My thumb is not and probably never will be green. But I think my friend, Mel, was born with a green thumb. He has one of the most beautiful fruit and vegetable gardens I think I've ever seen. More than once I've literally asked him to take me on a tour of his garden. Now, city boy always learns a lot in that garden. On my last tour Mel showed me a garden spider at work, for example. Actually he wasn't at work, he was at dinner. He was just finishing filet of grasshopper, the latest insect to be caught in his web. Now, while I was watching another grasshopper flew into the bottom of that web a few inches below the spider. Since the web is sticky, he stayed there. Mr. spider left his dinner and slid down this silk thread like a fireman would slide down his fire pole in a maneuver that you would have missed if you looked away for even a second. This spider spewed out a bombardment of silk and thread that totally encased and imprisoned that grasshopper. It was over in seconds! From the tiny touch of the web that grasshopper never stood a chance.
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You about "Death In A Sticky Web."
Now, it's not a spider you and I need to be concerned about - it's a lion with a deadly approach not unlike that of the spider. Thus God's sober warning in 1 Peter 5:8, our word for today from the Word of God. "Be self controlled and alert, your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him." Now there is, this very day, a powerful, shrewd spiritual destroyer who's looking for a way to entrap you, to invade your soul, to take you where you never thought you'd go - to devour you! And in a very real sense the devil is trying to get you just to touch his sticky web, like that grasshopper. You don't intend to stay. You don't intend to become a prisoner. You certainly don't intend to lose everything. Satan never tells you he's going to do all that. He just says, "touch this beautiful web." And when you touch the devil's web, you're his!
You may be flying perilously close to that web right now - by the relationships or the relationship you're getting into. By listening to or watching things that glamorize, or trivialize, or humorize sin by the thoughts you're dwelling on. Maybe you're falling for some of Satan's most successful "web lies" - "Hey, just this once! Don't you deserve this? So many others are doing it. No one will know." Listen, don't fall for it. Remember, once you touch the web he can do what he wants with you.
When I was in that garden I actually saw another spider and a grasshopper who landed just below his web and the spider didn't even move! He couldn't touch that grasshopper if the grasshopper didn't touch the web. You render Satan powerless against you in the same way. That's why God says, "Be self controlled, be alert, resist him." If you don't play around the sticky threads of sin and temptation the one who wants to devour you cannot touch you. You've resisted him.
Listen, if you've been flying pretty close to the devil's web lately accept this as a loving warning from God. Touch the web and you will pay a price you never could have imagined. When sin looks good, remember that death on a sticky web. The destroyer is waiting to wrap you up and make you his. But in Jesus' power you can get away. Do it now, while you can!