Latest / Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ) / "Common Sins and Struggles" by Joey Morgan - Part 7

Transcript

"Common Sins and Struggles" by Joey Morgan - Part 7 · Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ)

• 0:30
  Good morning, everyone.
• 0:41
  So today in our common sins and struggles class, we're going to be looking at gossip.
• 0:47
  Last Sunday, we started talking about swearing, or ultimately it kind of turned into a class
• 0:53
  just about how we use the things that we say, how we use our mouths, why it's important
• 0:58
  to watch the things that we say, why it's important what the fruits are going to be
• 1:03
  from the things that we say, and gossip is in that same category.
• 1:07
  It's obviously something that we're going to use our mouth to commit this sin.
• 1:12
  It's also something that, you know, we need to be watchful in the same way that we talked
• 1:16
  about all those other things.
• 1:18
  And as far as in your Bible, you're going to see the word gossip.
• 1:22
  You might see the word slander, which is maybe a hair different than gossip, I guess, but
• 1:27
  it's very much in the same type of vein.
• 1:30
  And then I think it was Wednesday night in the class with Chris, we were covering there
• 1:35
  in First Peter, and the term was used, busybody.
• 1:38
  That's another word that you might look for and see that.
• 1:42
  And it is said that gossip is a sin because it goes against both the basic command to
• 1:47
  love our neighbor and then the direct command from Jesus as Christians to especially love
• 1:53
  one another as brothers and sisters.
• 1:56
  So in Matthew 22, 36 through 40, it says, teacher, which is the great commandment in
• 2:01
  the law.
• 2:02
  Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your
• 2:06
  soul, with all your mind.
• 2:08
  This is the first and great commandment.
• 2:10
  And the second is like it.
• 2:11
  You shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two commandments, hang the law and the
• 2:16
  prophets.
• 2:17
  And then John 13, 34 and 35, Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you that you love
• 2:22
  one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
• 2:27
  By this, they will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
• 2:32
  So I bring up those two verses to point out that whenever we seek to speak about someone
• 2:37
  to others, we need to maybe ask ourselves, would we want someone to do the same type
• 2:43
  of thing to us?
• 2:44
  The things that I'm about to say to this person, if someone had the same kind of information
• 2:49
  about me, is that something that I would want them to go around telling everybody else
• 2:53
  as well?
• 2:54
  And then also, are we doing it out of love?
• 2:57
  The things that we're using our mouths for, is it something that we're doing out of love
• 3:01
  is another important question that we should ask in our mind before we speak all things,
• 3:06
  not just in the aspect of gossip that we're going to talk about this morning.
• 3:10
  But gossip is definitely one of those things.
• 3:13
  So what is gossip?
• 3:15
  We'll start this off the same as the rest of them.
• 3:18
  If you had to throw a definition on gossip, what would your definition be?
• 3:25
  Anybody have one?
• 3:28
  Idle talk.
• 3:29
  It is idle talk.
• 3:32
  Anything else?
• 3:37
  About other people.
• 3:39
  I have here, gossip is the revealing and sharing of negative things about others without their
• 3:46
  knowledge, without their permission, and without facts.
• 3:50
  That type of communication is considered gossip because it's done, again, without the permission
• 4:00
  of the person in question or the knowledge, and sometimes, and usually, not probably sometimes,
• 4:06
  without all the facts.
• 4:07
  Because we also normally don't have all the facts of a lot of things that end up things
• 4:12
  that we hear and stuff like that.
• 4:14
  So speech is malicious gossip when what you share is based simply on rumor and meant to
• 4:23
  harm because usually that's what gossip is.
• 4:25
  It's a rumor that's being spread around.
• 4:29
  You've heard something, you share it with someone else, it's the old telephone game
• 4:32
  where it just goes through the whole cycle of everybody and then it ends up going out
• 4:36
  and speaking to people.
• 4:39
  What if you have some facts?
• 4:43
  When you know something that's true and then you share it with people outside of the person
• 4:49
  who's involved in that, what about that?
• 4:53
  Still gossip, right?
• 4:54
  It doesn't matter even if it's true and if it's factual.
• 4:58
  Most of the time, sometimes, we might not have all the facts, but sometimes we even
• 5:01
  do have the facts.
• 5:03
  We know it to be true, but we go around and talk to other people about this instead of
• 5:06
  the person who might be involved in it.
• 5:09
  That's still gossip as well.
• 5:11
  So speech is gossip even when you reveal or share what you know is true concerning a negative
• 5:16
  thing about someone else when you're sharing it with other people without their permission,
• 5:21
  without that knowledge.
• 5:24
  So who all does gossip affect?
• 5:29
  Is it just the person who's spreading the gossip?
• 5:33
  There's really three people that end up being affected overall by gossip.
• 5:40
  The first person is the gossiper.
