In this sermon, the preacher focuses on Luke chapter 12 verses 2 and 3, which talk about nothing being hidden that will not be revealed. The preacher emphasizes the importance of not covering up sin, as it will eventually be exposed. Sin is described as a destructive force that affects us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. The preacher also discusses how unbelief and pride can lead to destruction. The sermon concludes by highlighting the responsibility we have to not be a temptation for others to sin through our actions and examples.

Luke chapter 12, verses 2 and 3. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. I'd rather get rid of the thing now, wouldn't you, than have it proclaimed on the housetops? It's insane to cover sin, friends, in the light of these verses. I'd rather repent and get rid of it and let the blood of Jesus wash it now, and have it forgiven, than have it declared at the judgment seat of Christ. It's insane to cover sin. And it hurts a God to have to expose us to fulfill his word. Surely, your sin will find you out. He goes into action to fulfill that verse, for our good. All right, what does sin do to others? It always affects them. Sin produces suffering. The word says, no man lives unto himself alone. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 15. See to it that no one failed to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled. You and I cannot have one particle of resentment in our heart, which is a root of bitterness, and not have others not affected by it. Don't think you can have a little bit of bitterness and resentment there, and keep it to yourself out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth will speak and others will be defiled. It blocks the flow, this is what sin does to others, it blocks the flow of the power of the Holy Spirit through us. The power of God flows through clean vessels, because he's a Holy Spirit. And therefore, when we have undealt with sin, there's the blockage of the flow of the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the blessings that would have come through us to others, others are denied. Now, God has to be just to the people around us, in our lives that we influence, when we, through choosing to sin, have stopped the blessings that would have come to them through us. How is God going to be just to them? He has to be. All right? So he recreates another plan to bless them through other means or through other people. That's justice. He creates another plan. And so, they get blessed, but we don't have the thrill of having the blessing come through us to them. We're the losers, not them, because of God's justice. That's why if you weren't blessed through your parents, it is insane for you to resent God and them. God has already, friend, gone into action in your lives to bring the blessings that would have come to you through your parents, had they chosen to do the right thing, through other means and other people. Now, if through resentment to God and your parents, you blocked out the blessings coming from other places, you're nuts! It's insane! Don't blame God, you just blocked them off. Now, we become a cause of temptation, this is what sin does to others, as we sin, we become a cause of temptation to others to sin, as a reaction to our sin. Okay, so we sin, and because of it, we then become a cause of temptation for them to sin in two ways. I'll give you the two ways in a minute, but let's get the verse Matthew 18 and verse 7. Woe to the world for temptations to sin, and the Greek literally means stumbling block. Woe to the world for those who are stumbling blocks to others, for it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes. Now, in my ignorance, in my pride, in my facetiousness, for many years as a young married woman, I would say around people that were close to me, they may be annoyed in some way by my manner or something I did, or personality or something, and they would make it apparent that I was annoying them or something, and I would just say, oh, you just want to claim the verse, he gives more grace. Very smart, wasn't it? Very facetious, very proud, very ignorant. It's true. They didn't have to react to me wrongly because I was annoying them in some way. It was true. But you see, I had no understanding of this verse, else I would have never gone around blithely saying, just receive more grace to cope with me. Woe to the man through whom the temptation comes. Think of all the woes that I had on me. Really, the judgment of God. Instead of being humble and broken and repentant and saying, I'm sorry, by my wrong here, it's not a matter of giving you a little lecture to receive more grace, I must not be, by my choosing to sin, a cause of temptation for you to sin. Now, how do we become a temptation for others to sin? One, we tempt others to do the same by our example. Now, according to the degree of the strength of our personality, much more importantly, the strength of our character, the strength of our position of authority in God by virtue of the ministry that God has given us and the anointing of the Spirit that may have been upon that ministry, which is where authority comes from. And all that adds up to influence. The greater the influence we have by all those things, the greater we will be held accountable by God when we sin to be a cause of temptation for another to sin. They're looking to us as an example. We are influencing people continuously. And when we choose to do wrong, there is a strong influence for people to do the same thing to the degree of all those things, strength of personality, character, authority and ministry. Now, the other temptation is they may not be tempted to do the thing that we have chosen to do, but they may be tempted to react wrongly to our wrong action. The wrong reaction to our wrong action. And we are the cause, not of their sin, they choose to sin, but we're the cause of the temptation. And then another thing that sin does to others, when God does convict us and we repent