Come with me to a third grade classroom..... There is a nine-year-old boy named Billy sitting at his desk and all of a sudden he notices his pants are wet. He has had an accident of devastating and incomprehensible proportions. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
Billy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, "Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat."
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered.
As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.
Billy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!"
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher allows him to go and put his gym clothes on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie.
She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. "You've done enough, you klutz!"
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, Billy walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Susie whispers back, "I wet my pants once too."
You see Susie sacrificed herself to ridicule that lasted only for a moment in order to save her friend from what could possibly have been an event for which he would have suffered endlessly.
We too have gotten ourselves into a condition spiritually which has everlasting consequences. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom.
Yet, fortunately for us all, a long time ago there was someone who took the shame and pain we deserve upon Himself; that someone was and still is Jesus!
And it is because of what He did so long ago that we can have salvation from everlasting punishment. That salvation is available to those who will hear and believe God’s Word (John
