The Viper's Eggs

“1Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. 2But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. 3For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things. 4 No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil. 5 They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web. Whoever eats their eggs will die, and when one is broken, an adder is hatched.” (Isaiah 59:1-5)
Click here if you want to read the whole chapter.

Now that is a really humbling passage, lol. Praise God for His mercy and grace. Let’s take a look at this passage in more depth. What are these verses describing? These verses are describing a spiritual failure. This spiritual failure is described by four things.

1. Separated (Verses 1-2): Our sins have separated us from our God. Our God is a Holy God and he can’t look upon sin.
2. Hidden (Verse 2): His face is hidden from us because of our sins.
3. Constrained (Verse 3): Our hands and fingers are stained with blood and guilt. Our good deeds and sacrifices are not acceptable to him. We are separated from God and He has hidden His face from us, and we can’t do anything about it because we are constrained by our bloodstained hands and deeds. (Isaiah 64:6)
4. Calloused (Verse 4): After a while you heart becomes calloused and you don’t even try to plead your case. You just quit caring about God and spiritual things.

Wow, it now seems like we are in a helpless state. Now, you might say how do I keep from being in that state? Or what was the cause of this spiritual failure? Well I am glad you asked (took a page from Steve’s book, lol).

Look at verse 5, “They hatch the eggs of vipers”. What are the viper’s eggs? The viper’s eggs are any opportunity to harm you spiritually. It can be something as big as adultery or something as small as putting yourself in the position to commit adultery by flirting, lusting, etc. The viper’s eggs could be pornography, movies, or music that could harm you spiritually.

How are viper’s egg hatched? They are hatched by warming the eggs until the snake inside them matures enough to break out off the egg. This can mean to allow some sin or situation to persist and let it warm up until that sin hatches and gives birth to death. Another word that can be used to describe “hatch” is to justify. We warm the eggs by justifying a certain action or sin, saying that the egg is harmless and it won’t hurt us, or thinking I won’t ever get to the point of adultery so it’s ok for me to look at pornography and lust over other women. You justify pornography by saying I won’t let it get to that point, but it is a FACT that eggs hatch after being warmed for a period of time.

Spiritual failure starts when you accept or warm the viper’s egg. It starts when we leave the eggs lying around and don’t do anything to get rid of them. How do the viper’s eggs get into your life? Why don’t the eggs alarm us?

Three ways the eggs can get into your life: your eyes, your heart, and your passiveness. I know you know about the first two but the last one gets overlooked a lot. Eggs can get into your life through your passiveness. Letting sin linger around and not doing anything about it, not taking sin seriously and having the mentality that it can’t happen to me. This egg can hatch and take control of your life and can lead to death. Jesus even taught about this. (Matthew 5:27-30) He said it is better to cutoff your hand if it causes you to sin, rather than have your whole body go to Hell. He is saying get rid of that sin now by any means necessary, because it can control your whole life and eventually lead to death.

Praise God that His arm is not to short to save. He saw that there was no one to intervene so His own arm worked out salvation for us (Isaiah 59:16).

8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

I wanted to talk about something that really bothers me about the Church. The church is developing Christians who think and feel like they have to wear mask all the time. You have to go to church and act like you have everything together when in reality your life is falling apart. The church doesn’t seem to be doing a good job of keeping people from reaching this spiritual failure. The church needs to be a place where Christians are able to admit when they mess up and not be judged, or looked down on (leadership and pastors included), and a place where they can receive forgiveness and healing. Christians are afraid to admit when they mess up or when they are struggling, so they just put on that mask, and it leads to competition, a bitter heart, hypocrisy, and spiritual failure. We are manufacturing Christians who are more concerned about looking holy and righteous in front of fellow Christians rather than pleasing God. Christians feel like this because as soon as we admit we have failed, we are immediately looked down on and are made to feel like we are weak Christians because we sin, when in reality the people who are judging do so to make them feel better about their selves. For some reason a notion has been embedded in the way we think, that says we have to put on our mask and clean ourselves up before coming to Church, when in reality we can’t do that, we need Jesus.

This applies to non-Christians also. There is such a big gap between the Church and non-Christians. That is not how it is supposed to be. The church should be right smack in the middle of the world helping to bridge that gap, instead of building walls and saying you must clean yourself up before you’re allowed in this sacred place. Anyway that was just a side note; ill end my rant, lol. On a lighter note:

What are the eggs in your life that you need to get rid of?

“13When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:13-15)