Given May 2018
Our pastor, Wayne Hager at Zion Family Ministries, preached a sermon recently about the woman caught in adultery, (John 8: 1-11) . One of the things that stood out to me from his message was a statement Pastor made after he told of the woman’s accusers who, one by one, dropped their stones and left the scene. Pastor said that Jesus was the “last man standing”. If we’ll allow Him, Jesus will be our “last man standing” when we’re in trouble. I was thinking about this scene recently while driving and God showed me some more lessons in this story. Again,this is where “Revelations from the Road” comes from; things God speaks to me while on the road.
Well, from this story, God showed me three lessons that I had not focused on before:
Number 1 – If you’re near Jesus and He’s on your side, you’ll be alright. In this story, the woman was brought to Jesus and “deposited” at His feet. The “religious people” were making all kinds of accusations about this woman, which were true, and demanded that Jesus do what was right according to the law. I thought, what would have happened to the woman if Jesus wasn’t there? I’m sure she would have been stoned to death. But Jesus was there, He was near the woman and she was at His mercy. Lesson: Accept Jesus, get Him on your side and draw near to Him (James 4:8).
Number 2 – The devil uses people to accuse you. The Bible says that the devil is the “accuser of the brethren”, (Revelation 12:10). Many times we cry, “Oh, the devil is doing this or that to me.” Well, the devil, Satan himself, is not omnipresent; he cannot be everywhere. There are many demons who were cast out of Heaven with Satan, (Revelation 12:9), and they’re all over but be sure that Satan and his demonic forces will use people to accuse us and do other dastardly deeds from hell. So Satan uses people to accuse us; to remind us of our past, to lie on us and take advantage of us. It’s not always demons working for Satan against us but people who have been enlisted by Satan to do this work.
Number 3 – What about the man? This question comes up often when this story is told. The woman was caught “in the act” of adultery which means she was caught having sex with a man who was not her husband. So why was the man not brought before Jesus too? The Bible doesn’t say. We can speculate on all kinds of answers: Women were treated differently in that day than men. The man ran away. Maybe the man was a church leader and they let him go. We don’t know but the man wasn’t there and was not even mentioned. Jesus told the woman, after her accusers left and no one was there to condemn her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (John 8:11). I can imagine if the woman would have asked, “Thank you Master, but what about the man?” Jesus might have answered, “Don’t worry about him, I’ll take care of that.” “You just go on, accept my mercy and sin no more.”
Another idea that came from this sermon and story that I have used often when temptation tries to influence me is the boldly stated phrase, “NO MORE!” Jesus told the woman to go and sin NO MORE and, I’ve found, that this statement is a good deterrent to temptation. #nomore