I'm going to tell you a story.

It's a story from the Bible in John chapter 8.

Maybe it's one that you've heard before.

But as you listen to it in this new setting,

will you take a moment to picture who you are in the story?

What character do you play? Where are you sitting? What are you

feeling? What are you going through? And listen to this story. Picture the dusty outer courts

of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. And in these outer courts of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.

And in these outer courts, Jesus was sitting.

And as he was sitting, he was teaching.

His teaching would have been full of love and forgiveness and compassion and empathy.

But suddenly there was an interruption.

The law enforcement officers just caught a woman,

caught in the very act of sleeping with someone else's husband.

And in this ancient culture 2,000 years ago,

that was an act that was punishable by death.

But not just any death, a gruesome death,

one in which stones were pelted at the person,

one after the other, after the other, until they were no longer alive.

And so these law enforcement officers brought this woman who was full of shame, possibly barely

clothed, fearful of her life.

They came and they threw her at the feet of Jesus and they said,

...