Now in Hebrew, the 'o' does not exist; we just put the 'o' in English, so you know how to pronounce it. In Hebrew it's just: A, V and N; or: Alef; Vav; and Noon. Now the picture of A is an eye; the picture of Vav was a hook; and Noon was fish that were multiplying. So it's kind of like one fish becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight - like it looks like that.
By the way, can you imagine being a scribe between Moses and David? Like all the psalms would have been written like this!
So when a Hebrew person read: ‘Inequity’, they would see this word: Eye + Hook + Fish-Multiplying. So when a Hebrew person read ‘Inequity’, what they read was: “whatever your eye hooks-to, multiplies”.
If you've ever done premarital counseling, you know this to be true; because two people come, and they're in love, and their eye is hooked to all the good things. I've had them sit in my office, and I'm saying: “are you sure that you want to do this”? “Yes”. I'm like: “sir, have you seen the way she acts, when she doesn't get her way”? He's like: “oh yeah, but it'll be okay, we're in looove”!
How many of you know, like four months into that, it's like a disaster right; because your eye - it's not because anything's changed. It's just because the focus of your eye has changed to something different. The focus of your eye has changed.
How many of you have ever been guilty of: focusing on everything you don't have; instead of being thankful for what you do? Whatever your eye hooks to, multiplies. Has anybody, besides me, ever been guilty of wanting something really, really bad; to the point where we thought we'd die without it; and then we get it, and it's not what we thought it was? That's what this is. Its inequity.
I'm just using this as an example of their pictures; but this should give us a revelation on grace; and that is, that there's three levels to sin in the Hebrew culture. I always say ‘levels’, but that makes it sound like one's worse than the other, so we'll say ‘stages’.
Stage one is: Inequity; and that's when your eye hooks to something, and it starts multiplying. So let's say, I want this pen. My eye hooks to this pen; and my need for it on the inside starts to grow. Even if I look over here, my eye's still drawn to this pen. Any guy here ever been on a car lot, and your eye gets drawn to the V8 - even though petrol's $1.85 a litre! Your eye gets drawn to the V8, because you'll be more of a man if you have the V8. Chicks dig the V8; and so the eye gets hooked to it.
Now at some point in that journey of my eye hooking to this, it starts multiplying. It creates something that the Bible calls a lust; and once that lust is in us, and we are enticed by it - that's when the Bible says we sin.
The Bible says: a person sins when he's drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. So my eye hooks to it, it creates a lust, and now I'm having a lust for this pen. I really want it. I need it. I have to have it in my life. I might die without that pen.
Come on, this is about all of us, isn't it? I mean it might not be a pen, but it could be something else; and so that's sin. That's level two - so you've got Inequity; and then you've got Sin.
The third stage is: Transgression, when I actually take the pen. It's when I actually do something. So in the Old Testament, could you prosecute somebody for Inequity? Could you prosecute somebody for having inequity in their heart? Absolutely not! Why? Because you didn't know it was there. How would you know?
Could you prosecute somebody for sin? No, because you don't know it's there. However, you could prosecute somebody for transgression; because if you had two or three witnesses of somebody transgressing the law, that's when you could prosecute them.
So Jesus comes along, and He starts blowing people away. He starts saying things like: you have heard it said: “don't murder”. Now is murder: Inequity; a Sin; or a Transgression? It's a transgression.
He said: “you've heard it said: don't commit murder; but I say to you: don't hate” - so He starts bringing the standard back to Inequity.