and we have to go and make our restitutions, restitution is merely the outward sign of the depth of repentance, which 80-50% of the time God requires of us, I believe. He hasn't let me get away with too much without it, I can assure you. And I don't think I'm any exception. If we want friendship with God, we will show the depth of our repentance by going to the circle where the sin was committed and say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. Well, then it wastes others' valuable time as we have to make our confessions and restitutions. Many a time when I'm almost too weary to read the continuous load of correspondence that comes to me, I've groaned many times opening the mail, coming home from a long journey, opening the mail, reading through. The last time I came home, it took me a whole day just to read and sort the mail. It was a day's work. Not answer it, just read it and sort it. And sometimes I just groan as I have to read through letters of restitution. The time that it takes. Wondering whether I've got to reply to it. You know, now it has to be made. I'm not resenting the people, I'm praising the Lord that they're getting right with God and they're being obedient and they're being humble. But it's time consuming. And friends, if I've groaned over that, I've groaned ten times more at the acute embarrassment I've had in my life on many occasions of having to go and make my restitutions to extremely busy people. And I've hesitated and said, God, I'll go through with this, but you know that that phone call is going to take that busy person who's already overloaded and they've got to listen to the boredom of me with all my restitutions or they've got to wade through my letter or they've got to wait at the end of some speaking engagement while I take their time. And only speakers know how weary you are after that. And I'm acutely conscious of all this and I felt nearly overwhelmed with embarrassment for their sake. Do you understand? To take their time. And I felt that much more acutely than the groaning from reading people's restitutions to me, because it's been my sin. And what it does to others. Don't ever let your embarrassment stop you from making your restitutions if you want friendship with God. Just pray for the other person to be given grace at the other end. All right, what does sin do to ourselves now? I'm trusting the Holy Spirit that it will cause this next sentence to be burned across our minds like the insanity of choosing to do wrong. Do you know what sin does? It destroys us. Would you write that down in big capital letters? Sin destroys us. It brings, starts having destructive operations on us spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. It's the biggest destroying agent. Now aren't we nuts? Aren't we crazy? Aren't we absolutely insane to choose to do the wrong thing to produce spiritual, mental, emotion and physical destruction? Is it coming through? Aren't we crazy? Romans 6, 23. The wages of sin is death. Proverbs 14, verse 30. Passion, resentment or anger makes the bones rot. I believe resentment, bitterness and anger are the number one killers in our world today. Pride expressed in competition often causes death. You think of racing car drivers. You think of the competition that has caused death through pride, just wanting to be better than the other guy. Let's look at how unbelief destroys us. Brings destruction. The Word of God has told us in the Psalms, cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you. Psalm 37, verse 5, He says commit your way unto the Lord. I think cast your burden on the Lord is Psalm 55. I didn't write down the reference. But Psalm 37, verse 5, is commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him and He will act. Commit here means, the Hebrew word means throw what is worrying you at God and leave it with Him and believe He's going to solve your problem. Now, when we do not cast our burden on the Lord, when we do not throw the problem people or the problem circumstances at God, and we worry with the sin of unbelief, well then we get our rashes out in our bodies, our stomach ulcers, our headaches, our migraines, our neck pains. All these things, sin destroys. I was speaking to a top surgeon personally one day and he said, Joy, ask the Lord to show you if there's something that He would give me through you. I haven't shared this with anybody else, he said, but my wife, but I need spiritual counsel and I'm wondering if you can help me. He was the top surgeon of the largest hospital in that city. And he said, others don't know it but my wife, but I've got a stomach full of ulcers. And he said, I'm puzzled. And it's not that I don't watch my food carefully. And he said, I'm even more puzzled because I understand that worry can cause ulcers and I'm a man of prayer. And he said, as a matter of fact, every single morning of my life before I go in to have these operations on these people, I actually name every one of the doctors and nurses who are going to be with me around that operating table before the Lord and pray over them one at a time. And I've still got a stomach full of ulcers. I said, my dear friend, you need to know how to do Psalm 37 verse 5. Because you are praying and naming every one of those doctors and nurses around the operating table but you're not giving them to God. You're praying, God please control them because he said, a life is dependent upon teamwork. It only needs one of them to be out of sorts or agitated or not in unity. He says, we've got to have unity. We've got to be an absolute precision team. We've got to be working as one man. We've got to be thinking as one man. If one doesn't think clearly and doesn't pass the scalpel or the thing at the right time or one is out of sorts with the other, he says, we've got a life at stake. And I'm praying over each one of them to be mentally strong and emotionally calm and for them all to be physically alert, mentally alert and the whole thing. I said, look, you're praying about them but you haven't given