The first wave is over. You might be thinking I’m talking about COVID-19, but actually it’s my yard, which is surrounded by poplar trees. The huge leaves have finally stopped falling. However, I can’t rest yet; the dozen or so Bradford pears are just beginning to turn red and pretty soon they’ll be blowing over my way, too. Another wave of work!
Funny thing about those waves: we tend not to be ready for the next one. In the two times I have fished in the ocean’s surf, I’ve had the same shock. I like to stand out in it almost waist deep, but the last time at Cape Hatteras, even though it was a relatively calm day, I was bowled completely over a couple of times. Too busy casting to watch out for the waves.
The one-chapter poetical book of Jude offers us another theme of waves. Jude thoroughly points out the vast corruption of the “ungodly” by stating they are “raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame” (v.13 NKJV). Yes, sin keeps on coming, doesn’t it?
Pity the “young man devoid of understanding” as he encounters the harlot in Proverbs 7. He wasn’t even able to fend off this first wave of sexual temptation and suffered “as an ox goes to the slaughter.” Yet that is not the end of this one Bible book’s warnings about this type of temptation. Why? Because the waves keep on coming!
Jesus tells a parable of an “unclean spirit” going out of a man seeking a place to “rest” elsewhere, but finding none. He decides to return to the man and finding the man’s “house” “swept and in order,” and “takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26). While there is much conjecture about Jesus’ actual meaning, we see one thing missing from this man succumbing to further waves of evil. He did not improve his defenses against future evil.
A long time ago I was on the job in my old mail Jeep, when I pulled out at an intersection in front of a motorcycle. I screeched to a halt just in time, but I did what most all of us would do: I made a mental note to take a moment longer to look out for those small vehicles. We all must constantly be watching out for evil. As Peter said, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 P. 5:8). You may have fought off Satan’s first wave. Be ready for the next!
Jeff Greene, minister for the South Stokes Church of Christ