"The Lord spoke to me some time back about why Jesus did not heal or teach the crowd, being content to let them throw down their stones and retreat. He said to me that Jesus could only do something with them as they were willing to step across the line and stand with Him and the sinful woman..."
The part of Jim's response that touched me so deeply was the word content. He said, "Jesus was content to let them throw down their stones and retreat." Why? Why did he bend down and draw a literal line across the desert sand? And why was He content to let them reject Him and leave?
On one side of the line we see Yeshua (Jesus) - together with a sinful woman who was repentant and at this point, facing death by stoning, utterly dependent upon the Lord for her life. On the other side we see the self-righteous, vindictive mob of people who were ready to stone her for her sin. The line offers an invitation - the same invitation Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman at the well: "Come to me and I will give you living water." But no one accepts the invitation; no one crosses the line to His side. The angry, probably embarrassed mob drop their stones on the ground and leave, unable to give any response, but also unwilling to stand beside the likes of the adulteress. Did they not recognize their need to repent for their own sin? Or, did they think they were above the need for a Messiah?
Yeshua obviously knew this was their heart condition, for as Jim points out, He did not waste time in teaching or healing there.
This whole illustration just confirms for me that we are in exactly that place right now. A clear separation is being made between those who are so hungry for Yeshua that we will die to self and live for Him - and those who prefer to stay in "Babylon," where they can continue in the pleasures and comforts of the world and keep control of their own lives.
I can relate to Yeshua's experience in this story. I have friends and members of my own family with whom I have shared the glorious redemptive story of Yeshua over and over, only to watch them say "No thanks," throw down their stones, and leave. And when I cried out to the Lord for them, so fearful that I might have to separate myself from them completely one day, He answered me with a heart-stopping question: "Do you want to be in YOUR family or MY family?"
The answer to this question, for all of us who call Him LORD, is found in the Scripture where Yeshua does not go outside to meet with his mother and brothers, but rather points to His disciples and says, "These are my mother and brothers." In other words, those who were giving up their own lives to follow Him were the ones He considered family. He always knew that the Father granted His creation free will to choose. Now it is a hard truth we must learn to embrace in our own day - being content that when we have done all we can, we must align ourselves with the family of Christ, and stand on HIS side of the line.
