How do you avoid a culture of gossip and slander in the local church? The Lord has designed a wonderful culture to be maintained in His church. Through many commands for governing our tongues, God keeps His church, “loving life and seeing good days.” (1 Peter 3:10). This session explains a church covenant that addresses this critical matter for happy church life.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. Today our focus is the sufficiency of Scripture in the government of the tongue in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we want to cover various matters regarding how we speak to one another, about one another in the church. And we're going to do a takeoff on what is a section of the church covenant that both Jason and I use in our churches when someone becomes a member, we all recite this church covenant.

And so for this podcast, I've just extracted a paragraph on this matter of the government of the tongue, of gossip and things like that. So what I'd like to do is read it and then tear it apart phrase by phrase. So Jason, we've talked about this a lot, haven't we, over the years? We've seen gossip tear into our churches from time to time. Yeah, it's an important subject.

Yeah, and it's so good to have you, Phil, Kaiser with us from Omaha. What a blessing. It's such a joy to have you with us. We really, really appreciate you. Phil, how long have you been pastoring?

Since 1987. There you go. So there's been a lot of wear and tear. Oh my, yes. Some of it has been over this subject, hasn't it?

You can't be a pastor and not have had to deal with this. And so, it's a normal yet regrettable part of church life. And social media just exacerbates the problem. Oh my, absolutely. Makes it quite efficient.

Yeah, very efficient. Yeah, You can say whatever you want. It's hit and run, you know? Right, right. Yeah, drive-by shootings.

Okay, so let me, anyway, hey, it's great to have an experienced pastor to talk about these things. And I'm grateful that the years of dealing with this can be a help. So I want to read the covenant here, and then we'll talk about it. We will cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech. Strive to avoid all scriptural prohibitions such as tattling, backbiting, and unrighteous anger, to refrain from speaking evil of one another, to be slow to take offense, to think the best of one another, and always ready for biblical reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay so far as it depends on us.

And then of course there's several passages of scripture that support the phraseology here. I want to start off just by saying that God has given instructions to create the most wonderful culture that can exist in the world. You just look at the commands that God gives His people. What a sweet community. What a wonderful culture God wants to build.

Of course, the devil is always there to mess it up. And he uses our tongues to do it. Yes. And, you know, in fact, Jason, many years ago, man, it had to be over 15 years ago, because of some tumult that we were experiencing, we decided we were going to preach a sermon on the tongue once a year. Right.

We didn't do it every year though, did we? No, but hey, it was a helpful process because for a couple of years we were coming back to the topic and sort of refining Our understanding and our articulation of what the Word of God teaches about how to govern your tongue. One of my comments about our church covenants, we serve churches that have very, very similar covenants. We have almost exactly the same language as that. Last time somebody came into membership, I think I counted the cross references on the covenant, I think there are 60 of them.

So the point being, don't just say, this is a church covenant, who cares? No, the church covenant comes out explicitly out of New Testament language about how God has said that we should live together in a local church, or really should be a good representation of how God wants us to be towards one another as we try to help each other make progress in the faith. Amen. Yeah. And there's all kinds of problems with the tongue.

The tongue is a fire, says James. But let's talk about these different matters. The first phrase in our covenant is to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech. So what does that look like? I think that's such a well-worded statement there.

A lot of people will justify what they're saying because, hey, what they're saying is true. And I've seen kids do this, I've seen adults do this, but you can use the truth through a misapplication of it. So, for example, what could be kinder and nicer than to bless your neighbor? And yet Proverbs 27 verse 11, I think it is, says, He who rises early in the morning and blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, it will be counted as a curse. Why?

Because, you know, his motives are wrong. His goals are wrong. The situation is wrong. Two a.m. In the morning.

And so there is much more that goes into this. I mean, how many times have I had little kids say, I was just asking a question, but I immediately have a handout that I give of 22 questions from the scripture. There are ungodly questions that reveal the sin of the heart, such as, you know, Martha's question, don't you care Jesus? You know, that my sister is with me with all of the work or, you know, in the wilderness they were grumbling and they did it through questions. You know, where, how did they word it?

Where are we gonna get a drink? And anyway, there's many different questions that reveal different facets. And so I think the way you worded this really ties into what Greg Bonson said about ethics. You can't just look at the rule, you got to look at what the Bible says about the goal, the consequences, about the situation, the unique situation you're in, and the unique people that you're dealing with. So you're going to address someone who's an authority over you differently than you will a child.

All of these things have to be considered, And I think what you wrote there is dealing with some of these contextual issues of speech. You know, the first word here is cultivate. That means it needs to be nurtured. You're pulling weeds, you're dealing with pests, you're feeding the soil, you're watering. Cultivation is a constant task.

Right, and it's cultivate affections. So before you even start talking about the words that you say or withhold, What is being commended is love. We're actually supposed to love each other. That's how people will know that we're the disciples of Jesus, is that we love each other. Our tendency is to want to just move on.

What can I say? What can't I say? Oh, wait, wait, back up. Our relationships are about love. We're supposed to be loving each other, and that frames how we think about the words that we use, to and about one another.

