People Who Are Moth-Eaten

People Who Are Moth-Eaten

January 6, 2002

Intro: How many have ever seen a moth and went ballistic? Hurry... kill it! It’s going to eat up all our cloths. “Get the broom, get the newspaper.” And begin to chase it around the house until you finally kill it. Probably none of us. To us, a moth is harmless. It doesn’t bit, doesn’t sting and so it looks so innocent as it flies into your closet. But you see, there is where the real trouble begins…let’s look at Isaiah and find out what moth’s really can do.

Isa 51:7-8(TLB)

7 "Listen to me, you who know the right from wrong and cherish my laws in your hearts: don’t be afraid of people’s scorn or their slanderous talk.

8 For the moth shall destroy them like garments; the worm shall eat them like wool; but my justice and mercy shall last forever, and my salvation from generation to generation."

1. The Unconcerned Heart

A. Things At Work

a. This is a picture of how people, in those days came to their destruction

b. It is describing the insignificance of the character of their enemies and their opposition

c. They were not to be taken into account as enemies who needed to be fought with sword and battle-axe or with spear and javelin

d. Isaiah says…the moth would take care of them

i. This was another way of saying that there were certain insidious causes at work among themselves

ii. In their own hearts and lives – certain habits and conditions as quiet and still and noiseless as a moth

iii. That would yet eat their hearts out, and they would fall to pieces like garments which had been silently cut and scissored by the moths

B. Some Sins Are Obvious

a. Some sins work largely in the open…they are like the paw of a lion; they leave their marks

b. Everyone who is slain by them knows who the enemy was…if a herd of elephants passed through a rice field, everyone would know what passed through there

c. But the dwarfs in the thick jungles of South America go unnoticed until the tiny stabbing spears among the leaves

d. And the wounded man may not know of the deadly poison that has entered his blood until it is too late for help

i. So there are some sins that are blatant; they are recognized at once

ii. The man who is tempted by them immediately knows that the devil is behind it (expound)

iii. But other sins are like the hidden stab with its poisoned covering that we step on unseen

C. The Secret Sins

a. There are sins like the malaria that floats off from stagnant water

b. Sins like the moth millers…white, soft, noiseless, and delicate, that lay their eggs in the secret places of the imagination

c. They are quiet, until one day they hatch out moral moths, silent and noiseless like their mother, but with teeth as sharp and vicious as Satan’s

d. Which will cut the holy fabric of character and leave it useless as a moth-eaten garment

2. The Moths That Destroy

A. The Moth of Indolence (Laziness, Idleness, Sloth)

a. Everything that God has made in this world is for use and service

b. When a thing will not serve it begins to decay and becomes a nuisance to itself and a danger to everything around it

c. There are no exceptions to this great truth…it is true of anything around us

Ill: Take an old house…that no one lives in anymore. How quick the bats find it out and make their nests in the cellar. The wasps begin to build it’s nests in the crevices and all sorts of other bugs begin to find their home and shelter in this old house. It now becomes a breeding place for all these little beasts and the house becomes a place of loathsomeness and danger.

d. An indolent garden, given over to weeds and neglect goes to waste in the same manner

i. As the weeds grow, more bugs and snakes begin to find their homes in the thickness of the brush

ii. And what was once supposed to produce and yield fruit, is now the home to snakes and pestilences

iii. These are illustrations of what comes to pass in an idle, indolent life

A2. What Man Was Made For

a. Man was made for work, for exercise, for service and when he ceases to serve and is given over to indolence the moths begin to work

Old Proverb: “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop” “Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do.”…are both true

b. And yet many get into the habits of indolence without feeling that they are sinners

c. This is also true for an indolent mind…once reading was a serious thing, but now our time is taken by work, pleasure or other habits