Sinclair Ferguson

And I wonder if they were thinking, you know, I don't think I can trust myself to keep Sinclair's secret.

I think I'd be tempted to share it.

Now, you see, this was the problem with Mr. Humanus.

He trusted himself too much, but he had lost control of his tongue.

And that means he had actually lost control of his heart, because spiritually, the tongue is directly connected to the heart.

And the result of it was that eventually his fellow Christians realized they couldn't share their secrets with him.

For all his friendliness, they could never unburden themselves to him.

And so they never told him about their struggles, their problems, their failures, or their deepest needs.

And he was left wondering, why do they share these things with those other people and never with me?

Keeping secrets is a small thing.

Failing to keep them is a big thing.

Because faithfulness isn't really faithfulness unless it's faithfulness in everything.

Now, being faithful in the big things doesn't minimize the importance of being faithful in the small things.

I wonder if you ever wonder why it is that there are some people in your church family that people tend to go to.

One of the reasons is because they know they will keep their secrets.

And the reason they know they will keep their secrets is because these people guard their hearts and their lips as though they were Fort Knox.

And you and I need to learn to do the same.

So remember Jesus' words.

One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.

Yesterday I mentioned a letter by the great hymn writer John Newton where he makes the point that sometimes one blemish in our Christian character can be like a spot on a tie or a mark on a shirt or a dent in our car that everybody seems to notice.