Emmy Warren
Appearances
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
hello hello everyone and welcome back to saved not soft what's going on everyone hope you guys have had a great great week god has been very good and very kind to me so kind i've just been in the grace of god i think a part of that has to do with my season and where god has been pushing me Being a fiance, feel me?
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
If this is your first time to the podcast, my name is Emmy Warren. I'm the host and this is Save Not Soft. And what is Save Not Soft? Save Not Soft is a podcast catered to those who want to know that they are loved, heard, and seen by God. And also just navigating what it means to be a Christian. I think a lot of the times we come to Christianity and we think that's going to be an easy walk.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
It has fire restraining bark, but these cones can't be released unless if it's touched by fire. And so that really started to meditate in my spirit because I remember there's this one verse and it's Isaiah 43 too. It says, when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you ablaze.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so the giant sequoia trees are one of the only forest trees that produce new life from a kindle of a flame. And I think sometimes we think fire is really harsh. whether if it's fire in our own lives, whether if it's a trial or a circumstance, but that fire from your circumstance before your trial might be the very thing that sparks new life inside and outside of you.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so these trees were just kind of ministering to me physically, a physical revelation of a grace that's on fire of how, of how the grace we should extend out to others. What if it's a grace that, That's on fire, just like with these trees. A fire so powerful that it burns away bitterness and unforgiveness and resentment and the desire for revenge.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
A fire that doesn't just consume, but it releases new life. And I believe that God today wants to give us fire of grace to spark new life into circumstances that are covered in a hard shell. And so I love how God can minister to us. I believe it's in Romans, but it says, you know, nature itself preaches the gospel. Like the existence of God is shown through what you already see in the natural.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And a grace that burns through the cones of forgiveness is the grace that God is calling us to have because there was new life released in a hard coned shell and it was only released by fire. I love Revelation 19, 12. It says his eyes are like a blazing fire. His eyes are of grace. It's the kind of grace that disarms judgment, restores dignity and changes everything.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And it's the kind of grace that would change the way we see those who have wronged us and And it's the grace that Jesus embodies. And so I bring this to a parallel to a very popular story in the gospels of the woman who was caught in adultery because this required a grace out of Jesus that we sometimes fail to understand because of the lack of compassion we have in our own hearts.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I feel like there's two sides of the story that we tend to miss. And I think most of the times we empathize and victimize ourselves with the woman. But then there's also another aspect where there's this accusing and there's this self-righteousness of a Pharisee that we also need to address. And how those things come together and can cause some enmity and disagreements.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I'm going to read the story, which is found in John chapter 8, verses 1 through 11. I'm going to start, yeah, I'll start in verse 2. It says, 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.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And just because we love Jesus and we're sold out for Jesus, that there's going, it's just kind of like a stroll in the park. And it's not a stroll in the park the majority of the time. That's why scripture says that the way to Jesus, that the path is narrow. It's not wide enough. It's a narrow one.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said, let any one of you who is without sin 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 asked her, woman, where are they?
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Now go and leave your life of sin. Let's set the scene really quickly so we know what's happening in this story. Because we see in the story that basically Jesus is teaching in the temple courts, right? Jesus was teaching publicly. This is what Jesus did all the time.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so in the middle of Jesus teaching, the Pharisees bring in this woman because they wanted to make this as embarrassing as possible for Not just for Jesus, but also towards this woman. And immediately we can identify the characteristics of each party, of Jesus, of this woman, and of the Pharisees.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I first want to talk about the attitude of the Pharisees, because we see that whenever the Pharisees presented the woman before Jesus, they said that they had, one, that they interrupted this teaching, right? Two, they didn't have to bring this woman, but yet they did. And two, they stated as if she was caught in the very act.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
The Pharisees, if you're not familiar with who the Pharisees were, the Pharisees was a prominent religious group known for their strict observance of the law and their influence on Jewish religious practices. And so the Pharisees had a thick animosity towards Jesus because of their religion. They didn't desire a relationship. They desired religion. They
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
They couldn't go outside of their own understanding. They could only remain inside of it. And so the story says, and I quote, that the woman that the Pharisees brought was caught in adultery. They made her stand before a crowd and they said that she was caught from their own lips, caught in the very act.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and that just makes me wonder how was this woman caught in the very act like were you standing outside of her door and having your ear up against the window or up against the wall to hear or to see or to catch somebody like how was this woman caught in the act like were you waiting
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and looking around I wonder if they caught this woman themselves I wonder if they were standing by the doorpost and if they were waiting for for this woman to commit something or if they barged into her home and if they and if they just up and got her and dragged her out like I wonder how they actually caught her right this is just something that's going on in my head
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I also wonder why they caught the woman, but they didn't bring the man. Because it's so funny that the same religion and law that the Pharisees would boast and be so loud about, it's just so funny that they couldn't follow the same law that they preach about. Because if you go into Levitical law, Leviticus 20 tells us that if a man and a woman are caught in the action of adultery,
