Objects needed:  Bring fishing rod and some lures.

There are two things that are essential for fishing. You have to have bait and you have to have hooks.

The bait is something that looks very good to the fish; something that looks really delicious. Perhaps it's a plastic worm or a lure that looks like a frog, or a lure that looks like a wiggly fish or a crawfish.  These objects resemble things that fish love to eat, but the fish doesn’t realize that there is a deadly hook hidden within the bait.  The fish will get tricked and get hooked and might end up in the fry pan.

So it is with our lives. Satan wants to deceive us with bait that looks so good, but it’s really not good at all, and will only harm us in the end. He wants us to go for the bait and he doesn’t want us to see the hidden hooks and he doesn't want to see what will happen to us if we get caught.

Above is a picture from a magazine ad of a group of young people having a wonderful time fooling around with a football. The ad is for Salem cigarettes. This is the bait. The message is this:  If you smoke these cigarettes you will have such a wonderful and enjoyable time.  But they don’t show you the hook. For example, they don’t show you a diseased cancerous lung that may result from smoking as illustrated below:

Smoking could result in disease and death.

Here’s another picture of an ad with a handsome man at a party pouring an alcoholic drink into the glass of a another woman.

It looks like they are having so much fun, with everyone holding their drinks. They want us to see the bait, that drinking is so enjoyable. Yet, they don't show the hook. You’ll never see an ad with a drunk man sitting on a park bench sick or a man lying in his own vomit.

They do not want you to see some of the terrible results of drinking alcohol.

On the Internet there are all kinds of bait, to lure you into seeing things you shouldn’t see or doing things you should not do or communicating with the wrong kind of people or buying things you should not buy. Be careful of the hooks.

On TV and in the movies they make it seem like sexual relations before marriage is a wonderful and normal thing, but they never show you what God says about this and they never show you the heartaches, the guilt, and the diseases that can result. They don’t show you the hooks.

You might have friends who invite you to do what they are doing, and entice you by saying “Come with us” (Prov. 1:11). It may sound like you will have such a good time. But look for the hidden hooks. Proverbs 1:10 says, “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”  Be careful not to go with others if they are doing wrong even if it sounds like it would be fun.

Perhaps this week, as you have your family devotional time you can think about different kinds of bait that can deceive us, and think about the hidden hooks that can get us if we are not very careful.


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