They’re in Big Sandy, Texas, attending chemistry class and the high school students are doing some kind of experiment under the supervision of their teacher, Miss Watson.*  When the students finish their sojourn into their assigned chemical wonderland, Miss Watson has told them that they can have some free time to roam around the chemistry classroom which also doubles as Miss Watson’s biology room.

Frank and Joe rush through the assigned experiment and are loving their free time to stroll around and look at all the animals Miss Watson has in the various cages and terraria in the room.  Miss Watson, always the careful teacher, has given the students one caveat: “You can handle and pick up all the animals except one, the tarantula.”  They could see the big, black hairy spider properly confined in its glass house, and Frank and Joe, although typical fun-loving and adventurous long-time friends, stayed away from Mr. Deadly.

Frank and Joe approached the terrarium confining the resident snake in the room.  Although Frank had never picked up or touched such a reptile before, the boys thought that it would be fun to play with the non-venomous creature.  And they had Miss Watson’s permission to do so.

Frank opened the lid of the lair and carefully reached in, took hold of, and pulled the snake out.  He began to play with it; the animal was docile.  He let it twine itself around his right arm and watched its fascinating coils.  As he held the snake, he gave it a playful squeeze.

And then it happened: the snake, now alarmed, struck, its fangs plunging deeply into startled Frank’s right hand.  He began to bleed; the pain was like red-hot liquid fire.  Holding the snake at bay, Frank tried to put it back in its glass case, but it was fighting him hard.

Joe, seizing the moment, grabbed the snake away from his friend and was trying to lower it into the cage and close the lid.  As he did, the snake lashed out at him, and before it was all said and done and it was thrown back in its place with the lid lowered, it bit Joe four times on his right hand.  Joe’s hand and arm were a bloody sight.

The non-venomous snake had done its angry work, but something was happening to Joe and Frank.  Their eyes won’t focus.  They feel dizzy.  Miss Watson told them to go to the school nurse and they headed off out of the classroom and down the hall.

As they walk, their feet become lead weights.  Their vision continues to blur the familiar objects in the hall of their high school in Big Sandy.  Their pace is zombie like.  They stop, trying to see, trying to figure out how to get where they need to be.

A teacher sees them in the hall and comes out of his classroom to ask, “What’s going on?”  The boys, leaning now against a wall, tell him that they’d been bitten by a snake and aren’t doing so hot.  The teacher  grabs two chairs; he helps the boys sit down.  He summons the school nurse and she comes to attend them.

They tell her about their blurred vision, the fiery pain, and that they can barely walk.  The principal, the nurse, and the teacher put Frank and Joe into a car and the principal drives them to the ER in Big Sandy.  As they’re on the way, Joe, the one bitten four times, raises his arm above his head, the pain and the swelling are on a rampage; he’s going in and out of consciousness.

They get to the ER, the principal registers the boys and they take their seats in the waiting room, waiting their turn.  Joe, still coming and going, uses his cell phone to call his mother.  He tells her that he’s in the ER, but knowing her son’s fun-loving side, she thinks its one of his pranks and he’s skipping school.  He tells her that he’s been bitten by a snake at school and she still thinks he’s kidding.  She thinks, “Who gets bitten by a snake in school?”  But there’s a seriousness to his tone, and finally she realizes he’s telling the truth.  She believes and rushes to the hospital.

When she arrives, Joe and Frank are still in the waiting room, but by now, her son is turning black.  She goes up to the desk and tells the lady, “Something’s wrong!  He’s turning black and losing consciousness!”

They get Frank and Joe into the examining room immediately and the doctor asks the boys to tell him about the snake.  They do, but the doctor needs to identify what kind of non-venomous snake it was.  He calls the school and asks them to FAX a picture of the snake immediately.  They do and he holds up the picture and asks the boys if this is the one that bit them.  Joe points to it and says, “Yes.”

The doctor then tells the boys and Joe’s mother that their teacher has misidentified the snake.  Whatever she thought it was, it’s not.  It’s a cottonmouth.  The adverb for cottonmouth is “deadly.”