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so how do you navigate the Christian lifestyle while also simultaneously being human and not perfect? And it's just by embracing the cross. And each week we go through some sort of topic to just help us understand Jesus more. And it's not a self-discovery Bible. It's not a self-discovery gospel. And it's not just prosperity. It's true, authentic gospel.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Both of them must be put to death, not just the woman. And so when the Pharisees are stating, oh, the law of Moses commands us to stone such women, my question is, where the heck is the man? Where is he at? Because if they knew the law and if they truly believed the law, they would have... They would have followed through with it and correct instruction.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And that just kind of points to us that the reason as to why the Pharisees brought the woman in the first place was because there is a self-righteousness that was being taken in place also. And so adultery, just so we know what adultery is, adultery is committing adultery. Obviously cheating on your spouse and adultery during this time was serious.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
It was a capital offense It was something very big and it's something that you just don't take lightly you take it seriously And I wonder where the man was And I wonder why they brought this woman to jesus the way that they did Knowing that jesus couldn't even enforce the bed the death penalty on this girl because the pharisees brought this woman and they were like Hey
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Such women were called to stone by the law of Moses. So what do you say about that? So this is why it was a trap to Jesus. Two reasons. Because one, he couldn't, he's in a compromising position to where the law does say to stone such people who have committed adultery. Simultaneously, though, if he were to do that, that would make him look harsh and careless and not empathizing with the people.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And we're going to get into Jesus's response later. But even if Jesus did have the authority, which he does have the authority to stone such women, the consensus during that time was that Judea was under Roman occupation. The Pharisees were responsible for enforcing religious laws upon their own community.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But when it came to the execution of people, the authority to carry out capital punishment was generally held by the Romans, not the local Jewish authorities. Like they didn't have the right to do that. So there was just a lot of things happening outside of order in order to embarrass Jesus and this woman.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And when I look at this woman, I think when we read this story, we could empathize with her a lot because I wonder how this woman felt during this time. I wonder how she felt standing before a crowd in shame and embarrassment, publicly exposed by sin, dragged and propped up as being some sort of pawn for self-righteousness and to prove a point. I wonder how used she felt in that moment.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I've personally experienced what it feels like to be that woman standing in the face of adversity full of shame and grief, worry and deep sadness and being judged by a crowd that has never empathized with my weakness. Like imagine being propped up and being judged before a crowd that has failed to empathize with you.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I'm not saying what she has done is right, because I will never sit here and say, oh, adultery is correct. That's not what I'm saying whatsoever. But this woman, two wrongs don't make a right. And because this woman had committed adultery and has been in the wrong, that doesn't necessarily make her in right standing. But that also doesn't put her in a position to be in more condemnation.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Because the truth of the matter is, is that the people who brought this woman, they were never truly worried about bringing justice or vindication. They wanted to embarrass Jesus and this woman.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
If they really cared about justice, they would have carried this act out lawfully and truthfully according to the law of Moses, instead of fulfilling and using this woman as a pawn for their own self-righteousness and for them to prove a point. And I wonder how she must have felt in this moment.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And the Pharisees, what is so irritating through this story is that they actually never empathized with the people that they were trying to raise a standard up against. They were just trying to prove a point to come against Jesus. And even though she committed a wrong, there was a further injustice that was made that was apart from her.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I wonder how many of us have experienced the pain of this woman who has been tested and put up for court and has been condemned for our wrongs by a people who are just as wrong in a different aspect and how alone that must feel and shameful. And I empathize with that because I've been there and I've seen people in compromising positions.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
it's truth, it's authentic, and it's Jesus, essentially. So yeah, I'm really excited, y'all. Today, I'm going to be speaking upon a topic that I actually preached about last year in September at my church's conference called Grace on Fire, and it was amazing. It was all the way out in Florida, in Orlando, and man, the message was so powerful.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I want to highlight the irony of the story because I think a lot of the times we could focus on what this woman was doing and the fact that she committed adultery, but we fail to see the hearts of the Pharisees.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
We read the story of victimizing ourselves relating to this woman when truly I believe as Christians, we empathize and relate more to the Pharisees more than we do to this woman in this story. because we'll set up a trap for somebody who we think deserves to be stoned. And the Pharisees failed to have a grace that was on fire for this woman.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Even though this woman is wrong and was in the face of adversity and did commit adultery, the Pharisee had hearts that were disingenuous and far from compassion because they wanted to fulfill a desire that was rooted from self-righteousness and pride. And so I want to speak about the dangers of having a heart of a Pharisee and how it doesn't cultivate compassion or forgiveness.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Instead, it keeps us in bitterness and resentment, and it keeps us in a place where God's calling us to move forward. And so the actions of the Pharisees was first to accuse and point fingers, which sounds a lot like somebody I know. know of, which is Satan. His name literally means to accuse.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So the fact that the Pharisees' first action was to accuse and point fingers just shows that this wasn't a godly accusation. It wasn't godly judgment. It was fully satanic at the core. And they didn't see this woman as a person. They saw her as an object. They saw her as a pawn. They saw her as someone that they could use to fulfill their own plots and plans to...
