Quote from Forum Archives on June 25, 2002, 11:31 am

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

THE MASTER'S MASTER PLAN
June 23, 2002

TEXT: John 8:2-11

Writing for the Reader’s Digest, Gerald Lebowitz recounts, “On the way
home one night, I spotted some fresh-cut roses outside a florist's shop.
After selecting a dozen and entering the shop, I was greeted by a young
saleswoman. ‘Are these for your wife, sir?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘For her birthday?’ she asked. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘For your anniversary?’
‘No,’ I said again. As I pocketed my change and headed toward the door,
the young woman called out, ‘I hope she forgives you.’” (Gerald Lebowitz,
Readers Digest, Jan 1996, p. 31.)

In this world filled with imperfections, frustrations, misunderstandings,
disobedience, and outright evil deeds, the need for husbands to seek
forgiveness from their wives is frequent. But then, so is the need for
wives to seek forgiveness from their husbands, children from their
parents, parents from their children, and well beyond that. Anywhere
there is a human relationship, the need for forgiveness is not far
behind. Sad for the man or woman for whom forgiveness cannot be found.
Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor on
television, Marghanita Laski, a secular humanist and novelist, said:
"What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody
to forgive me." (John Stott in “The Contemporary Christian,” Christianity
Today, Vol. 38, no. 7.)

Forgiveness which has come from God through the suffering and sacrifice
of Jesus is the greatest news of all time. Human wisdom still has yet to
come up with the best ways and languages to describe it to its fullest.
Without any argument, forgiveness from God leading to relationship with
Him is the obvious message of the New Testament. Forgiveness is the
Master’s Master plan. Yet, it quite frequently appears that Christians
take divine forgiveness for granted. We all do well to review the
Scriptures to seek God’s plan for our lives.

I’m sure that like me, many of you have come across a person who has
questions about the Bible’s reliability. Why should anyone trust it as
containing any more truth than any other book? You know, questions like
that. Well, one answer that I give, which doesn’t make it a provable
scientific fact or anything, is the inclusion in the Bible accounts of
“fallible” heroes of the faith. No other book of Scriptures of any other
religion that I know of contains accounts of so many individuals who are
regarded as faithful servants of God, and yet have such sad moments of
human failure. When told that he would father generations that would
become more numerous than the stars in the sky, old Abram laughed at God.
Moses argued at length with God about going to confront the Egyptian
Pharaoh. Even after the miraculous defeat of the prophets of Baal on
Mount Carmel, Elijah threw aside God’s protective power and fled from
wicked Queen Jezebel and her threats to kill him. David, the shepherd boy
turned king who was beloved by God, covered up an adulterous “one night
stand” by having Bathsheba’s husband murdered. Peter, the disciple who
boasted that he would never “leave his Lord’s side,” denied his knowledge
of Jesus three times. Paul, one of the most influential Christians the
world has know, actively hunted down Christians prior to his conversion.
Even after his conversion, he became frustrated with young Mark and
bullied him around a bit by not letting him join Paul again on a mission
trip. There is an old political cartoon strip, Pogo, which has become
somewhat famous for its revision of a familiar saying: “We have met the
enemy, and they is us!” Well, this rings true for us when we read about
the Master’s Master plan throughout the Bible. At some point in time, we
have been an Abram or a Moses or an Elijah or a David or a Peter or a
Paul. And in spite of our disbelief or lack of faith or denials or sins,
God has reached out to us the same way He reached out to these “heroes of
the faith:” with life-giving, life-changing forgiveness.

Sometimes we forget this. The Bible speaks of those who were forgetful,
too. In this account, some teachers of the law and Pharisees are guilty
of such forgetfulness. They forgot that the ancestors they held in such
high esteem were in need of God’s forgiveness throughout their lives.
They forgot that God’s forgiveness extended to them. They forgot that
they were to extend God’s forgiveness to others. They forgot the Master’s
Master plan.

In this account of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus once more
forcefully drives that point home. Before I address the dynamics of
forgiveness found in the Scriptures themselves, I digress a little to
point out that many of our Bibles today include a note about these verses
that says something like this: “The earliest and most reliable
manuscripts do not have John 7:53-8:11.” This is true. According to
Biblical scholarship, these verses were apparently added into the text
sometime after the time of the earliest known manuscripts of John. So,
for some, this is an indication that they are not really part of the
Bible. However, there are some observations that have been made that
indicate they are appropriate. First, their inclusion into written
Biblical accounts occurred early in the history of the New Testament -
between 100 and 200 AD. This fairly early introduction into the text
indicates that they were perhaps still part of the Bible’s oral
tradition, where the Bible was transmitted by speech instead of writing.
Second, these particular verses “fit” with other Scripture from the
reliable manuscripts concerning Jesus’ treatment of sinners, his
confrontations with Pharisees, and his responses to their attempted
traps. Whether one considers these verses to be a “real” part of the
Bible or not does not prevent us from drawing lessons from the life of
Jesus from them.