them to God believing he will work on them. You name them and say, dear God, work on them today but you're still holding them. You're still worrying over them. You haven't relinquished them. You haven't given them to God. And so that day I taught him how to throw every one of them. Commit, the Hebrew word throw. Name them and say, here they are God, I give Dr. Smith to you this morning. I give Nurse Jane to you this morning and I leave them in your hands. It's your responsibility to come on them and control them now, not mine. Mine to give them to you, yours to work on them. And I said, when you give them to God and believe in him to work on them, they are not your responsibility. You will be thanking God he is working on them. And you'll get rid of your ulcers. I wonder whether we're all aware the causes of not delegating authority and responsibility to others when God wants us to and needs to. Do you know what the causes are? Pride that they can't do it as well as we do and unbelief that God can't make them do it as well or better than we can. So let's look at the roots of why we don't delegate responsibility. Okay, so when we don't, are we aware that high blood pressure in those with a lot of responsibility is coming from the roots of pride and unbelief because they will not delegate? Romans 14, last part of verse 23, whatever is not of faith is sin. Can we not trust God to do the job through somebody else? How proud can we get? How unbelieving? Psalm 107, verse 17, some were sick through their sinful ways and because of their iniquities suffered affliction. We suffer in our bodies, in our minds, in our emotions, in our spirits, through sin. The Word says so. Psalm 38, verses 1 to 8, there is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities have gone over my head. They weigh like a burden too heavy for me. Then we read in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 27 to 32, some were sick, not some, many it says. The word is many. Many were sick, many of ill, and some had even died because they didn't discern the body of the Lord, because they didn't get right with one another partaking of communion, dying through sin. Insane. Then we bring destruction into our bodies by neglecting to observe God's natural laws with our bodies. In other words, we're disobedient to 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, which tells us we're to glorify God in our bodies. Now that's a command. It's the temple of the Holy Spirit and we are to glorify God in our bodies. Now let's have a look at this, friends. Cigarettes taken into the body does not glorify God. That doesn't help the temple of the Holy Spirit. It only hinders it. Alcohol does the same. Overeating does the same. That's not glorifying God in your body. Putting more food into the temple of the Holy Spirit than is good for it. It'll bring destruction. Don't ask God to give you physical strength and overeat. It's inconsistent. Many times we shouldn't run to God for healing. We should run to God for mercy and say, have mercy on me, O God. I don't deserve a thing. All I deserve is judgment because I've been abusing the temple of the Holy Spirit in this way or that way. And overeating is a very common one, particularly in this country. Eating foods that lack nourishment when we have the choice to do so. We're held accountable by God. Do you eat for health? You should if you're going to glorify God in your body. And when we have a choice, that's where we're held accountable by God to put in it what is nourishing. Lack of exercise. One of the greatest disobediences to natural laws that we have is lack of exercising our body, not glorifying God. They'll bring destruction. Lack of fresh air. Lack of sleep through lack of discipline. Not lack of sleep through being obedient to God. He will give us supernatural energy and He will give us times to rest. But I'm talking about lack of sleep through lack of discipline. It will destroy. Disobedience when God prompts us to fast. When God prompts us to fast, it's for our physical good apart from anything else. Now friends, having said all that, that's the bad news. Here's the good news. Repentance brings healing when sin is the cause. Proverbs 3, verses 7 and 8. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Hallelujah. Then another thing that sin does to ourselves, it cuts us off from the close fellowship with God which is the only thing that brings fulfillment. If you and I were created for intimate friendship with God, then think this through spiritually, logically. We will only be fulfilled as we are obeying what He created us for. And therefore, all our frustrations come from the choices we make that cause us not to have intimate friendship with God which is fulfillment. Are you frustrated tonight in any area? Sin stops intimacy of friendship with God which produces frustration. Ninety percent of the times God will answer by His Spirit and say, the sin of disobedience of taking time alone with me over my word and in prayer daily. That's caused me to withdraw. That's why you're frustrated. But every day of our life when we make it a way of life because it's priority, because we want to be fulfilled and fulfillment is to know God and then be effective in making Him known. We will only be as effective in making Him known in personal or public or mass evangelism and all that's in between to the depth that we know Him. You can witness to people continuously all through a day but you will only make Him known to the degree you know Him. It's not how many people you witness to in a day, it's what happened when you did. How aware are they of who He is? Have they a distorted view of Him? Have they a shallow view of Him? Have they only had a glimpse of Him? Or has something been revealed to them of the wonders of the majesty and holiness and beauty and excitement and glory in that God who you spoke about because that's who He is to you, because you're walking and talking in intimacy of friendship with Him? You can witness and be full of resentment