(If you were to ask, “How did Miss Watson let a cottonmouth get into the room,” the answer is that she let students bring wild animals they’d found to her, she would identify them, and then those which she judged “OK” could stay as points of interest and study for the students.  Miss Watson had missed this one.)

The doctor explained that the snake had bitten Frank once because he’d squeezed it, and that was a warning strike.  But when Joe grabbed it, the warning was over.  Now the snake released a full load of venom into his hand with bite after bite in full attack mode.

That day in Big Sandy, history would be made; the doctor would put eight vials of anti-venom serum into Joe’s IV, the most ever administered to anyone in that hospital.

Frank recovered and was later released, but not Joe; Joe had to stay.  They both recovered, but it wasn’t easy.  Joe’s mother sat for days and nights by his hospital bed, crying and crying.  Frank and Joe are alive today, but that day, they learned a lesson in school they would never forget.

The snake, the serpent in Eden, becomes, for all time, God’s symbol of sin.  And how appropriate a symbol it is.  Like sin, its movements hold a fascination for the fallen human race.  Like sin, it glides into our lives, and captivated by its coils, we play, all the while Satan, in this classroom called earth, is promising, “It’s harmless.  It can’t hurt you, it’s non-venomous, you know.”

Isn’t that what Satan said as he instructed Eve through the subtle serpent, “Eat.  It won’t hurt you; it can’t hurt you; in fact, it’ll help you.  It’s a non-venomous fruit.”

And for thousands of years in this classroom, we human beings have played with sin, believing “Miss Watson” is right and the Bible is wrong.  We play until one day, it strikes; its venom sinks deep.  The pay-off pain is searing, the price of reaping the venom after sowing the fun is higher than we thought and one we don’t want to pay.

But sin doesn’t inject its venom in a vacuum.  Just as Joe’s mother sat for days and nights with tears chasing themselves down her cheeks, so others, those who didn’t play with the snake, feel the effects of its poison.

Doesn’t the Bible warn us about sin’s venom?  Doesn’t it tell us that Miss Watson is wrong, that this supernatural Miss Watson is a deceiver?  It does, and it does so over and over again.  “The way of the transgressor is hard.” “ . . . wickedness overthrows the sinner.”  “Trouble pursues the sinner.”

What begins as a fascination with the “recreational,” ends with trying to find a place on the big toe where the needle hasn’t been yet and a brain-destroying obsession for “just one more.” What begins with a bored and wandering eye winds up with a poisoned marriage vow, a lost family with children who now hate the guilty party.  What begins under the high-gloss cover of freedom of speech, “I can say anything I want to whomever I want, whenever I want, and how I want,” ends up pumping its venom into a relationship.

Sin carries its own special poison.  We may think that the way not to get bitten is to simply slap a rule on the terrarium, and with the rule, say, “Stop it!  Don’t play with snakes!”  But that’s not God’s way.  That doesn’t work because the sin nature inside of us wants to play with the reptile and we can’t stop it.

God’s way is first to show the believer the sin and its consequences — “the way of the transgressor is hard;” “sin overthrows;” “trouble pursues” — to point out that our sin displeases Him and brings the venom into our lives.  He wants the believer to recognize that he can’t “stop it” (Rom. 7) and, unaided, put on a new behavior. He’s powerless.  Only by walking by means of the Spirit can the Holy Spirit stop it and replace the ungodly behavior with the godly behavior, which, with a changed heart, the believer now wants to do and enjoys doing.

Instead of the bored and wandering eye, the believer delights in that special marriage partner.  Instead of saying whatever, whenever, to whomever, and however he wants to say it, instead of ripping someone apart with a verbal hatchet to the forehead, the believer, under the control of the Holy Spirit, finds joy in “speaking the truth in love,” delighting to “edify the body of Christ.”  Instead of a needle into the toe, the believer delights in the power of a sound mind and body, now sacrificed to the Lord (Rom. 12:1-2)

Those snake handlers in Big Sandy almost died that day because they thought the snake was harmless.  That thing almost killed them.  When sin entered the human race, so death came by sin (Romans 5:12).

Who are the snake handlers of Big Sandy?  Not only Joe and Frank; they are you and I apart from the control of the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor