Proverbs 1:18: The Gospel according to Looney Tunes

“but these men [sinners] lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives.”
-Proverbs 1:18

I was always a big fan of the Road Runner cartoons. I mean, all of the old Looney Tunes cartoons followed a similar theme: one character was always chasing another and usually ended up being hit in the head five or six hundred times. But the Road Runner ones were special to me. They were unique from the others in two ways: 1) they were all about the bad guy, Wile E. Coyote, rather than the good guy, like the others, and 2) they were more patient in delivering the laughs.

You remember. Wile E. Coyote would spend an inordinate amount of time building some crazy contraption, and then the Road Runner would zoom by, and Wile E. Coyote would hit the button, only to fall off a cliff, smack himself in the head, or rocket himself into a huge rock. It was this long set up for a half-moment worth of punch line. But what a punch line! It was worth it every time.

We’re looking a few verses here that talk about the futility of sin. The sinners in these verses are compared first to people who set a trap for a bird while the bird is watching (thus gaining nothing). Now we are told that they are actually setting the traps, much as Wile E. Coyote does, only to fall into the traps themselves.

This is very true in this life, but it is even more true in the next. But consider, how many of your problems in life are not ultimately of your own making? There are times when this is not true, but most of the time it is. You try to take advantage of a situation, maybe in a relationship, maybe at work, maybe elsewhere, and it comes back to bite you. It is rare that we ever experience a problem that could not have been avoided by a better decision in the beginning. It happens, certainly, but it’s rare.

In the next life, no one will have an excuse. All sins will be paid for. I find it somewhat funny that some people say that they will get to heaven because they are “good people.” That is nothing but pride talking, and pride got Lucifer kicked out of heaven. I tell you the truth, if all your anger, your lust, your greed, and your pride were laid before you, you would know that you deserve nothing better than death.

Sin is a trap of our own making, constructed to gain some advantage for ourselves, and yet will bring about our own destruction.

Like Wile E. Coyote, we think we have everything under control, and we end up making a man-shaped hold in the side of a cliff.

There is only one way out of this. It’s not being a better person, because we’ve already gone too far for that. It’s not balancing your sins with good works, because even the smallest sin is too much to ever be repaid. It’s Jesus.

Jesus lived a perfect life and died undeservedly. But in that death He took on our sins and paid for them with His blood. If we repent of our sins and follow Him, then His Blood will take the place of our own in death.

Or we can keep chasing the Road Runner.

Th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!