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
ultimately create a demise and a trap for Jesus. And they were limited in compassion for the women because of their own cares about themselves. It's pride. It's selfishness. They didn't have a selflessness about them. Self-righteousness is what hindered their compassion. And so we'll tend to put our own feelings and circumstances before others, gaining a compassion for ourselves rather than a
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And the real enemy in the story is not adultery. It's pride. It's sin. And we'll read the story. We think that this woman committing adultery was the problem. But what was really the root of the problem and I guess the climax of the conflict of this story is ultimately sin and the heart of pride.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I love how Romans 17 says that you do not, Romans 12, 17, excuse me, says that you do not repay evil with evil. We have a hard time loving difficult people and showing them grace because we're deceived by our own judgment of vindication. And so what it means to truly be vindicated is giving and granting God the permission to be the judge.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And with these Pharisees, while they thought they were setting up a trap for this woman and for Jesus, they were simultaneously actually setting up a trap for themselves. If Jesus said, let her go, he would have seemed to break the law of Moses. Because the Levitical law does say that such people who have committed adultery to stone them.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But if God, if Jesus did stone this woman, then he would have been apathetic and harsh and careless and selfish. He would have been perceived in a harsh light. And so... Jesus is in this position to where the law has to be executed, but there is also a grace that is needed to be taken at hand because God is merciful and loving and compassionate.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and i realized i never made an episode on it and i never talked about this so i wanted to bring the sermon here and just share with y'all what the lord put on my heart uh and more importantly what he says about forgiving your abusers by forgiving those who have wronged you and also how to ditch self-righteousness and how to pursue selflessness and the things of god not from a spirit that is self-indulgent but from one that actually wants to hope the best for others amen
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so little did the Pharisee know, little did the Pharisees know that the trap that they laid out for Jesus was actually the trap that they had laid out for themselves. And that's all that pride is. It's a hole that you dig for others that you end up falling into. I love this analogy and I heard it when I was a kid.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. And that's what happens to these Pharisees. They plotted and orchestrated this, this trap and this plan in order to watch Jesus on his downfall. But they only constructed and created a trap for themselves for they, for they got entrapped by the very thing that they set up for God, for Jesus. And,
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so Psalm 7, uh, 15 through 16 shows us what, what selfish ambition and setting up a trap for other people looks like. It says, whoever digs a hole and scoops it out, falls into the pit that they have made. The trouble they cause recoils on them. Their violence comes down on their own heads. In Proverbs 26, 27, whoever digs a pit will fall into it.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
If someone rolls a stone, it will fall back on to them. And so it shows us that the response in the heart of these Pharisees were to, were to vindicate.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I'm using air quotes for those who are just listening for self-righteousness, not because they actually had compassion upon this woman and because they wanted to see justice or let it alone because they had a love because love also hopes the best for These Pharisees were not hoping the best. They hoped for what they thought was the best for themselves and not for other people.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
There was a there was a selfless, a selfishness that was being taken in place. And so what's Jesus's response? We see that they say, God, Jesus, now what do you say? They were using this 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 questioning him, he straightened up to them.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. And he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
the pharisees tried to push jesus into a corner jesus didn't answer them and started right on the ground twice and this is one of the more like theological debates and mysteries that is into the gospels because we hear that jesus was writing on the ground but we don't know what he was saying some people believe that he was writing the law or that he was writing the sins that they have committed and and was kind of there's just like a lot of different theories as to what
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
