Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## 1 Thessalonians 3:6-8

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 3:6-8.

But now when Timothy came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, and that you have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you. Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you and all our affliction and distress by your faith. For now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord.

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All right, heat up here. Oh, heat, heat. The younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools now if the parents desire that.

We’re going through the book of First Thessalonians. Nice and slow. I’ve decided to return really to something we already talked about very early on, one of the first sermons, and that is the subject of faith. So I could call this faith part two, relate back to that. But really, what I want to get to now is sort of we’re going to review a little bit today what was said about faith earlier back several months ago and then move on to the subject of faithfulness and standing firm in the Lord.

And so this is kind of like hopefully more application-oriented based on some of what we talked about earlier in this series. What we’re going to do is we’re going to begin at the short review of the verses we just read. As we said, relate that back to what was said earlier in the chapter about faith. And then we’ll move on to talk specifically about the subject of faithfulness as found throughout the Scripture.

It’s sort of a little subject study on faithfulness and the important importance of it.

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Now, the last time we talked a couple weeks ago in 1 Thessalonians, we talked about temptation. And we have here in the text a shift in the middle of this chapter, although it’s somewhat of a subtle one, from a defensive sort of position and Paul’s concern and defending his own ministry and a concern for the Thessalonians and a shift to an expression now of joy.

Remember, he was concerned. That’s why they sent Timothy to the Thessalonians after the church had been planted. He was concerned that they might have been tempted by the tempter. And the implication is and fallen into temptation as opposed to receiving it as a trial from God. And so he was concerned about various things. And the report that Timothy brings back now is the subject of the verses we just read.

And it’s a good report. Timothy says their faith and love is strong. And they are standing firm in the Lord. And the standing firm in the Lord is related to the fact that they have faith and love operative in their lives. Calvin said of faith and love together in this sense that they comprised the sum total of godliness and so they were expressing this in their lives and so Paul was encouraged because they were standing firm.

Now we live, he said, if you stand firm in the Lord. So due to their faith and love here is the reason why he expresses the standing firm and that hearkens back to chapter 1. And remember when we talked about verse three of chapter 1, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope. And so the work of faith was being demonstrated by the Thessalonians to the extent that Timothy could see it still operative there and report back to Paul.

And so their faithfulness really is what we’re going to be talking about. That is the manifestation of their faith in faithful actions. And the word that’s translated faithfulness most often in the scriptures—the root word of that is faith. Just like our English word: faith and then faithfulness. To be faithful you have to have faith and the faith works itself out in life.

Now the term to keep—to stand—if he says if we live if you stand firm in the Lord, that means if you continue to stand firm. And so he rewards them for their faith and love and he reminds them that this is a continual action of the Christian life to exhibit faithfulness and love one toward another.

And so we’re going to spend a little time this week and next week on two of the seven virtues. Remember I said I’d try to weave into this discussion of First Thessalonians the seven virtues. And two of those virtues are faith and love. And so today we’re going to talk about the application of faith in a life of faithfulness. And next week we’ll talk about practical expressions of love in a variety of contexts as well.

And so that’s what we’re going to do today and then next week.

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Remember that the context for this is persecution. They’re standing firm. They’re not being blown over. They’re not collapsing. They’re standing firm in the face of persecution. And Paul relates this to their exercise of faith and love. And so my implication for us: if we in our church have various trials and I think my judgment or evaluation of where we’re at right now is that there are some trials.

There are some things we’re going to have to persevere through here as a church both corporately and individually in each of our lives that various people have been counted in the last six months or a year, and in the last few months particularly some things are happening that have the capability, if we don’t respond to them correctly, to cause us to collapse individually or who knows, even corporately perhaps.

And so Paul is worried that the corporate body at the church of Thessalonica would collapse under these persecutions because they wouldn’t treat them as trials from God but rather they’d fall into temptations and fall away from the faith.

