July 16, 2013 – Matthew 26

Click here to read Matthew 26 on BibleGateway.com

secretIs there anything that fills the common man with a sense of drunken power more than knowing a secret about somebody else? Let’s say you know that Bob in Cubicle A113 is going to be fired on Friday, and he doesn’t know yet. Doesn’t that give you the feeling of an omnipotent deity? We stroll around the office, “burdened by our terrible knowledge.” We are dying for someone to ask us why we are suddenly so mature-looking with our majestic countenance, just so we can sadly shake our heads as if to say “oh poor pathetic mortal; I would not dream to cast such a heavy weight upon thy shoulders.”

Have you ever kept a secret? Not about your wife’s birthday present, but about yourself. Do you keep that one activity under wraps? Do you make sure to watch that TV show after everyone else is in bed, with the volume turned way down? Do you clear your browser history after visiting that one site? If we find ourselves keeping secrets, one of the questions that we try to avoid is exactly Why are we doing it.  Do we really think God is fooled?

A SECRET PLOT IS A FOOT

Notice that the Pharisees in today’s passage started “plotting in secret.” Why? If they were doing what was right for the whole people (as they claimed), if they were doing “God’s Work,” why would it be necessary to keep it a secret? Perhaps they should have taken a few minutes and asked themselves Why it was necessary to meet at night?

Secrets make us feel powerful. They make us feel that we are in control of what people know about us, that we are the ones with ultimate authority. Yet ask yourself, when was the last time somebody told you a secret that really surprised you? Isn’t the normal reaction “yeah, i kinda figured something like that was going on.” Perhaps people know more about us than we really think. Maybe keeping secrets isn’t so much giving us power, as taking away the strength and comfort that we might in another.

GO INTO THE LIGHT

We need to ask ourselves the reason for keeping the secrets that we do. Is it to protect someone else? There may be some legitimately valid reasons to keep a secret. Is it to spare ourselves embarrassment? Maybe others would say “yes, I deal with the same thing.” Is it to keep on doing the things we know we shouldn’t do? The bible says that evil loves the dark; perhaps we keep secrets for the same reason?

What secrets are you keeping today? Are you willing to bring them into the light?

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