1 Peter 3, 8, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tender-hearted, be courteous. It begins in the heart. Yep. And it's how you think from your heart about the people, the other people in the church. And courtesy has become so last century.

Courtesy has fallen on hard times. And so it's almost like cold water thrown in the face to see it in a church covenant. What is that doing there? Actually, we're supposed to be courteous towards one another. It's part of thinking the best of one another and preferring one another.

Yes, and good manners used to be taught. I don't know very many people who actually teach good manners like, you know, Emily Post in the past and others. I'm not saying she's the greatest on that, but how we can be courteous to one another within the church rather than having rash words, hasty words, harsh words. Very, very important. David says in Psalm 19, 14, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight or pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

I think this first phrase to cultivate these things in the heart is what that addresses. And then the next phrase is, strive to avoid all scriptural prohibitions such as tattling, backbiting, and unrighteous anger. What does that look like? I'll tell you that word strive is a very, very important word because when we have been hurt by somebody, the immediate impulse is to want to say something nasty and sometimes behind their backs, the backbiting. And I think David was a great example of this where he refused to do that.

The impulse must have been there. I wrote down a verse here, Psalm 17 verse 3. This was after the Ziphyites had betrayed him. And here they are, his countrymen, and they had betrayed him. And he says, I have purple that my mouth shall not transgress." And so, he was striving to keep his heart in check.

He probably had felt like lashing back, but he was striving that his mouth would not transgress. So, If you have to pick a book of the Bible that helps you govern your tongue, you'd probably pick Proverbs. Here's Proverbs 20, verse 19, He who goes about as a tale-bearer reveals secrets, therefore do not associate with one who flatters with his lips. So there's always someone who has a story to tell. The Bible calls them a tale bearer.

It's actually a literal term, someone coming with a story, And they have secrets, things you need to know, and the council of scriptures actually avoid people like that. It's interesting, in Romans 1, 28 through 32, you have this long list of sins, including covetousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, but it adds whisperers and backbiteers. So it's listed in the midst of really heinous sins. And it's a serious matter. We think lightly of the sins of the tongue.

Yeah. I think it's probably a good thing to define some of those terms, those sins of the lips. Tail bearing, you know, is telling private matters to gratify malice or idle curiosity. A lot of people say it's a gossip where you're sharing private information that they're not a part of the problem, they're not the solution of the problem. So why are you sharing it with them?

And then whispering is doing tail-bearing and secret. You don't want anybody else maybe to hear just one on one. And then tattling is a tail bearing to an authority because you're trying to get somebody in trouble. There you go. Backbiting saying something hurtful behind somebody's back.

And then slander really has two sins. It's lying and spreading the lie, whereas backbiting is just one sin. It's spreading hurtful facts. But there's a bunch of other things of the mouth that could be thrown into the mix. You know, how do you respond to that when you hear it?

Now we have temptations to do it, but what do you do when you hear it? Proverbs 25-23, The north wind brings forth rain and a backbiting tongue and angry countenance." John Gill, in his commentary on this verse, his position is that this is referring to the person who hears the backbiting tongue and he faces off with it with an angry countenance. In other words, he shoots it back. He says, No, no, I'm not listening to that. Stop doing that.

Right. So here's Proverbs 17 verse 4, an evildoer gives heed to false lips. A liar listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue." So what this proverb is saying is there's two sides of the coin here. There is the person who speaks spitefully, but then there's someone on the other end who's eager to hear the spiteful words. And so the question we always ought to be asking ourselves is, am I the listening ear?

Do gossips and tale bearers and back biters and whispers, do they know they have a safe place to come with the things that they're peddling? There you go. You know, my experience is that the backbiter's find each other. Yes. People who will listen find each other.

And there's some people in the church that just flat won't listen and nobody goes to them. Yeah. My, my wife, for many, many years, anybody come up to her with something like that, she'll say, well, if I'm part of the solution to this problem, and this is not gossip, we need to go to that person right now and they don't want to. Oh, that people don't even talk to her about gossip. Yeah.

Word got out quick about her. Yeah. But I think it's helpful to see what, what, what these things are not. Because some people go too far in the opposite extreme and they're not telling the truth when they need to. I mean, Jesus, when he said, remember Lot's wife, he was not engaged in tail-bearing.

This was public. He had already destroyed her reputation and she was using her as an illustration. And there are many examples of that where you're using a public sin that's already known by others and a teaching, teaching how we can avoid similar things ourselves. You know, and people, you know, on the other side of that, they minimize the gossip and the slander, and they categorize it by saying, well, I was just seeking a sounding board. Or sharing a prayer request.

Sharing a prayer request. But in the process, that slander went down to the innermost being of that person, and they'll never be the same. They'll never look at that other person the same. So I've come armed with the Proverbs today. Let me give you another one.

