I used to love eating watermelon. However, about a year ago, I purchased some cut up watermelon at the deli near my office and took it back to my desk and ate it. Well, it wasn’t but just a few minutes later, when I began to feel very sick to my stomach, and I finally went home and was sick for three days. There was obviously something wrong with that watermelon, and I haven’t eaten any since.
However, today I walked over to the grocery store to grab something to eat and I walked past the fruit and vegetables and they had some newly sliced watermelon on sale. I thought “Yum! I love watermelon!” So, I walked over and picked up a package of it and immediately my stomach began to convulse as it remembered what happened the last time I ate watermelon. I said “No…I can’t eat that….” and put it back. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat watermelon again. It looked good, but as soon as my stomach remembered the pain and discomfort from my previous experience with watermelon, I knew better than to buy it. So, now to me – watermelon is disgusting.
Well, that is the same thing that should happen to us when we start to do something wrong. Something that is against God’s Word. Something we know is sin. When we remember how it is OUR SIN that caused Jesus to DIE on the cross. When we remember the pain and the trouble our sin has brought us in the past. When we look back at our life and we remember and see what harm sin has done to others in our lives and to this world around us. We should be SO DISGUSTED by it that we say “No way! I’m NOT going to do that!!” Sin ought to revile us! The mere thought of doing what is displeasing to our loving God should drive us to our knees praying, “Father, give me strength to FIGHT temptation and say NO!!! to ANYTHING that I know would not bring honor to your Holy Name!”
Like Daniel, who chose NOT to defile himself with food offered to idols, we too should purpose NOT to defile ourselves with sin! “But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank…” (Daniel 1:8)