Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"Thou shalt not hate
thy brother in thine heart.
Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and
not suffer [allow] sin upon him."
Lev. 19:17
"Whoso is partner
with a thief hateth his own soul;
he heareth cursing and betrayeth it not."
Prov.
29:24
I have been pondering this morning over my personal history with the saints, in particular over the lives of some of God's children who have wandered away from the right way and are now in the wilderness of sin. In retrospect, it can easily be seen that sin not exposed was the beginning of their downfall, and the wisdom we find in the Scriptures shines more brightly because of their night. In the preceding TFT, I told about Rick and Terry, and the tragic results of his hiding her sin from the saints.
On another occasion, I was called upon by a woman to conduct the funeral of her mother, an elderly saint whom I knew well. Some of the most precious moments of my life have been those spent at the bedside of old saints who were dying and at the funerals that followed. God's presence can be so wonderful at such times! The Scriptures say, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of His saints", and I understand that Scripture well, for the death of one of God's saints is precious to my heart, too!
In this case, however, my spirit was grieved with the thought of conducting that old saint's funeral. The thought of participating in it was absolutely repugnant to me, and yet, I could not understand why I felt that way. Twice, I suggested to the family that they might prefer another minister to conduct the funeral, but the family would not hear of it. And since I had no reason to give them for not doing it, I found it all but impossible to refuse their request. Had I known then what I discovered later, I could have easily turned them down, but at the time, I wasn't privy to their nasty little family secrets.
God was privy to the secrets, though, and He refused to give me any message at all to preach at the funeral. This was very troubling to me. What was I to do? If I were a Christian minister, I could have just bought one of those little books that tells a man what to say at funerals and weddings. That way, it wouldn't matter what God said or didn't say; I could still do the job. But the true servant of God depends upon God for his words, and I was now in a very awkward position because of His silence. The night before I was to conduct the funeral, I was anxiously thinking about my predicament as I drove west on Dabney Drive in Henderson, NC (I still remember the exact spot). I had concluded that since the Lord would give me nothing to say at the funeral, I would simply read some Scriptures and pray.
But the Lord abruptly interrupted my vain thoughts. He spoke to me in a very stern voice and said, "You're not going to pray, either."
Not even pray! What was I to do now? My mind began to race around, trying to come up with some way out, some solution to this dilemma. I abhorred with all my heart the thought of conducting this funeral, as I know now that God did. He did not want His servant used in the continuing cover-up of filthiness and sin. But I was in the dark; I suspected nothing. I only knew what I felt. I was really in a hard place now, and I did not know what I could do. The funeral was to be held the next morning, and I felt as empty and dry as last week's cracker box.
The next morning, as a last measure, I decided that since I had no message for the funeral, and since my Master would not even allow me to pray, I would just pick out a few Scriptures to read and close with one that ended with the word, "Amen." In retrospect, that plan seems a little humorous, but at the time, I was desperate. The funeral was just a few hours away.
As I was searching the Bible for an appropriate order of verses, God had mercy on me and gave me a short message for the unhappy occasion, but its tone was more of rebuke and warning for the natural relatives of the departed saint than of hope. She was the only member of her earthly family that had a heart for God's truth. Beside her grave that morning, I spoke to people who had for decades heard and rejected the truth of God, people who, in reality, knew neither that old saint nor her God, yet people who now expected me to submissively play the role of a Christian comforter to them who could not grieve for her death in any measure as I and the saints grieved. The saints, her true family, were made to stand to the side while the ceremony proceeded. It was an awkward situation for everyone present. It is probably my most unpleasant memory. But I am not my own; I have an Owner, and He decides what I can and cannot do.
The details of what I said and did at the funeral are not important here. The point that I want to make is that the cause of all the pain and trouble that this situation caused me and everyone at the funeral was that sin was kept secret from the saints by that old saint. She should have told us about the wretched filthiness of some of her relatives. But she did not. And she did not tell me because she knew that I (and anyone else with good sense in Jesus) would have told her to separate herself from those relatives of hers who had given themselves to grossly unclean practices. The body of Christ is to be merciful, yes, but also pure! Her keeping some sins secret from the saints forced both me and the saints-and her own relatives as well-into a terribly confusing and difficult situation that none of us should have been put through. But God knew about it, and He was displeased that I should have anything to do with their ceremony of her burial. If I had understood that then, I would have refused so much as to show up at her funeral, much less would I have conducted it.
We make ourselves partners with sin when we seek to hide it from the saints. And when we hide sin while we are part of an assembly of saints, we can force the unsuspecting saints into an unwilling partnership with it, too. In the Bible, we find a number of cases in which God's people suffered and even died because certain ones among them secretly brought sin into the camp (e.g. Joshua 6 & 7). That is why we are warned not to allow sin to remain hidden among us but to rebuke our neighbor (that is, fellow believers) and to "betray" any cursing that we hear. Isn't it interesting that God says (in the verse quoted at the beginning of this letter) that to fail to rebuke a brother who commits a sin is to hate him?
We do no one a favor by hiding his sin from the saints. We only make room for that sin to grow in his heart and, so, endanger God's people. Secrecy is fertilizer for sin. That is why Paul, that wise old warrior of the faith, commanded young Timothy to rebuke openly those who sinned, so that those who were looking on could learn to fear God (1Tim. 5:20) and, so, escape the sin that "doth so easily beset us".