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We all know the story about the woman caught in adultery and how Jesus stopped those who wanted to stone her. We also know that Jesus told her to go and Sin no more" but now I shall allow Pastor Cary Gordon to take the role of the late great radio broadcaster Paul Harvey and he shall tell you...The Rest of the Story.
Once Jesus out-lawyered the lawyers on their own turf He said something that is grossly misrepresented by antinomian preachers in our era: Neither do I condemn you. Lets work our way to that phrase.
First the men who brought the woman caught in adultery were not after her... they were after Jesus. If Jesus opposed Moses they could get Him. If Jesus opposed Rome they could get Him. That was their goal. To trap Jesus.
How did Jesus out-lawyer them? Where was the man she had sex with? Under Deuteronomy 22 both the man and the woman must be tried for adultery under two or three witnesses not ONLY her as these leaders were attempting to do. Moses would not approve of this. It began as a mistrial just waiting to be thrown-out.
Mosaic law directly spoke to the fitness and credibility of the witnesses against another person who was considered innocent until PROVEN guilty. So Jesus spoke to their fitness as witnesses against the woman allegedly caught in adultery. A witness under Mosaic law entered the court with a warning. If they gave false testimony that might bring the death penalty upon an innocent party once it was found-out the false witness would get the death penalty. (Deut. 19:1621).
Further only those who have never participated in adultery specifically are able to prosecute adultery under any modicum of conscience much less under Mosaic law. Adultery needed to be prosecuted. It certainly had been prosecuted in obedience to Gods word for centuries. It certainly could be prosecuted under legally sound circumstances by the authority of Jesus. It should be prosecuted but the witnesses left the scene under the fear of God and His law. If they mishandled their duties they might be sentenced to die. The entire thing was backfiring and it frightened them away!
After all this played out in perfect obedience to Mosaic law (Moses would have handled this entire scenario identically to Jesus by the way) all the witnesses ran away. In order for the trial to continue all witnesses cannot leave the scene.
The antimonian preacher thinks he has discovered Jesus abrogating the law of God penned by Moses but the modern preacher is ignorant of the majesty and ongoing authority of the civic duties imposed upon modern governments by Gods standard-setting Hebrew system of law... Duties that modern humanist governments (like Rome in Jesus day and Americans today) refused to obey.
By His own testimony (Matthew 5:17) Jesus perfectly upheld the Mosaic law and in no remote way EVER abrogated its civic authority. More profoundly He predicted that the Greatest in His Kingdom would carefully teach Mosaic law throughout the New Covenant. We understand that ceremonial law would be finished in His crucifixion and therefore ended in practice moving forward but we enter into very dangerous error to think that Mosaic CIVIC law also ended at the cross. The finished work of ceremonial law would be taught by the greatest of the Kingdom during the New Covenant but the ONGOING and UNFINISHED authority of the civic side of Mosaic law MUST BE TAUGHT TOO!
It is utter nonsense to teach AGAINST the ongoing authority of Mosaic CIVIC law during the New Testament era. To do such denies Christs own prediction given in Matthew 5:18-19. Does this fallen world still require civic government? Of course it does. So it is UNFINISHED in its purpose. You cannot even understand Romans 13th chapter on human government unless you assume the Mosaic civil laws ongoing authority! Romans 13th chapter is written under that assumption based upon the clear explanation of civic government assumed across the Old Testament. So let us implement and obey the civic template already given to the world by God at Sinai. (See Deuteronomy 4 if you buy into the fallacy that it was only for Israel God clearly says the opposite to Moses in that text).
How arrogant to think we can cook-up a better plan via humanism.
The explicit statement of Jesus that He WOULD NOT abrogate Mosaic law applies to His actions here in John 8:2-11 concerning adultery. So why do modern preachers directly contradict Jesus by pitting His actions in John 8 against His extremely blunt testimony in Matthew 5? It is foolishness.
This leaves us with Christs final words to the woman who brushed-up against death through alleged sexual sin:
Where are your accusers?
