For Lord’s Day, January 24, 2021

Dear Saints,

Recently I was watching a fishing program on YouTube with the boys.  This particular angler is especially enjoyable as he is a Christian who prays over his meals (which is often his fresh and filleted catch with a small portable cooker while on the shoreline).

Something he shared was profound to me.  He began to fish for crabs in a shallow ocean runoff using his fishing pole with a fish carcass on the end of his line.  He said he didn’t need to use a hook, because the crabs just held on to the dead fish as he brought in the line, and so they did indeed!  While reeling them in he said, “These crabs are so greedy they just hold on and won’t let go so you don’t even need a hook to drag them out.”

Beloved, isn’t this what we have to be so careful about?  Satan doesn’t even need to use a hook so often to lure us in to his grasp.  We are so greedy we just hold on to the temptation and he simply reels us in as we blindly yet gladly grab on.

May we be so careful:

1 John 2:16: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Jude 11: Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

Proverbs 21:25-26: The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour. He coveteth greedily all the day long …

Another way crabs are caught is by putting out a trap with bait in it.  The crabs crawl in unassumingly, but they can’t get out.  Then they are pulled out by the trapper.  If you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, what also comes to mind is the proverbial monkey who can’t get his hand out of a jar because he won’t let go of the the item within it.

Let us also remember that when we find ourselves grumbling, murmuring greed is often behind it one way or another (something the NT Scriptures warn against constantly pointing to the Church in Numbers in particular).  And the stubborn clenching of our fists will keep us away from God and draw us closer to the Devil.

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant