I have been reading through the Puritan Thomas Brooks’s classic, Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices. It is best taken in sip-by-sip, each morning, as I have been doing. This morning I read about one of Satan’s most effective devices, “Device 7: By making the soul bold to venture upon the occasions of sin.”*
“Saith Satan, You may walk by the harlot’s door though you won’t go into the harlot’s bed; you may sit and sup with the drunkard, though you won’t be drunk with the drunkard; you may look upon Jezebel’s beauty, and you may play and toy with Delilah, though you do not commit wickedness with the one or the other; you may with Achan handle the golden wedge, though you do not steal the golden wedge.”
In ministering to young (and old) people over the years, I have found that this is one of the best specimens of wise counsel the Bible and the Christian tradition give us for avoiding sin: Think carefully, and figure out what situations you get yourself in that predispose you to be tempted, and avoid those situations.
The first remedy against this device, Brooks says, is “to dwell upon those scriptures that do expressly command us to avoid the occasions of sin, and the least appearance of evil (1 Thess. 5. 22): ‘Abstain from all appearance of evil.’ Whatsoever is heterodox, unsound and unsavoury, shun it, as you would a serpent in your way, or poison in your meat.” A few lines down he says, “It was good counsel that Livia gave her husband Augustus: ‘It behoveth thee not only not to do wrong, but not to seem to do so.’”
Quoting Proverbs 5:8, “Remove your way far from her, And do not go near the door of her house,” Brooks counsels: “He that would not be burnt, must dread the fire; he that would not hear the bell, must not meddle with the rope. To venture upon the occasion of sin, and then to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ is all one as to thrust thy finger into the fire, and then to pray that it might not be burnt.”
The second remedy against this device, Brooks says, is to consider solemnly “that ordinarily there is no conquest over sin, without the soul turning from the occasion of sin.” God will not take temptation out of our path, Brooks warns, unless we turn from the occasion of sin. If you dance near the edge of a pit, he says, you can’t be surprised if you fall in. “He that hath gunpowder about him had need keep far enough from sparkles.” Brooks is right when he says that it’s rare to go up to the brink of sin and not give in to temptation. “He that ventures upon the occasions of sin is as he that would quench the fire with oil, which is a fuel to maintain it, and increase it.”
This godly wisdom reminds me of a Christian counseling book I once read (I can’t remember which one). It told the story of a recovering alcoholic who was in addiction counseling. He walked to work each day, and he had to walk by a liquor store. Each day, he would struggle with intense temptation to go into the liquor store and buy a bottle of his favorite drink. This went on for months. Then one day when walking home from work, he gave in to the temptation, bought the alcohol, and drank it all.
When he told his counselor about it in tears, the counselor said, “You need to take another route to work.” He said, “I can’t. The only other route would take me thirty minutes longer.” The counselor said, “You can. You must, if you really want to beat this.”
Then the author went on to compare the door to the liquor store to the opening of a cave with a dragon inside: The closer you get to the mouth of the cave, the more you are predisposed to being captured by the dragon. So the best advice is to stay away from the mouth of the cave.
Brooks’s other two remedies are just as helpful: Using the example of Joseph fleeing Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:10), he says: “The third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider,
that other precious saints, who were once glorious on earth, and are now triumphing in heaven, have turned from the occasion of sin, as hell itself. The fourth remedy is “solemnly to consider, that the avoiding the occasions of sin, is an evidence of grace, and that which lifts up a man above most other men in the world.”
May we pray for grace not to venture boldly upon the occasions of sin, and may we apply ourselves, with God’s help, to adhere to make use of this precious remedy against Satan’s devices every day of our lives
*These quotations are taken from pp. 66–70 of the “Puritan Paperbacks” edition published by Banner of Truth Trust.