Spider Webs and Sin (Ezekiel)

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Trying to capture images of spider webs with clarity is baffling AND challenging to me. The beautiful nebulousness and silky nothingness of their webs call to me in their beauty--until they wrap around my head and stick in my hair (causing my husband to tell me to quit acting all scared . . . "You mean, like a GIRL?!")

Y'all, sin is the same way. It is often beautiful and nebulous and inviting and doesn't seem like much until we walk right into its web and it sticks to us for dear life. It is real. It is personal. WE ARE ALL SINNERS who make the choice to struggle with (or fail to battle) sin for as long as we live. Like each spider web is intricate and different, so are our sins. One is not worse than another . . . all sin is repulsive to God, which is why we desperately need Jesus and the grace He offers freely!
As I have read through Ezekiel this time around, I have paid more attention to Matthew Henry's admonitions in his commentary (usually, the personal ones begin with NOTE). Mostly, in Ezekiel, the warnings are directed at those who sit and listen to the word of God over and over again and either mock it, disregard it, or outright reject it because it is too challenging. Here are just a few of Henry's comments that I thought of when I saw these spider webs this morning:
  • MH Ez. 9: “Note, It is not enough that we do not delight in the sins of others, and that we have not fellowship with them, but we must mourn for them, and lay them to heart we must grieve for that which we cannot help, as those that hate sin for its own sake, and have a tender concern for the souls of others.”
  • MH Ez. Ez. 23: “Note, Those may justly expect God's judgments upon themselves who do not take warning by his judgments upon others, who see in others what is the end of sin and yet continue to make a light matter of it. . . Those who, instead of reflecting upon their former sins with sorrow and shame, reflect upon them with pleasure and pride, contract new guilt thereby, strengthen their own corruptions, and in effect bid defiance to repentance."
  • MH Ez. 23 (cont.): "Note, Drunkenness has sorrow attending it, to such a degree that the utmost confusion and astonishment are here represented by it. Who would think that that which is such a force upon nature, such a scandal to it, which deprives men of their reason, disorders them to the last degree, and is therefore expressive of the greatest misery, should yet be with many a beloved sin, that they should damn their own souls to distemper their own bodies? Who has woe and sorrow like them? Proverbs 23:29.”
  • MH Ez. 33:10: “Note, It is very common for those that have been hardened with presumption when they were warned against sin to sink into despair when they are called to repent, and to conclude there is no hope of life for them.”
  • MH Ez. 34:31-33: “Covetousness is the ruining sin of multitudes that make a great profession of religion it is the love of the world that secretly eats the love of God out of their hearts. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are the thorns that choke the seed, and [they]choke the soul too . . . Note, There are many who take pleasure in hearing the word, but make no conscience of doing it and so they build upon the sand, and deceive themselves.”
This is my long-winded post to remind myself next year and the years to come (if I am still around) to listen to God's word, attend to it, digest it, let it stick firmly to my soul so that I will not get caught up in any webs that overtake me before I know what has happened.

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