This year I am listening to and reading the Bible with The One Year ESV Bible. This morning I was struck with the description of the fruit of the wicked in Psalm 7:14-16:
“Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.”
Surely he did not intend to fall in the hole that he made, but the pursuit of pleasure in sin always reaps far more pain than originally anticipated. From a short-term perspective, he may have expected minimal pain and big-time pleasure. But in the end, it was the other way around. Proverbs 1:17-19 sounds the same warning:
“For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.”
The pursuit of pleasure outside of God is spiritual suicide. This is the folly of evil.