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I was given a quote from David Chilton to remind you sort of what we were saying two weeks ago about temptation. From his book, Days of Vengeance, Chilton said, “So the divinely ordained purpose for the devil’s wicked activity is that you may be tested.” As Samuel Rutherford wrote, “The devil is but God’s master fencer to teach us how to handle our weapons.” The trials of Christians are not ordained ultimately by Satan, but by God.

And the outcome is not destruction, but purity. And so, just like the church at Thessalonica, each of our lives has various trials and temptations God brings into them. And ultimately, these are not things to cause us to fall. They’re things to accomplish our purity. And what Paul, I think, says is that God trains us how to use our weapons correctly, as Rutherford said, how to use our swords correctly.

And we’re supposed to use those swords in faithfulness and in love. And so that’s what I’m going to try to encourage and exhort you to this day. As I said, there are some trials. You know, you may not know all of what’s going on in various spheres of various people’s lives in this church. But I know a lot more probably collectively than each of you do individually. And right now I think is a particular time of trial and temptation to handle things biblically or not.

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We have a situation going on at the church in Seattle right now for instance. And that church up there is being tried and tested by God. And it’s a big trial for them. And it’s a trial for us as well and for the leadership of this church. How we go about proceeding now with what’s going on up in Seattle. That’s a real problem.

We’ve got a bill in the legislature that we’ll have a work session on tomorrow afternoon in Salem and we’re there’s some compromises that have been made last week. I’ll share those in the announcement time downstairs. But we’re under and have been under now for a period of probably what it’s been—I guess seven, eight months—attack on the part of the educational bureaucracy to get rid of essentially the liberties we won in 1985. We’re under some persecution here. We’re under some testing. We’re trying to respond to it biblically in faith and in love and make this into a realization that this is really for the sake of purifying us and causing us to act more responsibly with what God has given to us.

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That’s a temptation. Ordinary sort of everyday sort of things in our lives also can bring temptations to us. Right now we’ve got a lot of things going on in the context of the church where various families need help and they needed help with meals and that can put some strains and stresses upon people’s lives who are trying to help people out with a whole series of meals being delivered to families that need them.

We’re committed to kind of seeing ourselves as a community in that way, but it brings some interpersonal tensions into play. Some of the situations in the church that we’re trying to work with individually and corporately all have this capability of interpersonal tensions. And so these are trials and temptations. And as the Thessalonians face these both from within and from without, from friends and from opponents, from various devices—remember we talked a couple weeks ago about Satan’s various ways he will tempt Christians to send to fall away from faithfulness.

So we go through these things ourselves, but God is intending to purify us. And if we act faithfully and in biblical love, then they will indeed be purification devices from God.

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I could mention other things, but let’s go on just to review now in terms of what faith is and what faith isn’t. Remember, we said several months ago that at the heart of the meaning of the biblical term faith in the Old Testament and the New is a root which means certainty.

Certainty. And we use the example several times now with several different sermons of Exodus 17:12 when Moses’ hands were heavy. He held them up. They were going to be delivered by God. And people came around and held up his hands. And as a result of others encouraging and holding up Moses’ hands, his hands were steady. And that word steady is essentially the same word that means faithful, certain, in place.

The biblical idea then is that belief or faith is a certainty. It is not like today where faith is something that is seen as possible or something that we hope to be true even though we have no basis for that hope. Biblical faith rests on the certainty and it rests upon the certainty of the God of Scripture who has given us his word.

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Hebrews 11:1, turn to that please. Hebrews 11:1 is an indication of what biblical faith is.

We read in Hebrews chapter 11, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Now, you could, if you just stop right there, if that is your definition of faith, then you could go away thinking all the Bible says is you want something hard enough, you have faith in it, and that’s what faith is. But it doesn’t say that. It goes on to say, “For by it the men of old gained approval by faith.

We understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God. So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

He relates faith back to the very creation of all things in God’s faithfulness, God’s creative work. Now Calvin has a very interesting comment on this last section of the verse that talks about God’s creating what is visible from things that were not visible. And I’ll read you Calvin’s comment out of his commentary in the book of Hebrews.

