Episode Transcript
All right, if you take God's precious word and turn to Proverbs chapter 11, verse 13, Proverbs chapter 11, verse 13.
I sure enjoyed studying in this passage of Scripture.
The title of the message tonight is "Spice Merchants."
Spice merchants.
Verse 13 brings us to another fine topic for us to learn about, gain wisdom from, and apply to our lives.
And I'm so thankful for the Proverbs and for their vast range of subjects that they provide for us.
And the subject of tonight's verse is that of a, if you'll look in your verse 13, that of a "tail-bear."
A "tail-bear."
Now, our English word "tail-bear" is a compound word that consists of the word "tail," like "tailing a tail," or "tall tail."
And the word "bearer," meaning someone who bears something, like keeping bare arms.
Or a standard bearer.
The Second Amendment allows us to bear arms.
A bearer could also bear news, couldn't they?
Sometimes we say, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news."
Right?
In the same way, a "tail-bearer" bears a story.
They bear a tale that they have to tell people.
And the root word, the Hebrew root word, that the word "tail-bear" is translated from is "rakal."
"Rakal."
And I love this.
It means a traveling salesman that sells spices.
Hence the title "spice merchants."
A door-to-door salesman selling spices.
So when you think of a "tail-bear," think of a traveling salesman who's going door-to-door selling something spicy for you to hear and feed upon in your mind.
A "tail-bear" is a traveling salesman peddling spicy information.
Now, in our language today, we wouldn't say that, but we may say "juicy" information.
All tantalizing through the tongue, which is like the mind here.
Ooh.
Is it juicy?
Well, no, but it's spicy.
How about that?
We like that.
And so that's what a "tail-bear" is here.
It's spicy information, like a scandal.
Embarrassing information, something like that, about another person.
So a "tail-bear" is someone who shares things that people want to hear, but that the people they're talking about don't want to be made known.
But a "tail-bear" doesn't care about privacy.
They only care about passing along the information they weren't supposed to tell.
They really enjoy that.
"Solomon" says a "tail-bear," if you look back in your text now, "revealeth secrets."
The Hebrew word translated "secrets" has the idea of a tight circle of people that are speaking among one another.
Today, I had someone invite me into an office, and they said, "Would you mind closing the door behind you, please?"
And what is that when we talked?
We were saying, "This is for us to hear, and nobody else.
Let's keep this between us."
And so that's what this secret here has the idea of.
It doesn't have the idea of something you go, "Shh!"
It has the idea of this network, this tight group of people, this circle of intimacy.
And in private counsel, it has all of that in that definition.
There are some things that are meant to be kept secret.
They're just supposed to be kept secret, but a "tail-bear" doesn't keep them secret.
Now, don't mistake what the Bible is saying here, because not everything is meant to be kept secret.
We're not talking about someone who reports a crime to the police.
Now, you may not like a tattletale, but if you come to me one night after church, on a Wednesday night, you say, "Brother Richard, I broke into someone's house this week, and I found a nice gun that I've been looking for."
Well, if you tell me something like that, then you should expect me to go tell the police and help the owner recover their gun that got stolen.
Crime has no expectation of privacy, and those who know about it have no obligation to keep things like that a secret.
We're obligated to keep something secret, and we're obligated to bring some things out into the open.
So how do you know when you're a "tell-bear" when you're telling something that secret, and when you're not a "tell-bear" when you're telling something that secret?
Because if I tell you a secret that I just broke into someone's house, now you'll be revealing a secret if you go tell what I said.
So how do you know if you fit into the category of a "tell-bear"?
How do we know when we should reveal something and when we should conceal something?
Well, to answer that question, all we have to do is follow God's examples in the Bible.
And in Joshua 7, there's a story about a man named Achan.
Achan had taken and concealed in his tent some things that God had forbidden Israel to have.
And those things didn't belong in Achan's tent.
That's the important part.
They didn't belong in Achan's tent.
They didn't belong among the Israelites.
Just like that gun wouldn't belong in my house.
It belonged to the person's house I took it from.
So it didn't belong in Achan's tent.
So God revealed that, that he might remove that.
God revealed it, that he might remove it.
