Revealing Hidden Sins: The Power of Repentance

1. Hidden Sins Nabil Shenoda Nov 24, 2013

2. Based on a Sermon by Pope Shenouda III When we pray the thanksgiving prayer: grant us to complete this holy day, and all the days of our life, in all peace with Your fear. All envy, all temptation, all the work of Satan, the counsel of wicked men, and the rising up of enemies, hidden and manifest, take them away from us, and from all Your people, and from this holy place that is Yours.

3. What is this prayer? • Absolve, forgive, and remit, O God, our transgressions; those which we have committed willingly and those we have committed unwillingly, those which we have committed knowingly and those which we have committed unknowingly, the hidden and manifest, • Answer: (Traisagon) Holy, Holy, Holy

4. What is the Hidden Sin • Sins of Thought: • Sins of the feeling of the Heart • No one knows what is in the heart and what are your lusts. • Wishful sins: • I wish that person would die and leave me alone. • Hidden Sins stored in the brain: • Out of those comes another type of hidden sins • Sinful Dreams: story???????

5. What is the Hidden Sin • Ignorant Sins: • Doing sins without realizing (and as you grow spiritually, you begin to realize it). • There are many things in the innerself that we don’t know and we are ignorant about fixing.

6. Know Yourself: • Not just for the known and apparent things but also for knowing what you need to improve your inner self. • Poem: • If my virtues of which I am proud of where Sins then tell me how I appolgize Much more of what we don’t know about oursleves compared to what we know Happy is the man who is constantly cheking Himself and changing.

7. We have Sins that are knowledgable but are covered: • Covered by excuses, Justifications, lying, anything

8. Be very scared • We think we will not be accountable, However: • you have sinned against the lord and be sure your sin will find you out. (Numbers 32:23) • There is no darkness or deep shadow where the workers of inquity may hide themselves. (Job 34:21) • For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has {anything} been secret, but that it should come to light (Mark 4:22, Luke 8:17).

9. Be very scared • Everything will be unveiled in judgment day. • Books will be opened, thoughts be read, ideas be revealed, intentions be known. • No where to hide (can not give excuses or act ignorant). Our Lord says: “For there is nothing covered that will be revealed and hidden that will not be known So disclose and repent of them yourself before they are Revealed at the time of no repentance.

10. The Bible declares that God will one day judge the secrets of every heart (Rom. 2:16). He "will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil" (Eccl. 12:14). • Secret sins will not remain secret. "The Lord [will] bring to light the things hidden in the darkness" (1 Cor. 4:5). • Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops" (Luke 12:2-3).

11. Mark 7:20-23 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” • Matthew 5:28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

12. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 • For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; • 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 • Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body

13. So Christians take secret sins as somehow less serious and more respectable than the sins everyone sees. Here are three reasons secret sin is especially abhorrent: 1. Because God sees the heart. • Scripture tells us "God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). No sin--not even a whispered curse or a fleeting evil thought--is hidden from the view of God.

14. 2. Because sin in the mind is a fruit that produces deeds of sin. • Jesus said hatred carries the same kind of guilt as murder, and lust of adultery, He was not suggesting that there is no difference in degree between sin that takes place in the mind and sin that is acted out. • Sermon on the Mount pointed out that anger arises from the same moral defect as murder; one who lusts suffers from the same character flaw as the adulterer. Furthermore, those who engage in thought-sins are guilty of violating the same moral precepts as those who commit acts of murder and adultery.

15. How Can We Resist Secret Sins? • Examine your own heart. What do you think about? • • For as he thinks within himself, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). • • Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23). • • For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders (Matthew15:19).

16. How Can We Resist Secret Sins? • Examine your own heart. What do you think about? • • For as he thinks within himself, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). • • Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23). • • For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders (Matthew15:19).

17. Choosing a Monk (not solitare but the council if succeeds then become a hermit)and a Priest (excellent servant, wonderful knowledge)(family) • Examples of Hidden intent: • Engagement period (immediately after the marriage, the hidden appears) • Smart women are the one’s who are aware of what the man is hiding before the relationship. • Earth is manifest but heaven is hidden • Which no eye has seen no ear has ever heard

18. The Hidden enemy: • First is the Devil • Whispers in thought and heart and offers temptations. • Second is the plots of evil people • Whispers in thought and heart and offers temptations. There are many plots that the Lord has saved you from that you have never known or were even aware of it. • Third is the non Loyal friends • Face in the mirror and the sellaya (Fork) in the nape • Poem: Gives you sweetnes of the tongue and eludes from you as the Fox Lord save me from my friends for my enemies I Know them well

19. The Bible says: beware of false prophets who come in sheep’s closing but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. • You Say: “May God forgive you” and you hope “May God punish you” • At work: • You flatter your boss and insult him behind his back

20. God himself works in the Hidden to protect you: • His Holy Spirit works • His angels work Lay for yourself treasures in heaven, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,