Calvin said, “I believe that all commentators have been misled in this clause. Their mistake has arisen from the fact that they separate the preposition from the participle in this phrase so that they translate it—quote, now this is the way most people translate it—’so that visible things are made from those which are not seen.’ Scarcely any sense,” says Calvin, “can be taken from these words, or at least only very meager and moreover the context does not allow this meaning. For then the words would have been—” and he gives the Greek order of what the words would have been. “The apostle sequence is different and this is where it’s important to understand this. If we translate word for word,” Calvin said, “this clause can only be rendered thus: ‘so that they became the visibles of things not seen,’ that is the spectacles.” End quote.

So that the preposition is joined with the participle. These words contain the very important teaching that in this world we have a clear image of God. And in this passage, our apostle is saying the same thing as Paul in Romans 1:20 where he says that the invisible things of God are made known to us by the creation of the world and they are seen in his works. In the whole architecture of the world, God has given us clear evidence of his eternal wisdom, goodness, power and though he is invisible in himself he shows himself to us in some measure in his work.

So what Calvin is saying is that faith is related to God’s creative act. The creation of the physical universe gives form, gives visibility to things in God’s character and his very person that are of themselves invisible. And really what he’s saying is the created world is here to give picture, to give spectacles, to give visible form, to help us understand the invisible characteristics of the God we serve.

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Now, that’s real important. Maybe a little tough for you to comprehend what I’m trying to say, but it’s real important because it means that the faith that we have is rooted in the certainty that God creates whatever is here. It’s not a wishful thinking sort of faith. That faith extends to every aspect of who we are. Everything that we do. “The just shall live by faith.” The just shall live, in the words of Habakkuk, faithfully with the faithful performance of duties, recognizing that what we have to do is premised upon the fact that God has created whatsoever things are and he ordains whatsoever comes to pass.

We’re to act in covenant faithfulness to what he has given to us. And so the scriptures tell us here and in other places that faith gives meaning to our lives. Faith is meaning. To believe in meaning is to believe that things add up and hang together. There is coherence to the world. And because we have a world that is created by God, the work of faith then is yielding to the coherence to the meaning that God says permeates all of our lives and all of the world.

It’s extend is universal. We live in a universe. One word of God, one faith, one meaning, one coherence that the scriptures reveal to us is the only way to understand and then to act on the basis of what is the meaning of all these things. All that we see is given to us by God. And so we have a universe that is premised upon a coherence and meaning, that meaning in life that is based upon faith that God is, that he’s created the worlds and those worlds have a meaning to them.

Men who are of the biblical faith then work out the implications of that faith in every sphere of life deliberately, self-consciously, changing their presuppositions by which they live to the word of faith, the word of God, accepting it as the presupposition of all that they do. We work systematically to apply that faith that is revealed in the scriptures, that meaning and coherence in every sphere of life.

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Now in a very interesting way, I begun to read a book called Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde who was a communist party member and then I guess became Catholic or Christian and this book is sort of an analysis of why the communist party is so successful and why the Christian church by way of comparison has been unsuccessful in the last 50 or 100 years. And really Hyde’s comments are very apropos to what I’m saying here about faith and I’m going to read a couple of things here from this book.

Hyde said the following. “Individual members of the communist party are brought to believe that together they and others like them can change the world in their lifetime. They are convinced that this is not just a dream for they have techniques and a marxist science of changemaking which provides them with the means by which this can be done. When you have succeeded in making men believe that change is necessary and possible and that they are the ones who can achieve it. When you have convinced them that they and the small minority of whom they are a part can transform the world in their lifetime, you have achieved something very considerable indeed. You have put into their lives a dynamic force so powerful that you can bring them to do what would otherwise be impossible. The dull and humdrum becomes meaningful. Life becomes purposeful and immensely more worth living.”

