Morning & Evening Daily Devotional Reading– August 8

by Charles H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by William C. Neff

“They weave the spider’s web.”

—Isaiah 59:5

Look at the spider’s web, and consider it to be a very good picture of the hypocrite’s religion. First of all, a spider’s web is meant to catch his prey. The spider fattens himself on flies, just as Pharisees take the flies of custom, reputation, praise, and advancement into their nets.

A spider’s web is a marvelous work of skill, and isn’t a hypocrite’s religion equally amazing? How does he make a boldfaced lie appear to be the truth? How can he make his “tinsel lifestyle” appear to have the value of gold?

A spider’s web comes from within the spider’s very core. The bee gathers her wax from flowers, but the spider produces what he needs from within. Even so hypocrites find their trust and hope within themselves; their anchor was forged on their own anvil, and they laid the foundation for their own house, disdaining to be debtors to the sovereign grace of God.

But a spider’s web is very frail. It is curiously manufactured, but not enduringly strong. It’s no match for the servant’s broom, or the traveler’s staff. It doesn’t take much force to blow the hypocrite’s hope to pieces; a mere puff of wind will do it. Hypocritical cobwebs will come down quickly when the cleaning of judgment begins.

Which reminds us of one more thought– which is 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, are destroyed forever. O my soul, rest on something better than a spider’s web; make the Lord Jesus your eternal hiding-place. [M&E]