However officially, I'll start of the month being thankful for my weekly Bible Study. Interestingly enough, (or not!) the topic seemed to be directed straight at me today. Funny how that happens huh? If I was the only person who showed up today, J's lesson would have been exactly what was needed. She was talking about sin. Sin is sin. All sin is the same to God. We list and categorize sin. That sin isn't so bad as this sin. She asked us to come up with some large ones... "big" sins. Of course, we can all think of murder as a top sin. Adultry ranks high up there. Rape. Child abuse. Pornography. Blasphemy. Suicide. What about hatred? Lust? Envy? Greed? Jealousy? Alcoholism? Idolatry? The list continued...
Okay that wasn't too hard. Making a big list of "big" sins. Got it. "Don't do those" I thought to myself. Some worse than others in my mind of course, some I can be sure to not do. I thought "this is easy, check!" Then she said for us to rank them. Huh? Our mouths stood open... Errrr... Right. Okay. I put a #1 by murder. Then shook my head and put a #1 by child abuse. Then shook my head and put a #1 by blasphemy. So now I have three #1s. I did try to list the rest but I was shaking my head all the time thinking, "I can't rank these. Who am I to say which is more or less bigger than the next sin down the line?"
Then she said for us to list some "small" sins.... you can see where this is going. Speeding. Cursing. Gossip. Jealousy. Anger. Lying. White lies. Omission. Impatience. Greed. Theft. Laziness. Critical spirit. Yelling. Gluttony. ... These are some of the examples as a group we came up with for "small" sins. Then, you guessed it. She said "rank them." Oy. I don't know. I again sat there with my mouth hanging open, trying to decide what would be worse: gossip or laziness. yelling or lying. jealousy or over-eating.... sigh. I don't know.
And that's exactly the point she was going for. She showed us four examples in the Bible where what seemed like small acts of disobedience resulted in large and harsh consequences. Looking on the Arc of the Covenant caused 50,000 people to perish. Touching the Arc caused a man to fall down dead. Moses striking the rock for water instead of speaking to it resulted in him not being allowed to the promise land.... The bottom line is that sin is sin. And while stealing a phone may not be the same in weight of our human minds as stealing $100,000,000 dollars, it's still theft. Telling a little white lie shouldn't weigh the same as out right lying, but it's still a lie. A lie is a lie. A sin is a sin. All sin is SIN to God. There is no big or small about it.
The best news though is that there is no sin too big for Jesus. His blood can cover all our sins. Jesus is able to cover the smallest of sin and the largest of sin. Jesus already paid the price. He died on the cross to suffer at our own hands for all that we may do, for all we have done... Jesus loves us regardless.
I'm so thankful for this Bible Study each week to dive into the Word and study the instructions God has left for us while we are here on the earth. What a good lesson to remind us that we're to obey God. Bottom line. And regardless of whatever we do... Jesus already covered our sins, if we just ask for forgiveness from them, He will forgive us. (1 John 1:9)
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