See, that’s really a cheap impostor of the biblical faith. That’s what God tells us. If you read the book of Acts, as we’re doing in our family worship right now, the whole thrust of that is that the gospel and the implications of the faith are taken in every country and around the world. The gospel is preached and men and nations are converted. Men are imbued. And the Thessalonians knew they were world changers. And all Christian reconstruction really means is taking the Bible seriously about this stuff and saying that the word of God relates to every aspect of our lives and that we are called not to simply coexist with the world but we are called to evangelize the world.

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Well, the Communist Party has picked up that line from the church that they’ve actually told men self-consciously this is what their call to communism is. Quoting again from Hyde’s book, he says, “Christians really are told the same thing in terms of evangelism yet in practice, although Christianity has taught the Christian that total dedication is something to be admired and something to which one could aspire in one’s own life.

A communist may be the first totally dedicated person he has met. Or if he is putting it too harshly—or if it is putting it too harshly—the communist may be the first dedicated person he has met who is not wrapped up, who is not wrapped up in his own salvation but is devoting himself to the transformation of society and to changing the world.”

Now a big part of that is because of the pessimistic eschatologies that have permeated the church.

The point is, while the Christian may give lip service to that, most Christians are simply nowhere near as dedicated to working out the implications of that faith, that coherence, that meaning the scriptures talk about in every area of life and in society. Quoting again from Hyde’s book, “To be more specific, a man may decide to become a Catholic without it ever occurring to him that the pattern of life will be transformed, that the whole of every waking day will be different because of the set of beliefs he has accepted.

It is possible for the would-be convert to go to a priest for a lengthy period of instruction without once being made to feel that he is about to become part of a group of people who are quite exceptional in their dedication. Indeed, to make him feel this might well lead to disillusionment because it would be against the truth. It’s equally possible for him, that is the Catholic, to receive the whole—and I would say this would apply to most Christian groups, not Catholics. We could go across the board. It’s possible for him to receive the whole of the instruction which is required before baptism without hearing a word about the church’s social teaching or his personal responsibility in helping to transform society by taking Christian values for him—probably a new scale of values—into his place of work into his trade union or professional organization into his politics and into his personal relations with others.

He will certainly finish his instruction knowing that he must indeed attend mass on Sunday, abstain from meat on Friday and say his prayer. But his instruction will in most cases end without it ever having occurred to him—because it has never been put to him and also because he has never seen it borne out in practice—that he is now one of the people who are originally charged with the job of changing the world.”

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Now I read all this to say that Hyde says that the communists know that to get a big response from people you have to challenge them with a big demand. If you challenge people with a big demand, you get a big response. You challenge them with a minimal demand, you get a minimal response.

What kind of demand does the faith of the word of God challenge us with? Well, the biggest demand there is: death to yourself. Take up your cross, die to your own self, your own meaning, your own sense of community, and live to God’s sense of meaning, coherence, purpose, and community as revealed in the scriptures. That’s a big demand. And if preached forward and if taught regularly from that word that challenges to these things would elicit a big response.

The problem we have in Christian days is the faith has been watered down to simply believing in Jesus and going to heaven without the implications of ripping out every other rotten plank that we’ve built up in our lives prior to the moment of conversion and replacing it with the living tree that’s Jesus Christ.

Faith is saying amen to God’s world, his marching orders, his call to worship him in all that we do. Faith is to assert the crown rights of the one who is himself faithful and true, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now, so I guess what I’m saying here is again reminding us that faith is not simply an intellectual ascent. It is not simply volitional. It is an act of life and it should permeate all of our lives.

It was Schaeffer who said that faith is the gift of a steadfast and faithful God whose steadfastness and faithfulness in relationship to us makes us steadfast and faithful in our world. And that’s what we’re going to talk about now. Faith is that kind of a thing.

And now let’s talk about faithfulness and the basis of that faith. As Schaeffer said, our faithfulness and our faith is tied to the fact that God himself is faithful.

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And so in 1 Corinthians 1:9, we read that God is faithful by whom we are called into fellowship. Remember we talked a couple weeks ago 1 Corinthians 10:13: with every temptation, God is what? He is faithful and provides the means of escaping the temptation. If you put that together with James 1 that we talked about last week, God is faithful to bring trials and testings into our lives for the purpose of correcting and purifying and causing us to grow.

