Hebrews 11:25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

Sin has its appeal doesn't it? It also has its misery.

If we look back, you can find certain things that are attractive. An recovering alcoholic can look back at the bar scene and remember the good times he had. After a few years of sobriety the vomit, fights, car accidents, lateness to work, calling out sick (hungover), loss of job, arguments with wife, fearful children, and police visiting the house after midnight to quell disputes, can all be forgotten.

Ah, yes, the cold brew (scene from many commercials) and the laughter and the camaraderie of watching the big game with friends--how sweet it was.

The return to drinking for the alcoholic comes in his mind first. He allows it in. Begins to caress the thoughts of it. Just like Israel, he remembers the cucumbers and the leaks of the pleasures it offered, all the while forgetting of the bad things.

He forgets UNTIL he takes that drink. Then he remembers. It soon comes back to him that he stopped enjoying the pleasures of this particular sin long ago.

An alcoholic that returns to the bar, can never again drink in peace of mind. It's always there, in the back of his mind, I shouldn't be here. What have I done? I escaped this place, why did I ever come back?

And as that man sits on his bar stool, alone, (he's too much of a depressed drunk for others to hang around, because he doesn't seem to know how to drink without a conscience about it)---as he sits there listening to old music, hearing idle and vain chatter of those around him, he will remember the time he once escaped from Egypt. And as he remembers, he will think of the days under the hot sun, the difficult days of trial and tribulation and affliction---and that man will yearn to be back there. Oh, he will yearn to return to faithfulness. To the time when he was grievously troubled, yet, through all the troubles, there was comfort, because God was with him.

But as he sits alone in the bar, as he looks around at those that have no concern for anything other than having a good time---he realizes that the thing he misses most is the relationship he once had with God.

Today, in the time of the end of the Church Age, there is no difference between returning to a bar and drinking; or returning to church to (so called) worship.

2 Peter 2:20 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

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