A voice in the wilderness: To not walk in darkness. A series. Part 1

Sunday, June 30, 2013

To not walk in darkness. A series. Part 1

I attend a men's bible study and we have been going through the book of John. Currently we are in John chapter 8. It is all so rich and worthy of thought, we never do it justice. I suppose that is one of my motivations for placing these blogs up here. To give someone the chance to discover the depth of God's word.

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

(John 8:12 KJV)

What is the context?

The last we saw Jesus he was sitting among a crowd, in the temple, teaching, when the Pharisees pushed a woman in front of him as they ranted about how she had committed adultery. One of the aspects of that story (it is reality, not fiction) is that the pharisees came ready to kill someone; that someone was Jesus, not the woman. Yes, that is an assumption but look at the story.

There were no witnesses presented; there was no second party to the crime against the law, and though they refused to recognize how correct they were in bringing her to him, he was not a person recognized to be the judge.

And, they brought the stones with them to carry out their judgment. How do I know they had stones meant to kill? Because after he challenged them they dropped their stones and slowly skulked away.

When Jesus stood to his feet the second time there was no one left but the woman, still standing there. If only the Pharisees had stayed they would have heard the five most important words in all the world, “neither do I condemn you!”

The crowd - we are not told when or how they parted but they had seen the Pharisees in action and these religious zealots were probably feared. Considering their entrance, the stones, and the anger, I imagine the crowd got out just as fast as they could.

The woman - Picture yourself in her shoes. God himself just told you that he does not condemn you, but then she did not know this was God, or did she? Consider also that she looked into the eyes of God, and who would want to leave after having those eyes look into your soul, especially after telling you that he did not condemn you.

Wow, what just happened? Teaching one minute, the next you are confronted by an angry crowd of religious zealots that throw a woman in front of you, demanding that you illegally produce a judgment against her. As far as we know he brings none. They were prepared with stones to carry out whatever justice they saw fit. Jesus response drove the Pharisees away, leaving only Jesus and the woman.

If you were reading along in your bibles you noticed that the next verse states, "Later on Jesus spoke to them again," So that leaves us with a gap in time, one we cannot resolve, and therefore must make an assumption about.

We will continue this in part 2.