When it comes to sin, have you noticed that everyone seems to have an subconscious scale of sorts? I’m talking about that spiritual gauge we apply to others and seldom (if ever) apply to ourselves. The following are common ways I’ve heard it applied:
- The stuff Hitler did ranks right at a 10
- My friend’s occasional stretching of the truth ranks as a 1
- Bullying others is a 5
- Stealing little things is a 3
- Grand theft Auto? More like a 7
- Murder? 8 – 10 ( The legal system uses Manslaughter to 1st Degree Murder but it looks like a scale to me)
- Gossip? Some would say this isn’t even on the scale—just harmless fun. God gives it a 10!
- Most all of the above for OURSELVES ranks as a 0 (except for the Hitler thing, of course)
See how it works? Silly? Don’t jump too soon because you do this too!
Take a look at your own life. Aren’t there plenty of ‘harmless’ things you do that, by the very nature of the fact you think of them as ‘harmless’ are really being disregarded as 1’s or 2’s? Things like…
- That time you rolled your eyes after your boss or teacher turned away from you
- When you tell someone you already did something (like a work assignment or homework) that you ‘plan’ on doing but actually haven’t
- When you walk out of the store and discover your 3 year old has a little toy in their hand and instead of returning it you save the embarrassment and go on your merry way
- When you ‘discuss’ the short-comings of another through the shroud of ‘prayer requests.’
- When you gather in groups of 2 or 3 to discuss the ‘issues’ you are having with another
- Similar to the above—when you meet for weeks and months with groups to talk about how you are ‘planning to help someone’ but what you’re really doing is gossiping and doing nothing to help
- When you defy those God has placed in authority over you and see who else you can get to follow you ‘behind the scenes.’ Guess the theory here is that you want to get things ‘just right’ before you go public with your coup, oops, I mean, ‘concerns’.
The point is, we all rank sin on a scale of 1 to 10, or 1 to 100, or whatever. But God has no such scale. All sin is sin to Him, period. If we murder, we are a sinner. If we lie, we are a sinner. Each of these sins makes us far from God and in need of a savior.
Jesus came to save sinners—a group we are all members of.
- Intentional sinners
- Unintentional sinners
- Little white liars
- Big fat liars
- Subtle mumblers who split churches
- “Revolutionaries” (the bad kind…Yes, there are good ones. Jesus was a revolutionary) who bring anarchy to whole countries
When it comes to sin, size doesn’t matter to God. Sin is sin.
However, when it comes to redemption? The attitude of the heart makes all the difference in the world.
Look at Numbers 15:22–36,
22 “But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses. 23 And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses. 24 If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering. 25 With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the Lord,a]’>[a] and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the Lord—the special gift and the sin offering. 26 The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin.
27 “If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering. 28 The priest will sacrifice it to purifyb]’>[b] the guilty person before the Lord, and that person will be forgiven. 29 These same instructions apply both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you.
30 “But those who brazenly violate the Lord’s will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord, and they must be cut off from the community. 31 Since they have treated the Lord’s word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”
Penalty for Breaking the Sabbath
32 One day while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community. 34 They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must be put to death! The whole community must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
WOW!
Doesn’t this seem harsh? The one dude was gathering fire wood one minute and he’s dead (pummeled by rocks) the next!
Funny how I’ve often heard Christians wish aloud that they lived in the days of biblical miracles such as when Moses was around or Daniel, or King David. But one thing you know these people aren’t taking in to account is the strict obedience God required as well! Most of us have drifted so far from this ideal, become so flippant in our approach to God and authority that we wouldn’t last a day in that culture and under those laws! Some wouldn’t make it an hour! But, for the Jews, the laws and ways of God were ever before them—a constant part of everyday life. They weren’t some ‘Sunday only’ deal that they gave little or no thought to the rest of the week. So, I’m convinced that most of that is relative.
What is not is the attitude of the heart. A right heart before God is what He was after then and it is what He’s after now. That’s why intentional sins were dealt with so severely—it was so black and white then that only the one with a bad spiritual heart condition would intentionally sin.
And, yes, that includes the sneaky lumberjack we read about in Numbers 15:32. This was no accident! Approximately 2 million others got the memo to keep the Sabbath holy—are we to assume he didn’t?
No, he just didn’t care. His actions show that he lived a sort of double life—the one people observed in public and the one God observed in private.
His heart was wicked.
I know. I know. And I’m right there with you. I’m going to wrestle with this one a bit today. God seems too harsh to me too.
That just serves to remind me at times how far I have to go.
“Thank You, God that you are also a God of grace and mercy! Without such I would be doomed and first in line for a rock pounding!”
* Ok, Brookies, guess what is right around the corner?
Christmas!!
Everyone’s favorite time of year (ok, MOST people’s favorite time of the year) and a wonderful opportunity to reach out to a hurting world. We have some awesome things planned for you! But tap the breaks a couple times and don’t forget our Thanksgiving outreach — See the Southbrook Website for details! We are trying to make Thanksgiving happen for hundreds of families in the Monroe area and we need your help!