God Expects Us To Deal With It

 

A student came into the Principal’s Office one day with a surprise. “Ex­cuse me, but there’s a snake in the hallway.” “What?” the Principal asked. “Yeah! A snake, right outside your office door!” The Principal opened the door, and sure enough, there was the foot-long garter snake, motionless in the middle of the hallway floor a full 50 feet from the front door. He deftly picked it up (the student said, “Eeewww!”) and took it outside, releas­ing it in a flower bed with the Vulcan gesture and farewell greeting, “Live long and prosper!”

Returning to his office, he began to medi­tate about how often the spiritual Serpent (Revelation 12:7-9) has entered the Christian student center and how often he slithers into the church building, thinking he must be a regular vis­itor at both places. In fact, he’s been sliding into the homes and assemblies of the righteous for eons, inflicting pain, suffering, and death wherever he is not discovered and tossed out. How can we deal with the Serpent more effectively? A sim­ple plan would correspond to what one must do to keep that snake out of every righteous environment. * Prevent the Serpent from entering in the first place. There may be a ne­glected opening through which he en­ters again and again. Find it and stop it up. * Assume that he will be trying to get in or is in already. The Serpent likes nothing better than to sow dis­cord among believers (Galatians 5:16-26) or to cause saints to stumble (Luke 22:31-32). No doubt Christians are tops on his list of in­tended victims. * Look around for him. He may be right out in the open without notice. He may be hiding behind good intentions, competi­tion, or hurt pride. * If you find him, get rid of him imme­diately. The larger snakes grow, the more troublesome they become. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

[Galatians 6:1-2] “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Wilbur Chapman tells of a distinguished minister who preached on sin. One of his leading members came to him and said, “Please don’t talk so plainly about sin. It will give our young ones the wrong idea. Call it a ‘mistake’ if you will.” The preacher took a bottle of strychnine that was marked ‘Poison’ and showed it to his visitor. He said, “I understand what you want me to do. You want me to change the label of ‘Sin’. Suppose I take the label off this bottle and replace it with a label that reads ‘oil of Anise’ or some other mild liquid. Can you see the danger in what you are asking me to do? The milder one makes the label, the more dangerous it makes the poison.” The world hardly recognizes sin anymore. It’s been replaced with far too many politically correct names to mellow its destruction.

Why is it that some people begin to object aloud, and some people are ready to ignore obvious sin? Why is it that when sins are obvious and public we sit and say nothing? Oh, my, did I step on some toes! Why is it that we will stand strong on some obvious sinful situations and say absolutely nothing about others that are even more obvious or egregious? Is it because we have our own man-made rating system of sins. We don’t look at all sin as bad. Some sin we seem to make allowance for. Some sin would require confronting people by which we are intimidated, so we let it slide rather than experiencing personal criticism. There are a lot of reasons we do so, but we aren’t consistent, are we? 

“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). God expects us to deal with sin. Ignoring sin is not an option!