How's Your Rap-Sheet Looking?

At school Little Tommy was told by a classmate that most adults are hiding at least one dark secret, and that this makes it very easy to blackmail them by saying, "I know the whole truth." Little Tommy decided to go home and try it out. He went home, and as he was greeted by his mother he said, "I know the whole truth." His mother quickly handed him $20 and said, "Just don’t tell your father." Quite pleased, the boy waited for his father to get home from work, and greeted him with, "I know the whole truth." Tommy’s father promptly handed him $50 and said, "Please don’t say a word to your mother!" Very pleased, the boy was on his way to school the next day when he saw the mailman at his front door. Little Tommy greeted him by saying, "I know the whole truth." The mailman immediately dropped the mail, opened his arms saying, "Then come give your daddy a big hug."

Before we get started I want to tell you that I don’t know the whole truth about your lives. I don’t know every dark secret you keep hidden…I know some but not all. But let’s say for the sake of making a point that I did know every dark secret you have. Let’s say that I had a list of every sin you’ve ever committed, and that list is now posted in the back of the church, would you still be sitting here now, or would you rush either in the back to destroy that list, or would you run out the church doors in shame? Or would you rush to me to get the scoop? There are certain things we don’t want others to know about us: Things in our past that we are not proud of. We often talk about criminals having a rap sheet, a list of every crime they have ever committed, but what if there was a list of your sins, a rap sheet of every bad thought, every sinful behavior, everything. It’s a scary thought, and that’s what makes our text today so sobering. Look at vs. 3 of Psalm 130. “If You O’ Lord, kept a record of sins!”

What a sobering thought. If there was such a record, what would yours look like? There’s a commercial out there for persons wanting a credit report, and the commercial goes, “do you have good credit…or do you only think you have good credit…hmmmm.” Most people think that have a good record when it comes to their sins because in their mind, they are not a murderer or they are not an adulterer, so there record, though not perfect is still fairly clean.

Yet is it? Consider that if you break one of God’s laws than that means that you are a sinner, it goes on your record. And only one sin is needed to condemn you. And the truth is that we have all sinned not once, but many times. One of the words for sin in the Bible simply means “missing the mark.” It pictures an archer shooting an arrow toward a target, and if the arrow hits anything but the bulls eye, he has missed the mark. The Bible commands us to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. Any time we fall short of the ideal of God’s perfection, we sin.

The bible mentions different ways that we sin. Now as I tell you these, I want you to keep a tally in your mind, and think about what that record of yours might look like. The first type of sin is what we call sins of commission. These are deliberate sins. We know not to do something but we do it anyway.

A couple of weeks back, I was leaving the Winchester service to come to teach Sunday School at Clara, and I was already leaving late, and I knew I had a good lesson planned, (The class might have disagreed!), so I wanted to get there as quick as I could. As I pulled off onto the hwy, my truck went from 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 and so on. No sooner had a got to be a bit too quick, I saw a state trooper coming the opposite way, and I immediately slammed on the brakes, but to my chagrin. He popped on those lights and pointed his finger at me as he passed me. Now I know what the law says. Some lawmakers up in Jackson got to together and in their collective wisdom they determined that the speed limit for the old Hwy 45 is 55 mph. I knew that. And the bible tells me to obey those with authority over me, and that includes elected officials. I knew all this but I deliberately sinned by speeding. That’s a sin of commission. It wasn’t an accident…it was an accident that I got caught but it wasn’t an accident. I knew what I was doing.