Tampering With Sin

Lying awake, unable to sleep, one night I could hear a train in the distance. My husband tells me the track is probably a couple of miles from our house, but in the stillness of the night, it is easy to hear. It made me think of our home in Saint Louis, Missouri, United States of America. When we lived in Saint Louis, there was a not-too-deep woods behind our house and then a train track. We figured we could expect maybe three or four trains a day—we could live with that. We soon learned the double track was a major east-west track across the United States. Thirtysome trains traveled that track in a twenty-four-hour period.

At first, we heard every one of them, day and night.

But gradually, we got used to them, slept through the night, and barely noticed them during the daytime. When company stayed overnight, they would say, “Wow! We heard the trains in the night,” and we would respond, “We didn’t notice.” The trains and sinful tendencies in our lives have a lot in common. At first, we know that something we are thinking, reading, seeing, or doing is very wrong. But the longer we engage in the activity, the less evil it seems to be. The Holy Spirit’s voice becomes less discernible. Judas loved Jesus and desired to be with Him. He even felt a desire to change his character and life, and he hoped he would experience this by connecting with Jesus. But Judas did not come to a full and complete surrender. Because “his heart was open to unbelief, the enemy supplied thoughts of questioning and rebellion.”* It was a gradual downward course for Judas. Mrs. White says, “This will be the experience of everyone who persists in tampering with sin.”† When we were ready to leave Saint Louis and sell our house, the real estate agent told us we had to disclose the train tracks behind the woods and that it might take six months for the house to sell. Within three weeks, we had a buyer. “Oh,” the man said, “I grew up by a train track. I will hardly notice.” As we live in this sinful world, may we not become so conditioned to it that we “hardly notice.” Our only safeguard is a close connection with Jesus.

Sharon Oster

* Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press®, 2005), 718.

† White, 720.