Monday, May 19, 2014
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When you work in a ministry as I do, your spending priorities are usually more on people than on things. For example, we have never invested real heavily in office furniture. We've sort of waited for what the Lord supplied, and God has really met our needs. Now, sometimes that gives our office sort of an eclectic look; it's not one style, but it's nice-it's functional. I remember when I once received a new guest chair for my office. It was a nice, black leather swivel chair, and it was a busy chair; a lot of people in and out of there. And it was always so interesting to watch people get in and out of it; especially out. It was relatively easy to plop down into this chair, but there was something about the height and the angle that made it a struggle to get out. You know, life has a lot of positions like that, doesn't it?
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Easy to Get In, Hard to Get Out."
Our word for today from the Word of God is from the first Psalm. There's a lot of Psalms, but this is the first one, and we're only going to read the first verse. It says this: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat" (or there's the chair) "...in the seat of mockers."
This verse is really about how easy it is to get into the wrong thing and how hard it is to get out of it. Sounds like a chair I once met. Notice the three postures here. First, you walk. It says, "In the middle of some wrong things." Now, you're just flirting with it; you're just "walking in the counsel of the wicked." You're exposed briefly to it. You're kind of listening to what they have to say. You plan to move on; you're walking, you're in motion. Not a serious issue; it's just a little glimpse – just walking.
Then it talks about "standing in the way of sinners." Uh-oh! Slow down now! I'm spending more time around the wrong thing; I'm soaking up more wrong input. My resistance is eroding. It's starting to look a little more interesting than I thought it would. And you notice where the person ends up who was just walking, and then standing? They're sitting in the seat of mockers. Sitting in the middle of sin? I never planned to do this. Suddenly I'm in it.
You may very well be in that sinking process right now without even knowing it and God directed you here today to point it out. You're walking with sin. You're not doing it; you're just letting yourself get close; flirt with it a little bit, a small lie, a few immoral fantasies, a little compromise of your honesty and integrity. You're not doing anything, you're just fantasizing. A little cheating, some media input that glamorizes what God hates, some dark thoughts.
Or maybe you've come to the point where you're standing in the middle of what God hates. It's getting harder not to do it isn't it? You're on your way to the slavery stage. See, sin seduces you slowly...not to make you happy, but to take you prisoner. Would you please run before you're all the way in? Don't get hooked. Are you flirting with what you should be fleeing from? The devil will do everything necessary to make it easy for you to walk into his trap: good looks, good feelings, green lights, great promises, and then you will hear that cell door slam shut and he will lock you in.
Just ask anyone who sat in that chair in my office. The easiest time to get out is before you get in.