The Troubles
Frogs have an amazing ability to detect temperature change in the water surrounding them. In fact, if you put a frog into water that is too warm, it will immediately attempt to escape because the water temperature triggers a reflex response. Scientists have for centuries attempted to determine just how sensitive this reflex is in frogs.
In the early 1800s scientists found that frogs would immediately attempt to escape as soon as the water temperature increased to an uncomfortable level. However, in 1872, a man by the name of Heinzmann did an experiment that proved that it was possible to change the temperature of the water slowly enough that the frogs could not detect the changes surrounding them.
In Heinzmann’s experiment he slowly increased the temperature of a pot of water until it reached a boiling point and the frogs did not attempt to escape. This was replicated by others and recorded in 1875 and in 1897.
In 1888, a professor at MIT named William Thompson Sedgwick commented on these experimental results:
The truth appears to be that if the heating be sufficiently gradual, no reflex movements will be produced … if it be more rapid, yet take place at such a rate as to be fairly called "gradual," it will not secure the repose of the normal frog under any circumstances.
What do these experiments with frogs have to do with us? Humans also have a reflex response toward stimuli that could be dangerous to us. If a change happens gradually enough it is possible that we will not notice the change and before long what may have been considered uncomfortable or even deadly is now something that we embrace.
As we continue our series Life on the Edge, we focus today on how sin impacts the lives of those that are followers of Jesus. We know that before we chose to accept Jesus as the boss of our lives, we were filled with sin that needed to be forgiven.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23, HCSB)
Sin is an archery term that means to miss the mark. Isaiah 53:6 says, “We all went astray like sheep.” From the moment that Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden of Eden, humans have chosen to stray from God’s commands. We have sinned.
But God promised that through Jesus our sins could be forgiven. So after we accepted Jesus we never sinned again, right? Wrong. We still find ourselves straying from God’s commands. Why? Because we are in a pot of water that is slowly being boiled and we give in to the pressures that surround us.
Sometimes we sin because we don’t think that what we are doing is sin. We call them things like, “white lies” so that they don’t sound bad. We justify the reason we do something so that it is okay: “I was starving, I had no money, so I stole something so I could eat.” After a while, these “little sins” just start building and growing and we suddenly find that we are in some hot water.
Sometimes we sin because we just don’t care enough to try to do the right thing. At one time we told God that we wanted Jesus to be boss, but as we stood on the edge of that cliff looking out over what God had planned for us, we chose to go right back to the way things were before. We enjoyed our old lifestyle of sin. It was a comfortable place and what God was asking us to do looked too hard. We did not have enough faith to believe that Jesus would take care of us if we just went over the cliff with Him.
Sometimes we sin because we let our guard down and sin got ahold of us. We never intended to sin, but like that frog in the water, we slowly found ourselves in a situation where we were right in the midst of a mess of trouble. We suddenly see that sin has become the boss of our life, not Jesus. Just like the song, The Troubles, by U2:
Somebody stepped inside your soul
Somebody stepped inside your soul
Little by little they robbed and stole
Till someone else was in control
Here is the ugly truth: nobody puts us in the pot of water—we put ourselves there. People love to claim that the devil made them do it, but he does not have the power to do that. We like to blame others for the troubles we find ourselves in. We blame our parents, we blame our finances, we blame the government, we blame our boyfriend or girlfriend, we blame our children. We want someone else to be the reason, but the truth is that we willingly got into a pot of water and we stayed there until the heat was so bad that we just gave in and let sin overtake us.
I have talked to people that decided that letting God be the boss was just too hard, so they left the church, stopped trying to do the right thing, and just started raising hell. They said that they tried religion and its guilt and wanted nothing to do with it. At one time they tried to live a good, clean lifestyle, but every time they failed, they felt worse.
They thought that they could just say some magic words, “Jesus forgive me of my sins,” and then they would never sin again. Jesus is not a genie that grants your wishes. When you come to Jesus and ask Him to forgive you of a sin, He looks at your heart to see if you really have chosen Him over that sin. You cannot hold that sin in reserve just in case this Jesus thing doesn’t work out the way you had planned.
Making Jesus boss is a commitment. Why are commitments so important? They show that you are serious. That you intend to do what you have said. We live in a commitment phobic society. People are afraid to commit to a relationship because things may not work out the way they hoped. People are afraid to commit to a job because they may not like it much after they start.
So we want to set-up provisional commitments. I’ll try this job, but if I don’t like it I’m out of there. I’ll try this relationship, but I’m gonna keep in touch with my ex just in case things don’t work out. I’ll marry you, but I want to get a prenup just in case you cheat on me. Jesus will not accept a provisional commitment. He wants 100% of you. He said that you must make Him the boss of your life and that you must obey everything that He has commanded of you. Otherwise it is sin.
What exactly is sin? What is considered sinful by God? Sin is the transgression of the law of God. Failing to hit the mark of God’s commands. There are a great number of things we should not do, but most of these can be avoided if we focus on the two greatest commands by Jesus: love God and love others. These two things completely envelope the ten commandments by God.
We will find ourselves tempted by sin when our focus is on anything other than God and when we chose to be selfish rather than showing love to our friends, neighbors, family, etc. Just a little sin in our lives will cloud our judgements, make it easier to sin more, and then we will find ourselves in trouble.
But there is good news and that of course is Jesus Christ. When we turn to Jesus daily and allow Him to be boss, sin has no power over us. When we allow Jesus to fill our lives through studying the Bible and spending time talking to God each day, we receive a supernatural power to avoid sins. Watch this little demonstration that represents how Jesus can help us overcome our sins.
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