jesus was writing and they were persistent in questioning him and pushing him in a corner and finally he responded respectfully and then went back to the ground and wrote and nobody knows what he was writing and then he says in john chapter 8 verse 7 let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw the stone at her Which is so funny because Jesus said, y'all could throw up a stone.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Like y'all can kill this woman. You have full permission. But to those who are without sin, if you have not sinned, be my guest. Pick up a stone and cast it upon this woman. But if any of you has sinned, you do not have the authority to put this woman to death. And so what starts happening? They start going out one by one.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And Jesus never said for this woman to be correct and let alone did he justify her actions. Instead of passing a sentence onto this woman, Jesus passed a sentence onto the accusers. And in this very incident, they had greater sin and greater guilt. And Jesus exposed a common sin we tend to wrestle with. And it's a desire to punish the sins of others while ignoring our own sin.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And that's a problem that we see even to this day. We have a desire to punish others. We have a desire to crucify others and put them on a cross and be quick to point fingers. But there's a lack of a desire to deal with our own sinful desires and deal with the thorn of our flesh and to deal with the things that are wrestling against our spirit.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But rather, there's an urgency to deal with other people's problems. So instead of Jesus passing the judgment upon that woman for your sake, he actually passes judgment upon you to deal with your problems before you have the audacity to cast a stone upon somebody you're just as sinful as.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so the reason as to why we have a hard time forgiving others is because we fail to see that we are just as sinful. Maybe we didn't commit the same act or maybe we didn't do the same exact verbatim thing. But we have sinned. The word says that all have fallen short from the glory of God. And so is there someone who falls further or have we all fallen? And where does grace come into play?
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So let's pray and then we'll get into the topic today because there's so much we're needing to talk about. So let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you, God. God, first and foremost, I just ask that you help us understand your grace in your favor, God. Your grace is something that may be a hard topic for us to understand and for us to grasp, Father.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Because Jesus didn't excuse this woman and what she did. And God is not saying, hey, you're perfectly fine because you committed adultery. That's not what Jesus is saying. Instead, God, Jesus, excuse me. I keep saying God and Jesus. Jesus instead passed judgment upon the accusers Instead of passing or allowing them to pass their self-righteous embedded judgment onto this woman.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Because that would have been a greater, a way greater injustice. And what a perfect response that Jesus had. And most of the times, Jesus doesn't punish those with cruelty or torture, but rather with a mirror. Sometimes God isn't punishing you by putting you through a crazy circumstance or through hardcore suffering. Sometimes Jesus just holds up a mirror and sin will punish itself.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Sometimes wickedness will do all that it needs to do. It's not the hand of God. It's not the hand of some satanic oppression or attack. It's literally just the repercussion of your own sin. And what the Pharisees were dealing with was the judgment of their own sin of which they committed. Jesus just released it and held up a mirror. That was it.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so the authority and the judgment of Jesus that he carried through the scripture is so important, especially when it came to like the writing on the ground. Because we don't know what Jesus was saying whenever he was writing on the ground. It doesn't tell us anywhere through scriptural evidence. No one tells us. There's theological debates and theories for sure.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But nowhere in scripture does it tell us verbatim this is what Jesus was writing on the ground. And... I wonder at times, what was Jesus writing? Because here's the thing about scripture. Scripture is not going to say anything just to say something.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Even if it's a mystery, the word of God will always leave in a detail or some sort of description because there's a bigger picture being taken that you just can't see fully. And so I started to ask, why did Jesus write on the ground? Not what was he writing on the ground, but why? And Jesus went down twice to write with his fingers.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So I was just kind of accumulating these facts and just allowing the Holy Spirit to just help me. And we just know that we don't know what Jesus was saying. We just know what plays a significant role into the story.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and so the only other occasion which i started to look in scripture where where i want to i want to say this so well the only other occasion where we see an instance like this of the finger of god or of jesus being written into the ground is in exodus 31 when god inscribes the ten commandments on two stone tablets with his very finger My God.
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When Moses then broke the tablets out of anger, he saw the Israelites idolizing all these false gods, the golden calf, and God again, for a second time, wrote the commandments on the stone with his very finger.
Saved Not Soft
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So perhaps the story of emphasis is not what Jesus wrote on the ground, but it's the fact that a moment where judgment was needed, the authority of Jesus Christ was revealed through the imitation of God's finger. So get this, it doesn't matter what Jesus was writing down,
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But I just ask that you make our hearts and our minds and our hands open to receive your grace and to understand what it means, God. God, we tear down our perception of our version of grace, God, and we accept your version, what true grace. authentic grace is. Your definition of it, God, is what we come into agreement with, God.