That this confrontation with Jesus was another attempt to trap Jesus and
so accuse him is directly stated in the passage. To the accusers, this
looked like a no-win situation for Jesus. If he told the accusers
outright not to stone the woman, he was caught in a direct violation of
holy law. Jesus would be in violation of Scripture! Adultery was a
serious crime. It is a violation of one of the Commandments.
Additionally, Leviticus 20:10 prescribes that “if a man commits adultery
with another man’s wife - with the wife of his neighbor - both the
adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” Yep, if Jesus told
them not to stone her, his accusers would have him for disobeying the
very Word of God.

On the other hand, if Jesus told them to stone her, his credibility with
the sinners among who he ministered would be destroyed. How could he any
longer be welcomed into their homes, where his most significant
ministries occurred, since he now made himself out to be just another
Pharisee. Besides that, even if Jesus had told them to stone her,
technically they could not follow through with it. According to Roman law
in force at the time, the Jewish religious authorities did not have the
right to carry out an execution. It wasn’t until the Pharisees and others
were able to present Jesus to the Roman authorities as a threat to the
Empire that they were able to have him executed. So, had Jesus told them
to stone her, they could have brought accusations against him to the
Roman authorities that he was encouraging violation of Roman law.
Obviously hypocritical, but they were out to set him up so that they
could accuse him.

So, here’s Jesus in a rather unenviable predicament. Whether his answer
is “yes” or his answer is “no,” he is caught. Well, this merits some
pondering, so he refused to answer for a bit. Maybe to think about it;
maybe to build up some tension in order to drive the point home; maybe a
bit of both. At length, though, he provides his well-known reply, “If any
of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Oops!

And in Jesus’ answer is the divine wisdom of the Master’s Master plan.
“You decide,” Jesus tells them. “Actually, you have already decided,
based on your human decisions. You have already decided what you want to
do with the woman, and what you want to do with me. You do not need God
to decide for you. But, when you decide, decide on the basis of God’s
Master plan of compassion and forgiveness He has already shown you. And
when you decide, let the one without sin be the first to throw a stone.”

Jesus’ accusers may have been devious, but they were not stupid. They
were certainly not ignorant of the Scriptures or of the many collections
of wisdom literature about the Scriptures. They knew that the creation of
the Hebrew people was an act of mercy from Almighty God. They knew that
when their people entered the Promised Land, they were told to treat the
foreigners among them with compassion and mercy, for they were once
foreigners and wanderers without a country. They knew that regardless of
their righteousness in comparison to others, that they had no
righteousness of their own before the Holiness of God. They knew that the
very ancestors they esteemed so highly had displayed grievous faults and
sins and had been allowed to live and be restored with God only by His
merciful compassion that goes beyond their words and our words. They
knew. And their response was unavoidable: “At this, those who heard began
to go away one at a time…”

When the scene is left only with Jesus and the accused woman, then the
heart of the Master’s Master plan was activated. “Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I
condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

This is it; the Master’s Master plan. It is all about forgiveness. God
gives us unmerited forgiveness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do.” In return, we are to pass along God’s forgiveness to
others in like need: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother
when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” “Jesus answered, ‘I tell
you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Concerning another portion of Scripture, the parable of the prodigal son,
Robert Farrar Capon writes, “You're worried about permissiveness - about
the way the preaching of grace seems to say it's okay to do all kinds of
terrible things as long as you just walk in afterward and take the free
gift of God's forgiveness. ... While you and I may be worried about
seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn't. He wasn't afraid of
giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of
probation; and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end
of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections you do.
He's angry about the party. He complains that his father is lowering
standards and ignoring virtue - that music, dancing, and a fattened calf
are, in effect, just so many permissions to break the law. And to that,
Jesus has the father say only one thing: ‘Cut that out! We're not playing
good boys and bad boys any more. Your brother was dead and he's alive
again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not
bookkeeping.’” (Robert Farrar Capon, “Between Noon and Three,”
Christianity Today, vol. 30, no. 7.)

It is a good thing to forgive and to be forgiven. “Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I
condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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