John 8:1-11
Every Soul’s Story
The sermon that I will preach today is universal. It fits everyone.
It could be taken and applied to several dozen Bible characters. It
would fit if I were preaching about Cain, Jacob, Korah, Nadab, Abihu,
the nation of Israel, Nebuchadnezzar, Paul, Felix, Festus, or many
other Bible personalities.
But is also the story of every human soul, saved or lost, historic
or presently living, male or female. It is your story and it is
mine. We will turn to several Bible passages but keep your place in
this text if you would for I plan to return to it several times.
I. The direction of every soul is down.
A. This text gives us the story of one woman.
1. Her name is not mentioned, neither are all the details of
sin or her life.
2. The one thing we are certain of is that the direction of
her life was down.
3. Down as in away from God. Down as into rebellion.
B. \\#3\\ The Bible indicates that she was an adulteress.
1. I do not want to dwell on her sin, but on the direction
her sin took her.
a. It took her down.
b. It took her away from God.
c. It took her into rebellion against God.
2. I do not know how long she followed the pathway down.
a. The Bible does not give the impression that this was
this woman’s first act of this kind.
b. The Bible does not state it and I will now dwell upon
it, but the impression is that this was this woman’s
chosen profession.
c. She was a repeated adulteress.
C. Every human being knows some things to be right and some
things to be wrong.
1. Every human being knows right from wrong because God wrote
right and wrong in their hearts.
Romans 2:14 For when the Gentiles, which have
not the law, do by nature the things contained
in the law, these, having not the law, are a law
unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience also bearing
witness, and their thoughts the mean while
accusing or else excusing one another;)
a. \\#14\\ "Gentiles" - Those who are not Jews. Those
who did have the Old Testament Law, whose parents
did not have the Old Testament Law, who were not
raised with Bible teaching or Bible preaching.
b. Yet, Paul was saying that these Gentiles can know by
nature—without a Bible, without a godly home,
without Bible teach—know right from wrong.
c. How? \\#15\\ Because the law is "written in their
hearts."
(1) What is the law? It is the general
understanding of right and wrong.
(2) Who wrote the law into their hearts? God did.
2. I say again, every human being knows right from wrong.
a. It is the world’s notion, not God’s, that people are
confused about sex today.
(1) It is the world’s notion—not God’s—that our
children do not know that adultery and
fornication are wrong.
(2) It is the world’s notion—not God’s—that they
cannot help themselves. They have to sin.
(3) It is the world’s notion—not God’s—that boys
are trapped in girl’s bodies and girls are born
in boy’s bodies.
(4) It is the world’s notion—not God’s—that every
body is doing it.
(5) It is the world’s notion—not God’s—that it does
not matter. All of these values are man-made.
b. It is the world’s notion and it is killing our
children.
(1) With the rise in sexual activity among our
children has also come the rise in suicide.
Study links teen sex to depression, suicide
Printed by the Washington Times on June 3, 2003.
No author was given.
Teens who have had sexual intercourse are more likely to feel
depressed and suicidal than teens who have not become sexually
active, says a new study from the Heritage Foundation.
Early sexual activity, in addition to causing teen pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases, “is a substantial factor in
undermining the emotional well-being of American teenagers,” said the
study written by Robert Rector, Kirk A. Johnson and Lauren R. Noyes.
Using data from a national survey of 6,500 teens ages 14 to 17,
researchers found teen girls who had sexual intercourse were three
times more likely to be depressed than girls who had not.
Similarly, sexually-active boys were twice as likely to be depressed
than peers who had not had sex. Suicide attempts also were
significantly more common among sexually-active teens than their
chaste peers.
(2) If it doesn’t matter, why are suicide rates going
up?
(a) Because it does matter.
(b) Sin matters to every human being.
(c) We all know right from wrong.
(d) God wrote it on our hearts.
D. When people repeatedly violate the conscious that God has
given to them, the direction that they are going is down into
sin, down into rebellion, down in guilt, down into heartache.
E. This woman was not the only person whose direction was down.
1. The Bible gives us the story of man who we refer to as the
Demonic of Gadara.
Mark 5:1 And they came over unto the other side
of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
2 And when he was come out of the ship,
immediately there met him out of the tombs a man
with an unclean spirit,
3 Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no
man could bind him, no, not with chains:
4 Because that he had been often bound with
fetters and chains, and the chains had been
plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken
in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
5 And always, night and day, he was in the
mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting
himself with stones.
a. As with the woman we just read about, the Bible does
give us this man’s name or his complete story.
(1) The Bible only records the direction he had gone.
(2) Down into sin, down into rebellion, down into
grief and heartache.
b. The Bible will tell us that this man was not just
demon possessed but DEMONS possessed.
(1) \\#Mk 5:9\\ He had a legion of demons within him.
(2) The size of a legion varied throughout history
but most sources say between 1500 and 6000.
c. I do not think this condition happened to this man
overnight.
(1) Demons do not just rush into a human host. If
they did, we’d all be demon possessed.
(2) Demons are invited into humans.
(a) You do not have to give them a written
invitation. Just make your body a place
where they feel comfortable. The more
demons you make comfortable, the more
demons you are inviting to inhabit you.