In Joshua 7, verse 13b, God said, "There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel.
Thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you."
It did not belong there, so it needed to be taken away.
God revealed Achan's secret, but God was not a tell-bear.
God revealed it, that he might remove it, because it did not belong there.
On the other hand, let's go to another scenario, because there are some things God revealed.
He revealed the issue with King David, didn't he?
He revealed the issue with Achan, but go back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned.
God didn't reveal their nakedness, what did he do?
He concealed their nakedness.
Isn't that beautiful?
The word "attonement" means to cover.
And God made an atonement for their nakedness by clothing them with the animals' skins that day.
God doesn't simply conceal sin, if he just concealed sin, well he would say, "Well, just leave that stuff, that Babylonian stuff, leave that concealed in Achan's tent.
Just leave it there, we'll just keep it swept under the roof."
God doesn't simply conceal our sin, what God does is, God removes our sin, and then he covers our shame.
That's what God does.
He removes our sin, he removed Adam and Eve sin by sacrificing those animals, then he covered their shame with it.
So, just like on the day of Atonement, God didn't cover up sin, God took one animal, the scapegoat, what does God do?
He takes one goat out into the wilderness, takes the sin away, he takes the other goat, sacrifices it, puts its blood on the mercy seat to atone, so God removed the sin, he covered the shame.
Here's a kingdom and truth for you tonight.
We should reveal what needs to be removed, and we should conceal what needs to be restored.
Repeat that again.
We should reveal what needs to be removed, and we should conceal what needs to be restored.
A tell bear does the opposite, a tell bear reveals what needs to be restored.
Write this down in your notes, your margins, Galatians 6, verse 1.
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, and we all have faults, ye which are spiritual restore such and one how in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
Now if I learn something shameful about you, I should help restore you, and I should always do so considering myself knowing that I also have a flesh, and I need to be very meek about dealing with you, because if I get proud in my heart, guess what?
I may stumble and fall worse than you.
And God will say, "I'll teach you a lesson, proud boy.
I'll show you how weak you are."
And so a tell bear doesn't do that.
He should be concealing something that needs to be restored, and so he needs to restore them in the spirit of meekness, but that's not what happens.
He finds something, he says, "Oh, that's some good spicy stuff right there."
Then he goes out and starts blabbing it to other people as if he's immune from everything.
Solomon said a tell bear reveals secrets, those things that were said or done in the midst of an intimate circle of people.
In other words, a tell bear is someone who has made it into somebody's inner circle.
Do you know what it takes to have someone in your inner circle?
It takes trust.
And you know what happens when you trust someone?
You have to make yourself vulnerable to that person.
You do.
You've got to make yourself vulnerable.
When someone lets us into their inner circle, we then become privy to information that we otherwise would not have known, and then we should not reveal those things to other people and hurt and bring shame to the people that let us in their inner circle.
We shouldn't.
When someone lets us get close to them, they make themselves vulnerable to us.
They put their confidence in us, and they allow us to know things about them that are private and embarrassing.
Again, an inner circle, what if it's a counseling session?
What if someone calls you up?
I've got to be very careful when people call.
I counsel people privately all the time.
When I do, I hear things that sometimes you go, "Woo!"
But you know what?
A lot of times when I hear those things, the Lord will make me consider myself.
Make me consider myself.
And then I have to remember, I have to keep this concealed here.
This person wants help.
They're not trying to hide sin like Aiken.
They want restoration.
That's why they're reaching out to a preacher.
That's why they reach out to you for help if they call you.
And I know people, especially if they consider you wise or stable or faithful or something, they may reach out to you with something.
They don't go blab it.
Keep it private and try to help them if you can.
But they make themselves vulnerable.
They allow us to know things that are private and embarrassing.
They allow us to see their weaknesses and their faults close up.
Man, when someone says, "I do" to you, you talk about bringing you into the inner circle.
You talk about allowing them to see all your faults and weaknesses close up.
If you truly love somebody, whether it's your spouse or your friend or your family or whoever, if you truly love someone, then you will love that person through their faults and not use their faults to gain leverage against them and to broadcast them to hurt them.
A tailbearer is a selfish, untrustworthy hypocrite.