Saved Not Soft
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So being a fiance has came with so much grace and favor and a lot of expedited pruning and healing that's needing to happen because God has just taken me into a next season of my life, which has been such a blessing. So the grace of God has been upon me because, wow, there's been a lot of things that God has been clearing up and out of my life entirely. And it's been...
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
in the sand or on the ground but it was the fact that in that moment jesus was replicating his father and he was releasing judgment not just by saying something but by showing that his finger is the same finger that wrote the law that the pharisees were trying to accuse him and this woman of and so sometimes jesus don't gotta say much he's just gotta show you who wrote it
Saved Not Soft
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You're trying to bring this justification to a person as if he didn't create the law. And I think this parallel in scripture is so beautiful because we don't know what Jesus was writing, but we just know that the other instance in scripture where God came down twice to write with his finger was when he was writing the 10 commandments.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so it's so funny to me and coincidence and only God led that.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
it's it's what am i trying to say it's so ordained and perfectly orchestrated by god that the next time that the that the ten commandments and the levitical law is brought up to jesus he orchestrates judgment not just by saying something or committing an act of throwing a stone but he just shows his finger because he's saying simultaneously i wrote the law i wrote the law
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And a finger which wrote the law is the law. And when the authority of Jesus Christ wasn't revealed through a word, it was revealed through an action. My God, it's just so good. I wrote a writing that allows the accusers to reflect on their own sinfulness. Hebrews 1.3 says, We have to understand that Jesus reflects God's glory and fullness. Jesus is a representative of God.
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Jesus is a human formation of who God is. So when we read in the Old Testament that God was writing these 10 commandments with his finger and and was releasing judgment upon Israel because of their sin. And then we go look at the story of this woman who's caught in adultery and we see Jesus writing in the ground. It's because he's releasing judgment because his finger writing the law is the law.
Saved Not Soft
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You're trying to bring a law to a man who has already stated it. who has written it himself, who has been with God in the beginning. In the beginning, the word was with God and the word was God, referring to Jesus. And this is the grace of God. Jesus is the expression of God's very essence.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
In Colossians 1.15 says, the son is the image of the invisible God, which means that Jesus fully and accurately represents the father in his essence character here. and nature. And he's not just similar to God, but shares the exact same divine essence. I think sometimes when we read about Jesus in the gospels, we think that Jesus is just a nicer version of God.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But the Bible shows us that Jesus was the embodiment of who God is. Jesus is the physical representation of the invisible God of which we serve. And so when we read about Jesus and him walking on earth, we think, oh man, he's a little more relatable. I empathize with him more. He seems a little more compassionate, but the same attributes that Jesus has is the same attributes that God has.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
God, I ask that every person who's on the other side of the screen who has been abused and hurt and thrown into the pit and has truly been in soaks at the bottom, God, that you meet their hearts and you let them know that they are heard, seen, and loved by you, God, that there is a compassion that you have for them, that vengeance belongs to you, God.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I believe we would see the heart of the father more if we just accepted that the relationship of Jesus and God isn't good cop and bad cop. Instead it's, it's,
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Divinely and accurately good and the reason as to why god sent his one and only son in the first place Is because god wanted to show himself and he revealed himself in human form So the next time you think oh dang god is just wrathful and god Is is causing all these things and god is a lot more strict and you know He's the king and he's authority which god is authoritative and he is a king and he still stands on a throne
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. And that's the same heart of the Father. Of course, there's some sort of, there's a distinct between Jesus and God because of certain things and roles that they fulfilled. But in divine essence, they are the same, which is why God sent Jesus. God sent Jesus because he wanted to show the people of God firsthand that this is the man that you serve.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Right. And we go to the end of the story where it says 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. She straightened up and asked her. Jesus straightened up and asked her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Now go leave your life of sin. And so when we see grace, grace isn't a get out of jail free card. Whenever you forgive somebody and whenever you're going through, whether somebody hurt you really bad or if somebody just cut you off while you were driving on your way to work, grace comes into place.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
It doesn't necessarily take away the consequences of sin, but it releases that divine and divine judgment and that anger and that self-righteousness that you could have been feeling in that moment and And so grace is not just something we deserve or earn. It's a gift that's freely given. And the only one who could have casted a stone upon this woman, which was Jesus, didn't.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