and your eyes are dull in the witness. And you can say one sentence from eyes that are sparkling because you're in intimate friendship with Him and they yearn to know Him like you know Him. You don't need courses in how to witness for the Lord, just get near the Lord constantly and then you'll want to talk about Him. I was running down a mountain in Switzerland on a day off from teaching in an intensive time of teaching leaders and it was the Saturday, the one day off was running down a mountainside and I came to a little tiny Swiss restaurant still way up in the mountains and there was nobody in the restaurant at that time, it was in the afternoon and the waiter was out filling in time doing some gardening and I stopped and talked to him. I was fascinated to find that he was a French man who'd come from the city of Paris on inquiry and I said, why did you come from Paris to this little wee tiny restaurant out here in the hills? He said to get away from all the mad rush of the city and I said, I've been looking at all the beauty of all the wonders of creation here, the snow-capped mountains and the little crocuses on the hillside and I've been running and laughing and what has really got me today is that my lover created all this and he said, I beg your pardon. And I said, my lover, God created all this and the Holy Spirit says, that's all and I knew it was all and I went away and the Spirit of God said, I have created within him a yearning to know me. That was the job that was done that day. Didn't need any more gospel tracts or Bibles or anything else at that point that day. That man just needed to see that a little middle-aged woman was in love with the creator of the universe and was the lover of her soul and that draws them quicker than any other thing. Do whatever else he tells you to do in any witnessing situation. We don't start a denomination of those who witness by saying he's the creator lover and never do anything else. The secrets of witnessing is obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit from having spent much time with the one you're going to witness about. Continuously, daily, there are no shortcuts to intimacy of friendship with God. There are no shortcuts to intimacy of friendship with anybody. You spend much time alone with them, listening to them, sharing with them, making what's important to them important to you and it's the same with friendship with God. And so we, by sinning, we cut off our opportunity of close friendship with God and so are frustrated. This produces heaviness of spirit. We lose our joy and peace. We're frustrated. It stops us from getting answers to our prayers. Sin does. Psalm 66, 18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Isaiah 59, 1 and 2 Behold the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save or His ear dull that it cannot hear but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God so that He does not hear. This is still what sin does to ourselves. It places us under the judgment of God. When I think of that, I think how insane can sin get. Deuteronomy 28, 15 to 67 Verses I gave you before. Do you know what we say every time we sin? Dear God. No, we don't say it in words. Would to God we did. I hope from today on we're going to remember this sentence and say it. Now dear God, I'm about to choose to sin. I'm going to be absolutely insane right now. I'm going to hurt you and grieve you. I'm going to cause you to go into action to bring judgment down upon me. I'm going to stop close friendship with you. I'm going to bring sorrow to other people. And I'm saying to you, hold back all the blessings that you had planned to give me. Would we say it out like that? I hope we're going to say it out like that when we're thinking of being disobedient. I'm God in detail to know whether I'm to be the right person at the right place in the right time with the right condition of heart saying and doing the right things to get the right results. It's half my life just fulfilling that sentence. Really, half my life. What's the reward? Intimacy of friendship with God wouldn't swap it for anything. I was walking around these streets today and my lover spoke a most intimate sentence right into my mind. Blew my mind. It's a little secret he said to me. Nothing to do with you girls. He'll give you his own secrets. And don't go and tell people them. Do you know who God gives secrets to? People who keep them. Then we waste valuable time and money by having to confess and make restitution, phone calls, letters, travel, repenting and getting right again. All that time that could be spent doing something positive and even with all the letters and the money and the humbling and everything. Then we miss the thrill of being a clean channel for the maximum power of God's Spirit to flow through in ministry to the Lord and His people. We deny ourselves the great joy of being used by God. Okay, what does it do to the devil? That's what it does to ourselves. Now what does it do to the devil? It makes him very happy and very satisfied. Next it advances his kingdom and cause. 1 Samuel 15 verse 27 says, Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Resentment or rebellion to God means that you take sides with the devil in the ministry that he is engaged in which is rebellion. Every time you resent God you say you're not just, you're not kind and I'm again you in some way. A couple of months ago he told me to stop at the sin of resentment to God amongst 150 spiritual leaders. Most of them were men. It was a conference for leaders. And I don't think there was one person of those leaders in the next two or three hours after the Holy Spirit told me just to give that one point and not go on. That's all I gave of the message. What sin does to God, the sin of resentment. The Spirit of God said to me don't teach anymore. I want application of this point. I want them to confess before me the sins of resentment that they're in their hearts. And out of 150 leaders I never saw anybody that wasn't moving in