Proverbs 5:22-23, Sin’s Tyranny!

March 2, Proverbs 5:22-23

Acts 12:20-23; Rom. 7:24 “Let the wicked fall into their own nets” (Ps. 141:10).

Sin’s Tyranny!

What a tender, precious picture Hosea paints of God’s training of Israel, which, alas, failed of the desired goal (Pr. 11:4). God says through the prophet, I drew them with cords of a man, even with bands of love. These are the cords of God’s grace. Israel, like a little child, is being taught to go,and is upheld, in those first baby-steps, by the loving parent’s cords. Now, Solomon speaks of the cords of one’s own sin. To reject the cords of God’s gentle leading is to become the victim of sin’s cruel chains of oppression and bondage. Sin becomes its own stick for punishing sinners. As virtue is its own reward, so sin its own rebuke. If man has no regard for the Eye of God, he must face the result of God’s wrath.

1. The Trafficker Tricked: Wickedness has unintended results. His own iniquities take him (v.22a). The sinner thinks to enjoy liberty but finds himself a remorseless prisoner of his own sins. They arrest him in his wilful career. Evil deeds become evil habits (his goings). It is so much easier to for bad ones than good. Sin is like the first gentle touch of the octopus, but soon it draws its victim in tighter and tighter until it crushes him. This is surely an apt picture of how sin tricks its victims!
2. The Taker Trapper: He shall be holden with the cords of his own sin (v.22b). Evil deeds quickly begin to imprison. The sinner weaves his own chains that enclose around him, linking him to his past actions. He is caught as in a vice from which he cannot free himself even though he may say he wants to. He is like a wild animal in a net from which there is no apparent means of escape (Isa. 51:20; Jer. 13:23). Someone has suggested that this is like Rom. 8:28 in reverse.
3. The Trifler Tormented: He shall die; he shall go astray (v.23). He trifled with instruction and discipline, and now there won’t be any. He sinned away the day of grace. Despair sets in when hope goes, and earthly and eternal issues surely result. He loved the darkness. He shut his eyes against what light he had and dies in the darkness he loved. In the greatness of his folly he is led away to – perdition (2 Pet. 2:14-15). Sin banishes the soul from good, from heaven and from God, but we have not done with our sins when we have done them. Let us draw another lesson from Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan tells of three characters called Simple, Sloth, and Presumption. They are types of religious indifference. They are “three men, a little out of the way, fast asleep, with fetters upon their hills. Christian seeing them in this case went to them, if peradventure he might awake them.” They are only a little out of the way. It is still within easy reach, but unknown to them fetters have been forged about their feet while they slept. All efforts to rouse them failed. In the Second part, Bunyan tells of Simple, Sloth, and Presumption “hanged up in irons a little way off on the other side.” At first they were only threads, but became fetters of iron!

Thought: “Ponder your path and you will have nothing to fear when God ponders it.”

Prayer: Lord, hold me in the cords of Thy love and deliver me from the cords of sin.