THE SPIDER'S WEB!

THE SPIDER’S WEB”

“RELIGIOUS RITUALS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SPIRITUAL ‘ONENESS’ WITH GOD.”

“They weave the spider’s web.” Isaiah 59:5

See the spider’s web, and behold in it a most suggestive picture of not the “spiritual,” but of “religion.” It is meant to catch his prey: the spider fattens himself on flies, and the  Pharisee has his reward. Foolish persons are easily entrapped by the loud professions of pretenders, and even the more judicious cannot always escape.

Phillip baptized Simon Magus, whose guileful declaration of faith was so soon exploded by the stern rebuke of Peter. Custom, reputation, praise, advancement, and other flies, are the small game which religion take in their nets. A spider’s web is a marvel of skill: look at it and admire the cunning hunter’s wiles. It not a deceiver’s religion equally wonderful! How does he make so barefaced a lie appear to be truth? How can he make tinsel answer so well the purpose of gold?

A spider’s web comes all from the creature’s own bowels. The bee gathers her wax from flowers, the spider sucks no flowers, and yet she spins out her material to any length. Even so the religious (not the righteous) find their trust and hope within themselves; and their anchor was forged on their own anvil, and their cable twisted by their own hands. They lay their own foundation, and hew out the pillars of their own house, disdaining to be debtors to the sovereign grace of God.

But a spider’s web is very frail. It is curiously wrought, but not enduringly manufactured. It is no match for the servant’s broom, or the traveler’s staff. The religious (not the righteous) needs no battery of Armstrong to blow his hope to pieces; a mere puff of wind will do it. Hypocritical cobwebs will soon come down when the besom of destruction begins it purifying work.

We should be reminded of one more thought; that such cobwebs are not to be endured in the Lord’s house: He will see to it that they and those who spin them shall be destroyed for ever. “O my soul, rest on the something better then a spider’s web. Be the Lord Jesus thine eternal hiding-place.”