Wednesday, June 3, 2015
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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. And 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 the last time, I think, we toured (which was a while back) he showed me a garden spider at work, for example. Actually, it wasn't at work, it was at dinner. It 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. And since the web is sticky, he stayed there. Well, Mr. Spider left his dinner, slid down this silk thread like a fireman would slide down his fire pole, and in a maneuver that you would have missed if you looked away for even a second, this spider spewed out a bombardment of silken thread that totally encased and imprisoned that grasshopper - kind of mummified him. It was over in seconds. From that time that he touched the web that grasshopper never stood a chance.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Sin Trap You Can't See."
Now it's not a spider you and I need to be concerned about. Well, maybe you are, but he won't hurt you much. You're a lot bigger than he is. We need to be concerned about 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's 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, "Just touch this beautiful web." And when you touch the Devil's web, you're his.
You might be flying perilously close to that web right now by the relationships, or the relationship you're getting into, by listening to what you're listening to, or watching things that glamorize or trivialize, or "humorize" sin. By the thoughts you're dwelling on. By the websites you go to, maybe you're falling for some of Satan's most successful web lies, "Hey, just this once." "Don't you deserve this?" "You know, so many others are doing it." "It won't hurt." "No one will know." Don't fall for those lies. They've destroyed so many people.
Remember, once you touch the web, he can do what he wants with you. While I was in that garden I actually saw another spider and a grasshopper that landed just below his web. 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 said, "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 have done what the Bible says. You have resisted the one who would devour you.
Listen, you been flying pretty close to the Devil's web lately, too close? Would you accept this as not just me talking, but 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. But you need to do it now while you can.