And because God is faithful and we pray this every week as we approach the sermon time, we pray that God would reveal something of himself and that we would then respond to that truth in our lives. Reveal something of who you are. God reveals himself at his core as being faithful. And he calls us then to image him in being faithful in all our inner relationships as well.

The scriptures use this word faithful really as a synonym for a believer, somebody who has faith. So in Acts 10:45, it says that they of the circumcision which believed—and you could read that which were faithful—were astonished as many as came with Peter. And so that is a correlation between the very essence of the faith and being faithful.

1 Timothy 4:12 says, “Let no man despise thy youth but be thou an example of the believers in word and conversation.” The word believer can be just as easily rendered “those who are faithful.”

And so this correlation between the scriptures between having faith and being a Christian essentially and being faithful. In Psalm 12:1, we read a description that’s very much like we could say in our prayers to God. David said, “Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men.” And understanding now as you do the parallelism in the Psalter, what it’s saying to us is that if a godly man is one who is faithful, and so if you think you’re godly and yet find yourself not faithful in your duties and responsibilities that God calls you to, this verse corrects you and says no, you’re not a godly man.

If you’re a godly man you’re a faithful man. Okay, so the scriptures show us this correlation between faith itself and faithfulness.

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And I wanted to point one other thing before we get into the application of this in terms of speech and the institutions that God has for us. Some of these things may feel, may make you feel bad—may not—but before I do start making you feel bad I want to point out here that now Paul has just commended them several times in these first three chapters on their faith and love.

Right? But he goes on in the book of First Thessalonians to remind them they’re not perfect. In this very chapter in verse 12, he says, “And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all men just as we also do for you.” So he’s commented on their faithfulness and their love and how great a thing it is. But he also then prays that God would cause their love to abound and increase.

And then in chapter 4, verses 9 and 10, we read, “Now as for the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you if you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. For indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more.”

Okay? To excel still more. And the reason I bring that up is to say, first of all, that in this congregation, you understand what Hyde wrote in Dedication and Leadership. You understand the radical call to Jesus Christ and the faithfulness to him. More than, you know, 99 congregations out of a 100. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re attending a church that is filled with what I would call people who are 100 percenters. People who are trying 100% across the board apply that word and leave no autonomous area.

So I’m going to commend you for your faithfulness to now and your love. But I want to challenge you as Paul did to the Thessalonians to improve still more in these things and to go on and increase in glory. Go from glory to glory as the scriptures say.

Okay, so now that’s the introduction. Now we get to the first part of the outline.

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## Faithfulness and Speech

Faithfulness and speech. It’s interesting that if you do a study on faithfulness, you come up with a lot of verses about speech. And then there’s other verses as well, but speech is a very important part of who we are, the words we speak. And the first verses I’ve listed you on the outline there essentially had to do with the fact that faithfulness is related to covenant keeping in scripture.

Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him.” God’s faithfulness, according to Deuteronomy 7:9, is directly linked to his keeping covenant with those that love him. And so faithfulness is not devoid from covenant keeping. It’s tied right to it. And of course, if the word of the covenant is how we come to understand life, then you can understand that relationship.

Point here is that faithfulness is tied to covenant keeping. Again, in Isaiah 11:5, we read of our savior that “Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of his reigns.” And what is he talking about there? Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins. Faithfulness the girdle of his reins. Righteousness is conformity to his standard. It’s justice according to God’s law. And faithfulness is constancy in applying that law to everything that he does.

And so our savior girting himself about is his justice, the law of the covenant that he obeys perfectly and puts in force. And he does that with constancy or faithfulness across the board. And so faithfulness again there is tied to the law of God and the covenant, the definition of what justice and righteousness is.

