealed tax they're two thousand nine hundred and seven miniscule texts manuscripts there are two thousand four hundred and forty-five lectionary portions and there are a hundred and twenty seven papyri papyri adding up to about five thousand eight hundred and one manuscripts or fragments they're not all complete New Testaments by any mean but they are either whole or fragments of the New Testament so these handwritten copies these five thousand handwritten copies of the New Testament are in existence today and now are visible to the scholars who want to work with them to try to discern what the original words were that our biblical authors wrote now as you can imagine the copying of those texts produced variations for all kinds of human reasons variations so that the multiplicity of the numbers of manuscripts increases the problem of variations and increases the powers of control by which we can assess which are the most original the more you have the more you can test which the original ones were just a simple example if we only had say two manuscripts of the Gospel of John and one of them included the story about the woman taken in adultery and one of them omitted it and they're both old what would we do it would be very difficult to decide that's not the situation with any tax the variations are many but we have hundreds of texts and so we can say well here it is in these one or two or three or four or five but here the number of these texts the antiquity these texts the geographical distribution of the text makes it crystal clear that's the original right there so the number while creating more variations also creates the very roll that scholars are able to use in order to decide which is original here's the way FF Bruce from a generation ago put it he wrote this in 1943 if the number of manuscripts increases the number of scribal errors it increases proportionally the means of correcting such errors so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is truly remarkably small but what's most significant for the reliability and the authority of the new testament is that the variations that remain that we still wonder about do not affect any biblical doctrine here Zoey Bruce puts it the variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament effects no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice now nothing in the last what seventy years or so since he wrote that has changed in that judgment in my judgment accept the fact that some very popular teachers especially Bart Ehrman have become renowned for calling the New Testament into question precisely on the basis of textual critical issues his book is called misquoting Jesus there are other books but that one especially on the other hand Paul Wegener writing in 2006 reaffirms Bruce's judgment and it would be mine he writes like this five years ago it is important to keep in perspective the fact that only a very small part of the tech is in question of these most variants make little difference to the meaning of any passage and then he closes his book with this quote from Frederick Kenyon it is reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scriptures and our conviction that we have in our hands in substantial integrity the veritable Word of God so I I agree with Don Carson and the others that this story was not in the Gospel of John when he wrote it and when I say that I don't at all mean for you to respond oh my everything then is up for grabs or how can I count on any text on the contrary you and I should be very thankful very thankful that in God's sovereign providence over the centuries these thousands and thousands of manuscripts are so abundant today that in the science of textual criticism as they are compared one with the other there is a high degree of certainty that we have the original wording and where there isn't a degree of certainty it affects no doctrine of the Christian faith now the question is what should I do with it the story that's the background I intended to give you that's the lecture on textual criticism and I'm done with it almost the reason I say almost is because very interestingly both Don Carson and Bruce Metzger think this event really happened just the way the story says just wasn't part of John's Gospel so here's what Carson says there is little reason for doubting that the event here described occurred really Metzger writes the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity well perhaps I would like to think so who doesn't love this story kind of a gut punch tonight to hear me say doesn't belong in the Bible that's a downer but neither of those judgments even if true give the story the sanction and the authority of Scripture so what I'm gonna do with it is this I'm gonna preach and I'm gonna say that what we have in this text is not a basis for its truth but a pointer to its truth in the rest of the bottle that makes sense I'm not going to I'm not going to say that what I'm about to preach to you is true because of this text I don't think I have the warrant to do that I preached the Word of God I don't think this is part of it even if it happened therefore what I want to hear is what's the point of the story why did the early church love this so much that they preserved it and is it true on the basis of what we do know that's what I want to know so that's where we're going in the last few minutes of this of this sermon here's what I think the point of the story is Jesus exalts himself over the law of Moses changes and appointed punishment in the law reestablishes righteousness on the foundation of grace and I don't doubt that's why this story was loved and preserved Jesus exalted law altered righteousness reestablished on the foundation of grace that's what I think this story is doing and that's the point of the New Testament which I'll try to show now so the woman is caught in adultery verses 4 and 5 the scribes and Pharisees interesting little tidbit here the word scribes never occurs anywhere else in the Gospel of John it's always chief priests that's the kind of thing that scholars notice the scribes and the Pharisees cuz they're all over the other Gospels so no problem with this really happening like this they come and bring her to Jesus and they say teacher this woman has been caught caught in the act of adultery now in the law of Moses the law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman so what are you saying so this is a blatant test of Jesus perfectly historically understandable this is happening all the time this has the ring of this sort of thing that happened there's nothing new nothing weird here is the way it happens all over the Gospels what did the law say well here's what the law says in two places Deuteronomy 22 22 in Leviticus 20:10 here's Deuteronomy if a man is found lying with the wife of another man both of them shall die and that's what Leviticus 20 says as well so something is fishy here there's no man about to be stoned this is fishy don't like it verse 6 tells exactly what they're up to this they said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him these men don't love the law they hate Jesus they don't care about the man they don't care about obeying the law this is not about law keeping this is about tripping somebody they can't abide so the law is becoming a pretext in the mouths of these scribes and Pharisees coming to pretext