A family in Atlanta was going about their normal day when suddenly ...
The Fishers had a wooded backyard with a creek going through it. They were very careful to teach their four children about the dangers of the outdoors, including poison ivy, spiders and, yes, even poisonous snakes. They were taught to be careful where they walked and especially what they stepped on.
But certain animals can be just about impossible to see because they can camouflage themselves so well. This is especially true of the copperhead snake. When they are curled up on a rock or buried under a pile of leaves with just their eye sticking out, it is very easy to miss them!
One day in August 2014, 2-year-old Levi Fisher was following his father and three siblings home. Suddenly, he let out a piercing scream, a scream of pain that every mother would recognize. Racing outside, Levi’s mother scooped him up in her arms — and saw a three-foot-long snake slithering away out of the corner of her eye! The skin of the snake blended in perfectly with the rock, making it impossible for Levi to see.
Rushing inside, she immediately called 911. Her husband called out, “It’s a copperhead!” It had bitten Levi twice on the back of his right hand.
Venom starts to do damage immediately. By the time the ambulance got there, Levi’s hand was “swollen and bruised beyond recognition.” By the time he arrived at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta nearly 18 minutes later, the venom had travelled up his arm and half way to his heart. Levi was a very sick little boy!
He was immediately put on an IV and given morphine to dull the pain. Venom is especially toxic to children. Levi was given 24 vials of antivenom and had to spend four days in the pediatric intensive care unit before he was released.
Even then, he had a long road of recovery ahead of him. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta released a blog post in which Levi’s mother explained: “In the months afterward, we logged countless hours visiting with a hand surgeon, a physical therapist, a wound care specialist and a hematologist. Copperhead venom thins the blood of its victims, and it would be nearly 3 months before Levi’s blood clotting factors were back in the safe range.”
It is critical that snake bites be treated immediately, or serious injury or even death can be the result of them. Even so, it is absolutely necessary that our sins be forgiven, or spiritual death and eternal separation from God will be the result. God sent His Son Jesus to die on a shameful cross and shed His precious blood for our sins. But we must receive God’s forgiveness and put our faith in Jesus alone. We must truly repent before God. This is the ONLY way to have eternal life. The person who has their sins forgiven can honestly say with a free and happy heart, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:5757But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)).
Medical wisdom says that you should do these things if you receive a venomous bite. They are:
Do NOT apply a tourniquet.
Do NOT cut into the wound or attempt to squeeze out the poison.
Do NOT submerge under water.
Clean the wound with a washcloth.
Get to a medical professional immediately.
God, in His wisdom and love, says that His children (those that have their sins forgiven) should do these things:
“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:1515Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)). Read God’s Word every day! Know what the Bible really says!
“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:1717Pray without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5:17)). Praying is how we speak to God. We should make it a habit to speak to Him every day and all through the day.
“Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:2222Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)). God is warning us to RUN from any immoral temptation. This means don’t look, don’t even get close to it, but avoid it altogether. In love, God says, “Don’t hurt yourself!”
“Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:3232And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)). To be able to forgive is one of the signs that you belong to the family of God. What an example we have in how much God has forgiven us!
Can you say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:5555O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1 Corinthians 15:55)). You can, if your sins are forgiven and you have peace with God!
Unwelcome Guests gives one last important lesson from snakes.
Unwelcome
Guests
A man recently bought a beautiful home in Poolesville, Maryland, for 1.8 million dollars. The home sat on 25 acres. The house was made out of stone and timber. It had eight bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and was three stories tall. With a little decorating and renovating it would be an excellent house to entertain guests.
However, uninvited guests invaded the house and upset all the plans. One day in November, the homeowner squeezed through a trap door to inspect the crawl space. He looked around the crawl space with a flashlight.
To his dismay, he saw his basement was crawling with rat snakes. There were so many of them, they were impossible to count. Rat snakes in the region like to spend winter sleeping under rocks or in hollow trees, but in this case many had found their way into this poor man’s crawl space.
The man got out of that crawl space in a hurry and slammed the trap door down tightly behind him. He didn’t want any of those snakes slithering their way into the living quarters of his house.
Being a take-charge kind of a fellow, he felt like he had to do something. The idea of sleeping in a house with a passel of rat snakes made his skin crawl.
He didn’t want to wait for an exterminator to deal with the problem. He took the matter in his own hands. He filled a five-gallon metal bucket with hot burning coals and poured it on the gravel floor of his crawl space.
“That will fix them,” he thought.
He figured the smoke from the burning coals would fill the crawl space and drive the snakes out. Confident his plan would work without a hitch, the man drove to town to run errands.
Later in the evening a neighbor driving by saw flames and dark smoke billowing out of the windows of the home. The fire from the coals had spread to some combustible material stored in the crawl space, and from there leaped from floor to floor, engulfing the whole house in flames.
Seventy-five firefighters fought the blaze for hours. One of the firemen later said he thought he saw a rat snake slithering away from the orange glow of the flames but he couldn’t be sure.
The dream house burned to the ground, and all that is left of it is charred stone walls, dust and ashes.
A Foolish Mistake
Everybody is likely to make a foolish mistake in life, but the challenge is to make as few of them as possible. The man mistakenly underestimated the intensity of heat radiating off the coals and foolishly destroyed his own house. The fellow must have felt foolish for what he did.
You know, a lot of people are making a different type of foolish mistake in another area of life. They are underestimating God’s hatred which burns against sin! The Bible says, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:2929For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:29)), and, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:3131It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31)).
“Ah, God’s wrath will never be turned against me. That is such an old-fashioned notion. Surely we are past that as a society,” or so a great many people would like to believe. But they are dead wrong. God will hold each person accountable for their every action in this life.
A verse in the book of Psalms speaks directly to this point. “God shall wound the head of His enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses” (Psalm 68:2121But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses. (Psalm 68:21)). It was a foolish thing for the homeowner to dump the burning coals in his basement, and it is a foolish thing for anyone to go on in their sin too.
The time to repent is now! Turn away from sin or it will certainly destroy you. If you knew how God’s wrath burns against sin, you wouldn’t waste another moment before renouncing it and placing your faith in Christ.
If you go ahead and sin like you have nothing to worry about, you will find out firsthand that you are making a mistake as foolish as pouring a bucket of live coals into your crawl space. It is only a matter of time before God’s wrath will be seen in the fire of His judgment.
All of us have done wicked things that have earned God’s wrath, but because Christ came into the world, each man, woman and child has the opportunity to find forgiveness of sins and to start to live for God. Although none deserves it, all may come to Christ and receive the gift of eternal life.
The homeowner, through a foolish act, burned down his beautiful home. Through a foolish love of sin, souls are headed for the fires of hell, which will never be put out and from which they will never escape.
The right thing for the homeowner to do when he discovered the snakes was to call an exterminating company. The right thing for men and women to do when they discover they have sin infesting their hearts is to call out to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only Savior and He has what it takes to deal with these hearts of ours. “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:1414And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (1 John 4:14)). The problem of sin is too deadly, dangerous and difficult for men and women to tackle.
The Lord Jesus alone can deliver us from the guilt and power of sin. Those who come to Christ can say with King David, “Great is Thy mercy toward me: and Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell” (Psalm 86:1313For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. (Psalm 86:13)).
Thank God that, for people whose hearts have been infested with sin, we have such a Savior!