Restoring the Damaged

John 8:1-11
In 1972, a mentally disturbed geologist by the name of Laszlo Toth slipped into St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome with a hammer and began to smash Michelangelo’s sculpture The Pieta, a statue of Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. Three years later, an unemployed school teacher rushed through a museum in Amsterdam until he reached Rembrandt’s famous painting "Night Watch." He took out a knife and slashed it repeatedly before any¬one could stop him. Two cherished works of art were severely damaged. What did officials do? Throw them out because they were damaged? Absolutely not! Using the best experts, who worked with the utmost care and precision, they made every effort to RESTORE the treasures.
A damaged person is worth more than any work of art and the same careful efforts should be made to restore them to a relationship with God. The value of art results from the artist and the age, but we are created in the image of God as His workmanship. In our passage tonight, we find a woman who was demoralized and humiliated by her own sin.

I. CONSPIRACY-
Here were people not interested in spiritual truth and didn’t mind preventing others
They came for the sole purpose of disrupting the service and destabilizing Jesus
So they found this woman and used her to set a trap for Jesus
It’s kind of like catching worms to use as bait for a really big fish
They didn’t care about this woman’s sin so much as they cared about ambushing Jesus
Though they catch her in the midst of committing this sin, they let the man escape
Or perhaps the man was among them as one of the accusers, a part of the conspiracy
6 lays bare their true motives to snare Jesus They were seeking grounds to accuse Him
The word accuse here is the Greek word kategoria from which we get category
It means to speak against; was connected to court procedure; label or pigeonhole Him
He will either have to side with Rome or side with Moses. Either way He loses.
If He offers her forgiveness, they can label Him as a law-breaker who condones adultery
If He condemns the woman to death, He has violated Rome’s law
The Jewish nation under Roman oppression did not have the right of capital punishment
We need to be sure that our motives are pure and not selfishness masquerading as spirituality

II. CONDEMNATION -
Jesus was never in a quandary about how to approach this situation.
The predicament was how the scribes and Pharisees would handle the Savior’s challenge
Pharisees were very uptight and strict about their behavioral codes, self-righteous
But the real question is where or not they would be honest enough to face their own sin
Jesus’ answer, “He that is without sin cast the first stone”
Okay, we can begin our stoning service once we find someone without sin
James 2:10 says, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."
It is so easy to find the sin in the lives of others. Too easy.
What if we set out to stone all of the sinners present here tonight?
In certain places of the world Holy places are riddled with bullets- Both sides lose
9 They had come to condemn this woman and Jesus but left with a deeper conviction of their sin
Adultery is a terrible sin- betrayal of trust, breaking of vows, selfish pleasure
But there