Too often we consider what we do to be the sin, but that is just the result of our sin.
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For example, let’s say I am married and have a sexual encounter with someone who is not my wife, that is adultery and adultery is defined in the Torah as a sin.
But is the act of adultery the sin, or is the real sin wanting to commit the adultery? What I am saying is that adultery is just the result of my sin- the real sin was my decision to commit adultery.
What’s the difference?… I’m glad you asked!
Let’s look at the teaching Yeshua gave us about the Torah when he gave that Sermon on the Mount.
He taught us more than just the plain-language meaning (called the P’shat) of the Torah, he taught us the deeper, spiritual understanding of what God wants from us (called the Remes).
(If you are not familiar with those terms, please take a moment and look up PaRDeS)
When he said not to commit adultery wasn’t enough because we shouldn’t even lust with our eyes, he was telling us that the sin wasn’t in the doing, but in the desiring.
Committing adultery was not the actual sin; wanting to commit adultery was the sin, wanting to do it was the disobedience to God, and the sexual encounter was only the result of the sin.
He also said not to murder wasn’t enough, but that we shouldn’t even hate in our heart; in other words, the sin isn’t committing the murder, the sin is wanting to commit the murder.
Does this remind you of anyone, maybe like King David? That is why in Psalm 51 he said his sin was against God, and God, alone. He knew that even though he had sex with Bat-Sheba, and even though he planned Uriah’s death, those actions were the result of his wanting to do those things, which was the actual sin against God.
And let’s also recall what the real New Covenant says (Jeremiah 31:31), which is that God will write his Torah on our hearts. That means we won’t be thinking what does the Torah require, we will be a living Torah. There won’t be need to remember what the Torah says, no more so than having to remember to pump blood or to blink our eyes.
Obedience to God’s way of living will be as natural to us as breathing.
The problem is that this covenant won’t be fulfilled until the Acharit haYamim (End Days) are over, so until then we will have to purposefully remember not to commit that adultery in our hearts or murder someone in our thoughts, which is the sin.
This is also an example of why Legalism is so dangerous- it is based on your actions, not your thoughts or desires, so you could want to have sex with someone not your spouse or murder someone in your thoughts, over and over, but as long as you didn’t really do it, you were OK.
Well, no- not really.
So, my suggestion is that the next time you want to do something you know you shouldn’t, stop right then and there and ask God to forgive you (by means of the shed blood of Messiah Yeshua) in order to be clean.
Sadly, we cannot always (if ever!) stop thoughts from entering our heads, especially if we are in a highly emotional state, but we better try because if we so much as think of committing a sin, we already have.
Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!