Thirty-five million people.

Three times the population of Greece, Portugal, or Cuba.
More than double the population of the Netherlands or Chile.
Equal to the total population of Canada.
A little less than the population of California.

Thirty-five million people. All searching for something.

All searching in the wrong place.The wrong place is Ashley Madison, a website for married people who seek to cheat on their spouses. The website motto, “Life is short. Have an affair,” doesn’t just acknowledge the reality of adultery; their motto encourages it.

But recently, the website users lost their cloak of privacy…and the clichés abound.

The betrayers have been betrayed.

You made your bed, now lie in it. (No pun intended.)

Be sure your sin will find you out. (This one is biblical.)

But consider:

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. (That one’s biblical, too.)

Of course, we don’t condone sin. However, neither should we rejoice when others are caught red-handed in their sin. We should weep with them and for them. Weep for broken lives, broken marriages, broken families.

When it comes to sin, there’s never a cause to rejoice…well, maybe just one cause to rejoice.

We rejoice that Jesus Christ died to pay for all sin.

Yours and mine.

Public and private.

Major and minor.

Adultery and gossip.

Murder and lying.

Theft and greed.

Or as the apostle Paul put it…

“Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:9-11, NIV).

Your sin may be different from mine. It may be more public than mine. It may even be determined by some to be worse than mine. But we are all guilty before a holy God and we all need a Savior.

Whatever our sin, let’s not justify it because “everyone is doing it.” We’ve already seen how easily thirty-five million people can be wrong.