Mr. and Mrs. Cameron had been fishing all afternoon, but they had not caught a single fish. Over on the shore, though, a small boy seemed to be pulling in one fish after another. Finally, the Camerons decided to go over and ask him what he was using for bait.
“There are lots of worms under there,” he said, pointing to a rotting log. “They make good bait, but they bite your hand a bit when you put them on the hook. If you want some, there’s lots of them.”
Worms that bite? That just didn’t sound right, so Mrs. Cameron decided she had better check out these “worms.” She lifted the log and found . . . a nest of poisonous, baby copperhead snakes! In alarm she called to the boy, “These aren’t worms . . . they’re copperhead snakes! Let me see your hands!”
The boy’s hands were covered with tiny bites and were beginning to swell up from the poison. They rushed him to a doctor who quickly gave him antivenin to offset the poison, and the boy’s life was saved. The doctor estimated that the tiny amounts of poison from all the baby snake bites would probably equal the bite of a full-grown copperhead! If they had waited another hour, the boy would not have lived.
Perhaps some of you are doing something just as dangerous as being bitten with poisonous snakes. The Bible says, “There is a way which [seems] right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:1212There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)). The baby copperheads didn’t look dangerous. In fact, they even helped the boy to catch a lot of fish. But they were deadly!
Sin is the same - deadly! It may seem to be just a “little” sin, but in God’s sight it is so horrible that He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to die on the cross and shed His blood so that that sin could be forgiven. Even baby copperheads can kill, and even what seems to you to be a small sin needs to be washed away. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son [cleanses] us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)).
What if the boy decided he didn’t want to stop fishing and go to a doctor. Suppose he had said, “But I’m catching lots of fish. I don’t want to stop right now . . . I’ll go tomorrow.” What would have happened to him? He would have died, of course. He had to have the life-saving medicine right away or it would have been too late.
ML-04/18/2004