“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

The above quotes are from Psalm 5:9, Psalm 140:3, Psalm 10:7, Isaiah 59:7-8, and Psalm 36:1. It is a collage of the destruction that sin leads to. As I think about the vivid pictures these words create, I think about one of the scariest movie scenes I have seen: in the Return of the Jedi, the watchers are introduced to the Sarlacc Pit. This pit was found at the bottom of a sand cliff. The Sarlacc was actually a creature who had razor sharp teeth and you could only see his mouth, and those who met this fate were slowly digested over 1,000 years. Jobba the Hut liked to have his enemies thrown in there. Pretty scary! And as we look at the reference here to “their throats are open graves”, I find this is a pretty good picture of what this looks like spiritually. This passage also mentions poisonous lips, like the pretty female spy who tries to kill the hero in a movie. Sin is like a poison; once it comes into contact with our heart, it contaminates the whole thing. Sinners are doomed to become evil, without the redemption that comes through Jesus Christ. Add to the bottomless pit and the poison lips the rest of the descriptions mentioned here: deceitful tongues, mouths that curse, feet ready to shed blood, and the picture is too much — it makes me sick to my stomach. And all of this is due to the lack of “the fear of God” before their eyes. And we all have a choice as sinners on the path to a destructive life: 1) We can stay on this path, and it is easy. It doesn’t require us to work hard or change at all. But … it leads to destruction. Or, 2) we can accept Jesus in our hearts and his redeeming grace. II Corinthians 5:17 says this: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

Lord, thank you for helping us understand the utter wickedness and depravity of our lives of sin, apart from you. There is only one way to God, redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ. His perfect life and ultimate sacrifice IS THE WAY for me. I will dedicate the rest of my life to following him. And if I fall, I will get back up, dust myself off, and follow all the more faithfully still!