How Big Is A Sin?

0:59This is big. Why would a child, why would a seven-year-old tell you it's this big? Because that's the way it looks from here. You look at the star and say, "This is how big it is; that's it, that's the star." But as an adult, whether you're 30, 40, or 50 years old, you know it's not this big, even though it looks that way. That’s the issue at hand. The only reason you even question fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu is because you have no idea how significant a sin truly is in Shamayim (Heaven). You have no idea how HaKadosh Baruch Hu evaluates a sin in Shamayim. You think like a seven-year-old. It's this big, because it wasn't such a big deal to you when you did it. So what? So I looked at her once. Wow, what's the big deal, Hashem? There are eight billion people. Do You care that I looked at that one? 8 billion people. I looked at one. I didn't look at all 8 billion. Just one I looked at. For 5, 10, 15, 25 minutes. Why? 8 billion people, 24 hours a day. I spent 5 minutes looking at the girl that wasn't my wife. No. No, Hashem. What's the big deal? It's just a quarter. No, it's just this big. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says, no, my friend. You think it's that big.

2:08Those who bow to Hashem see an entire picture of what happens. Now, He sees not just what you see; He sees what's going to happen as a result. He perceives the outcomes both in this world and the world above. Let's evaluate: now, you looked at the girl... Five minutes, not a big deal, right? Two minutes, 25 seconds, whatever it is, your neshama records permanently every single thing that you look at. What is it like? Sometimes your mom asks you, "Honey, do you know where the such and such is?" "No, I don't really know. I don't know, I don't really know." Three hours later, you need that tool, you need that thing, and you know exactly where it is. How come? When you were walking around the house, you saw it, but you just didn't pay attention. So when she asked you, you didn't know, you didn't care, but when you needed it, when it meant something to you, your neshama repeated that information to you and told you exactly where that tool is, exactly what you wanted. The priority list changed. When a person looks at something inappropriate,

3:27The neshamah will record it permanently. And what ends up happening is that he's going to think about that when he goes to sleep. He's going to think about that maybe even 25 years later when he has his wife and six kids. He's going to think about that image that he saw when he was 18, 19, or 20 years old. Now it's a problem. Why? It's going to create a dream. Or perhaps it's going to create a reality. And the Chachamim say in the Shulchan Aruch, in different types of commentary, and Rabbi Yosef Karo himself says that if you wake up out of a dream, and you thought about some woman in your dream, and you wake up and your wife is there, the Shulchan Aruch says you're not allowed to touch her. But she's my wife. Exactly, she's your wife. But you just had a dream about another woman, so you are not allowed to touch your wife. Until when? Until you calm down. Why? So long as the thought of another woman is in your mind, Rabbi Yochanan says in the Gemara, if you touch your wife and it consummates to a baby, it could be considered a mamzer, an illegitimate child in Shamayim (Heaven).

4:43Why? Yeah, but it was with my wife. Yes, but your mind was somewhere else. That's how important the mind is. So now an average person is not going to think like this. He's even going to laugh about something like this. What are you, crazy? What are you, this? What are you, that? So then HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to tell you, wait a minute, look, you looked at this Precious neshamah, her father's a nice rabbi, her mother's a nice rebbetzin, they worked their whole life to make sure that they give a good education to their kid, and now one day, they're going to find out that you looked at her. When are they going to find out? When they're in Shamayim. And it's going to be embarrassing to them in Shamayim, that you looked at their daughter inappropriately. And the point is, Rabotai Yekarim, the magnitude of the sin, the magnitude of the effect, can be much greater than what we perceive in this world. It's a reminder of how we must be cautious with our actions and mindful of the reverence we owe to others' dignity. The reality we see is not always the entire picture; HaKadosh Baruch Hu's perspective encompasses far more than we can imagine. of a simple thing that we take for granted is shown to us in such a big way that we realize that, after all, it's not this small. It's not this small. In fact, it's not even this small. When HaKadosh Baruch Hu looks at things, it's very, very different. Where do we learn an example of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu looks at things? In last week's parasha. Anyone that read last week's parasha, the parasha of the Meraglim,

