July 12, 2022
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She was just such a sweet little old lady - the housemother who inspected our dorm rooms every week at college. I didn't want her to get hurt. You know? I mean, I was afraid she would, if she opened my closet door. Yeah, you know, you're busy in college with all kinds of important things - who's got time to clean your room? Right? Some days, it was almost impossible to tell that I had furniture in there. Everything was covered with what looked like the fallout from some bomb blast, but not on inspection day. Nope, I managed to get all that junk somehow stuffed into my closet. Sometimes it took three guys to close the door, but eventually what I needed to hide was safely inside that closet. Safe, that is, unless you opened the door.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Dark Closet."
A lot of us still have a closet today where we try to hide the stuff we don't want discovered. Maybe there's some dark stuff you've managed to keep in that closet for a long time. Like my college room, on the surface you look clean. But just inside the closet is stuff you don't want anyone to see. And so far, no one has. Well, except for the One who matters most.
Nine words; that's all it is. But these nine words in Numbers 32:23, our word for today from the Word of God, literally blow the door off your closet. Here they are: "Be sure that your sin will find you out." Wow! No loopholes, no exceptions-including yours. God knows everything you've done, everything you've thought, and everything you've said. So you're caught! And without exception, someday your sin will be out of the closet.
You can rationalize it away. We're good at that. "Hey, it's just a little while, I can't help it, I deserve this, I need this, this is love, I'll quit soon." Lies that you may believe but God doesn't buy. You can compare yourself with others and feel pretty good about yourself - until you remember that God doesn't grade on the curve. His standard is His holiness - perfection. You can excuse what you're doing, call it by a nice name, blame somebody else, live in denial about it, or try to compensate for it by doing some good things. But it's still sin, it's still something that helped cause the death of your Savior, it still stinks to God, and it's building up judgment for you all the time.
I remember when a major church was rocked by the public confession by one of its longtime leaders; a man described as the most trusted person in the church. But behind that closet door, turned out there was 20 years of blatant sexual sin, a sin he had even confronted in others as a church leader. It had been successfully concealed from everyone but God. And now comes the picking up of the pieces of so many lives.
King David did everything to keep his adultery hidden in the closet. Until God's man, Nathan, tore the door off with these words, "You are the man." Finally, David faced the ugly truth and he said, "I have sinned against the Lord." Right now, God, through His Holy Spirit, may be saying to you, "You are the man. You are the woman." He's giving you this chance to finally be free of that inner torment, to stop the mounting consequences, to experience at Jesus' cross the incomparable relief and the release of finally getting clean.
You've hidden it, but the sin, the price, and the guilt? They continue growing behind that door. It's going to be tough to open that closet and deal with what's in there. But it's going to be a whole lot tougher not to. It's haunted you. It has shamed you. It has shackled you long enough. Jesus is right there with you to help you open that door, and to once and for all get rid of that awful secret behind it.