Gone.
Neither do I condemn you.
Let us carefully ascertain the meaning of Christs final statement to her by pointing out to the modern preachers what He DID NOT just say to her:
He did NOT just say You are forgiven.
He did NOT just say You are born-again and on your way to Heaven.
He did NOT just say Ive come to abrogate the mean-spirited law Moses wrote down by direct inspiration of my Father in Heaven because I am so much nicer than my Father.
He did not just say Give me a hug. I rescued you from the bad bad men.
He simply said in the role of a magistrate: Your accusers ran away so I can not legally condemn you.
But then He spoke not as the magistrate but as the Prophet of God with a dire warning to her heretofore unrepentant sexual habits which nearly cost her her life:
Go and sin no more.
The Greek transliteration into modern vernacular would be like Jesus ending the whole spectacle with these commanding and authoritative words:
Dont. Do. It. Again!
False doctrine from antinomian scholars pretends that Jesus eliminated capitol punishment from the New Covenant during this story recorded in John 8:2-11. They argue that the mosaic death sentence for murderers is somehow still in force but that it is not in force any longer for sexual crimes. (Some radical text abusers claim even capitol punishment for murder is abrogated by Christ in John 8 which is even more impossible to defend than the bizarre and inexplicable position of half-abrogation.)
This is false doctrine that has ransacked western civilization by literally creating an ever-expanding sexual anarchy - destroying millions of families over the last one hundred years in both Europe and America.
We are dying in the west because our fear of the Lord has been erased by false teaching. Jesus allegedly came to make civil government gentler on crime. Our western sensibilities (baked like sweet and delicious cookies in the oven of cosmic humanism and neo-gnosticsm) are embarrassed at the severity of God revealed against crime in the Old Testament. But we do not even understand how to correctly read Old Testament case-law much less to judge its alleged inferiority to our cosmic humanist ideas found in perverted modern prison-culture.
We condemn scripture in a patronizing tone. We do not understand our own squirming attempts to declare on the one hand that Jesus (if the eternal Son of God we declare Him to be) agreed with every single command given Moses to execute criminals and took part in handing the commands to Moses 1534 years before He was born in Bethlehem! We pretend to put God under our microscope and critique the errant severity of the God of the Old Testament while claiming in our next breath that Jesus was God during the Old Testament. We have been reduced to poster-children of an embarrassing intellectual contradiction... while managing to not feel any embarrassment.
Our cognitive dissonance on this matter is too much to bear for any objective and consistent thinker.
The reality is that abuse of Scripture in our pulpits has systematically removed nearly every consequence imposed by God for sexual sins... from our society... thereby allowing pure evil to flourish among us over the last century.
This trend marches on at this hour.
And the same preachers who are aghast at the FRUIT of the problem will refuse to see the ROOT of the problem (their own refusal to accept Mosaic law as the standard for all civic government). They will refuse to see that it is their doctrine that brought this darkness upon the whole earth. They will refuse to see that the very elect will be deceived by the Spirit of lawlessness. They will miss the most obvious point of the title Lawless One given to the Antichrist.. He is an opponent of Mosaic law. He is not an opponent of cosmic humanist law. He is not an opponent of secular humanist law. He is the ANTI GODs LAW! And since Christ was literally the LAW OF GOD MADE FLESH - The Lawless One is called the Antichrist!
The Antichrist will have easy work when he arrives to oppose Gods law. Most western preachers will have prepared the way for his spirit of lawlessness by denigrating Mosaic law in their pulpits for scores of decades before his arrival.
Behold therefore the goodness AND severity of God: on them which fell severity; but toward thee goodness if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. - Romans 11:22
Where did you hide this New Testament severity my preaching friends? What have you done to it? You tell the world to behold only HALF of what you were commanded to tell them.
Selah.
Now you know the Rest of the Story-Paul Harvey
Please visit my Facebook page DNMs World and thanks to Pastor Cary Gordon for allowing me to republish his piece.