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In Psalm 15, we have a picture of the covenant keeper. It’d be real good and probably some of you already have to memorize Psalm 15. It’s an excellent synopsis of some of the essentials of the faith. It asks the question: who shall essentially continue in covenant with God, who shall abide on the holy hill of the Lord? And then it answers the question. It says:

“He who walks with integrity and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart”—in reference to speech. “He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, again, nor takes up a reproach against his friend.” Speech. And “whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord” and how do we honor people normally with speech. “He swears to his own hurt and doesn’t change. He doesn’t put out his money to interest nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.”

So God says that faithfulness and speech is an important aspect of our very character as Christians. It’s one of the essential elements of covenant keeping. And this tells us a lot. Specifically what I want to see get you to see here is that faithfulness is faithfulness to our word. God gives us a word and it is a faithful, true and sure word. And he wants us then in our words one to another then to also speak faithful words. And he wants us to be faithful to the words that we speak.

This is a simple concept, but I’d venture to say that if any congregation of any size applied this across the board in their lives and were faithful to what they said and swore more to their own hurt and let their yes be yes and their no be no and didn’t weasel out of things here and there of what they say they would do for other people you would see a congregation that has a large impact on the extended community about them.

And so the first thing I want us to talk about in terms of faithfulness is faithfulness in speech and specifically it’s faithfulness to swear to our own hurt—to be men and women, boys and girls of our word. Simple thing. The simple things that we say in everyday life, faith is an important part of that.

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Now, this is the elements that really make up all of our lives. Our speech is how we interact with one another. It’s how we exist in community. And so if we don’t clean up our speech in terms of faithfulness, then really there’s not much sense in trying to discuss the rest of these things. So faithfulness begins in our speech. And it begins with our speech being sure and with us following through with what we’d said we will do.

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Now, secondly we read in Proverbs 11:13 that there is an element of faithfulness to our companions that should be exhibited in our speech as well. We read there, “A tailbearer revealeth secrets but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.” So if we want to understand what faith is according to the scriptures here we are told specifically that faithfulness is faithfulness to conceal matters that have been entrusted to us for safekeeping by friends.

The opposite of the faithful one is the tailbearer. The one who goes about trying to get information from other people for the purpose of then running over and telling somebody else this, that, or the other thing about the other person. That’s a real bad deal in scripture. Over and over and over again, the tailbearer and the gossip is spoken against. Why? Well, you know, it’s such a fun thing to do.

You know, one of the first things you want to do with a secret is share it with somebody, you know, because it’s kind of secret knowledge. But the scriptures say you’re supposed to be faithful to conceal the matter.

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Now, it’s interesting, too. Turn to Proverbs 11 for the context of this. I think it’s important. Proverbs 11, we’ll start at verse 11. Verse 11 of Proverbs 11:

“By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the work by the mouth of the wicked it is torn down. He who despises his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding keeps silent. He who goes about as a tailbearer reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy conceals a manner. Where there is no guidance, the people fall. But in an abundance of counselors, there is victory.”

Now we could probably spend the whole time just in this passage. Maybe we should have, but we didn’t. I didn’t in my preparation. But you see the correlation here to the ability to keep confidence that people have shared with you, to conceal a matter in that way, with the well-being of not just your little relationship but of the whole city. A city that is characterized by tailbearers falls down and people are not faithful to conceal matters that have been given to them in confidence.

And very importantly as well, one of the reasons for that is you do away with what’s required in verse 14 for success and blessing in life. Verse 14 says, “Where there’s no guidance the people fall but in abundance of counselors there is victory.” How do you achieve an abundance of counselors? Well, if you’re going to go seek counsel from somebody on something, you want to know that whoever you’re getting the counsel on the matter about isn’t going to turn around and say to somebody else, “Oh, guess what’s going on in their life.” See, you’ve got a problem.

You’re trying to discern: do I do this or do I do that? You go to a trusted friend or associate. You go to a counselor. If the counselor then turns around and breaks confidence with you, what are you going to do? Well, you’re never going to go back to that counselor. That line of counsel is cut off. And all too often in churches, this happens over and over and over again until what you have at the end of that process is no counselors left anymore.

