Out of Trouble - God's Mercy and Forgiveness

Memory Verse: Proverbs 5:7-10a ”She leads you down to death and hell. Run from her! Don’t go near her house, lest you fall to her temptation and lose your honor, and give your life to the cruel and merciless; lest strangers obtain your wealth”

Your lesson tells the story of the woman caught in adultery. The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus to lessen His impact and influence on the people who were listening to Him and following Him. If they were truly against the sin itself, the man involved would also have been present to be stoned. Where was he? Was it worse for the woman to commit adultery than for the man? No. He was just as guilty as she and deserved the same punishment, death. So where was he? Why wasn’t he there also? It was because this was not about the sin, it was about trapping Jesus.

Did you know that we all deserve death too? We have all sinned. You too have sinned. We are all sinners.

Romans 3:23-27 23 "For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, 26 for He was looking ahead and including them in what He would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, for He Himself is fair and just, and He declares sinners to be right in His sight when they believe in Jesus. 27 Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith."

It only takes one sin to bring on the death penalty. No person is more innocent than another. No sin is greater or less than another – something you learned in previous lessons. All bear the death penalty.

The woman and the man were guilty. Both deserved to die, but no one died that day.

John 8:1-11 A Woman Caught in Adultery 1"Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning He was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and He sat down and taught them. 3 As He was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. 4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” 6 They were trying to trap Him into saying something they could use against Him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with His finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so He stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then He stooped down again and wrote in the dust. 9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” 11 “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Jesus had mercy on the sinning woman. His mercy freed her to live. Did His mercy allow her to get off scot- free? What do you think?

No one gets off scot-free. Everyone bears some consequences for their sins. The woman would be known as an adulterer. She may have destroyed her marriage. If she had children, they probably would have lost respect for her. She may have contracted a disease from the man, or given one to him. We don’t know for sure because the Bible doesn’t say, but in those days adultery was a crime punishable by death. She would bear the consequences for her sin for the rest of her life.

In this day and age men and women commit adultery and other sexual sins with impunity because society has accepted these sins in normal daily life. Just because society accepts sinful behavior does not make it right.

As for her getting off scot-free to sin again, isn’t that what God does for you when you repent of your sins and He forgives them?

I John 1:8-9 8 "If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”

John tells us that if we confess our sins God will forgive them.

Psalms 103:2-4, 8-12 2 "Let all that I am praise the LORD; may I never forget the good things He does for me. 3 He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. 4 He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies."

8 "The LORD is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 9 He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. 10 He does not punish us for all our sins; He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. 11 For His unfailing love toward those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. 12 He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west."

David tells us that God abounds, overflows in mercy. He tells us that God has not dealt with us as we deserve. He tells us that God has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. Picture that in your mind. East and west on a straight line will never connect. God lets us off scot-free, so to speak. If we are faithful to truly repent, we will not do that sin again. We may slip here and there, but we won’t consciously decide to do something we know is wrong.

If we sin deliberately, there was no repentance – no deliberate and conscious decision to try very hard never to commit that sin again. Confession is not just listing our sins, it is admitting to God that what we did was wrong and we know it and we intend never to do it again. We have to repent of our sins, and being truly sorry for having committed them, confess them to God and ask His forgiveness.

Everyone in that crowd had sinned at one time or another. Some of them may have been involved in the same sin that the woman was caught committing. We will have to ask Jesus someday what He wrote in the dirt that day that caused all the woman’s accusers to slip away guiltily, one by one, until there was no one left to condemn her.

Jesus' mercy freed her to live. As long as you are alive on this earth, forgiveness of your sins will be available to you. You have to make choices in life and sometimes some of them are wrong choices. The earthly consequences of those choices will not disappear. You will have to suffer through them. But the eternal consequences of those bad choices can disappear if you truly repent of them and confess them to God.

When you decide that it is time to repent of your sins and be baptized, all of your previous sins will be washed away. Just as Jesus forgave the woman, He will forgive you and tell you to go and sin no more. Forgiveness for any sins you might commit after baptism will require repentance and confession to God and it also will require that you forgive others for their sins against you -- repentance, confession, and a forgiving nature.

Matthew 6:12-15 12" and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

What lessons have you learned from this account of the woman caught in adultery? (All have sinned, no one is innocent; even though forgiveness is freely given, there are always remaining physical or earthly consequences to sin; God freely forgives if we confess our sins; repentance means to try to sin no more; repentance for sin and confession to God is necessary; we are to forgive as God forgives us – if we don’t, we aren’t forgiven; no sin is greater than or lesser than another – any of them required the death of Jesus to remove it)

You will be facing more and more difficult choices in your lives as you get older. As more and more you are free to make your own choices apart from your parents, you will bear the total responsibility of those choices and the total consequences of them also. Think carefully and prepare beforehand for some of those choices in friends, who to date, and many other activities that you may be exposed to such as peer pressure from your friends and classmates to engage in wrong activities.

God’s laws were set up to give you a framework by which to live your lives. Every single law has a benefit for keeping it. God knows that without boundaries, men and women will degenerate to and below the level and behavior of animals. He created you in His image and likeness – not the image and likeness of an animal. You are special. You are His creation. You were designed to be like Him and to have a relationship with Him. His mercy, love and forgiveness for your sins are available NOW. Don’t wait too long to make God and His ways part of your lives. He is waiting to hear from you.

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