repentance in some way and confessing and getting right with God. And it went on for two or three hours. What does all this tell us? That we have hidden resentments to God that we're not aware of in our hearts and we need to ask the Holy Ghost to show us. How do you know when you resent God? You're not delighting to do His will. You're not praising and thanking Him for the circumstances. There's a lack of joy. There's a lack of peace. You're mad with Him for something. And you actually take sides with the enemy when you are in resentment to God. Undealt with resentment will in time lead to rebellion. And that's the ministry that the devil is engaged in against the Lord. And then what else does it do to the devil? It gives him a platform to get a hold on us and bind us in that area where we persist in undealt with sin. It's like a little trap door that we let down. It's like a platform in our lives and the enemy can get a foothold on and then he can get his cords and bind us like that and hold us in the grip of that sin. Well, that's insane to give the enemy a foothold. Repentance releases his power and then we resist him. I'm going to close now with the positive of Scriptures because God would never have led to this message tonight, this kind of a length of message, this kind of a depth of message, if we hadn't needed it. I don't know you. I don't know the faintest thing about any of you. But thank God He knows everything about you and He knows your deepest need and after all you've prayed that would be met when you came here. So take the message tonight and thank Him for the medicine and make application and here's the positive to encourage you. Proverbs 28 verse 13. He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them, that's the repentance, not just confess, quit it. Then they will obtain mercy. Praise God. Micah chapter 7 verse 18. Who is a God like Thee, pardoning of iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in steadfast love. He will again. Oh, how I love that word again. No matter how many times we've blown it. He will again have compassion upon us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Thou will cast all our sins that we repent of into the depths of the sea. Hallelujah. He blots out our transgressions like a thick cloud. John 5 verse 14. Here's a warning. See you are well, sin no more, that nothing worse befall you. Acts 3 verse 19. Repent therefore and turn again that your sins may be blotted out. Why? That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Romans 5 verse 20. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. God's wonderful grace. The more we've sinned, the more grace He's got to come in and forgive. 1 John chapter 2 verse 1. Notice it doesn't say when we sin. It says if anyone does sin, we have an advocate. God's not expecting us to sin. If you just happen to, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Praise God for His intercessory ministry on our behalf. How do we keep from sinning? Give more place to meditating daily on the Word of God and memorizing it. And one ounce of meditation is worth a ton of memorization. Meditate on the scriptures. That's how you get them into your spiritual bloodstream and then memorize. I have, Psalm 119 verse 11, I have laid up thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Proverbs 8 verse 13. The fear of the Lord is to hate sin. Ask for the fear of the Lord constantly. Friends, when you ask daily to have a hatred of sin, God gives you a hatred of sin, then you quit sinning. Remember the sentence I gave you at the beginning. If the fear of God is to hate sin, those who hate sin seldom do. Another last thing, how do we keep from sinning? Let's meditate on the price He paid to save us from the penalty and power of sin. Let's go back to the cross. Remember, He left heaven, equality with the Father, became a baby, took on Himself our humanity, suffered the utmost in rejection and humility, suffered excruciating physical agony for your sin and mine. These are steps. He became sin. It's getting progressively worse. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21. He became sin. He was then separated from the Father. Did you realize why on the cross Jesus said for the only time in His life, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me? Only because at that point He was forsaken, because He had become sin, and He couldn't say, My Father, My Father. To me, that's the deepest thing in relation to the atonement. Jesus, who had lived in unclouded communion with His Father from before time began, on the cross could not say, My Father, My Father, because He became my filthy sin, my pride He took upon Himself, my resentments, my jealousies, my unbelief, He became it for me. And the deepest point of agony to Jesus in Gethsemane was facing not the physical excruciating agony, awful as that was of crucifixion, not the horror of being the spotless pure Son of God and becoming the accumulative filth in the world. The agony in the garden of Gethsemane was separation from God the Father, alone hanging naked, the Creator on a cross, voluntarily being crucified by the creatures He created, cut off from God and man for your sin and mine. Oh, how we need to meditate on the price He paid for our sin and what sin does to Him today. He paid the supreme price that we may be delivered from the power and the penalty of it. Could we not choose with our wills, because He's given us free will, to say, I choose to live according to revealed truth, I choose righteousness, that you may be glorified, that I might enter in to what you created me for, intimate friendship with you, that I may know you in order to effectively make you known in all your dazzling beauty and glory and splendor and love and power and faithfulness and justice, that my face may shine with having seen you so that others may see you in me through intimacy of friendship with Him. May God, by His Spirit, so motivate us tonight to always choose the sanity of righteousness and reject the insanity of sin.