Episode 1. Breaking with the Power of the Past
We can’t change the past. But it’s amazing how many people are gripped by hurts and failures from the past. Jesus came to set us free – maybe it’s time for you to break with the power of the …
It’s just amazing how things from the past can end up ruining our today’s and tomorrows. The past is a funny thing because it’s actually gone. We can never turn back time. We can never change what’s been done. We can never unsay something that we regret saying or undo 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 can 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, the ridicule, they can limit us, stunt our growth. And try as we will we just can’t shake them off and so they end up ruining our today’s and tomorrows. Fortunately though, God has a plan, God wants us to be the person he meant us to be.
We’re talking this week on the program about Being The Me I Was Meant To Be. And people’s reaction is, ‘Well, yeah but what does that mean? I look at my life and God seems a million miles away.’ Well, I’ve often shared my own stories on the program because I’m not talking from a text book, I’m talking from a transformed life. I am being the me I was meant to be. It wasn’t always like that but it is today. Anyway, today I’d like to share someone else’s story, a woman who was caught in the cot with a man, a man who wasn’t her husband – at a time when that sort of thing carried some incredibly severe penalties. It pops up in John’s gospel, chapter 8 if you’d like to have a read later. Here’s what it says,
“Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts; where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought up a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Law of Moses commands us to stone such a woman to death, now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus; Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 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 and said, “Woman, where are they? Has no one stayed to condemn you?” “No one sir.” She answered, “Then neither do I condemn you.” Jesus declared, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
This is one of the most powerful stories in the New Testament for me because God is literally putting himself between this woman and the angry mob. They were doing this to trap Jesus because Roman law and Jewish law were in conflict. Jewish law said you should stone a woman to death. Roman law said you can only kill someone if the Governor said you could. So whichever way Jesus answered, they thought they had him. If he answered, “Don’t stone her,” he was disobeying Moses Law, the Jewish law and if he said, “Do stone her,” then he was disobeying Roman law. What a ripper, these people hated Jesus because he was showing them up.
Let’s put ourselves for a moment in the woman’s shoes. Adultery is a bit of an old fashioned word these days; people seem to do as they please. Affairs are common, almost acceptable, but they still tear marriages apart, they still tear people’s lives apart, they still cause untold pain. And so one of the things I do, I have to say, just a little digression, is I never put myself in a place of compromise or temptation. When I’m travelling I normally take my wife Jacqui with me and you know why? Because my marriage is the most important human relationship that I have. But here’s this woman, caught in the cot, where’s the man? Who knows? She was just the porn who the religious leaders were trying to trap and accuse Jesus. And there must have been incredibly deep shame because this was in the first century, this was in a society where you got stoned to death for doing something like this. She knew she’d done wrong; this angry Middle Eastern crowd must have been petrifying. Shame, incredible shame, the fear of being stoned to death, the law, the Jewish law, God’s law forbade what she had done.
You and I in our hearts, we know that what she’d done was wrong but here was her problem, the past is the past and she couldn’t change it, so here’s the question. What does God do? Jesus the Son of God, (remember their religious leaders were trying to trap him), supposedly God’s representatives on this earth. The priests were trying to trap him but Jesus the Son of God, he’s in danger too, so what does he do? He places himself between her and the angry mob, between her and the religious leaders who were plotting his crucifixion already and he says, “If any one of YOU is without sin, go on, let him throw the first stone at her.” He cut straight to the heart of every person in that mob saying that each one of us is somehow in the same boat. Each one of us has a past that would condemn us, a past that would hold us back and gives her what? He gives her a new beginning, He doesn’t judge her, He doesn’t have to. She knows she’d done wrong, everyone knew she’d done wrong but neither does he sweep it under the carpet.
This seems like an absolutely impossible position. It would have seemed that way to her, but God is setting her free to go and be the person she was meant to be. Our lives sometimes, the things of the past seem absolutely impossible to resolve. And people will come and condemn us and criticise us and the devil will come sit on our shoulders and condemn us and say, “See, you’re not good enough to be a Christian, you’re not good enough to believe in Jesus, you’re not good enough for this, that and the other.” We know the failures of our past and somehow they can grip us like an angry mob and we can think of God as a god of judgement and he is. But Jesus ended up going to the cross for her and for you and for me and he stands up and says, “you know something, I want to set you free from your past so that you can go on and be the person I meant you to be.”
2 Corinthians, 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ Jesus they are a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold all things are new.” On the cross of Christ the demands of God’s justice were met and that’s why Jesus Christ can come into your life and into my life and say, “You are set free from the power of the past.” He handcrafted you and me to be a person whom he meant to be, everything we are he planned before time began and so when our past comes along to condemn us, when the chains of our past want to lock up our hearts, Jesus comes and puts himself on that cross to set you and me free from the power of the past. Do you believe in Jesus? Then you are a new creation, the old things have passed away and behold all things are new.
God has a plan, he wants you to be the person, he wants me to be the person that we were meant to be and that includes setting us free from the power of the past.
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