there is no such thing as adultery with one guilty person ever so we're easy well they're just not interested in that they want Jesus in trouble by giving a wrong answer to this question and contradicting the law that's what they want and Jesus knows that he's seen it over and over again we've seen it in the Gospel of John verse 7 middle of the verse Jesus gives his verdict let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her now of course that won't work as a basis of social justice no criminals would be brought to justice if all judges had to be sinless this won't work as a basis for social justice which is not what he's doing what I said at the beginning was Jesus in this text is re-establishing righteousness re-establishing holiness and re-establishing justice on another foundation than the Pharisees are offering they get the little law piece abusing it twisting it not really obeying it but making it a pretext and he knows justice is important righteousness is important not committing sin is important adultery is wrong and you man not what you care about you care about getting rid of me throughout the Gospels here we're broadening out to the basis throughout the Gospels Jesus stand against this kind of thing in the Pharisees comes up again and again a few examples Matthew 9 13 Jesus says to them go learn what this means I desire mercy and not sacrifice and you said that to them when they were criticizing his disciples for picking grain and eating it on Saturday law-breaking he says in this amazing quote from Hosea go learn what this means I desire mercy and not sacrifice like if you understood the Old Testament you wouldn't use the law like that or we've seen this one just a couple of weeks ago John 7 23 if on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision as Jesus talking now to the crowds if on a Sabbath the man rich man receives circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a whole man's body well how would you do that kind of a law keeping people are you that you could get the circumcision right here we'll even do it on Saturday we have to but healing a whole man by one word that can't happen on Saturday what kind of a crazy use of the law is that in Jesus just drawing that out this is what's happening in this story as well you can see why probably Metzger and Carson say has the ring of truth it looks like something that would happen just like this okay verse and write it down you can find it into the end of the text neither do i condemn you go and from now on sin no more neither do i condemn you he did not say neither do i condemn you because adultery doesn't matter he didn't say neither do i condemn you so what'd you do next doesn't really matter cuz there is therefore now no condemnation that's know what he said he said go and sin no more which is also found in chapter 5 verse 16 verse 14 remember when the man was healed and he came and found Jesus and Jesus said you well now see that you don't sin again another ring of truth I think what Jesus is saying is this I am re-establishing your holy life my friend I'm building it again you threw it away in adultery I'm building it again don't want you to come into adultery anymore I'm sending you away not to commit adultery anymore but here's here's the difference woman I have just put it on a new foundation my grace do you see this woman I'm not lessening the command to you don't do this again but now I have just forgiven you totally which is why I say this is exalting Jesus big tongue which is why they would love this text want to preserve this text over against the Feres sake mishandling and the misunderstanding of Jesus woman I am rebuilding justice I'm rebuilding righteousness I'm rebuilding holiness and I'm building it on grace you you have to have an experience of grace in your life before you can pursue not sinning if you try to pursue not sinning without an experience of Amazing Grace what do you get Pharisee ISM that's what you get you get heartless misuses of the law you get hypocrisy through and through you get moralism so he's not saying the law had a bad idea when it told people not to sleep together except when they're married that's a good idea that's right that's God's Way for us but it doesn't mean anything to God ultimately if you stay out of bed with no grace in your life no experience of sweet forgiveness and imagine what she must have tasted in this story I was just about to be horribly killed I don't know if you saw the movie the stoning of sera um it was horrible if you've ever watched or imagine what a stoning is buried up to here in the ground with her hands tied behind her back and rocks this big hurled at your face she was just about to taste this horrific death their God no condemnation and until you taste that for your sin you're about to be stoned in hell and now it's not gonna happen now you have a whole different reason for not sleeping with the girlfriend/boyfriend other man's wife husband your life is built on a whole new foundation I love this story and it's true it's a true story meaning the lesson in it is exactly what Jesus would want us to see whether it happened or whether it belongs in this gospel or not so let me end like this the story points us to the entire message of the New Testament I don't have to base the point of the story on the story and thus leave you with a wobbly foundation tonight you shouldn't have a wobbly foundation for this point God is speaking here and this story is illustrative it's a pointer it's an echo it's not the foundation of this sermon it's an echo of the authority of the Bible which from cover to cover is designed that Jesus come into the world to put holiness on a foundation of grace that's the point of the Bible be holy for I am holy but don't pursue this hardness until you have heard the words neither do i condemn you that's the point of the Bible to the glory of God so very simply you know when I said I have one more sentence before I give it to you when you heard me pray what thirty minutes ago when it was 40 minutes ago I have impossible desires and you're the God who's able to do the impossible what I meant was could somebody get saved here in a sermon like this I feel like I don't like preaching like this I don't want to spend 3/4 those sermon talking about scholarly stuff that's know what preaching is could you do that maybe I mean yes you can will you you out there watching this or Sunday morning downtown South downtown ToNight north so my last sentences come to Jesus for grace and set your face to sin no more come to Jesus for grace wherever you are on your spiritual mess up and go and set your face to sin so father have mercy upon my imperfect efforts to try to manage a very complex situation in the text anything I have said a miss of mercy and forgive anything that's true confirm it in the lives of your people thank you for this story thank you this is the way Jesus is and that the whole New Testament this precious book is designed to make it plain to us for our salvation and our holiness pray this in Jesus name you

Channel: Desiring God

Views: 12,832

Rating: 4.880342 out of 5

Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism, Gospel, Law, Grace, Truth, Faith, Joy, Bible, Scripture, Gospel of John, Sin, Holy, Sermon

Id: SDDNxwcJ9NM

Length: 40min 47sec (2447 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 05 2018