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Beware of pleasures!
From Spurgeon's, "The Snare of the Fowler"
The fowler's snare is frequently connected with
pleasure, profit, and advantage.
In the bird's case it is for the seed scattered
on the ground that he flies to the snare.
It is some tempting bait which allures him to his death.
And usually Satan; the fowler, uses a similar
temptation with which to beguile us.
It is just the 'sweetness' of the temptation
that makes it the more dangerous.
Satan never sells his poisons naked-
he always gilds them before he vends them.
He knows very well that men will buy them and swallow them,
if he does but gild them beforehand.
Beware of pleasures! mind what you are at when you are at them.
Many of them are innocent and healthful,
but many of them are destructive.
It is said that where the most beautiful cacti grow, there the
most venomous serpents are to be found at the root of every plant.
And so it is with sin.
Your fairest pleasures may harbor your grossest sins.
Take heed- beware of your pleasures.
Cleopatra's asp was introduced in a basket of flowers; so are
our sins often brought to us in the flowers of our pleasures.
Satan offers us the pleasant bait,
concealing the hook which afterwards shall pain us.
He gives to you and to me, each of us, the offer of
our peculiar joy; he tickles us with pleasures,
that he may lay hold upon us, and so have us in his power.
I would have every Christian be especially on his guard against
the very thing that is most pleasing to his human nature.
I would not have him avoid every thing that pleases him,
but I would have him be on his guard against it.
Let us remember that the snare of the fowler is generally connected
with some pretended pleasure or profit, but that Satan's end is not
our pleasing, but our destruction.
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