When I was a young boy growing up my brother and I would go fishing almost every day. We would work on the farm but finish in time to load the gear into the old pickup truck and head to the lake. There was a lake near our home called Burdick’s Lake. It was a lake in the country that contained bream and bass. It was a paradise to a couple of young boys growing up in the country.
I remember one trip in particular. I had a new lure to try out. This particular lure was a plastic grasshopper. It looked and felt like a real grasshopper only it had a fishhook embedded in it. I remember the first time I threw it in the water a bass practically jumped out of the water to get to it. After reeling the catch in, I threw it out again. Time after time, I caught a fish with each cast until the grasshopper was mangled so badly that it just wouldn’t work anymore. Those are pretty good memories for a young man. In case you were wondering, I went to the store and bought a new one, but never caught another fish with the new grasshopper.
The idea behind a fishing lure is to entice a fish to bite. The lure must fool the fish into thinking it is something that it is not. The fish saw a grasshopper; it did not see the hook.
James 1:14-15 reads, “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
The Greek word translated ‘enticed’ is the word ‘deleazo’. The only other time it is found in the New Testament is in 2 Peter 2:14,18 where it is translated ‘beguiling’ and ‘allure’. The root word is actually a fishing term: it is a form of bait. Just as the lure presents a very tempting object to the fish, so too does sin present us with temptation. The Scriptures say that when we allow our own desire to get out of control then Satan’s presentation of sin ensnares us.
We must mature to the point of seeing through the packaging and seeing sin for what it is. We must realize that there is always a hook there. We must realize that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).
Don’t miss the progression found in verse 15 of our text. Desire gives birth to sin which brings forth death. Desire…sin…death. What begins as an enticing lure, often contains the hook that we didn’t see until it was too late. May we ever be on guard.