Avoid the trap!

John 8: 2-7—Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Throughout the New Testament Jesus tells and shows us that we are to be in the world but not of the world.  In this story, we see one example of exactly what He means.  Here, the Pharisees created a whole drama for the purpose of trapping Jesus in a seemingly impossible predicament.  On the one hand, if He showed compassion and freed her outright, it would appear that He was disobeying the Mosaic law.  On the other hand, if He stoned her to death, He would be killing her.  To a human mind, it seems like an impossible choice under the law, but Jesus sees the question completely differently.  To Him, it’s not just about what the woman supposedly did—it’s about what everyone else in the crowd had done, too.  Notice that He didn’t respond to the Pharisees right away.  As the crowd gathered around Jesus and launched accusations at the adulteress, Jesus calmly crouched down and began writing on the ground.  Only after the crowd persisted and continued to question Him did Jesus take their words and turn them around on their head to say “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Just like Jesus was tested, we can expect to be tested in our daily lives.  We must resist the temptation to react and engage immediately with whoever is testing us.  We don’t have to respond to what is being said to us—when we do react, that is a choice we make.  If we pause, we can shift the perspective, shift conversation, and shift the question.  This is how we let God in to do the talking for us when the time is right—it’s about His terms, not our terms.

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, pray for insight and patience as you are in this world.  Ask God to temper your spirit so that you do not react to the traps laid around you.  Pray for strength and wisdom to pause and allow God to speak through you.  Rejoice in His deliverance from evil and praise Him for leaving His Holy Spirit as a comforting guide in this World.