How Do You Score Sin?

“The Lord heard your complaints and became angry, and so he solemnly declared, ‘Not one of you from this evil generation will enter the fertile land that I promised to give your ancestors.  Only Caleb son of Jephunneh will enter it. He has remained faithful to me, and I will give him and his descendants the land that he has explored.”

Deuteronomy 1:34-36

 

 

I think sometimes we create this sort of sliding scale in our head to ‘rate’ the severity of sin.

We measure the place of our sin on them imaginary scale compared to more ‘grave’ violations.

For instance, a little white lie rates a “1” but murder is definitely a “10”.

While the impact of our sins on ourselves and others can be quite different the truth is that

 sin is sin.

We compare one violation (a more politically correct term than sin!) to another and we think we are doing ‘fine’ because our score is lower than others.

But it is only when we compare our sin to a holy and sinless God that we realize how we come up short!

Take complaining for instance; is it a sin?

 Clearly, as we read today’s verse it is evident that it is.

The Lord hears our complaints.

It is not music to His ears!

Are there challenges in each of our lives?

That’s a ‘no-brainer’ question.

All twelve spies who went into the Promised Land saw the same things.

But ony Joshua and Caleb didn’t complain – nor did they incite complaints from the Children of Israel.

Because of this, they were the only two, of their entire generation, that entered the Promised Land.

Don’t write off complaining because you ‘scale it’ as a less serious offense before God.

It will keep you from entering into the blessing and the rest God has for you.  

The next time you are tempted to complain – try trading it out for an expression of gratitude!