This woman stood before the judge, and yet he showed compassion and called her to live a life apart from sin. How much more should we encourage the same message upon those who have wronged us? We must have a compassion that sets a grace on fire, that consumes bittered hearts, and then encourages them to sprout new life through repentance. God just loves the people that you hate.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I think sometimes we think unforgiveness is, hey, this person gets a jail out of free card. You're just releasing yourself from the expectation that they're going to fulfill something that only God could give you restoration through.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and so with grace it's not hey get out of jail free and we're just going to act like this didn't happen because there's still consequences of sin but that no longer falls upon you that falls upon the person who has committed those sins just like in the garden of eden like like god released judgment upon adam and eve but still gave them grace and restored them through that process but there was still a consequence of sin it's the same thing with forgiveness it's releasing yourself from bitterness
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
and judgment and hoping the best for the other person even if they have wronged you completely it's empathizing with them or more so empathizing with god because god's not calling you to become best friends with the person who abused you and hurt you god's just calling you to release yourself from the expectation of them apologizing and becoming better and doing this and rewriting your story you really receive the peace of god when you release his people from a judgment that only god can release himself
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
God, I ask that you remind your children that you will justify them, that you will assist them, that you will help them up in your aid, God, and that you do not fall or move away far from your children, but God, you are close. God, I thank you that your word says that you are close to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit, God.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
that God only could give out himself because he is the rightful, authoritative judge. And so it's passing the judgment on,
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
on to jesus and no longer taking the responsibility of you're the one who decrees and declares what vindication and what revenge is revenge belongs to the lord vengeance is god's it's not yours because ultimately before a person has sinned against you they have ultimately sinned against god The real person who has beef with that person is God. So let vengeance be his. Let vindication be his.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I love Psalms 23 and Romans 12, 9. Vengeance is the Lord's. Give your transgressions, your bitterness, your unforgiveness onto God and trust that he's going to take care of it because scripture points time after time after time. that God is the redeemer of all bitterness and all, and all who have fallen short to the glory of God. He has restored those people through repentance.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And it's not just a grace of, Hey, you know what? You committed this adultery. You're fine. But a grace that's followed by repentance because he tells this woman, daughter, you are forgiven. You are forgiven. but now leave and go and leave your life of sin. Amen.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So my encouragement to you is to know and trust that God is going to bring you vindication and to just even go into a moment of prayer and of repentance and for you to release your abusers and people who have wronged you and abandoned you because it hurts and it's harsh and it's difficult to go through.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
God is going to use that to release you from something that could have been holding you in bondage for so long. And I want to just supply encouragement and replace what has been renounced and denounced and all the forgiveness that's outbreaking now. Just replace that with thanksgiving and worship. The moment that you release that person, start to thank and praise God.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Thank God that he is the one who's held responsible, that he is the one who has everything figured out and it's not in our hands, but it's in his. So have trust that God loves the people that you hate and God will vindicate you because he loves you and has compassion upon you. And God is a God that is full of justice. We see this through the story.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And whether if you are the Pharisee of the story or the woman, there was correct divine judgment that was executed. And that's all in the hands of the Father and not the hands of humans. But the Lord is good. But I would just, like I said, encourage y'all to get in a time of worship, get in a time of prayer, and release your abuser. Speak to God. Read the word of God yourself.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I'm even going to encourage y'all, if you're dealing with some sort of righteousness, self-righteousness, and some sort of... Harshness and like getting over yourself and your own feelings. I would encourage you to read on your own. I must say it's in Luke. Let me find it. I read Luke chapter 11. starting in verse 37.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So God, I ask that you heal those who are crushed in spirit today, God. And God, I also ask that you deal with those who deal with a heart of self-righteousness and have a lack of compassion, God. God, I ask that through this episode, you show us how to take away all selfish desires and motives and anger and things that could only be justified by you, oh Jesus.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
If you want to kind of see where self-righteousness takes you and what the heart of God says about it. Amen. Amen. A few announcements. If you've been saved or if you need prayer, there are links down below for you to fill out a form. Also, if you feel led to tithe towards this ministry, there's also a link down below along with me and Malik and I's wedding fun. Again, there is no obligation.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
We accept prayers more than anything. It's just a resource because people ask for it. So it's all in the description. If you want to shop Save Not Soft merch, it's going to be at savenotsoftshop.com. And yeah, for all that's it. I feel like I give the same announcements each and every single week.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And yeah, everything you need is down below, but I pray that you guys have learned something and you can walk forward in freedom, forgiving and releasing people who have wronged you. Amen, because jesus has done it for you If jesus could release you from all the bad things you have done He could give you the grace to do it for somebody else. Amen So I love you guys.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Have a great rest of the week I'll speak to you guys next week. But until then be blessed. Love you guys. Bye
