There's a line out there that tells you to build a better mousetrap. But why?
Honestly, Ol' faithful has worked fine for a hundred and fifty years. The simple spring trap has been effective, still snaps mouse necks, still kills em dead, and they haven't figured out how to avoid it. Same trap, same mice, same results. So why change the approach?
I talked about this on Sunday, but I do think that it bears repeating, that sometimes, frequently, the predator / prey arms race doesn't change too terribly much, because certain tactics keep working. The humble mousetrap is simple and effective, and as long as you bait it, mice will keep blundering into it. They want the peanut butter real bad, and will kill themselves to get it. But they don't know that they're stepping into a literal death trap. All they think is "free peanut butter."
Likewise, the temptations of the devil really work that way too. The devil has shown and dangled before you certain temptations, and you keep on going for it. You don't see the consequences, all you see is 'free peanut butter.' And the devil doesn't change his approach much, primarily because he doesn't need to. If it keeps working, why change it? And it does keep working, oh boy does it ever keep working. As faith has become more and more esoteric for people, their understanding of what is or is not sinful, and what does and does not lead to damnation changes, then the trap becomes fuzzier and fuzzier in its consequences. But that doesn't make it any less dangerous. In fact, it's more so. The trap is more effective the less it looks like a trap, and if you can see mice blundering into the same trap even though it's obvious to you, you can see why the devil's traps keep working.
The trap that is set is obvious only to the one that set it; not to the prey. Prey are prey because they blunder into the traps that are set. Spiders' webs, mousetraps, angler fish lures, all these things are painfully obvious to the one setting the trap, but to the one who falls into it, they don't see it as a trap. Instead, they are frequently killed by it.
The thing we have to remember is that the Devil doesn't need to change his tactics because they keep working. We keep going for painfully obvious bait, over and over again, and because it keeps working, the Devil can keep on using it. And he does. And why does it keep on working? Because the temptation is to put to you as a Christian the big question 'did God really say.....?' That question was the one issued to Eve in the garden, and it tweaked a simple reaction in her that it continues to tweak in us. Did God really say to avoid that fruit? Well, she should have responded by saying 'yes he did say that,' and walked on. But she didn't, and she added her own cool fun twist to it. If she would have responded with the word of God, then the problem would have gone away. But she didn't. And nor do we.
Most of the time, we react with our own cool fun opinions about things. We react as though avoiding the trap isn't the issue, the trap not being a trap is the issue. But folks, the trap is going to be a trap whether we want it to be or not. You can't by force of will decide to not be in the trap once it's been sprung on you. You can't elect to not be stuck and just to get free peanut butter out of the deal. And the less you think of the trap as a trap, the more likely you will be to blunder straight into it.
On your own, you're not going to avoid those traps, And the penalty for slipping into sin is death and damnation. How on earth are you going to avoid that? By relying on God's word? That would work, but you're unlikely to do it. Is the question 'is this in keeping with God's word,' is asked less often than 'is this good for me?' And when the devil tempts you, your response is to say 'does this benefit me? If so, then free peanut butter!'
But you're a Christian. And that means something. And it doesn't mean that you just have to work harder to follow the word of God and avoid the traps. It means you have to understand how the trap works. The cross of Christ was where Jesus took death on and descended into Hell. And when that was done, it wasn't something esoteric that happened, it was practical. He triggered that trap for us. The trap went off, boy did it. Jesus was killed, he descended into hell, and the devil though that he won at that moment. The trap worked. But Jesus rose again, and the trap remained sprung. That means that when you look at the cross, it represents death emptied of its power, and the trap no longer able to kill you. It already did what it was there to do, and can do it no further. The wonder of the work of Jesus is that it defeats death making it so that those who believe in him can't be caught in that trap again, because the trap no longer works. That means that when your sins are on the shoulders of Christ, any time the Devil tries to accuse you based on your falling into his trap, you can remind him that the trap has been sprung already, and the hell that you deserve is the hell that Christ arose from. The trap is sprung, and you get to walk free.
