My Trojan Horse

I watched in surprise as ants marched into the kitchen from the dining room. Later on I found more in the living room. When I saw even more by the picture window in the living room, I thought that they must be getting in there. So I asked my husband to caulk outside. I even stuffed a small wad of steel wool into a hole.

A week passed. I had emptied several boxes of Kleenex to pick up dead ants. Drops of liquid ant killer lay scattered all over the living room, dining room, and kitchen floors. “What am I going to do? I can’t figure out where they are coming from,” I moaned.

Discouraged and frustrated, I knelt down in front of the fireplace to gather up more carcasses. At that point my eyes wandered toward a huge log stored on a brass basket. Then I saw it. An ant was crawling out a tiny hole in the log —then another—and another.

“Oh, no!” I yelled to my husband. “Get that log out of here!”

However he was in the bedroom and did not hear me at first. To my relief, he finally heard me and dumped the heavy log onto the front porch. Shortly afterward he carried it to the woods far behind our backyard.

Just like the fictional Trojan horse, my husband had carried that log into the house unaware of the ant nest inside it. Nevertheless the principle of the Trojan horse has been in force since the beginning of time. Satan appeared harmless to Eve. Yet he convinced her to eat fruit from the forbidden tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. The result was devastating for humanity because now all of us are born in sin and spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1–3).

The Lord told Cain that sin was crouching at his door and desired to have him. Likewise, all of us are tempted to sin. Sadly, Cain gave in to the temptation and murdered his brother, Abel. James writes:

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

My husband unwittingly brought an army of ants into our house. In the same way, yielding to temptation leads to a multitude of sins. Refusing to repent of those sins results in deadly consequences—everlasting punishment in hell, the place prepared for Satan and his demons (Matthew 25:41).

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