FBC Daily Devotional – November 30, 2021

Proverbs 17:9 and the Call to Cover Minor Offenses

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Here we are on the last day of November. This day's over. We head into the last month of the year. Amazing how quickly these months go by and seemingly the years as well.

Maybe that's got something to do with my age. I don't know. They say the older we get, the swifter the years fly by. I think there's probably some truth to that. But anyway, today, I want us to look at a verse, one of the verses in Proverbs that is in our reading, because it is a critical verse and has a wonderful principle that can be so helpful in this day.

You know, we have developed as a culture, as a society, and it I think is it has also, it's also evident in the church. A culture where we're thin-skinned. Where we're so easily offended about just about anything, anything that upsets us, anything we happen to disagree with.

It's an offense. We're offended by it and that then causes friction and it causes us to be angry at the person who has offended us and sometimes we lash out and we see it in the culture in so many ways, but it's not limited to the culture.

I've seen it, I've seen it on a personal level in the church. As a pastor, you're speaking multiple times in the course, at least I do, multiple times in the course of a week and it's probably a week that doesn't, it's probably not a week that goes by, but what, I don't say something that could be an offense to somebody.

I don't know. I haven't heard, but it's certainly possible when you speak that much and you say things and I speak extemporaneously, I don't write out manuscript my sermons so that I know exactly everything I'm going to say and all the words I'm going to say and everything else.

So I suppose in that kind of an extemporaneous method of speaking, it could be that somebody gets offended about something, you know. But we've become very thin-skinned regarding that as a culture. Where we take offense so easily and then that causes friction and degeneration in relationships.

You see it in marriages, you see it in families and there's this verse in Proverbs can be helpful to counteract that tendency. I'm speaking of Proverbs 17 verse 9, which says this, He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends.

Let Love Cover Minor Offenses

I like to put the little principle in this way, let love cover it. Let love cover it. So there's a lot of things that happen as I mentioned in our interacting with people that will lead to offense, will cause me to be you know hurt or offended by that other person.

At that point I have a couple of options. How am I going to handle this? And I would say definitely it depends upon the nature of the offense. If someone sins against you in an abusive way, then you don't let that go.

You don't let love cover it. It has to be dealt with. I'm talking about emotional abuse or physical abuse or sexual abuse or even verbal abuse. That kind of thing. No, you don't let love cover it and not deal with it.

Especially if it's a criminal matter, if it's a law-breaking matter. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about those serious kinds of offenses. I'm talking about just the everyday living that we go through and things come up where we easily get offended.

I don't know if you ever read the Dear Abby section in the newspaper. Oftentimes, it's not really fit reading. But I kind of like to read it because it gives me insight into the way people think. Not only Abby, but the people who are writing in.

And I'm amazed at how many times people write in to Abby and want her to solve some problem in a relationship that has resulted in one party being offended at the other party. And you know, what do I do about this?

Well, here's an answer for many, many, many of those situations. Let love cover it. Love the person. Love the person who has hurt you, who has offended you and bury it. Set it aside and go on. Again, I know there are serious matters that you can't do that with.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about somebody says something off the cuff and they don't mean anything by it, but it offends you. All right. What do you do with that? Get angry with them.

Break off their relationship with that person. Don't speak to them again. What do you do? No, you love them. You let love cover it. You look at them how you would want to be looked at. You look at them as a human being who is frail, who is a fallen person, who makes mistakes, who even says stupid things, like you do.

Like I do. You know, and you cut them some slack. Let love cover it. Let love cover it. Do that with your spouse if you're married. Do it with your sibling, your brothers and sisters, if you're a young person at home with siblings.

Let love cover it. Don't brood and stew and give the silent treatment and all that kind of stuff. Let love cover it. What's the alternative? Well, you can, as the verse goes on to say, you can repeat the matter and you end up separating chief friends.

You end up separating friends. So what a lot of people will do, they get offended by something somebody says or does and instead of either approaching them about it and say, hey, you know, this really hurt me and try to deal with the person individually or let love cover it and move on and go on and just forget about it.

Instead of doing that, what often happens is they go to somebody else and they tell somebody else. You see this in packs of friends, circles of friends, where, you know, one friend offends another friend and so the offended friend goes to a third or fourth party in the circle of friends and tells them what person A did and before you know it, there's conflict in the whole circle of friends and that's a tragic thing.

It's one that should be dealt with.

With love.

Let love cover it. Let love kill it. Let love put that offense aside and deal with it. Go on and don't allow yourself to end up destroying friendships over something that could simply be forgiven and forgotten simply because you love that person.

All right, so I need that. I need to hear that principle and that challenge from Proverbs myself, and I think we all do. Especially, as I said, especially in this day when everybody is so touchy and thin-skinned and offended about just about anything.

Let's not be like that. Father, I pray, fill us, fill our hearts with love. Love for people that will allow us to put aside those little offenses that could easily escalate into major conflicts. Oh, Father, deliver us from it, we pray, and we ask it in Jesus name.

Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Tuesday. Trust God will bless you in it. Good day.