• 5:43
  The source of the gossip is someone who is betraying the confidence or is guilty of spreading
• 5:48
  a hurtful truth or a damaging lie about another person, which is a sin, so it affects that
• 5:55
  person because they are now sinning.
• 5:59
  The hearers of the gossip, the carriers, are now hurt because they share in that sin that's
• 6:06
  going on right now.
• 6:08
  And then they also maybe have a different thought about whoever it is that they heard
• 6:12
  something about that may not be true or whatever it might be, and then they might also turn
• 6:17
  around and contribute to that gossip and amplify it even more, and it go on and on throughout
• 6:23
  other people, and then there's the person that was gossiped about.
• 6:28
  They're still affected by it even though they might not have had it brought to them or whatever
• 6:32
  it might be, they're hurt because whether the information's true or not, that negative
• 6:37
  thing has been attributed to them, and now they have to bear that from that point forward.
• 6:43
  The damage caused by gossip can really rarely be undone.
• 6:48
  Remember last week when we were talking about the tongue and how powerful it is, about what
• 6:54
  did James kind of liken it to?
• 6:58
  If you have a spark, it turns into a wildfire, right?
• 7:03
  Turns into something greater, very hard to stop a wildfire, you know, that's going on.
• 7:07
  You see it go on for months sometimes.
• 7:10
  Well, gossip is that spark that James is talking about, that small spark that starts out small,
• 7:18
  you might think it's not very harmful or anything like that, but then it goes through a bunch
• 7:22
  of other people, and now whatever it is that happens from that turns into a wildfire.
• 7:27
  That's why gossip, that's why slander, that's why being a busybody is a serious sin because
• 7:34
  it violates, again, the basic commands of those two things I read at the very beginning
• 7:38
  for us to love one another, and it does serious damage to many people, and then it's also,
• 7:43
  again, not easily repaired.
• 7:45
  It's not something that can just be fixed.
• 7:47
  You know, once that information's out there, sometimes it's hard to get that drawn back
• 7:50
  in and make people think differently and say, oh, I have a correction.
• 7:54
  You know, how often does the corrections, when they come out, really pass through everybody
• 7:58
  the same way that the gossips spread throughout everybody?
• 8:01
  It just typically doesn't, it doesn't happen.
• 8:04
  So there's at least three of the New Testament writers that teach us a little bit about this
• 8:08
  sin, and it's kind of a sign that it's probably a common problem among believers, but if you
• 8:14
  turn over to Ephesians chapter 4, we're going to look at what Paul says.
• 8:18
  I think I read these verses last week as well, but I think I'm going to go a little bit farther.
• 8:23
  I think I only read verse 29 last week.
• 8:26
  So Ephesians 4, beginning at verse 29, we're going to read 29 through 31.
• 8:33
  Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for
• 8:37
  edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.
• 8:43
  Does gossip fit in that category?
• 8:45
  No.
• 8:46
  I mean, it's not going to be good for edification, it's not going to give grace to those who
• 8:52
  hear.
• 8:53
  It's definitely not going to fit in that.
• 8:55
  Verse 30 says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day
• 8:59
  of redemption.
• 9:00
  Let all bitterness, wrath, and anger, and clamor, and then he says, and slander be put
• 9:06
  away from you along with all malice.
• 9:09
  So Paul is including gossip against slander in the same category as anger, malice, wrath,
• 9:16
  bitterness, and that conjunction there, and is linking all those words.
• 9:21
  They're all equal in degrees of wrongness and potential for harm.
• 9:25
  All those things are harmful.
• 9:26
  Those are all the unwholesome words that he's talking about in verse 29.
• 9:30
  It's something that should not proceed from our mouth because it's not going to be edifying,
• 9:35
  it's not going to build somebody up, it's not going to give grace to those who are hearing,
• 9:39
  and Paul says we should put that kind of speech away from us.
• 9:44
  Now turn over to James chapter 4, James chapter 4, we're going to look at verses 11 and 12.
• 9:57
  James says, do not speak against one another, brethren.
• 10:01
  He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges
• 10:07
  the law.
• 10:08
  But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it.
• 10:12
  There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy, but who
• 10:18
  are you who judge your neighbor?
• 10:22
  I don't think most people are probably going to think this way, but what is James saying
• 10:28
  that this kind of sin of the tongue also includes?
• 10:32
  Something like gossip or any of those kinds of things.
• 10:36
  What is James saying in these verses that whenever you actually commit this sin, you're
• 10:40
  not only just saying something about somebody, what else are you doing?
• 10:44
  Yeah, you're judging someone, you're making a judgment.
• 10:49
  Gossip has an element of judgment in it since we not only are going to pass along maybe
• 10:54
  the failing of somebody or a weakness of somebody, the foolishness of somebody else, but we also
• 11:00
  are kind of silently judging them as well, saying, can you believe, isn't that the typical
• 11:06
  type of gossip or slander?