And now you got people who are sitting together on Sunday, but who are never counseling with one another and encouraging, exhorting each other about their personal problems. They can’t trust anybody. And the end result of that is united you stand and divided you fall. The city falls. And so faithfulness to keep confidence is important part of biblical upstanding and having faithfulness in our speech. Conceal a manner.

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Some other scriptures that relate to that. Thou shalt not go up and down. This is actually based on a case law from Leviticus 19:16, “Thou shalt not go up and down as a tailbearer among thy people, neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor.”

Proverbs 20:19, “He that goeth about as a tailbearer revealeth secrets. Therefore meddle not with him that flatterth with his lips.” Now see, that’s important practical piece of advice. It says that he who goes about as a tailbearer reveals secrets as we’ve already just read about that. But then it says some advice to you if you know people who do that. Therefore, meddle not with him that flatters with his lips. It says if somebody’s always coming to you flattering with their lips and wanting information about your life, but you know that they’re a tailbearer, don’t have anything to do with them.

You cut off communication with them. You’ve got to defend your own integrity, your own lines of communication. So you have to do that and so the scriptures say that’s what you should do when you meet that kind of a person.

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This is a very important verse as well, a correlary of this. Proverbs 25:9, “Debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself and discover not a secret to another.” Now I think what this proverb is telling us is to resolve conflicts biblically.

Again, this is you know kind of like, this is first grade sort of stuff, right? But it’s the first grade sort of stuff that we keep having trouble with and keep tripping and stumbling over more often than not in our Christian life. If we get first grade down, we got to review it as we go through the rest of our grades as well. And this has to do with resolved conflicts biblically. And I, you know, as long as I’ve been here, you know, I’ve seen people not do this.

I mean, we all know better, but we all don’t do it. We need encouragement and exhortation to do this. What does it say? It says that if you “debate the cause with your neighbor himself.” Go to the neighbor himself for the communication about something you’re debating with. Don’t go around and talk to other people about it. Matthew 18 all over again. You got a problem with somebody. Could be sin. Could be a misunderstanding. Could be a difference of opinion that isn’t in the area of sin.

What does the scripture say? Go to the neighbor. Keep it at that level as long as you can. Keep it at that level. If it’s something that can be overlooked and forgotten about it. Don’t pass it on to somebody else because what you may think is not a big deal. The reason—well, sometimes the reason you’re passing it on, ’cause you really think it is a big deal, but you’re just not up to, you don’t have the guts, I guess, to follow through biblically with confronting the person about the sin.

So you sort of tell it to somebody else. What do you think about this? This other person might get real upset and they may really take offense at whatever’s been said. And now you’ve really started to stir things up. And see that’s not faithfulness in our speech. That’s the opposite of faithfulness.

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Proverbs 26:20, “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out. So where there is no tailbearer, the strife ceaseth.”

See, you should evaluate yourself in this area. You should think through your communication. How do you resolve conflicts? If you just cover them up and you’re still, you know, if you just try to overlook things, which you find that you cannot overlook them, then you’re not dealing with it directly, you should resolve it.

I’m not telling you go talk to your neighbor about every little thing that bugs you. But I’m saying if it bugs you enough to be thought about more than a day or two, you should go try to work it out. Because otherwise, what you’re going to end up doing is you’re going to get mad. You’re going to talk to somebody else about it. You’re going to do what this verse tells you not to do. Faithfulness tries to keep community, keep covenant one with another in the context of the church by resolving conflicts biblically and not talking to other people about problems.

So don’t pass on information unless you’ve really worked biblically to resolve the situation and then only with the knowledge of the person you’re dealing with. That’s kind of a corollary of this idea of concealing a matter. I think the original proverb we quoted there really has to do more with a trust that somebody has given to you. But in relationship to that as well, it is important to see that we should resolve conflicts biblically as part of what faithful speech is all about.

