We’ve all done it– we’ve all looked at the sin of someone else and judged it to be greater than our own. Maybe, in our own pride, we’ve even wished that God would pour out justice on that sin.

In John 8, we see a woman who is brought before Jesus to judge for her sin. John writes that she was brought to the temple and presented to Jesus as an adulteress and was caught in the very act– the punishment for which was to be stoned to death. The aim for these religious leaders was to put Jesus in a catch-22: condemn the woman for her sin thus painting Jesus as a strict, cruel judge, or for Jesus to condone the adultery which would make him wantonly lax on unrighteous, immoral sin.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

Over the last month, we’ve been picking apart Psalm 23, one of the most recognizable passages of scripture there is. David, the author of the psalm was a king, a shepherd, a son, but most importantly, a man that was passionately invested in a relationship with God. If anyone understood the deep nuances of every line of this psalm, it was David himself. If there was anyone qualified to compare God to a shepherd, it was David.In six, short verses, we were taken through the green pastures and still waters of a life laid in submission to the Lord; a life that allows God to lead and take care of our needs. From there, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, an ominous valley surrounded by the trials of life on all sides. Then, we sit down at a table prepared by the Lord, but a table set in a room full of our enemies, an oasis of comfort and rest in the middle of a not-so-wonderful situation.