45. The Bait of Satan

Welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 45 the bait of Satan The deception in fishing

Growing up in the foothills of North Carolina My grandpa and I used every excuse conceivable to steal away out to the water so that we had dropped a line and go fishing

It didn't matter to us if we were trolling quietly up the Yadkin River sitting on the bank under the shade of a weeping willow tree in flip -flops on the sandy shore of the

Holden Beach or miles from land in my papa's boat Rocking rhythmically to the waves and cooled by the misty wind we were happy So long as we had a rod in our hand a fish on the line and the

Sun at our backs That was hog heaven now in case you've never been fishing before one of the core principles of that enterprise is deception a

Great fisherman will not only have the proper gear for his location, but he will invest the effort towards Understanding the desires and the inclinations of the fish that he's hunting

Then after he understands that much he will liberally give them precisely whatever it is that they want yet with one metallic twist

You see the idea behind fishing is to take something That's good something that the fish really cannot resist and then to hide a barbed dagger

Inside of it to latch on to them as soon as they indulge in their desires their ignorant lust for the lure is what leads them to their tragic demise in this sense the bait is

What drags them from their safety and security to the grill and to the plate the whole process is?

Quite gruesome when you actually think about it Satanic similarities in The garden

Satan adopted a very similar posture towards mankind He cleverly disguised that first golden hook of sin and the beautiful flesh of a forbidden fruit

And he tossed the perfect cast right before the lustful eyes of Eve He said for God knows that when you eat of it

You will your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good from evil and her eyes dazzled

With a peculiar glimmer that had never been known before Instantly she wanted this thing more than anything else that she owned and then after sharing it with her husband that barbed hook of guilt shame and death dragged the

Unsuspecting couple into the boat of Satan and away from the tranquil pleasures of knowing

God Now the same is true for us today Satan lures us away from God by using our unholy affections

Like a good fisherman. He's studied us. Well, and he chooses the exact bait and temptation that we love so that we will not resist and while the bait may differ from person to person depending on the

Peculiarities and personality of that person the hook will always be the same

Every temptation that we seek our teeth into regardless of what it is that is attracting us will lead us to the same destination

Once that satanic hook is set in the lip of the soul. We find ourselves dragged violently away from God For this reason our greatest offense must not be spent trying to get off the hook once we've clamped down but instead

Fighting our desires today so that we do not fall for the bait tomorrow

To that end, let me give you three things to think about as you seek to avoid sin and temptation and Gain victory in your own life.

Number one scripture defines sin as corruption Every Christian knows that we should avoid sin and temptation

I hardly need to describe that fact since it nears the realm of truism From our earliest moments in the kingdom.

We've been taught that sin and temptation are utterly dangerous And they're damaging to the soul of man

They are not shiny little treats for us to nibble on and be nourished by on occasion instead

They are piercing daggers dragging us from our intimacy with God Paul along with the rest of Holy Scripture speaks about sin as a poison that we dare not ingest

Arrows to be armored up against rotten flesh that ought never to be gratified

Instead of caving to our carnality We are encouraged and admonished through scripture to beat it thoroughly into submission

We are reproved to make consistent and diligent war upon our flesh and upon our sin.

Why? Because sin is more deadly than the most aggressive forms of terminal cancer

It must be Abandoned and we must flee from it if we have even a modicum of desire for spiritual victory or nearness with the living

God we would do well to share the opinion of the

Puritans who made some of the most vivid claims about the nature of sin of Anyone in church history after they studied the scripture most diligently they had the most to say about what sin was for instance

Thomas Watson once said what fools are they? Who for a drop of pleasure would drink a sea of wrath

Thomas Brooks who wrote the definitive guide for avoiding temptations described it this way. He said sin is a plague

Yes, the worst and most infectious plague in the world and yet all How few there are who tremble at it who keep a distance from it

You see when we let scripture and faithful divines from church history aid us in understanding What sin really is then the only?

Logical action resulting from that knowledge would be to direct all of our energy and effort to consistently avoiding sin

Number two sin offers fleeting pleasures We should also avoid sin because the temporary pleasures that it affords us will quickly fade into soul eroding sorrows

Untold misery and shame that binds itself to the soul like wet superglue on the fingers Like a cup of antifreeze sin will probably go down tasting sweet, but it will soon wreak havoc upon the bowels

You see sin cannot deliver upon its promises for whatever droplet of pleasure that may be gained a wave of pain and torrent is forming to afflict you

For those who are in Christ The good news is that sin? cannot and will not permanently separate us from our

God, but Just like the North Carolina coastline and the tide

It will drag you down the coastline away from the ones that you love as you look up you you seem that you're further and further

And further away just because the tide is pulling you down the coast. That is what sin does over time

It brings distance and division between you and the one your soul loves and that is

God Again we may praise Jesus with all our hearts that he's paid the damnation that our sin has earned we may be rightly

Ecstatic over the moon about it that we finally forever will not be separated from God in Jesus Christ our

Lord We can say yes and amen to that, but oh how foolish it would be

To know the love of God and to go on ignoring sins paralyzing effects

For while it will not condemn us. That's right It will vandalize us

Though it may not damn us It most certainly will distract us and distance us from the pleasure of knowing

Christ knowing that Our most reasonable effort would be to avoid sin at all cost

Lest we get hooked on to something that we really do not want dragged away from the one that we do

Sin cannot satisfy our hearts. They were made for something more and that more is

Christ Number three sin leads to accusations

The third reason that we should avoid sin is because indulging in it gives Satan free reign to accuse us

Just like forgetting to close the hen house door mocks the Fox and dares him to come in Sin lays out the red carpet for the dragon of old to come into your life and torment you

That is his modus operandi In fact, his name Satan from the

Greek satanas means the accuser Which is more than an appropriate title for him

You see when we sin in addition to the guilt and the shame that we inherit Satan is waiting eagerly to pounce upon you

Ready to hurl accusations at you the moment that we give in He lies to us with a silver tongue while wooing us into our sin and then pierces us with his scaly abominable lips once we have fallen like a

Concentration camp for captured soldiers sin gets us caught behind enemy lines waiting to be tortured by our captor and With one lie after another he buries us in the bonds of shame regret and self -loathing

Conclusion our best defense and our sure remedy Our best defense against these schemes is to avoid them altogether if we are diligent and fleeing the bait of Satan by the power of the

Holy Spirit diligent to avoid Temptations in our life to flee from sin when it presents itself, then we may remain safe from the perils of that awful hook

Paul teaches us this principle in Romans 12 9 when he says detest what is evil and cling to what is good

This is the remedy and the cure for our temptations abhor what is evil run from it flee from it

Do not indulge it and then With all your heart cling to what is good Both of these actions are necessary.