Proverbs 23:28

The book of Proverbs gives us insights into so many different areas of life. The book gives us instruction on how to live our lives for God. Here is a proverb that gives us insight about sin’s allure:

Proverbs 23:28 (ESV)

She lies in wait like a robber

and increases the traitors among mankind.

The reference in the above proverb is that of the adulterous or harlot women.   Solomon is talking specifically about the type of women a man may encounter on life's journey, but also metaphorically about folly, a picture of sin in general.   He is telling us that this women and/or folly (sin) is like a robber and seeks to "steal" something away from her victims.   The first line above describes her character, the second the type of pain she inflicts.   The phrase in the second lime speaks of increasing those in the earth who lack faith and who are traitors (lacking in trustworthiness) in the earth.  When folly comes knocking and we succumb, we are not living in faith toward God.   That is what she (sin) does to us.  She causes us to live by flesh and not by faith.   Sin wants us to yield to something that is pleasing for the immediate and self-graiifying.   Faith looks beyond the immediate into something promised by God.   It is interested that the pain she inflicts is not put in the context of strength or poor choices.  It is put in the context of faith.   Many, today, would say that we give in to her because we lack faith or because we make bad choices.   But, Solomon tells us that it is because we lack faith.   Our failure in sin is not a result of our strength.   We are dead in sin, so we don't have strength.   It is a result of our faith.  We simply quit believing in the faithful promises of God to please us and look to her or what she represents.  She is a robber and robs us of the opportunity take up the shield of faith and thereby quench the fiery darts of the wicked one.