• 11:09
  It kind of starts out with, you won't believe what so-and-so did, you know, whenever you're
• 11:15
  going to talk to somebody, as if to say, let me tell you how bad that this person is.
• 11:22
  Let me tell you why what this person did is so bad and why it's wrong and all those kinds
• 11:27
  of things.
• 11:29
  That's the same as saying, in my mind, I thank God I'm not like this person is.
• 11:35
  That sound familiar to you?
• 11:37
  Anybody remember a prayer between a Pharisee and a tax collector?
• 11:45
  Sometimes when we're gossiping, we're not only spreading information, but we're silently
• 11:49
  judging a person, again, usually without facts, usually without all the knowledge, and we're
• 11:55
  spreading that same information to someone else.
• 11:59
  And in this context, James asks, who are you?
• 12:04
  Who are you to judge another person by making known their weaknesses and criticizing them?
• 12:10
  Why is he asked that?
• 12:13
  Would you like it if someone went around and judged your weaknesses and criticized you?
• 12:18
  Would that be loving towards you?
• 12:20
  No.
• 12:22
  But we're also not admitting to ourselves that that's who we are as well.
• 12:25
  We're making a judgment against someone else and not judging our own selves in the same
• 12:29
  way.
• 12:30
  So what does James say in verse 12?
• 12:35
  Who ultimately is the only one who has the ability to do that?
• 12:41
  Only God.
• 12:43
  Why can God do that?
• 12:45
  Because he has all the facts.
• 12:47
  He has all the knowledge.
• 12:49
  He doesn't need permission either, but we're not in the position of him.
• 12:53
  I kind of talked about this a while back with other things that we've talked about, and
• 12:56
  it's a common theme really with the struggles that we deal with is sometimes we put our
• 13:01
  place, ourselves, in the place of God.
• 13:06
  And it's going to cause some things to happen in our lives that we don't want to happen.
• 13:10
  And criticism and the gossip that surrounds it tends to put the gossiper in the role of
• 13:15
  the judge, and that's a position that only God has the right and the ability to fulfill.
• 13:21
  You know, we even have this kind of in our own day-to-day life in our own country and
• 13:26
  things like that, even in our own country, courtroom judges, you know, have to qualify
• 13:31
  for their positions and are supposed to be guided by laws and evidence, you know, facts
• 13:36
  and things like that, so that they're not influenced by hearsay or what's another fancy
• 13:42
  word for hearsay is gossip.
• 13:45
  I don't know how many of you, it's been a long time now, but I remember the Johnny Depp
• 13:50
  trial, every single time they mentioned something, it was a hearsay.
• 13:54
  The lawyers were saying hearsay, like objecting to it, hearsay.
• 13:58
  But that's an important thing that we put judges in positions hoping that they're not
• 14:03
  going to be influenced by hearsay and they're going to only strictly go by law and facts
• 14:08
  and all those kinds of things.
• 14:10
  How would you like to be sitting in court?
• 14:13
  And they're going to base whether or not you're guilty of whatever it is that they're accusing
• 14:16
  you of based on just what anybody says.
• 14:20
  Without facts and evidence, they're just going to go by hearsay and go by gossip.
• 14:24
  I think that would put a little bit of fear in us that we don't have any idea what's going
• 14:28
  to be the outcome of that.
• 14:30
  So James talks about it, and in James talking about it, he says you're not only slandering
• 14:37
  someone, you're not only speaking evil things about someone, you're not only causing harm,
• 14:43
  but you're also putting yourself in a position that you don't need to be in by being a judge
• 14:48
  that you shouldn't be doing.
• 14:51
  Now go over to 1 Peter chapter 2, and we'll look at verses 1 and 2.
• 15:05
  And after I go through these, I'm going to talk about two areas where I see this happen
• 15:10
  pretty often as well, like within ourselves and kind of a warning for ourselves.
• 15:15
  It's probably the times we do it and we don't think about it.
• 15:19
  Over in 1 Peter 2, verses 1 and 2, he says therefore put aside all malice and all deceit
• 15:26
  and hypocrisy and envy and all slander like newborn babies.
• 15:31
  Long for the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation
• 15:36
  if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
• 15:40
  Well the therefore of that is 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 22 through 25, and he says since
• 15:48
  you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit and sincere love
• 15:52
  of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart having been born again not
• 15:58
  of corruptible seed but of incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides forever
• 16:03
  because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is the flower of the grass.
• 16:08
  The grass withers and the flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
• 16:13
  Now this was the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
• 16:17
  So the therefore is prior to that, Peter is speaking of having sincere love for one
• 16:23
  another.
• 16:24
  And again, talked about that at the beginning.
• 16:26
  Gossip goes against those basic commands of loving one another.
• 16:29
  He says you should have some severe sincere love for one another.
• 16:33
  You should have a pure heart.
