As a Pastor, I have a very interesting perspective each week: I get to be reminded that our enemy really is not very creative! The reason? …he doesn’t have to be! Thomas Watson wrote: “Sin first courts, and then kills….” The enemy tends to divert our attention from glorifying God, to forgetting God, and then allows us to live for self. As I have watched how sin works in my life and in the lives of people I have the joy of serving, I have found three truths:
• Sin is deceitful: Sin is the ultimate con game. Unlike most con games though, the desire of sin is not to separate us and our money, but sin desires to separate us and our God. Somehow we are deceived into believing the same way Adam and Eve believed - that our loving, kind, gracious God actually doesn’t have our best interest at heart. Sin causes us to believe (although not consciously) that we are not accountable to God, but God is accountable to us. He is to make us happy; He is here for our enjoyment and when life doesn’t bring enjoyment, He has let us down, so I am justified in finding it for myself. We, in some warped sinful way, believe we have become a victim by God, therefore we long for more than God.
• Sin is enticing: Remember Genesis 3? The serpent simply leads Eve to question God’s command. Then, after looking at the sin and listening to the enemy, somehow Eve concludes that she is not accountable to God - but she is, in fact, a victim of this insecure God who didn’t want her to have the best.
• Sin Betrays: It never gives what it promises. It is never what you thought it would be. The enemy never tells us the end game. If David would have known what his lust would do to his family, if he would have seen the damage in advance, he would have ran the other way. If Samson would have known what his sin would cost him, he would have ran from Delilah. There are countless men and women, who never believed sin would betray them, and they have fallen victim to its grip.
I pray that these simple reminders will keep all of us leaning on God’s wonderful, amazing grace! As believers we don’t have to live in sin’s grip - we are more than conquerors through Christ!
