Are you as sly as a fox?

Shortly before I entered the seventh grade, my dad got a job as foreman of the massive Diamond Bar ranch in northern Arizona. I was outside the ranch house with him one day when a pickup truck came rumbling up the dirt road that wound its way seven miles from the main road to the old house perched in front of a rugged mountain.

A man with leathery, weathered skin dressed in western wear got out of the truck, shook hands with my dad, and introduced himself. He explained he was a professional trapper and was temporarily trapping fox in our area. He asked my dad for permission to set traps on a section of the ranch. After some discussion, my dad agreed to allow the trapper access to a portion of the land.

A few days later, the man returned so he could take my dad out to show him where he had set traps. My dad wanted to make sure we knew where the traps were so we wouldn’t step into them ourselves. Being curious about what the trapper was doing, I asked to go along.

My dad and I followed the trapper in the old four-wheel drive Ford truck the ranch provided its foreman, pulling up to different areas as the trapper would point to where a trap was laid. At one point, the trapper stopped his truck in front of us and got. He said he needed to check a trap that seemed to be triggered but empty. On closer inspection, the trapper found the foot of a fox in a trap laid by some brush. He explained the fox, desperate not to be caught by his trapper, had chosen to chew off his leg rather than be captured by his enemy.

I was amazed at such a thought!

How could a creature decide chewing its own leg off would be in its best interest?

I couldn’t fathom such an idea then, but years later I better understood the animal’s decision as I read in scripture the powerful warning against sin that Jesus gives us …

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one hand than to go into the unquenchable fires of hell with two hands. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one foot than to be thrown into hell with two feet. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It’s better to enter the Kingdom of God with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, ‘where the maggots never die and the fire never goes out,'” Mark 9:43-48.

Jesus uses explicit illustrations to warn us to do what is necessary, even take drastic steps (although I’m NOT encouraging you to maim yourself!), to avoid sin and the terrible consequences sin leads to. One commentator writes, “Our Lord makes special mention of the Hand, the Foot, the Eye, those members whereby we do amiss, or walk astray, or gaze on what is sinful.”

Jesus’ message to us is crystal clear: Avoid sin at all costs because the consequences are so horrendous that whatever it takes to avoid sin will be worth it.

Instead of being as sly as a fox who knows he needs to escape the snare of the enemy, we’ve become very casual about sin, unwilling to inconvenience ourselves to avoid it or rid our lives of it. Even worse, we find the idea of an eternity in hell to be so distasteful we don’t talk about it … even in church! Yet Jesus gives His most urgent instruction to our doing whatever it takes to avoid sin and hell.

What are you willing to do to purge all sin from your life and avoid the ravages of hell?

Scotty