• 16:35
  You should be longing for God's enduring word.
• 16:38
  And therefore because of all that, he kind of echoes what Paul said, you need to put
• 16:45
  this type of speech out of your mouth.
• 16:49
  You know, these things don't need to proceed from your mouth because if you're doing these
• 16:51
  things, you don't have the sincere love for one another.
• 16:56
  You're not having a pure heart.
• 16:58
  You're not longing for God's enduring word if these things are something that is in your
• 17:02
  desire.
• 17:03
  You need to change your desire from what you have been doing to those things.
• 17:08
  And again, I think it's a common desire within our human side to choose ourselves over others.
• 17:17
  I think that's the fight and the battle that we are fighting all the time is I want to
• 17:22
  do what I want to do.
• 17:24
  I want to do what's going to benefit me.
• 17:27
  I want to do all these things.
• 17:28
  It's me, me, me.
• 17:30
  That's the battle we're fighting whenever we need to change to.
• 17:33
  It's now I'm going to be a servant.
• 17:35
  I'm going to do for others.
• 17:37
  I'm going to do for God.
• 17:38
  All those things that come into effect.
• 17:40
  If you're only thinking of yourself and not how it affects others, then that's a chance
• 17:47
  for gossip to play a role in your life.
• 17:50
  If you sharing the story and being a person who is in the know because that's what gossipers
• 17:56
  really love is that I'm the person who knows this juicy content and I just got to get it
• 18:02
  to people because I'm the one who knows it.
• 18:04
  It makes me feel important.
• 18:05
  It makes all this thing about me, I'm the most important thing, your desires are not
• 18:11
  lining up with what Peter talked about at the end of 1 Peter chapter 1.
• 18:18
  He's saying if you are someone who loves nothing more than to proclaim, have I got a story
• 18:24
  for you about so and so, then you're in this boat.
• 18:29
  You're not paying attention to the therefore.
• 18:32
  Peter is saying if we have love for one another, fervent love, there's no place for gossip,
• 18:39
  there's no place for malice, there's no place for envy, there's no place for slander and
• 18:44
  again continue on and on about all those things and he says if that's the case, then you,
• 18:50
  your desire has not changed from who you were to what you should be doing.
• 18:57
  Your desire has not changed from self-service to selflessness and that's what you need to do.
• 19:05
  So Peter talks about it, James talks about it, Paul talks about it.
• 19:10
  Now there's two places that I've seen this play out again.
• 19:14
  It's in the world like crazy.
• 19:15
  I mean it's all over the place.
• 19:16
  You've got all sorts of magazines, tabloids that just throw everything out there.
• 19:23
  The internet's full of it because people just share things without knowing whether
• 19:26
  it's true or whether it's not.
• 19:28
  It's all over the place in the world.
• 19:30
  But I also see it play out sometimes in the church that I think that we need to be careful
• 19:35
  about and I hope I express these with clear thoughts and that y'all don't come at me with
• 19:39
  pitchforks by the time it's all said and done, but one of the things I see all the time,
• 19:44
  so what's the southern saying, yeah, if you want to be nice to somebody or if you've got
• 19:52
  something mean to say but you want it to sound nice, Nan already said it, but anybody
• 19:58
  hear what she said?
• 19:59
  I'll see if anybody else gets it.
• 20:01
  What's the phrase that we use?
• 20:03
  Bless your heart.
• 20:04
  I'm going to say something mean, but I'm going to wrap it in a bless your heart.
• 20:09
  That way it's not like I said something mean.
• 20:12
  It doesn't count.
• 20:14
  Well how is it that gossip within us, what do we sometimes wrap our gossip in so that
• 20:22
  we can say, oh, it's not really gossip.
• 20:25
  I was wanting to do good with this.
• 20:27
  I was wanting to be helpful to that person.
• 20:30
  How is it that sometimes we might wrap up some gossip?
• 20:34
  Yeah, Nan?
• 20:36
  We'll say, let me tell you this story I've got about so-and-so.
• 20:43
  Man, they are doing something that's, I mean, it's pretty rough and they did this or they've
• 20:49
  got this going on in their life, and then we'll end it with, so make sure you pray for
• 20:53
  them.
• 20:54
  That was me asking you to pray for them.
• 20:56
  I wasn't sharing that information with any ill intent whatsoever.
• 21:00
  I wasn't trying to be harmful in any way, but really it's just a tool we're using to
• 21:05
  make ourselves the same way we might say bless their heart.
• 21:08
  It's I'm going to do something I know I probably shouldn't be doing, but as long as I say,
• 21:13
  make sure you pray about them at the end of it, then it doesn't count as a bad thing.
• 21:16
  It's a good thing, because I'm asking somebody to pray for somebody.
• 21:20
  I've also seen, and it's not so much here, because you don't do it the same way here
• 21:26
  that I've been at other places, because it's bigger and I understand it.