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Okay. So we swear to our own hurt. We keep confidences. We resolve conflicts biblically. Oh, one thing before we go on there. Arnot—I’ve quoted him before on his commentary in the Proverbs. He said that a true friend is like water in a desert. One who can keep a confidence. He said, “You should be soft enough to take in another’s sorrows and firm enough to keep them.” That’s pretty nice. Soft enough to hear what somebody’s going through and empathize with them and take it in but firm enough in your own resolve to be faithful in your speech not to pass it on to somebody else if it’s been shared with you in confidence.

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Third, there’s a whole series of proverbs about being a faithful messenger. And you may not think of this too much in terms of your life, but really it is applicable. Proverbs 13:17 says that “a wicked messenger falleth into mischief, but a faithful ambassador is health.” And there’s a whole bunch of scriptures about that.

Proverbs 10:26: “As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the slugger to them that send him.”

Now, he’s the unfaithful messenger, and it’s as bad as smoke getting in your eyes. It’s a biting sort of a thing. That’s why I point that verse out. But secondly, I point it out to show you that faithfulness really has a primary connection to diligence and to an absence of sloth in our lives. What usually prevents us from being faithful is sloth.

Now, you may not think of yourself as lazy. But remember what we said about sloth when we were going through it in the scriptures. The old church fathers had it right when they referred to sloth as acidia or acedia, which is Latin for “no heart.” See, the slugger doesn’t have a heart for the job that has been given him to do. And to just try to whip him into doing it without addressing the heart problem is not going to fix the problem.

If you’ve got children that are slothful that don’t get work done, you really should be aiming upon the heart because that’s where the actions come out of. Now, I’m not saying you just let them go and be slothful until they get their heart squared away. You have to obviously get them to be diligent in what they do and obey you. But I’m saying that ultimately you’ve got to work on the heart problem.

The faithful messenger is one who does the task he’s been given to do because he realizes the importance of it and he has a heart and a concern for doing what’s been entrusted to him to do.

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Another passage along the same line, Proverbs 26:6, “He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off the feet and drinketh damage.” Bad deal. Cut off the feet and drink damage. You don’t send a message by a fool, somebody who has no fear of God before their eyes. That’s what a fool is. You don’t send a message by somebody who doesn’t have a heart for what the message is. Instead, you’re supposed to rely on your messages, give your messages to those who will be faithful in carrying them out.

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Now, I said that another proverb, Proverbs 25:13, “As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him. He refresheth the soul of his masters.” And that’s the flip side. If you’ve got somebody who is faithful in communicating things for you, then what a what a great blessing that is. It’s as if you’re out there working in the hot sun, harvest time, and they come running down with snow off the mountain for you. Ice cold glacier water, whatever it is. It’s that refreshing to the soul to have a faithful messenger.

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Now, we’re all messengers to a certain extent, you know. I mean, that’s what a witness is. We’re all witnesses for Jesus Christ. And we’re to be faithful to witness and to be a messenger for the king and to take his word into every sphere of life. So in one sense, we’re all messengers. And we rely upon messengers all the time.

And usually, you know—wives in the sense of being a messenger—this maybe has more everyday application to you. If your house works at anything like our house, then what’s going on at our house is my wife really becomes my messenger in an awful lot of things. She’s a communication line for me. And it’s very important that she understands and that those of you who function this way in your households, you understand the need to be faithful in communicating just what’s been said.

The faithful messenger says just what it’s told him to communicate, doesn’t detract from it, doesn’t add to it, does it very deliberately. And you know how difficult it is when you’re trying to tell a conversation or what’s happened, to relate a conversation, a message to somebody else about something that’s happened. It’s so easy to begin to put your own inferences into the conversation. A faithful person doesn’t do that.

A faithful man is diligent to root out his inferences and presuppositions from what he conveys about the conversation. Now, you may have inferences and presuppositions about what happened that you may want to tell somebody else. That’s okay. I’m not saying be brainless, but I’m saying make a distinction in your speech to who you’re relating it to. This is the fact of the matter. Here’s what was conveyed. Now what I’m going to tell you is my opinion, my advice, my understanding of this matter. Differentiate between the facts and your interpretation of those facts.