Second in a series on “Encounters with Jesus”.
Text: John 8:1-11
Title: Grace Encounter
Introduction
Is there a limit on Grace? Is there a sin to great that Grace cannot cover and God would not forgive?
Can a lair be forgiven and can grace restore him to God?
A thief? A murder? An adulterer?
I see that many of you agree that such people can receive grace. Let’s push it a little.
Can a serial murder be forgiven?
How about a homosexual?
How about a child molester or Rapist?
It gets a little harder to agree doesn’t it? Let’s push it even father, let’s make it personal.
Should God forgive and grant grace to?
The thief that broken into you house and stole your vacation money?
The person that murdered your son?
The man that raped your daughter?
The molester that fondled you as child?
Your husband or wife that committed adultery?
The son that shamed you when he announced at the Christmas party he was gay?
Forgiveness is a little more difficult to agree with – is it not?
Grace by its very definition is receiving something that is not deserved.
In our text today we have the obvious need for grace in the person of the woman brought before Jesus. She was about to come face to face with grace.
But there is another group of people who need grace also, the Pharisees that brought the woman to Jesus. They are going to be confronted with this grace also. Of all those gathered, only the woman would encounter Grace – Only she would encounter Jesus.
The others would miss Grace because they did identify the essentials of Grace. They did not recognize their wrong. They did not receive the Love. They did not repent of the sin. These are the essentials of encountering Grace.
Essentials of Grace
I. Recognition of Wrong
Let’s face the facts. This woman didn’t come to Jesus of her own accord. She was forced into an encounter with Jesus and forced to face her wrong.
Let’s also face the fact that the Pharisees had no intention of being confronted with their wrongdoing.
Yet both were.
A. Grace Demands Accountability
The woman caught in her shame, exposed for her sin, stood before Christ as sinner.
The Pharisees recognized no wrong, rationalized their sins away, mad themselves righteous in their own eyes.
B. Grace Demands Responsibility
Just as the Alcoholic must admit he is an alcoholic, so must the sinner confess he is a sinner.
II. Receiving of Love
Allow me to stray for a moment. I wish to address something that Phillip Yancey called, “Grace Abuse.”
What is to keep a person from continually sinning? Let me illustrate with an illustration that is shared by Phillip Yancey in this book, “What’s so Amazing About Grace.” Yancey tells about a Christian worker and friend that had dinner with him. During the course of dinner the man tells Yancey that he is having an affair with a younger woman and is going to leave his wife and three kids. He then ask the question, “Can God forgive me?”
Illustrate (three bags marked sin and bag marked forgiveness. Set the bags down to receive bags marked forgiveness)
The question is not “Can God forgive” but rather whether the man will receive God’s love.
For grace to be grace it must be received.
III.
Repentance of Sin
For the man illustrated above to receive that love there had to be Repentance.
The Bible is clear that there is no remission of sin where there is no repentance.
This brings us back to our text. The Pharisees left without an encounter with grace. They left to continue their rationalization, to continue their own self-righteousness.
Let’s bring this home again, are
we like the Pharisees, quick to charge others with sin but slow to see our own.
Are we as deceitful as they in trying to make others look worse than ourselves
so we can feel good about our own self-righteousness?