• 21:30
  Normally at places I've been, we've got announcements and the person making announcements might
• 21:35
  say, anybody have anybody you want to add to the prayer list?
• 21:39
  And people just start saying whatever, it's too big here, you definitely wouldn't be able
• 21:43
  to do that.
• 21:45
  I don't know exactly how people get on the prayer list here, but I like how whenever
• 21:49
  I scan in it asks, do you have somebody you want to pray for?
• 21:52
  I'm assuming that's kind of how stuff gets calculated up, but I mean, I have physically
• 21:56
  been sitting in my seat before and someone say, well, I was talking to so-and-so and
• 22:03
  they didn't want anybody to know this, but, and then say whatever it is.
• 22:08
  I'm like, did you not just hear the first two or three sentences that came out of your
• 22:12
  mouth right before you said that?
• 22:15
  Because that means they didn't give you permission to share that information.
• 22:20
  Again, if we go back to the definition of gossip, it's sharing something without knowledge,
• 22:25
  permission, and facts.
• 22:28
  Or a lot of times it's, I was talking to so-and-so and they told me this about so-and-so, so
• 22:36
  we need to pray for them.
• 22:39
  And I'm not saying anyone's heart sometimes is not, is purposely doing it to gossip in
• 22:44
  that situation, but we just need to be careful, basically, is what I'm saying.
• 22:48
  And whenever we're gossiping, making sure that we're not wrapping it in a prayer request
• 22:55
  just so we can justify it in our minds that, oh, it's not really gossip.
• 23:01
  Because sometimes it can, or sometimes it can be.
• 23:06
  But it's definitely a place where sometimes I see that happening.
• 23:12
  If gossip is the revealing and sharing of negative things about others without their
• 23:17
  knowledge, without their permission, or without their facts, those kind of things still qualify
• 23:24
  just because you wrap it in a prayer request.
• 23:27
  Again, the prayer list, praying for someone, are tremendous things and tools that allow
• 23:31
  us to have what Peter is talking about.
• 23:34
  It allows us to love other people, to care for them, to show our care for them, a type
• 23:39
  of fervent love.
• 23:40
  It's a great thing to make sure that we are praying for people.
• 23:44
  There is great power in prayer, but we just need to make sure, basically, that our motives
• 23:49
  are right whenever we're doing those things.
• 23:52
  Yes.
• 23:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:54
  Yeah.
• 23:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:56
  Yeah.
• 23:57
  Yeah.
• 23:58
  Yeah.
• 23:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:00
  Yeah.
• 24:01
  Yeah.
• 24:02
  So I don't know if y'all heard, but Kathy said sometimes we will code it in, I'm looking
• 24:07
  for advice just to be able to share this story of how to, and sometimes it's even how do
• 24:11
  I deal with this situation between other people.
• 24:15
  And basically you're talking about that situation that doesn't involve that person, and then
• 24:19
  now you're tying other people into it.
• 24:20
  It's again the same type of thing.
• 24:25
  And again, sometimes your heart might actually be.
• 24:27
  And I'm sincerely looking for advice, not the intent of, hey, I just got this story
• 24:32
  I want to tell somebody.
• 24:33
  I'm not saying that somebody even sometimes when they ask for prayer requests, their intent
• 24:36
  is to gossip.
• 24:38
  But sometimes you will end up gossiping while you're still doing those things if you're
• 24:43
  not careful.
• 24:44
  So you need to make sure you're careful with that.
• 24:46
  And I think sometimes the motives behind ourselves, even with prayer list and things like that,
• 24:50
  is we want someone who has a situation going on in their life that's bad to get the most
• 24:55
  prayers that they can possibly get.
• 24:57
  And if we believe in the power of prayer and all those things, then we should be kind
• 25:01
  of seeking that.
• 25:02
  But is there any kind of, I mean, does God have like one of those, you see them at fundraisers,
• 25:08
  I don't know what it is, where it's got the big ball at the bottom and then the thing
• 25:13
  that they fill up red as it goes, does God have one of those and say, well, once you
• 25:18
  get to 300 prayers right here, that's when I'll answer it.
• 25:24
  It's great the more people that pray for something, if somebody has asked for it and
• 25:29
  they want us to pray for them and they want to share whatever it is, that's great to get
• 25:34
  more people praying for them, again, to show that love for one another.
• 25:38
  But he doesn't need all of us to pray about something.
• 25:41
  And then the other side of that is, sometimes we don't need, he doesn't need all the information
• 25:46
  either.
• 25:47
  Because sometimes someone will ask, hey, will you just pray for me, I've got a situation
• 25:50
  going on.
• 25:52
  And we just can't stand not to know what that situation is.
• 25:54
  Like, oh, well, I can't pray for you correctly, if I don't know exactly what you've got going
• 25:59
  on, you're going to have to share more juice with me so that way I can go around and share
• 26:04
  it with other people maybe.