6:04In the parasha of the Meraglim, we had 12 spies, 12 people that started off the parasha, and they were called Rashei Yisrael. They were called the heads of Yisrael. What does it mean, heads of Yisrael? The biggest tzaddikim. The biggest multi-millionaires? No, no. The biggest rabbis in Eretz Yisrael. In Am Yisrael. The biggest rabbis. Yehoshua ben Nun, Kalev ben Yefuneh, and so on and so forth. These twelve went to the land of Israel, which was called Canaan at the time. They saw giants and got scared to death. They ran back and couldn't control themselves, saying a bunch of things that were inappropriate about the land of Israel. Even more so, they said something inappropriate about Hashem. Where they said, yeah, we understand that Hashem promised a land of milk and honey, but there are giants there. And they're stronger than us. Rashi explains, what does it mean they're stronger than us? They were implying that the giants are so big, they're even stronger than Hashem. This is kfirah, which is heresy. How can you think that anything in the world is stronger than Hashem? Hashem punished them severely.

7:29Now, how did He punish them? I mentioned this a little bit on Sunday, but even more so, Hashem wants us to get to know Him in this parsha. And He says, 40 days, 40 years, and you have known My actions. The Holy One says, because... You went there, you twelve Meraglim, ten out of the twelve sinned. They said negative things. Hashem says they're not going to see the land. However, two of you, Yehoshua and Caleb, spoke good things. Mashiach is going to come from one of them, and so on and so forth with good things. The other ten spoke negatively about the Land of Israel. You're going to get punished like the rest of the people who followed you, which unfortunately was the entire generation. How are you going to get punished? He says, like the number of days that you spent in the land. How much time did you spend in the land? 40 days. A year for each day, a year for each day, shall you bear your iniquities for 40 years. And you shall comprehend straying away from Me, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says.

8:45you went there for 40 days. You saw what you saw. You came back. The sin itself was really four seconds—it took them four seconds to say something negative about Eretz Yisrael. But let's call it 40 minutes. They had a 40-minute conversation. Hashem says, even if it was 40 days, we're going to count every day that you went there as a day with consequences, leading to a 40-year punishment. Each day received a one-year punishment. Meaning, HaKadosh Baruch Hu's time span is very different. We think that a sin may give us a small sentence, a small punishment, no big deal. In Hashem's eyes, it's a big deal. Something that took ten people literally a few seconds to do resulted in an entire generation being punished for forty years. And what does Hashem say at the end? From here, you're going to learn what it means to go against me. Meaning, He's not just saying, "Listen, I'm going to punish you and that's it." No, no. "I'm punishing you, but I'm also teaching you." what it means to go against Me. Meaning, He's not saying, listen, I'm going to punish you and that's it. No, no. I'm punishing you, but I'm also teaching you.

9:55What am I teaching you? You may think that saying something bad doesn't have that much value because, from your perspective, it's limited. It's limited that you looked at something inappropriate. It's limited that you ate something inappropriate. It's limited how something seems from your perspective. Hashem says, I see the whole picture, and I'm going to punish based on the whole picture. So it took you 40 seconds, but the punishment is 40 years. For who? For everybody involved. Who was everybody? The entire generation. So, this Rabotai, if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what would. That's why the Chachamim, when they write it in the Sefarim HaKadoshim, the holy books, they're constantly talking about being afraid of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And very rarely do they talk about loving Hashem. Even though they love Hashem, and I wish, I wish that any one of us would simply be the dust they walked on one time in our life.

10:55I wish we could achieve such a degree, but the reality is... In our generation, you have many, many people thinking that they're even bigger than the Tzaddikim. They love Hashem. Why? They did Teshuvah last week, started keeping Shabbat, and began wearing Tzitzit. They're for sure lovers of Hashem. Even though the Tzaddikim themselves barely talked about it. What does it mean? Rabbi Ephraim says it just means that we have no idea how big the star really is. Our knowledge is like the knowledge of the seven-year-old. The seven-year-old who thinks the star is this big, even though in reality the star is the sun, which is 93 million miles away from Earth and much larger than the Earth, doesn’t grasp the full scope of Hashem's creation. Adjusting one's understanding with age and wisdom is part of our growth in appreciating the divine wonders of the universe.