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
God, I ask that this episode today sparks a surrenderment. And God, we give to you every ounce of bitterness and unforgiveness and problems we may have with the trust that you are going to take care of it truthfully. And it will bring us vengeance and justification, Lord. So I thank you that you care for us. God, use me as a vessel.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And God, let me be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and to what your people are wanting and needing to hear through this episode. God, give me discernment to speak upon this topic correctly. Jesus, give me grace, God. Give me grace, Father. God, anoint my tongue to speak. God, just use me as a vessel. This is your podcast, not mine. This is your ministry, not mine. We're here for you.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I'm here for you. We just want to receive what you have to say. And we want to go forth and hope, knowing that you are our safety, you are our fortress, and you are the ultimate authority and power. So we thank you, God, for all of who you are and all who you claim to be. And let your joy and your compassion be known here today. So we thank you, praise you.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
In Jesus' mighty name, I ask you this prayer. Amen. Amen. Amen, y'all. So I, like I said, I wrote this about a few months ago for a conference and the conference name was called Grace on Fire. And so while I was studying in my sermon prep and I was researching, you know, and just like consulting with the Lord of God, what is it that you want me to talk about?
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Because my topic was forgiving your abusers. And I felt like there was a lot of areas I could have gone because testimonial wise, I went through a lot of emotional and mental neglection and abandonment and betrayal, especially from those who were very close to me, whether if it was my own family and my immediate family or if it was friends or et cetera. It was a deep loss.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
betrayal that I experienced because of that that then bled into like anxiety and depression and then when I went into high school suicidal ideation and all these different things because I've experienced what it what it means to be abused and thrown and smacked to the ground and spit on and completely neglected and abandoned for no reason and
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I believe that the Lord has allowed me to go through my testimony of being denied by people who were called to love me in order to share how the Lord has granted me the grace to find forgiveness in those people who hurt me very deeply. and very badly, and a lot of people that I wanted to cast a stone against.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But God, through His grace and through His mercy, has granted me the ability to forgive and to move forward because the Holy Spirit resides inside of me. And I think when you're going through abuse and you've experienced abandonment or neglect, or you've been in an abusive relationship, whether it was
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
parental or relational in your family or relational romantically or uh in intimacy somehow it scars a lot of your perception of what love is and it's hard to come out of that when all you know is abuse and when you put the blame of your problems that you're experiencing now on people who have also probably been abused and don't know better and probably aren't in the heart of christ
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
great it's kind of like a like a it's an interesting face I feel like you know you as women we dream of getting engaged and married and um excited for all these seasons of like engagement and becoming a wife and one thing I will definitely say about engagement is that If you think you know what it's going to be like, you don't.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so what has really helped me escape the bondage of abandonment, of betrayal, and the collection of sadness, depression is forgiveness. And not just for the sake of the other person, but because it was for the sake of myself. it was more so I was releasing myself more than releasing that person. Like I released myself from bondage by accepting the grace that God has for me and that person.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So it's like when you forgive, you're releasing a person while also releasing yourself simultaneously. And it's just a freedom that you've experienced like never before. And so I want to talk about that today because I think forgiveness is a really hard topic, especially if you've been hurt and abused over and over again.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I was really deep in my secret space consulting with the Lord what he wanted to do when I first spoke this sermon. And the conference name was called Grace on Fire. And so I kind of meditated on the word fire for a really long time. And I felt like as if the Lord wanted to direct my steps in this sermon somehow with fire. And fires is something that's super common to me.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I feel like I've known a lot about fires in my whole entire life because I live in
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
In california i'm born and raised in california and i'm more so in like the central part So there's la there's san francisco and then there's like a whole central valley Which is where i've lived and resided my whole entire life Which is crazy because it's a mix of like country life and then also city life And it's just an accumulation of so many different types of people which has been great but because I live in california because It's so dry out here.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