• 26:06
  He doesn't need all that either.
• 26:08
  And that was the other side of where I see this happen sometimes, is let's say someone
• 26:13
  comes forward and they're just saying, hey, I'm struggling.
• 26:18
  I've got life going on, bad stuff's going on in my life, and I just want you to pray
• 26:23
  for me, whatever it is.
• 26:27
  And then we're sitting out here and we're thinking, I wonder what that struggle is.
• 26:33
  I bet somebody else over here knows what that struggle is.
• 26:35
  I'm going to go talk to them and see if they know what he went forward for.
• 26:38
  I'm going to see if they know what he's got going on in his life.
• 26:42
  Oh, you don't know?
• 26:43
  Well, I'm going to go over here and talk to them and then start saying, well, I think
• 26:46
  it's probably this, because I heard this, and then it starts going like that again.
• 26:51
  Because instead of going to the person and saying, I'd love to pray with you, and I'm
• 26:58
  just letting you know that I'm here.
• 27:00
  If you want to talk about whatever it is, if you don't want to, that's fine too.
• 27:04
  Because I can pray for you and say, God, I want you to be with whoever that is that you're
• 27:09
  praying for, whatever his struggle is, and if you can use me in some way to help him
• 27:15
  with whatever that struggle is, use me.
• 27:19
  God knows everything.
• 27:22
  He doesn't need any of that information that's, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly what it is,
• 27:27
  but if he would tell me, or if someone else would tell me, maybe we could work this out
• 27:31
  a little bit better and I'd be able to get a, you know, you'd answer it faster because
• 27:35
  you'd have all the information you need.
• 27:38
  He doesn't need any of that.
• 27:40
  And we sometimes don't need to know all that, because then there's a chance the more information
• 27:44
  we know, the more likely we're allowed, we're going to let it slip to someone else that
• 27:48
  doesn't need to know it, and then it might get twisted around.
• 27:52
  Again, the tongue and what we say is so powerful, again, just keep thinking about what James
• 27:57
  said about that small spark, and how I mentioned it last week, that we need to be careful about
• 28:06
  the information we share.
• 28:08
  Does it give grace to the hearers?
• 28:10
  Does it edify?
• 28:12
  All those things.
• 28:13
  Again, I see it all the time in workplaces, families, et cetera, but I'm just saying let's
• 28:20
  make sure that we don't turn asking for prayers for someone, or advice for someone, or whatever
• 28:26
  it might be, into feeding something that it doesn't need to be, and turn it into a bless
• 28:33
  your heart, you know, type of situation, that kind of a slang.
• 28:37
  Again, it sounds like a good deed sometimes, but the actual thing happening, if it's not
• 28:43
  under the right motivations, might not be good.
• 28:47
  So now let's talk about solutions.
• 28:50
  So and this kind of ties in with last week's too, so kind of solutions for just in general,
• 28:56
  we're talking about gossip, we're talking about slander, being a busybody, but this
• 29:00
  goes into lying, this goes into swearing like we talked about last week, basically the things
• 29:06
  that we do with our mouth when we're wrong, or if this is a problem that we're struggling
• 29:13
  with, how do we deal with it?
• 29:14
  How do we remove it from ourselves?
• 29:17
  Because like every sin and bad habit, the solution to it requires effort and a practice
• 29:25
  of a different kind of speech in order to get rid of it or to deal with it, and I've
• 29:30
  got a few things here, but how would you deal with it?
• 29:34
  I've got two or three, but I guess I'll throw it out there first before I cover mine.
• 29:38
  What are some ways that if you struggle with this, that you try to make sure to do these
• 29:47
  things and it helps you to not do those things, whether it's, again, it could be anything
• 29:52
  that you kind of sin or struggle with, with the things that you say, speak, or anything
• 29:56
  like that.
• 29:59
  Keep your mouth shut's a good one.
• 30:03
  That's kind of what I said, I've got one that's kind of like that, maybe not phrased
• 30:07
  in that way.
• 30:08
  I have learned to hold your tongue is a good thing.
• 30:12
  So there's tons of proverbs about this.
• 30:16
  So when there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips
• 30:23
  is wise, Proverbs 10, 19, or Gary's revised version is keep your mouth shut.
• 30:32
  Proverbs 17, 28, even a fool when he keeps silent is considered wise, but when he closes
• 30:38
  his lips, he is considered prudent.
• 30:42
  There's actually, again, not much left to say sometimes in life, whenever we eliminate
• 30:48
  what's untrue, when we eliminate what's exaggerated, distorted, when we eliminate what's unnecessary,
• 30:55
  when we eliminate what's coarse, repetitious, hurtful, or just plain out stupid.
• 31:03
  Sometimes we're not left with a lot of words to say to someone in conversations whenever
• 31:06
  we're just talking about things in life, but we have to learn that we do not always have
• 31:11
  to say everything that passes through our minds or is reported to us by somebody else.
