Breaking with the Power of the Past // God is a God of New Beginnings, Part 3

The past is a funny thing. We can’t change the past – yet it hold back so many people from living today and tomorrow to the full. So, how can you break the power of the past over your life?

It's just amazing how things from the past can end up ruining our todays and tomorrow’s. The past is a funny thing because it's gone, we can never turn back time, we can never change what's been done or un-say something we regret saying or un-do something we regret doing. So in one sense we have no control over the past but here's the scary thing, the things of the past end up controlling so many people.

The mistakes our parents made can end up being imprinted on our characters, the abuse that some people have suffered, the rejection, the hurts. Those things can limit us, stunt our growth and try as we will we just can't shake them and so they end up ruining our today’s and tomorrow’s. Fortunately though, God is a God of new beginnings.

This week, on the program, we're talking about God being the God of new beginnings and some people say, "Well, yeah. What does that mean? My life is my life, it just toddles along and God might as well be a million miles away and He probably is." I've often shared my own stories on this program because I'm talking not from a text book but from a life that God has transformed but today I'd like to share someone else's story, a woman who is caught in the cot with another man, someone who wasn't her husband at a time when that sort of thing carry’s some incredibly severe penalties. John writes about it in chapter 8 of John’s gospel and this is how it goes:

Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives. At dawn He appeared again in the Temple courts; where all the people had gathered around Him and He sat down to teach them. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand up before the group and they said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law of Moses we're commanded to stone such women, now what do you say?”

They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Him but Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with His finger. When they kept on questioning Him, He stood up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her." And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up again and said, "Woman, where are they? Has no-one stayed to condemn you?" "No-one sir." She said. "Then neither do I condemn you." Said Jesus, “Go. Go now and leave your life of sin."

This is one of the most powerful stories in the New Testament for me because it's effectively God putting Himself between the angry mob and this woman. Now the reason they brought her out here was not because she was caught in adultery, if the issue was adultery you had to say, "Well where was the guy that she was caught in adultery with?"

That wasn't it, they brought her out because they were using the question as a trap, they said:

Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law of Moses we're commanded to stone such women, what do you say?

And the reason this was a trap is because the Jewish Law, the Law of Moses, the Law in the first 5 books of what we call the Old Testament today, said, "Someone caught in adultery should be stoned to death." But in the first century Israel was occupied by the Romans and the Romans wouldn't let them do this so generally people weren't stoned to death. For someone to be killed for something the Roman Governor had to give his approval, so which ever way Jesus answered He was trapped. If He said, "Stone her." Then He was flouting Roman law, if He said, "Don't stone her". Then He was flouting Jewish Law. Either way the religious leaders won, they hated Jesus.

Now, just put ourselves for a moment in the woman’s shoes, maybe adultery is a bit of an old fashioned word these days, people seem to do as they please, affairs are almost common, almost acceptable but they tear people and marriages and families apart and one of the things that I do is I never put myself in a place of compromise or temptation.

When I'm travelling, normally I take my wife Jacqui with me. You know why? Because my marriage is the most important human relationship that I have but here's this woman who's been caught in the cot, where's the man? Who knows, this woman is just a pawn to trap Jesus but she's a person, she's a real person and this society, this patriarchal society where adultery was an absolute no-no, imagine the sense of shame that she has being dragged here into the Temple courts in front of the crowds, in front of Jesus having been caught in the cot. She knew she'd done wrong and she had an angry Middle Eastern crowd ready to stone her to death, it must have been frightening, shame, incredible shame and the fear of being stoned to death.

The past is the past, she couldn't change it and that was her problem, it's the problem that we have today. We've done things in our past that have consequences but we just can't change them. So here's the question, what does God do? Because it was God’s Law that said that if someone was caught in adultery should be stoned to death, God’s own Law. Well God, the Son of God, Jesus, remember these religious leaders are trying to trap Him too, He's in danger too, so what does He do?

He places Himself effectively between her and the angry mob, between her and the religious leaders who were plotting against Jesus and plotting to crucify Him and He says to them:

If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

He cuts straight into the heart of every person in that mob, He's saying each one of us is somehow in the same boat and interestingly they all start to drift away starting with the older men, the wiser men, they all drift away because they know that He's right. He gives her what? He gives her a new beginning. He doesn't judge her, He doesn't have to but neither does He sweep it under the carpet. It seemed, to her, like an absolutely impossible situation, it would have been but God is the God of new beginnings.

Our lives, our circumstances, our relationships, we can have things that seem absolutely impossible. We can have regrets of the past, we can have things that we've done wrong, we can have things that haunt us in our characters and things that we just keep on doing and doing and we can't help ourselves.

People criticising us, we know our failures of the past, somehow they grip us like that angry mob. We think of God as a God of judgement and He is but Jesus ended up going to the cross for her, you know why? Because His standing up to the religious leaders like this is what got Him crucified.

Jesus ended up going to the cross for me and you too, to pay for those things of the past. 2 Corinthians, 5:17, the apostle Paul writes:

If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation. Old things have past away and behold all things are new.

The demands of justice have been met by Jesus on the cross. The words Christ Jesus literally means, "God's chosen and appointed saviour". To be in Christ Jesus means that we put our trust in Him and if we do that we're a new creation, we have a new beginning, the old things have passed away and behold all things are new. God is the God of new beginnings and the reason that He is, the reason He can be is because He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you and for me.