Consent Not

Pro 1:10 My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.


Sinners WILL entice us!

It's what sinners do.

By their very nature of being unrepentant sinners they are controlled by Satan. We don't like to hear those words, do we? We like to soften those words up and roll them in a thick coat of sugar.

People are not really controlled by Satan. People are NEVER really controlled by Satan. Is that sugar coating thick enough for you yet? No? You want more? How about this... Satan isn't really even real, right?

I mean come on, we're much more intelligent than that. We aren't going to believe in this invisible evil being that stuff belongs on the television screen. You know that horror movie we've heard about where this evil being makes people do horrible things against their will until they destroy themselves one way or another, but only after making everybody around them miserable . Fiction, that's it. Fantasy, sure, sure that's even better, it's all fantasy, PURE fantasy if you will because I AM A RATIONAL BEING and there is no such thing as an evil invisible being going about wrecking all sorts of sicko havoc.

We live in a normal society, the REAL world where that sort of thing doesn't exists and you know, if someone does do something bad it's completely their own fault and they have to answer for that- not blame some invisible evil dude for their own evil. So DON'T tell me that anyone is controlled by Satan! That's a cop out! That's a scam, an excuse, a lie! We control ourselves end of story.


So now that we have that all cleared up, sinners will entice us, unrepentant sinners will seek to lure us to their sinning ways just because they're bad and that's what they do, right?


Tell me something, does sinning have anything to do with Satan at all? You know, that invisible being you don't think REALLY exists. First of all let's get one thing cleared up right now before we go any further. Do you believe in Jesus- God's Son?


If you do believe in Jesus, praise God, keep reading.


If you don't believe in Jesus-God's Son, you might as well just stop reading right now because everything from here on in will be a waste of time for you. Seriously, it will be just a waste of time where you could be doing something else. I happen to believe in the Son of God, my Savior Jesus Christ and if I believe in Him I have to believe in the invisible evil being, Satan. I can't believe in my Savior without believing in my Savior's adversary, who through default becomes my adversary if I believe in my Savior and choose to follow Him.


Well, do you believe in Satan now? You really can't hem and haw about it, you have to believe if you believe in our invisible Savior being.


Wait, what? Jesus isn't invisible, He took on flesh! He lived and died as one of us and then He rose again and appeared in the flesh. Jesus isn't invisible, He's real! Alright then, all that is true, but what about God the Father that Jesus prayed to, that Jesus relied upon, that Jesus came to reveal to the world? Is God the Father in the flesh too? Well? The answer is, no. God is spirit. If we have NO trouble in believing in the Spirit God, the invisible God, then truly we shouldn't have too much trouble believing in His invisible adversary- right?


Why am I stressing this so much? Because when a person chooses to sin willingly without any thought of repentance, without any remorse or willingness to confess and forsake the sinning they are in league with- Satan. Satan, the one who first sinned and the one who will use ALL his powers of persuasion to get as many human beings to sin and live in sin unrepentant as he possibly can.


Satan tempted our Savior to sin. Even knowing He was the Son of God, Satan tempted Him to sin. Satan tried to get Jesus to rebel against His Father. Satan used his powers- powers he possesses and uses upon earth today, powers to lure people to sin. You can bet everything that Satan stops at nothing to try and get us all to sin unrepentantly. Maybe he doesn't have to use much of that power to get you so he won't. Satan will expend the least amount of his power that he has to in order to get someone. If a little dab will do Him, He's not going to slather on his power, why should he? The lower profile he keeps the better. In fact if He can get people believing he doesn't REALLY exist and everyone is evil of their own accord with no help from Him, well that's just fine and dandy.


The truth is- we ARE evil of our own accord. Our original parents chose the path of evil for us a long time ago. However, our Savior sacrificed Himself to give us a path back to God. So now every single one of us that have been born into the evil world filled with the inclinations towards evil have a choice to make on whether to continue on the evil path, or take the good path.


Sounds like Lord of the Rings, and many other fictional movies doesn't it? Good or evil, which will win. Well we know which one wins however, we still have to choose which side we want to be on and YES we can (and many will) choose the losing side. The losing path will be the most appealing path for those living for the here and now. The losing path will be the one with the most people on it, in fact it will be amazingly crowded and in the majority.


This is REAL, people! Maybe we can't see that we are choosing daily which path to take, but we are.


The paths are very close to one another and it's very easy to step over from one to the other. Of course the Good path is extremely narrow and difficult, very hard to get onto, in fact IMPOSSIBLE to get onto unless you have the Savior's hand to guide you onto it. The Evil path is very wide and extremely easy to get onto without any risk of falling off- it's much too wide for that and you don't need anyone's help to get safely over to the evil path. We have to hold onto the Savior's hand to get onto the good, narrow path and guess what… here's where many falter… we have to KEEP holding onto the Savior's hand the entire time we are on the good path. There will NEVER be a good time to let go and start walking that path on our own, not ever! As soon as we let go of the Savior's hand we fall back onto that wide evil road. Unfortunately Satan has set up the wide evil road to even imitate the narrow good road, that evil road is whatever a person wants it to be but the only hand holding you on that evil road is Satan's and you choose to hold it. It's no joke when we're told that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light. So how do we know we are on the narrow good road holding our Savior's hand- through faith.


Pro 1:10 My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.


Sinners will entice us and when they do… we are not to CONSENT!


We cannot go along with the sinners. We cannot consent to their sinning and become part of their sinning. We have to choose NOT to consent.


If sinners entice thee…


Do they? Do you know of anyone trying to entice you to sin? There will be MANY that will entice you to sin that you don't want to even believe are sinners at all. We are taught NOT to judge so we placate ourselves by saying I can't say he or she is a sinner- that's not my place, only God can judge. While that's true, only God can judge eternal life, we HAVE to be able to discern between sinning and not sinning and therefore be able to discern between those who are sinning and those who aren't. If we blatantly see sinning we can NOT consent to sin. That sinner might go on to be saved, by the grace of God, but at that moment we have to realize that the sinning act committed by the sinning person is something we can not choose to be part of, we must CONSENT NOT!


Consenting not isn't always easy because often when we consent not, we appear to be 'holier than thou' and that is something sinners do not want to see and will try to use against us. Sinners will try to get us to believe that the very act of consenting not to sin is a sin of arrogance and pride. We cannot let that happen! We have to consent NOT to sin no matter what. We have to expect to be enticed and being enticed is very seductive and alluring, appealing to our carnal natures. Resisting the enticement is our duty to consent not.


Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.


Heb 12:4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.


Let us consent not! Let us cling to our Savior. We are warned and we must heed the warnings, not ignore them.


By the grace of God may we consent not to those…to sinners... who would entice us to sin. Don't we have enough sin to deal with, enough temptations to sin that aren't encouraged by others. Do we really want to consent to enticements from others? We need to obey God first and foremost, not each other.


Please Lord help us to resist unto blood, striving against sin. Help us to consent not to those who would entice us to sin- those who try to convince us that what they're doing is not sin. Bless and keep us Savior, bless and keep us, by your will, by your grace, your mercy.


Amen.