Don’t Give the Devil a Foothold (Ephesians 4:27)
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Ephesians 4:27 says ‘give no opportunity to the devil’. Other translations say ‘do not give the devil a foothold’ and others ‘do not leave room for the devil’.
I really like this verse & wanted to speak on it today as we just talked about sexual sin on Tuesday on this podcast, because Paul is encouraging the Ephesians to truly give the enemy no opportunity, no room, no grasp, to pull or draw them into sin.
There’s an old fable that relates to this verse containing an axehead and a forest of trees.
The axehead approached the trees in the forest & asked if they could give him a sliver of their wood so that he could make a handle, to which the reply was no. Some time passed, and the axehead returned asking again for a sliver of wood to make a handle, to which the reply was again no. But the axehead was determined, and he came back again a third time and countered with a more fervent ask that came with a supposed promise. He asked again for a sliver of wood from the trees to make a handle with the promise that he would never bother them again. The trees decided to give him a sliver of wood so that he could have his handle, & soon after the axe cut all the trees in that forest down.
What’s the lesson here?
The enemy only wants a sliver of a little allowed sin in your heart, because soon you will be all his own. The enemy just wants a little opportunity in your life, and soon he will dictate it. He just wants one room in the house of your heart, and soon after he does he will occupy the whole house.
This is why with sin, whether it's the sexual sin we talked about Tuesday, or gossip, slander, with any sin in your life, we must resolve to give no opportunity to the devil to draw us into it. We must resolve to give him no room, no foothold.
If you remember Tuesday we closed talking about how it's not enough to fear sin, but we must also fear the temptation that comes with it, because if we don’t we are exactly like the man in Proverbs 7, and we know how his story ended - it cost him his life.
An old bishop named Joseph Hall once said that 'He that would be safe from the acts of evil, must widely avoid the occasions'.
And in relation to that, there’s another fable in which a butterfly asked a wise owl how she should deal with the fire that had singed her wings, and the owl replied and told her to not even look at its smoke.
In other words, as author JC Ryle wisely put it,
‘It is not enough that we resolve to commit no sin. We must carefully keep at a distance from all opportunities for it. We must not be content saying 'there is nothing positively wrong here'. We must go further and ask 'Is there anything here which may prove to be an opportunity for sin for me?'’
Building off of Tuesday, this is why Solomon says in Proverbs 5:8 to
‘Keep your way far from (the forbidden woman or immoral man), and do not go near the door of (their) house…’
Solomon knows it’s not enough that we resolve to commit no sin, particularly sexual sin here. We must carefully keep at a distance from all opportunities for it. We can’t go near, like the butterfly we can’t look at its smoke, like the trees we can’t give the axehead a handle. It’s too dangerous and too destructive.
Give no room to the devil for ANY sin. Give him no opportunity. Give him no foothold.
As for what that practically looks like, I bring you back to something I briefly spoke on in Tuesday’s podcast. I prefer to be proactive rather than reactive, to play offense rather than defense.
2 Timothy 2:22 says ‘flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness’.
Don’t just not go near and stay away from temptations or anything that can cause you to sin, but couple that by pursuing something and Someone else: Jesus. Flee youthful passions, flee sexual sin, flee gossip, flee temptation to slander or malice or whatever it might be, and PURSUE Jesus. Take the offensive. Be proactive. Don’t sit still, but pursue our great Lord Jesus Christ who draws near to you when you draw near to Him.
I love you all.
God bless.