We've experienced so much wildfires and Like, I remember even when I was a kid, seeing on the news, whether it was an hour away from me or all the way in LA, we have a lot of forests, a lot of trees. And so there was a lot of wildfires that would happen just because it gets so hot here and there wasn't a lot of rain. And just because of the economic, not economic, the climate. Yeah, sure.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Like the, what am I saying? Like the ecosystem of where we're at. That's what I'm trying to say. And so I was meditating on like fires and like how I'm familiar with fires. God, why are you leaning me this way? Because there's fire talks a lot about in scripture.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Like we know that fire references in scripture, like how God uses flames to reveal his presence or how God led the Israelites with a pillar of fire or or of how God is an all consuming fire. Like I know in the Bible, there's a lot of principles about fire, even like pruning and God trying and not even trying, but God refining and elevating his people through fire.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Like fire is stated all throughout scripture and fire can be used for a number of good things. And so whenever I'm at this conference and God was placing fire in my heart, He he just told me, I mean, I want you to kind of look at your roots, see where you've been. And it was almost like he wanted me to talk about the fires that I grew up in and what I've seen.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so just going to give you a background of where I'm at about an hour away from where I live. I live. So where I live is like you're like three hours from San Francisco, then you're three hours from L.A., And then you're like an hour from the mountains and two hours from the beach. It's like a really nice equal space. You get like the best of all worlds.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so I live about an hour away from the mountains. And if you guys know Yosemite, Yosemite is one of the most beautiful and I mean beautiful.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
beautiful places you will ever be like there's people who come and vine all over the world just to see the yosemite national state park it is probably one of the most beautiful landscapes you'll ever see in your entire life and it's literally in california california is just truly so beautiful but uh right below the right next i guess to yosemite there's also a national tree forest which are these huge giant sequoia trees which are in california
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
Like when I tell you, no one really ever articulates what this season is really like. I feel like God just uses the engagement season to just really put you up to ramp speed with where God really wants you. So it's been a lot of spiritual growth, which has been really awesome. Anyways, I'm rambling. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about today.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And I grew up going to visit these trees even whenever I was little. We would always camp up in the sequoias and we would be around these big, big trees. And not just trees that are like, oh, like that's a big tree. I'm talking like tall trees.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
thick trunks and these trees are massive like it could be a wonder of the world like these these trees are about 300 feet high and then 30 feet wide so these trees are pretty chunky trees and you guys may wonder i mean why are you talking about trees because a lot of the wildfires that happen it happens through these forest is And in California, I didn't even know it was this much.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I knew we have a lot of wildfires. But there was a study that says that there's 7,000 wildfires that happen in California each and every single year. And a lot of these wildfires happen an hour away, pretty much like right in my backyard of where I live. And so... With these trees, you could look it up on your own, but they're ginormous. Like I said, 300 feet high and then 30 feet wide.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And they live over 3,000 years. I remember whenever my fiance came to visit me, I think it was in April of last year, I took him up to these trees. And there was this one tree that we saw. It's like the Great Sherman. That's like the oldest one that's there. And it's like 3,000 years old. That tree has been here while Jesus was walking on the earth. They could be friends. You don't know that.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so it's crazy to know that these trees have been here for so long, and yet they're so wide and tall. And what I love about these sequoia trees is that they have a few attributes that make them really special. They produce really small cones, which are about two to three inches wide. And they contain these seeds and their trunks. Well, these are like red trees.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
So their trunks are, I don't have anything next to me that's like the same color, but it's kind of like a red tone trunk and they're beautiful. They're like orange trunk trees. But the bark of the tree is super spongy. And I almost got, I almost went up there and got some just so I could bring some here and like show y'all visually. Maybe another day you can look it up on the internet. Okay.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But it has spongy bark and the bark prevents them or basically the bark is thick and spongy because it's fire resistant, which helps protect the tree from the wildfires. So these sequoia trees are like embedded with a fire resistant aspect about them.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
And so when I was reading about the sequoia trees and the reason as to why God took me to the sequoia trees is because we have all these wildfires that happen in California. And these redwood trees, these sequoia trees, they stand up tall, right? When I tell you that we have had crazy fires over here and these sequoia trees are standing strong and they're doing just fine.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
I began to wonder why, like why aren't these trees burning down? And it's because one, they have a bark that's like embedded to literally keep them safe from fire. And then a second attribute is that these cones that I was talking about, that's two to three inches wide. They contain these seeds. And so these cones are stored up in the tree.
Saved Not Soft
Drop the Stone (Forgiveness and grace) | SavedNotSoftPodcast
But get this, the moment fire, there's a wildfire, fire goes through the branches of these trees, it sparks something inside of these cones to where it releases more seeds to then be sprouted out and put into the soil so it could reproduce more sequoia trees. And that really, really just caught my attention because you're telling me that this is a tree that is so massive.