So a tailbearer is.
The Hebrew word translated "reveleth" here, it means to denude, which we don't use that word very often, but it means to strip something of its cover and expose it, to make it naked for people to see.
That's what reveal means.
It's got a cover on it.
A lot of things you're meant to have covers on them, right?
That's why we come with church with clothes on.
But some things, some secrets have covers on them, covers of trust, covers of confidence that people have put on things when they say, "Now, please keep this between me and you."
And then you get through talking to them, and you think, "I've got to tell somebody.
I'll just tell this person, and I'll tell them not to tell anyone."
You're a tailbearing.
Keep it covered up.
A tailbearer strips the cover off of them and says, "Now look here."
Don't do it.
Everybody has faults.
Everybody has things they'd rather other people not to know about them.
And if we love those people, then we're going to keep those things to ourselves, remembering that we have problems too.
We must be very careful because of this, who we let get close to us.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't ever trust anybody.
You've got to learn to trust people.
But we need to be very careful who we let get close to us, because some people only get close to us for what they can get from us.
They don't love us.
People get close to powerful and famous people.
Men, I think about Donald Trump.
I think about all those people.
They get close to him.
He's let them in his inner circle.
They learn things about him.
They're getting paid good money to help them.
And as long as the check's rolling in, as long as times are good, things are fine.
As soon as something messes up and he's of no use to them anymore, what do they do?
Well, we're going to tell all book about it.
That's someone who was brought into an inner circle in confidence.
Then they go out and they break that trust and they pull the cover off of it.
It's wrong, and that's just a, for instance, but people are like that.
Now, one of the best examples that I found as I was studying this, and God was so gracious, and I so enjoyed studying this, one of the best examples I found in the Scriptures was Noah and his three sons.
Noah and his three sons.
You talk about being in on a tight inner circle, as Noah's boys in their daddy.
They were all part of, those boys were all part of Noah's inner circle, Noah gets drunk and Noah's naked in his tent one day.
It's a shameful thing, a dignified man that God has allowed to literally pioneer into the new world.
Someone that found grace in the eyes of the Lord did a tremendous work with this ark and leading this way and all that, and he was a fine man.
He is in a moment of weakness, and he's laying drunk in his tent naked, and old Ham walks in and sees him.
You know what Ham should have done?
Ham should have covered him up, walked out, prayed for him, kept his mouth shut.
That's what Ham should have done.
But Ham was a tailed bearer.
He was a tailed bearer, and he revealed the privacy of his father's shame.
Ham would have never seen his father naked had he not been welcomed into his father's home.
You hear that?
I don't see things in your house, I'm sure you would invite me in, but I don't have a key to your front door, and if I was coming over, I know what you would do.
You would clean the house up, you'd put on your best smile, invite me into the places you want me to see, keep me from the rooms you don't want me to see.
That's what people do.
Noah had Ham in his inner circle.
That boy had an open door policy into Daddy's home.
He could just walk right in, see what was in the refrigerator, drink him some milk out of the garden, and leave.
So Noah trusted him, and he walked in, and because he was welcome in his father's home, he could see his father's faults.
When we're close to someone, we see their faults, and when we reveal those faults, we betray their trust.
He was a tailed bearer, but not his brothers.
Sham and Japheth, you know what they did?
They concealed their father's shame.
And when the Bible says, because you know what they did?
They take, and they take this cover, and they walk in backwards, so they wouldn't see their daddy's shame, and they cover him up.
You know what they did?
They kept themselves from tail-bearing in their own minds.
They allowed their father's shame to not be able to enter into their thoughts and their eyes.
And so doing, they concealed the matter.
Now, if you look here, it says, "A tailed bearer reveals seekers."
Look back in your text.
"But he that is of a faithful spirit," what do they do?
"Concealeth the matter."
He that's of a faithful spirit, "Concealeth the matter."
Now, they're in Genesis when those two brothers, when they took that cover, and they walked backwards, and they covered their daddy up, that's the same Hebrew word translated "concealeth" here in our text tonight.
They concealed the matter.
Ham and, I'm sorry, Sham and Japheth, they were of a faithful spirit.
