“My son, if sinners entice you, don’t be persuaded. If they say—“Come with us! Let’s set an ambush and kill someone. Let’s attack some innocent person just for fun! Let’s swallow them alive, like Sheol, whole, like those who go down to the Pit. We’ll find all kinds of valuable property and fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot with us, and we’ll all share the loot”—my son, don’t travel that road with them or set foot on their path, because their feet run toward evil and they hurry to shed blood. It is useless to spread a net where any bird can see it, but they set an ambush to kill themselves; they attack their own lives. Such are the paths of all who make profit dishonestly; it takes the lives of those who receive it.” (Proverbs 1:10-19 CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things the Scriptures are pretty clear that we shouldn’t mess around with is temptation. We sometimes imagine that resisting temptation is like a muscle. The more we do it, the stronger our ability to resist it gets. I’m not so sure, and the authors of the Scriptures (who were inspired by God) seem to agree. The apostle Paul doesn’t tell us to resist temptation or fight against it, he tells us to flee from it. Run away. Do not engage. Don’t test it to see how long you can hold out. Hightail it in the other direction. That doesn’t make you a coward, it makes you wise. How do I know? Because the very first bit of wise counsel we are given in Proverbs has to do with staying away from temptation. Let’s take a look.

Solomon here starts where he stopped yesterday. All of this is presented as a father offering wise counsel to his son. As a father myself, I offer a lot of counsel to my own sons. Some of it is better than others. Some of it isn’t really very good at all. But their relative youth and inexperience means there’s much about navigating life they don’t know and are hopefully open to learning. Maintain a healthy relational posture with them that will leave them more inclined to hear and heed what I have to say matters a great deal.

In any event, of all the places Solomon could have started when offering wisdom to his children, how interesting that he starts here: don’t go along with sinners. When somebody tempts or invites you into sin, don’t take up the invitation. “My son, if sinners entice you, don’t be persuaded.”

Now, we could probably just stop with that for today. When someone or something entices you into sin, don’t take the bait. How much trouble could we avoid for ourselves and others too if we would just say, “No,” more often. Turning down an invitation is hard. It’s even harder when the invitation comes from our own flesh or is otherwise in line with what we are already inclined to do. We can sell ourselves on just about anything. We can frame it such that we couldn’t possibly have refused to join in whatever it is.

The truth, though, is that we can always say, “No.” We can always turn them down. We can always walk away. We may be slaves to sin, but we say, “Yes,” to it every time of our own volition. There will never be a situation in which sin was the only option available to us. If we try to convince ourselves otherwise, we’re just lying to ourselves and the people around us. We wanted sin more than we wanted righteousness in that moment. Now, our wills are corrupted by sin such that apart from Christ we will always ultimately desire sin more than righteousness, the delusion of autonomy more than obedience and faithfulness, but never do we have to sin. So, “My son, if sinners entice you, don’t be persuaded.”

He goes on from here to give an example of something these hypothetical sinners might try to entice us to do. Honestly, the example feels a bit silly and overdramatized. “If they say—“Come with us! Let’s set an ambush and kill someone. Let’s attack some innocent person just for fun! Let’s swallow them alive, like Sheol, whole, like those who go down to the Pit. We’ll find all kinds of valuable property and fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot with us, and we’ll all share the loot.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never once received an offer like that. Now, if I had been born in another place or raised by a different family in a different cultural situation, perhaps that kind of thing might have been offered to me. Not just like that, of course. Not in those precise terms—I am quite sure no one will ever use the words “Sheol” or “Pit” when inviting me to join them in sin of some kind. But the idea that someone could be enticed toward violence and profit at the expense and exploitation of others is decidedly less far-fetched. The idea that we could be invited into an opportunity to make a quick buck, and even though it doesn’t feel totally above board, it’s all perfectly legal…or perhaps it’s not all legit, but no one is really getting hurt by it…starts to feel a whole lot more likely given where our culture is.

The real point here, though, is not precisely what the invitation to sin entails, but rather that we should refuse it and why. “My son, don’t travel that road with them or set foot on their path” Again: When invitations to sin come—whether they come from external or internal sources—we don’t have to accept them. In fact, we need to refuse them. We need to turn around and run in the other direction because what lies at the end of that path is not something we want to countenance. A little bit of trouble can and almost assuredly will turn into a whole lot of trouble with remarkable and even surprising speed.

Solomon goes on to offer several reasons why we should not be enticed to join with sinners in their sin. The first one comes naturally out of the example he gave. We need to not travel that road with them—in fact we need to not even set foot on that path—”because their feet run toward evil and they hurry to shed blood.” They aren’t slow-walking their way toward that end, they are racing toward it. There is a God who is just and righteous and holy and good who governs the affairs of His creation jealously. Those who race toward an end that will bring unrighteousness and injustice and evil to His world will not be tolerated for long. They will face the just end of their actions. We don’t want to be a part of that reckoning.

Beyond the obvious evil of it, though, we should stay away from sin because sin is stupid. It is senseless. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face. These folks in Solomon’s example were looking to lay a trap for others, but they are the ones who are going to wind up with all the egg on their face in the end. “It is useless to spread a net where any bird can see it, but they set an ambush to kill themselves; they attack their own lives.” Because God is just, their efforts will redound back on them, and they’ll be the ones hurting most in the end. This reckoning sometimes arrives in this life, but it will absolutely arrive in the next. We go out of our way in this life to avoid things that will harm us. Well, sin will harm us. We should avoid it at all costs.

And there is no sin that is exempt from this end. “Such are the paths of all who make profit dishonestly; it takes the lives of those who receive it.” If you look to profit in some way off the misery or exploitation of others, that’s going to go badly for you in the end. Joining sinners in their sin will always be a bad play. The wise recognize this and do something about it. They take whatever actions are necessary to block that path and to keep themselves away from it. Perhaps that kind of accountability will be embarrassing or costly now, but the price, whatever it is, will be worth the pain it saves us later on because the cost of walking the path of sin will be infinitely higher. Let’s pursue righteousness while we’ve got the chance!