Caught in one's own snare
One man may be supposed to have dug a pit in some dark place in the road, or to have concealed it by covering it with boughs and earth—like an Indian tiger trap—so that he may catch some wild animal, or perhaps make a prisoner or a victim of his enemy. Then, not heeding its whereabouts, he fails into his own snare. Another may be rolling a stone against his enemy, when it falls back and crushes the author of the mischief. Consider first some cases in which these things might happen, and then the principle that underlies them.
I. INSTANCES.
1. The deceiver. The pit is a snare. It is meant to deceive. Those who deceive others are likely to be deceived. They brand and blind the faculty of truth. They acclimatize themselves in a zone of falsehood. In the very belief that they think this well for them, they prove themselves deluded.
2. The swindler. This man may entrap unwary folk who trust his offers, and at first he may thrive and fatten on his ill-gotten gains; but his success is almost sure to be short-lived. Swindlers rarely prosper till old ago.
3. The tempter. One who imitates the work of the devil may have the devil's wicked triumph over weakness and ignorance. He may succeed in luring his victims to shame and ruin, and he may find a hellish glee in the awful ease with which he overcomes their virtue. But he is a short-sighted self-deceiver. There is a pit prepared for the devil and his angels, and the tempter is one of the latter. Satan makes hell, and every tempter prepares his own pit of destruction.
4. The opponent of Christ. The Jews rejected their Lord and laid snares for catching him. He was keen to reply, and turned the shame on the head of each party in succession—Pharisee, Sadducee, Herodian. In the end they accomplished his death. But they were punished in the frightful overthrow of their city. The world's rejection of Christ would mean the world's ruin. Every soul that plots against the kingdom of heaven unwarily plots for its own undoing.
II. THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLE. This principle is that sin brings its own retribution. There is no need lot the conception of a Deus ex machina. No heralds of justice are wanted to proclaim the guilt of the offender; no heavenly executioners with flaming swords are required to bring swift vengeance on the guilty. If only the foolish sinner is left to himself, he will certainly reap the fatal consequences of his wickedness. Sin is naturally fatal. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." The vile harvest of death grows in the soil of the man's own life. He is his own executioner. No doubt this terrible tact is based on a Divine decree that lies deeply embedded in the very constitution of the universe. Therefore, as the forest traveller unconsciously makes a circuit and returns to his old camp fire, so the sinner comes back to his own evil deeds, but to find them now as snares to entrap him and stones to crush him.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON