Who Cleans Up Your Mess?

John 8: 4 (New International Version NIV).

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.”

I was at a local garage the other day having my car serviced and there was a mom in the customer lounge with her three kids. She had a two year old girl, a four year old girl, and their eight year old brother. I eventually struck up a conversation with all of them and made friends with the four year old. I told her that because she was the big sister, even though she was in the middle, I bet she took good care of her little sister. “I sure do. I have to clean up all her messes” she said. I told her that was very nice of her to do that for her little sister and to help her mom out. I then asked her, “Do you make any messes that have to be cleaned up?” She said, “Oh yeah, and mom usually cleans my messes up.” Then she asked, “Who cleans up your messes?”

That is why Jesus said of little children; “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these!” At the age of four she has been around long enough to know that everyone makes messes sometimes. Take the woman that was caught living with a man that was not her husband. We think she may have been dragged right out of bed and brought before Christ. The motives of those who brought her to Him were to try and put Jesus in a fix. They wanted to see if He would tell them to stone her or not. The Law ordered it, but would Jesus carry it out? Read the chapter and see how He handled it.

The woman had made a mess of her life. In that culture people did not live together unless they were married. Women never held public jobs either so men usually kept them up. She was breaking the Law and stood to be condemned to death. Jesus cleaned up her mess that day. He said the same thing to the men there as the little girl said to me. “Which of you standing here are perfect?” He asked. None of them were so they left being convicted by their own messes. Then Jesus told her, “I am not condemning you to death for this but will forgive you if you will leave this life of sin.”

Are you in a mess today? Have you got one you need Jesus to clean up for you? He cleaned up my mess and He will clean up yours too if you will let Him.