• 31:18
  Doing so could be considered a form of pride in basically me saying what I have to say
• 31:25
  is so important that everybody needs to hear it.
• 31:29
  So that kind of turns into a little bit of pride as well whenever we get into that.
• 31:34
  A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind, Proverbs
• 31:40
  18, 2.
• 31:43
  So learn to hold your tongue.
• 31:45
  Learn to keep your mouth shut sometimes.
• 31:47
  That's one.
• 31:48
  Anybody else have anything else?
• 31:49
  Yes.
• 31:51
  Well, the bad issue is you need to take people to that person, not tell everybody else.
• 31:57
  That's not usually the path that we take, is it?
• 32:00
  For the most part, that's not the path people take.
• 32:03
  So Harry said if we have something that is wrong, if we know something is going on with
• 32:07
  someone or we know of a situation that we should go to that person, which is 100% true,
• 32:14
  it's not the path most people take.
• 32:16
  They usually go around and talk about it with everybody else first and never go to
• 32:20
  that person because that might be a confrontation, and I know a lot of people don't like confrontation.
• 32:25
  I don't like confrontation.
• 32:26
  It's one of the things that really I have a hard time with is if I know if I go to this
• 32:31
  person about whatever this is, it's going to be a situation that comes between us or
• 32:37
  whatever it might be.
• 32:38
  It's going to be a hard conversation sometimes with that person, but that's what we're supposed
• 32:43
  to do.
• 32:44
  We're supposed to go to the source and talk that through, and then sometimes if it is
• 32:50
  a problem that is actually sinful or something along those lines and we go to the source
• 32:55
  and they don't respond to it in some way, then we're supposed to go and get other people
• 33:00
  maybe involved and have some witnesses or whatever it might be, but the bottom line
• 33:05
  is God puts a lot of importance in the Bible on truth, right?
• 33:12
  He's very important with truth.
• 33:15
  Doesn't like liars, it's abomination, he doesn't like gossip, slander, all the things we're
• 33:19
  talking about because truth, he knows how important truth is because the opposite of
• 33:25
  truth is not him, and it leads people down a wrong path that's going to lead them away
• 33:31
  from him.
• 33:32
  You know, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but
• 33:37
  by him.
• 33:38
  So anything that we, he's so, he so much loves truth that he puts all those restrictions
• 33:45
  into place to make sure that we go about things in a way that we have the truth of the matter.
• 33:50
  That's all the things that we're supposed to have kind of come back to truth, so it's
• 33:53
  very important that we do that.
• 33:55
  So that's one aspect of it.
• 33:57
  Anybody have anything else?
• 34:02
  Remove yourself from the situation.
• 34:05
  Yeah, and I'll tell you right now, if you take that approach, you will have a lot less
• 34:17
  gossipers coming to you for, so it kind of fixes the problem in two ways.
• 34:22
  Like for one, you're doing the right thing in that situation, but they're going to go
• 34:26
  tell each other, don't tell so-and-so, she'll sit there and talk about how bad that you
• 34:31
  are for going around talking about stuff, you know, so it kind of removes the source
• 34:35
  from coming from you in the future as well, so that's very good as well.
• 34:39
  Anybody have anything else?
• 34:40
  Yes, Dolores?
• 34:41
  Anything that you wouldn't sign your name to that's said is gossip, is what Dolores
• 34:50
  said.
• 34:51
  It's a good kind of approach to things.
• 34:54
  If you're not willing, if you're not willing to say, after this spreads, there's going
• 34:59
  to be my name on it back here as the starter of it.
• 35:04
  It's going to be able to come back to me.
• 35:05
  People are going to know that I'm the one that's kind of started this.
• 35:08
  If you're not willing to do that, you might want to think twice before you say it.
• 35:13
  Anybody else?
• 35:14
  Yeah, Miller?
• 35:15
  In essence, it's a story.
• 35:16
  Yeah.
• 35:17
  You'd be amazed how many times that stories get out there and it's nowhere even remotely
• 35:28
  close to what's true, because people just go based on what they saw from afar and say,
• 35:34
  oh, I bet this is what, kind of like what I said about someone coming up forward, like
• 35:39
  oftentimes we're sitting in our seats and if your brain just starts thinking of ways
• 35:45
  that you might know the person and say, oh, I bet it's this that he's struggling with
• 35:49
  or she's struggling with, and we start to just kind of think about things, and next
• 35:53
  thing you know, we share it, and then it's probably untruthful.
• 35:58
  I have on here learned to apologize.
• 36:01
  You're going to commit sins with your tongue.
• 36:04
  You're going to, but when we do, we need to apologize for it, and we need to make it right
• 36:10
  and go to the person, and then anyone else that we maybe have told and say, I was wrong
• 36:15
  in this and all those things, a man's pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will
• 36:19
  obtain honor, Proverbs 29, 23.
