A fellow decided to rob a convenience store clerk. The robber had a neat plan to give the clerk a $10 bill, get her to open her cash drawer to make change, and then grab all the money. The plan worked! He got everything in her cash drawer—total $4.34—and left the clerk with his $10. He went in the hole to the tune of $5.66!
The undeniable truth is that sin never gives what it promises. It always returns less than the sinner invests in—, integrity, and spiritual security. Want proof?
—Adam and Eve were promised freedom, wisdom and life by Satan, only to be led to commit spiritual suicide.
—Sensuous Samson fell in love with a woman who did not love God, and he paid with his eyesight, freedom and life.
—Ananias and Sapphira were going to get credit for being generous and wound up being buried for being liars.
In each of these cases, sin promised something it could never deliver. The same thing is still happening in our world today.—
Sin costs too much. You have to sell your soul to have whatever pretty trinkets it offers you for the moment. Then you have to face a time of bitter reckoning. You have to “pay the piper.” Yet whatever had been promised to you as a reward has already gone up in a puff of smoke or has slipped through your fingers. And Judgment Day is coming! The basic lure of sin is the promise of quick gain, without regard to long-term consequences.
Truth and holiness work differently. With total honesty about the difficult demands at hand, the God who cannot lie promises to reward you down the line. Obedience, purity, integrity, repentance, denial—these are hard words and demanding deeds. But what lies at the end is invaluable!
Sin never delivers. Christ never fails. So don’t get robbed while trying to pull a fast one on God.
–From “A Treasury of Bible Illustrations”, by Ted Kyle & John Todd.
