Snared by Our Own Deception

May 29

In order for a snare to be effective, it must be cleverly camouflaged. Any fisherman knows he can’t simply toss a hook into the water. If he expects a fish to bite, the hook must have a lure, something attractive to the fish to first draw him to the hook and then entice him to bite…a juicy worm, perhaps.

Proverbs 1:17, 18 puts it this way, “It is foolish to spread a net where any bird can see it, but they set an ambush to kill themselves, they attack their own lives.”
Wait a minute! This is more than mere advice on how to snare a bird for dinner! There is a meaning of even greater import in these words!

Here the writer of Proverbs is acknowledging something any hunter knew in those days when food was obtained through ones own effort, not at the meat counter at the grocery store. Part of the strategy to capture the intended meal was to disguise the trap. When we disguise our sin, when we make it attractive, we are setting ourselves up to succumb to the same kind of lure that will destroy our spiritual well-being.

Though we grasp the need to hide our agenda from the unsuspecting menu item, we overlook the ambush we set for ourselves when we elect to venture into the snare of sin! We veil our intent with self-justification—everyone does it, it won’t hurt anyone—and we fail to recognize the deadly end of our self-made trap! Jesus came to set us free from the enemy of our souls and from our own complicity in his attempts to snare us!