• 36:22
  If we sin with our tongue, we need to repent with our tongue.
• 36:26
  We need to go to people, apologize, ask for forgiveness, apologize to the one that you've
• 36:32
  gossiped about as well as the ones that you drew into the gossip by going and sharing
• 36:37
  that gossip and say, I'm sorry I put you in this situation.
• 36:40
  You know, I shouldn't have came to you with this because I didn't know at the time maybe
• 36:45
  all the facts, and I shouldn't have even if I knew that they were facts, I shouldn't have
• 36:48
  been sharing them with you anyways, because there's no need for you to know it.
• 36:52
  It's not going to bring you grace.
• 36:54
  It's not going to edify you.
• 36:55
  There's no purpose behind it, but to cause harm.
• 36:58
  There was really no use for me to say that, but I did, and I'm sorry for that.
• 37:03
  Someone over here, yeah, yeah, and that's the thing with a lot of times, all the things
• 37:09
  that you say, it doesn't even necessarily, once it's said, it's out there, and it's very
• 37:13
  hurtful, and it causes a lot of harm that that fire still goes and still causes a lot
• 37:19
  of destruction.
• 37:20
  It's painful.
• 37:21
  Yeah.
• 37:22
  Yeah.
• 37:23
  Did you have something back there?
• 37:24
  Yeah.
• 37:25
  Yeah.
• 37:26
  Yeah.
• 37:27
  Learn to apologize, learn to try to tamp out the fire as best you can, learn to do all
• 37:44
  those things, and get ahead of it, basically, if it's already happened, you know, again,
• 37:51
  you can't take things back, you can't correct it 100%, but we need to learn to do the best
• 37:56
  that we can to kind of squash it, yep.
• 38:12
  Yeah.
• 38:16
  That's why it's best to do like what Amanda said, yeah.
• 38:24
  And I know sometimes we have this, I don't want to be rude to somebody, and I don't want
• 38:30
  to come off as I'm being mean, and then even sometimes in our minds, we're thinking, oh,
• 38:34
  if I tell them this is wrong, they're going to think I'm better than them by saying, don't
• 38:37
  talk to me about this, but it's like, let them think that, because it's more important
• 38:43
  that you don't fall into this trap of the sin, and for them to think that way than it
• 38:49
  is for you to just go ahead and encourage it, and to hear it, and all the things that
• 38:54
  go along with that, and then maybe, again, play a role in it, and it ends up sucking
• 38:58
  you in and causing you to play a role in it.
• 39:01
  And then I have learned, the last thing before the bell rings is learn how to say the right
• 39:05
  thing at the right time.
• 39:08
  Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in the right circumstances,
• 39:12
  again, that goes back to like what Paul said about edification and grace and all those
• 39:18
  things.
• 39:19
  That's the ability to speak.
• 39:21
  In order to praise him, to express ourselves, to communicate with one another, to bless
• 39:26
  one another, that's the goal behind the things that we say.
• 39:31
  And sometimes we need to make sure that we're saying the right things at the right time,
• 39:36
  and just pay attention, and again, just think about how, think about your words more than
• 39:42
  maybe what you've thought about them in the past, because sometimes we just say stuff,
• 39:47
  it just comes out, and we don't think about the power, I think, sometimes of the things
• 39:51
  that we say, and how important every single thing that we say might impact something else.
• 39:58
  Again, verse James 3, 5, and 6, we'll close with this, with the words of your mouth, I
• 40:03
  already read this last Sunday.
• 40:06
  The tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.
• 40:11
  See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire, and the tongue is a fire of
• 40:16
  the very world of iniquity.
• 40:18
  The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on
• 40:23
  fire the course of your life, and is set on fire by hell.
• 40:27
  Again, I wanted to close with that as we talk about the words that we say, because if you
• 40:33
  have problems in these areas, you need to take seriously about the things that you say,
• 40:41
  how powerful that they are, and spend the time to taste your words, you know, before
• 40:47
  you speak them, and make sure that they're in the right motive, and that they are for
• 40:55
  grace for the hearer, or for edification of someone, or to bring good.
• 41:00
  Basically a good question to ask yourself before you say anything is, what good is this
• 41:06
  going to cause if I let these words come out of my mouth, is there some good that's going
• 41:10
  to come from it?
• 41:11
  And if they're not, then it's kind of, they're vain, empty words, they're not of a value.
• 41:17
  Not that we don't have to say some vain words in our day-to-day life, but it shouldn't be
• 41:21
  with the goal of it being behind it being malicious or harmful.
• 41:25
  So that's gossip, appreciate y'all's comments and questions, next, well it won't be this
• 41:30
  next Sunday because we've got a quip going on, but the Sunday after that we'll talk about
• 41:35
  being overly critical.