AN OFFENDER FOR A WORD

I recently sent the following to a pastor friend:

Dear Pastor,

Recently, as I was reading through Isaiah, I found that words in chapter 29, verses 20 and 21 had a familiar ring to them:

“. . . the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off: That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.”

Every pastor, I think has had people like this to contend with during their ministry; people who do not like anything like reproof, and will look for opportunities to seize on a word the preacher says that they can misinterpret as an offense—one they can take up for themselves, or on behalf of the infamous and mysterious “others,” who have been, may have been, or might be, offended at something the pastor said or the tone in which he said it.

I wanted to see what my friend Matthew Henry had to say about this passage. His having been raised in a pastor’s home, and having been himself a pastor for many years  many years apparently had given him quite a bit of insight. Here’s what he wrote:

“They ridiculed the prophets and the serious professors of religion; they despised them, and did their utmost to bring them into contempt; they were scorners, and sat in the seat of the scornful. (2.) They lay in wait for an occasion against them. By their spies they watch for iniquity, to see if they can lay hold of any thing that is said or done that may be called an iniquity. Or they themselves watch for an opportunity to do mischief, as Judas did to betray our Lord Jesus. (3.) They took advantage against them for the least slip of the tongue; and, if a thing were ever so little said amiss, it served them to ground an indictment upon. They made a man, though he were ever so wise and good a man, though he were a man of God, an offender for a word, a word mischosen or misplaced, when they could not but know that it was well meant, v. 21. They cavilled at every word that the prophets spoke to them by way of admonition, though ever so innocently spoken, and without any design to affront them. They put the worst construction upon what was said, and made it criminal by strained innuendoes. Those who consider how apt we all are to speak unadvisedly, and to mistake what we hear, will think it very unjust and unfair to make a man an offender for a word. (4.) They did all they could to bring those into trouble that dealt faithfully with them and told them of their faults. Those that reprove in the gates, reprovers by office, that were bound by the duty of their place, as prophets, as judges, and magistrates, to show people their transgressions, they hated these, and laid snares for them, as the Pharisees' emissaries, who were sent to watch our Saviour that they might entangle him in his talk that they might have something to lay to his charge which might render him odious to the people or obnoxious to the government. So persecuted they the prophets; and it is next to impossible for the most cautious to place their words so warily as to escape such snares. See how base wicked people are, who bear ill-will to those who, out of good-will to them, seek to save their souls from death; and see what need reprovers have both of courage to do their duty and of prudence to avoid the snare. (5.) They pervert judgment, and will never let an honest man carry an honest cause: They turn aside the just for a thing of nought; they condemn him, or give the cause against him, upon no evidence, no colour or pretence whatsoever. They run a man down, and misrepresent him, by all the little arts and tricks they can devise, as they did our Saviour. We must not think it strange if we see the best of men thus treated; the disciple is not greater than his Master. But wait awhile, and God will not only bring forth their righteousness, but cut off and consume these scorners.”

I, like many if not most pastors through the years, have had people who waited to seize on something from the pulpit whereby they could make me “an offender for a word.” Sometimes, they would even endeavor to draw me into a conversation outside the pulpit where they could make me “an offender for a word” misspoken by me, or that could be misinterpreted by them.

There are people in congregations small and large who watch and wait, wanting to lay a snare for and a charge against their pastors. These are the “unreasonable” types from whom Paul asked that he might be delivered (2 Thess. 3:2); the “Nabal’ types with whom no man can talk to, let alone reason with (2 Sam. 25:17).

The bad news (at least in my own experience) is that these people “oppose themselves,” and rarely ever change. But the good news is that sometimes they do change where they have pastors who, “In meekness,” just keep on, “instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth (2 Tim. 2:25).” The good news too, is that most people pay little if any attention to those who would “make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate.”