During my morning devotions the other day I read the following story told by the Puritan scholar Joseph Mede:
"I once walked into a garden with a lady to gather some flowers. There was one large bush whose branches were bending under the weight of the most beautiful roses. We both gazed upon it with admiration. There was one flower on it which seemed to outshine all the rest in beauty. This lady pressed forward into the think bush, and reached far over to pluck it. As She did this, a black snake, which was hid in the bush, wrapped itself around her arm. She was alarmed beyond all descriptions; she ran from the garden, screaming, and almost in convulsions. During all that day she suffered very much with fear; her whole body trembled, and it was a long time before she could be calmed . . . Such is her hatred now of the whole serpent race, that she has never since been able to look at a snake, even a dead one. No one could ever persuade her to venture again into a cluster of bushes, even to pluck a beautiful rose."
Joseph Mede uses this story to make the following point:
"Now this is the way the sinner acts who truly repents of his sins. He thinks of sin as the serpent that once coiled itself around him. He hates it. He dreads it.He flees from it. He fears the places where it inhabits. he does not willingly go into the haunts. He will no more play with sin than this lady would afterwards have fondled snakes."
In a short devotion, Mede makes a powerful point. Consider where the snake which wrapped itself around the lady hid - in the most beautiful bush of roses. The one that someone would most certainly be drawn to. It is only after the woman makes herself completely vulnerable that the snake attacks.
This is the way of sin. It deceives. it disguises. It ambushes. We see this first in the book of Genesis, chapter 3, when the serpent deceives Adam and Eve by making that which God had commanded them not to do seem like the most wonderful thing in the world and by convincing them that God wouldn't really be upset with them if they did what he told them not to do. Sin works the same way in the lives of Christians today. It disguises itself as something which is harmless but in reality is dangerous to our spiritual well-being. It disguises itself as something desirable and yet in reality is something destructive. It disguises itself as the way of wisdom, but actually leads to the way of fools. When sin has successfully deceived the believer with the disguise it has chosen, it proceeds to ambush the believer.
Mede's solution for the Christian who truly has repented of their sin is to avoid sin and the places it inhabits. In his devotion, he cites I Timothy 6:11 which reads, "But as for you O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness."(ESV) What are the "these things" mentioned in the verse? Well verse 11 follows a section of scripture which describes various sins which arise from false teaching and the love of money. So the "these things" are sin. In Genesis 4, God warned Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, that sin was crouching at his door ready to harm him. Cain did not heed God's warning. The snake wrapped itself around him, and he was not able to escape, and and as a result he murdered his own brother. In the book of First Peter chapter 5, the apostle warns the church to beware of it's enemy the Devil, who is the father and master of sin, because he is roaming around like a lion looking for someone to devour. May we heed the warnings of scripture and be aware that sin is always seeking to attack us. May we remember it will attack us by working to deceive us, and then it will hurt us. Let us be like the woman in the story who was attacked by the serpent. Let us hate sin, and stay as far away from it as we can always remembering that as Christians we have been born of God and through the faith God has granted us, we can overcome the world (I John 5:4)
Pastor Wayne
