Beet Juice and Sin

          I have come to like a vegetable that I didn't care for in the past and it is the “beet.” I found a recipe for making “Harvard Beets” and made up a bunch of them and really liked them. The only problem is the beet juice. It would make a good clothing dye as it spreads everywhere quickly. It stained my sink, the knife, my hands and I even had a few spots on my shirt. I had beet juice everywhere. Some things are just prone to spread. I remember once putting a drop of black ink into a glass of water and watched as it slowly spread until the contents of the whole glass was made a different color. It is like the “plague” of the day. We always seem to have them and they come and go and trying to stop them from spreading is like trying to keep the ink from contaminating the whole glass of water or keeping the beet juice off of my hands. We do try to slow it down with our feeble attempts to control it but in the end, it just seems to pop up everywhere. Matthew 16:11-12 says, “ How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

           Germs are one thing and leaven is another but there are some similarities between the two. I sometimes ask myself, “Where did I get this cold?” They say that a cold germ can be contacted fourteen days before it manifests itself in your body. It could have come from the hospital visits, or the nursing home or one of the family members or the grocery store or even the gas pump. Somehow, one little germ got in and spoiled my night of rest with a runny nose and a sore throat and then the coughing that follows. The Lord Jesus Christ gave us an example of how things can spread when He used the comparison of sin to that of leaven. It could be the sin of false doctrine or any other sin that comes along in our daily life. Leavening and flour are interesting to watch. I put a little tablespoon of yeast into four cups of flour and the whole thing blows up and the longer I leave it, the bigger it grows. Sin has a way of doing the same thing in our lives. It doesn't take a large amount as a small sin will be sufficient. Just one little teeny, weeny sin makes a person unfit for heaven. It could be the smallest of sins maybe even an unkind thought about someone else or a hastily spoken word that harmed a person or the “theft” of the ball point pen from work that the company had paid for. Maybe it was not praying when you should have been doing so or maybe it was ignoring God last Thursday. Whatever the sin, it took place and now the whole lump is a mess. Fortunately for us, God solved that problem by sending His Son to make the full payment for not only that first sin, but every other one that we committed. We often sing the little hymn, “Jesus Paid it All,” and realize that it is true and reminds us that we were unable to make that payment. Perhaps there is some wisdom in trying to curb a virus from spreading and there is also much more wisdom in locating the cure for sin. The results of sin are far more devastating then any virus ever could be because of the eternal results that will follow. The “Z” pack for the problem of sin isn't found in a pill but in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God that He has taken care of the problem of sin by sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to make the all sufficient payment for each and every sin. There is, indeed, Power in the Blood.