(b) The places you go, the music you listen to,
the movies you watch, the tattoos you were,
the church you miss, the Bible you won’t
read, the sermons you will not hear—these
all give demons their invitations.
(3) What kind of a life had this man lived to bring
so many demons into his body?
(a) I do not know, but I do not the direction of
the life he lived.
(b) He went down.
2. It is not just lost people who go down. Saved people can
go down too. King David, one of God’s greatest servants,
went down into sin and rebellion against God.
2Sam 11:1 And it came to pass, after the year
was expired, at the time when kings go forth to
battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants
with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the
children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David
tarried still at Jerusalem.
2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that
David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the
roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he
saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was
very beautiful to look upon.
a. Most people say that if David had been in the battle
field where he belonged, he would not have been on
the roof to see Bathsheba.
b. Could I also point out that it is possible that he was
not in the battlefield where he belonged because he
had already been on the roof?
(1) We do not know the order in which things
happened.
(2) But I am convinced neither of these two just
happened into this act.
(3) I’ve heard some attempt to make Bathsheba
innocent by saying that woman often took baths
on their roofs due to the hot weather and
limited space.
(a) Hogwash. No lady is going to take her
clothes off outside without knowing who can
see her do it.
(b) Neither is a married lady going to run off
with another man on the his first
invitation—even if he is the king—unless
she wanted to go.
(4) But David was not innocent either.
(a) If a woman is visible from a man’s roof and
he doesn’t want to see it, he will do
something about it—especially if he is the
king.
(b)
c. The truth was these were two adults who knew what they
were doing and knew where it was going and continued
on their pathways, the pathways down into sin and
down into rebellion against God.
I. The direction of every soul is down.
II. At the bottom of every down is a thud.
John 8:3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought
unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they
had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was
taken in adultery, in the very act.
A. Did you hear that thud? It was the sound of this woman’s
world collapsing on her.
1. This woman knew what she was doing was wrong, but she kept
doing it until her down hit bottom, until her world hit
bottom.
a. Everyone knew what she did, but now she is caught
doing her sin in the very act. That must have been
embarrassing and humiliating.
b. Then she is arrested. Adultery was not just a crime
against an unseen God. It was a crime against the
laws of the land of Israel.
c. Then she is drug across town, put on display,
publically charged with her sin, and her fate
seemingly placed into one Man’s hands.
2. Thud. She had hit bottom.
a. Were her parents alive to see this day?
b. What of her friends, some going back to her childhood
days? Did they see the depths to which she had
fallen?
3. Well, while that may have caused more shame, it really did
not matter.
a. What mattered was that God had seen her direction and
her bottom.
b. She may have committed her sin behind closed doors,
but she always had an audience.
c. God watched her.
4. As God watched the demonic entertain demons and David
entertain Bathsheba.
Pro 15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every
place, beholding the evil and the good.
B. The bottom is not just a single platform.
1. The bottom is just another floor in your soul’s trek
downward.
2. Some of you know what I mean.
a. You have hit bottom time and time again, each time
reaching a new low, a new level of sin, debauchery.
shame, guilt, and regret.
b. This was not this woman’s first bottom.
(1) The first time she ever committed adultery was a
bottom for her.
(2) The first time someone gave her cash for her sin
was a new bottom for her.
(3) The first time she solicited cash for her sin was
a new bottom for her.
(4) And on she downward she had gone.
c. David committed adultery many times.
(1) David had multiple wives and many concubines.
(2) The bottom here is that he took another man’s
wife, a friend’s wife, a dedicated soldier in
his own army’s wife!
3. Many people today are crashing through bottoms like they
are made of tissue paper.
a. They are not just spiraling down.
b. They have jet packs on at full throttle hurling
themselves down, but with every new bottom, at least
for a moment, there is that thud.
I. The direction of every soul is down.
II. At the bottom of every down is a thud.
III. With the thud, there was Jesus.
A. Notice, I did not say "With EVERY thud, there is Jesus."
B. The truth is that there can come a time when even Jesus leaves
you.
Ge 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also is
flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and
twenty years.
Isa 63:10 But they rebelled, and vexed his holy
Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their
enemy, and he fought against them.
1. It takes a lot to get God to give up on you, but it can be
done.
2. America and Americans are doing just that in this age.
C. But for this woman, at her bottom was Jesus.
John 8:10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and
saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman,
where are those thine accusers? hath no man
condemned thee?
11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto
her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no
more.
1. This woman’s direction was down and her down bottom with
a thud, but when the door opened, there was Jesus.
2. All she had to do was let Jesus take her off the downward
path and put her on the upward path.
3. Let me make that very simple:
a. She had to turn her back on her sinful life and let
Jesus take control.
b. That is called repentance.
c. Too many are preaching a repentless gospel today.
(1) They say you can have your sin and salvation too.
(2) You cannot. You must turn your back on your sin
and your rebellion.
(3) You must both believe and surrender to Jesus.
This woman’s whole story is not given. What brought her to this
point in time is not given in the Bible and what happened after this
point in time is not given. I do not know whether she got off the
downward elevator or not. I believe she did but the Bible does not
say. From our perspective, it does not matter. She lived and died
2,000 years ago. The story that matters to me and I hope to you is
your story. What will you do today?
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