They covered up the matter just like they should have.
Ham is of a faithful spirit.
They concealed the matters of that inner shame.
They covered up just like Sham and Japheth because that person needs to be restored, not revealed.
Ham had an unfaithful spirit, but his brothers had a faithful spirit, like the text says here.
They concealed the matter.
So a person with a faithful spirit, someone who actually supports you, that's what the word "faithful" means, someone who's on your side, who's giving you support, who's got your back.
Everyone needs someone like that.
So they support you instead of use you.
Here's a kingdom truth tonight.
If you have a close friend or relative that works to protect your reputation and keeps negative things about you private, then you have someone with a faithful spirit.
I'll say it again.
If you have a close friend or relative that works to protect your reputation and keeps negative things about you private, then you have someone with a faithful spirit.
If they don't, you have someone with an unfaithful spirit.
Trust them.
You have someone who gets close to you so they can help you.
If they're careful to protect how people think about you and to keep private things private, they get close to you so they can help you, not so they can help themselves to you.
A person with a faithful spirit like that, they're hard to find.
Be good to that person.
My wife, I tell her all the time.
I have a nickname for her.
I've used it for years, even before we got married.
Do you all want to hear the name?
Tammy P.
Blessing.
Because she's a blessing and P stands for perfect.
I tell her all the time, you're almost perfect.
I say, "If you got any better, you'd have to go up in the rapture."
That's what I tell her all the time.
"If you got any better, you just have to go up in the rapture."
That said, she's human just like me.
Every now and then, she reminds me she's still human.
She still has faults.
But by God's grace, and I pray I'll always do it, I have set my heart on never revealing anything about my wife to someone else that would put her in a bad light.
Someone may say, "Well, Pastor, that's being false."
No, that's being kind and merciful, just like we want people to be to us.
There's things we know about our parents.
We grew up with them.
There's things our parents know about us.
They watched us grow up.
There's things spouses know about one another.
We have no business broadcasting their failures, their shortcomings to anybody.
Period.
We must reveal what needs to be removed.
If Tammy comes home one day with a bag full of money, and she says, "I just robbed the bank.
Look, it's money.
We can go on a long vacation now."
Well, that's something that needs to be removed, therefore it needs to be revealed.
And so I'm going to be obligated to reveal that and take the money back to where it belongs.
So we reveal what needs to be removed, but we conceal what needs to be restored.
So let's say on the other hand, before I married her, before she became a Christian, let's say she robbed a bank in Indiana.
Let's say she went to prison for it.
And she gets out.
She later becomes a Christian.
She's sorry for what she's done.
And then I meet her.
And then sometime during the relationship, she says, "Richard, you know, I have something that I need to share with you.
I think you should know about my past."
And then she tells me, and then I marry her.
That's something that should never, ever, and she's never robbed a bank, have you, honey?
Okay.
She never robbed a bank.
But now that's something that needs to be kept quiet.
Because that person, having experienced the forgiveness of God, needs to enjoy complete restoration in the body of Christ.
They've repented.
They've forsaken that sin.
And that's not something that, you know, you get mad at the wife.
You know, I asked for meatloaf.
She gave me chicken noodle soup or something.
And I come to church and say, "I tell you what."
Now, you know she robbed a bank one time, don't you?
You know, that's tail-bearing.
That's wrong.
That's revealing that intimacy.
Because she would have never told me that.
Because she would have been ashamed if anyone knew that.
But out of respect for me in her relationship, she reveals that because I'm in her inner circle.
And I need to know.
But nobody else needs to.
So in that case, nobody but me, God, the bank, and the prison warden need to know about it.
So with that, we'll go ahead and close tonight.
And I hope that we can take what we learned about tail-bearers, in those who conceal, in those who reveal, and when to do both.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Help us, Lord, to not be like Ham.
Help us, Lord, to conceal the matters that need to be concealed.
Help us, Lord, to always consider ourselves.
How would we want others to treat us, to cover us, and restore us, or to reveal us and destroy us, and help us to go and do likewise?
We ask these things in Jesus' name.
And, Lord, I thank you.
I thank you that you covered us.
And you have a faithful spirit, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
