FBC Morning Light – July 25, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you and here we are entering the last full week of July. That's incredible to think of that already. This year is more than half over and we're racing towards the month of August.

Well, I hope your summer is going well and I hope your week gets off to a good start. Did you have a good day yesterday in the Lord's house gathering with God's people? I hope the ministry of the Word was a blessing to you and the fellowship with God's people was an encouragement to you as well.

Well, today I want to look at a couple of verses from the book of Proverbs chapter 25 and they address a pretty common malady that afflicts, well, all of mankind, but you know what, the church isn't exempt from it at all.

Listen to these two verses, verses 9 and 10. Verse 9 says, debate your case with your neighbor and do not disclose the secret to another, lest he who hears it expose your shame and your reputation be ruined.

I think the first part of verse 9 should not be interpreted as you're having an argument with a neighbor and you're debating back and forth the merits of a case. I think the emphasis here, the idea is to discuss or deal with the situation, the case, if you will, with your neighbor.

Who is my neighbor? Not necessarily somebody next door to you. It can be somebody in the church family, it can be a relative, whatever. I think that the emphasis of the verse, if you look at the rest of this text, do not disclose the secret to another.

So there's some kind of an issue that's come up. It can be a matter of concern, it can be something that you observe in your neighbor or maybe your neighbor observes in you. You can see a conflict maybe going on in your neighbor's household.

The thrust of this passage is to deal with this matter discreetly, to deal with it privately, and not to go about telling the story to other people. Like the last part of the verse says, do not disclose the secret to another.

That's a real challenge, isn't it? Let's be honest. For some reason, we human beings, and again, believers are not exempt from this, we tend to have something gratifying about being able to tell somebody's secrets to someone else and let others know what this person's going through, what this person's done, and so on and so forth.

It doesn't have to be told. This is a matter that has a very, very small circle of knowledge. It's a secret. The obvious implication is that the matter is not widely known, it's not a public thing, it's a discreet thing, it's a private thing, it's a private matter.

Deal with it privately. Don't go telling the secret to other people. The fact that this is a problem is evident in the New Testament when you hear Paul, for example, exhorting against gossiping and being busybodies.

This was a challenge in the first century church. It's a challenge that continues to this day. Have you ever been the victim of someone telling a secret, passing on information that didn't need to be passed on, stuff that puts you in a bad light?

The interesting thing about this text, verse 10 goes on to say, lest he who hears it expose your shame and your reputation be ruined. You're passing on somebody else's secret, you're gossiping about somebody else, and the implication should be that that person's reputation gets ruined because of this secret thing.

But in the end, you, the tail bearer, the one who is exposing a secret that doesn't need to be exposed, you are the one who ends up having a ruined reputation because you're trying to ruin somebody else.

There will be those sensitive to what you're doing and won't appreciate it one bit. This passage is a good warning to us to think through what it is we're about to say. Are we about to talk about somebody else?

Does it need to be said? Do we need to talk about them? Does this situation that I know about, does it need to be told to somebody else? To whom should it be told? Only to somebody who can do something about it, and only somebody who has to that kind of private information.

That's not very many. The implication here of this passage is that the sin is passing on the secret to somebody who has no right to know it, can't do anything about it, won't do anything about it anyway, and you're just telling it because you think it's going to make you look good or look better, and better than the other person, knowledgeable about something that nobody else knows, and so on and so forth.

Be warned, the text says, your reputation is the one that will suffer for it. I trust that we are sensitive about this matter, but it's always good to be reminded to keep confidences, to keep quote-unquote secrets that don't need to be exposed for any reason whatsoever, to deal with those matters privately, that they might be resolved privately, and then it's good for everybody.

Let's take this encouragement to heart. Our Father and our God, I pray today that we would be careful about what we say, especially about other people, and I pray that we would be interested more in resolving things than in passing on salacious gossip.

So help us, Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Monday. Hope your week gets off to a great start. God bless.