In Proverbs chapter six verse 16 says these six things the Lord hates, yes seven are an abomination to him. So, I mean, first just stop there and say, oh, we get a list of things God hates and that are an abomination to him. And here's the last verse of that section, the end of the list, chapter six, verse 19, a false witness who speaks lies and one who sows discord among brethren. So the sins of the tongue that we're talking about, an ungoverned tongue, is something that God hates because this is really the nature of it, is sowing discord among brethren. This is, you know, where our discord comes from often is from these things.

God hates it. God calls it an abomination. That's why we have this phrase in the covenant, to refrain from speaking evil of one another and the verses Ephesians 429, let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. Speaking evil of one another. The next One is to be slow to take an offense.

Slow to take an offense. If this could happen in churches, there'd be far fewer problems. Slow to take an offense. What does that look like? And why do we so easily take offense?

I think pride many times is one of the root issues that makes us take an offense and also want to lash out and involve ourselves in the same sin that that other person has, sinned against us with, yeah, there are many scriptures for Corinthians, you know, talks about love bearing all things, you know, love suffers long. What are some of the other phrases in there? But it talks about our needing to have a little tougher skin and be willing to work with people where they're at. When Matthew 18 says somebody brings up a sin, rather than spreading it everywhere, we work with that person and work with them and work with them. It's only when they don't repent that we bring in one or two others.

And that's a kind of low to offense. You're trying to bring this person to repentance. You're not immediately going off in a hub. You know, Paul, to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 4, he says that they ought to be forbearing with one another and forgiving one another. In other words, forbearing has to do with long horizon of time, and forgiving one another has to do with lots of short horizons of time.

But this matter of forbearing with one another, I think is the heart of this being slow to take offense. In other words, don't jump the gun, let God work. God is big enough to help that person. Yeah. Scott, my wife, Janet, rephrases that a little bit differently and just says, be hard to offend.

So that really helps, that phrase helps me. Am I hard to offend? Do people have to work at it to offend me? Because the truth is everyone has a leaning either towards a charitable interpretation of the things that they hear or an uncharitable thing, interpretation of the things that they hear. If you're uncharitable, you're very easy to offend because you're always looking through this a gray lens that turns everything dark.

But if you're assuming the best of other people, you become hard to offend. Yeah, I like that, hard to offend. Any pastor, you know, who's ministered for very long is going to have slanders set against them. And one of the things that I've encouraged pastors who are overwhelmed with that is, hey, you've given your body, your soul, your wife, your house, everything to the Lord, including your rights, including your reputation, and God can protect his property, which it belongs to him now, far better than you think. Yeah.

Amen. Amen. The next phrase is to think the best of one another, and that comes from 1 Corinthians 13. You know, love is not provoked, thinks no evil. In other words, love doesn't inject evil motives into what people say and do.

Love thinks the best of the motives of the person. Sometimes that means that you're more charitable than they deserve. You thought the best of them, but that's not really the reality? Oh, well, how were you hurt by that? To pick between the two, to think the best of someone else, even when maybe reality in time will show that you thought better than them, than they actually were, you're not harmed by that, but you actually are harmed if you go the other way, you think the worst of them.

And you sort of are drinking your own poison at that point. And learning to help others to think the best of others, I think is a really important point. When Saul engaged in what the King James calls evil surmising, It was slander, but it was thinking the worst about David. He really was paranoid. It says, Jonathan spoke well of David, saw his father and said to him, let not the king sin against his servant, against David, because he's not sinned against you, because his works have been very good toward you.

And we need to develop techniques for putting a stop to these kinds of sins, including the sin of evil surmising. You know, Isaiah talks about the wickedness in the culture, and he talks about wicked men who make a man an offender at a word. You know, you say a word, and you use that word to make that man an offender and you're offended. But you know, I think that has to do with thinking the best of one another. So many church problems could be alleviated if people just thought the best of one another.

And then the last phrase, and always ready for biblical reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay so far as it depends upon us. I think that points us, there are probably a couple of texts you could go to for that, but Matthew 18 is certainly one of them which counsels us if we've been offended to go directly and in private. This cuts out so many of the sins of the tongue if we'll discipline ourselves to bite the bullet and power through the awkwardness of actually doing this. That's the reason why most of us are uncomfortable doing it is because it is driving a hard conversation, but the hard conversation cuts out all of this other stuff that is so harmful and so does the discord to go privately and keeping the matter small and keeping it direct instead of going to people who aren't part of the problem and aren't part of the solution. I'm so glad you said it that way because it really is a good rule of thumb.

I think we're well served here by some helpful rules of thumb and that's a great one. If I'm not part of the problem and I'm not part of the solution, why am I speaking about this or why am I hearing it? We know it's not always easy to be a peacemaker. David said, you know, I'm for peace, but when I speak there for war, there are the, you know, but you do the best you can. Are there any books that you guys recommend for some of these peacemaking techniques and trying to get people to reconcile rather than constantly be adversarial?

Charity and its fruits by Jonathan Edwards is the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. But frankly, I mean, the rules are so simple. You go to the person. You don't write them a letter.

You don't email them. You don't Instagram it. You go and you talk to the person and then if if it can't be resolved you don't go talk about it You bring somebody with you You bring someone and You don't spread the word around the world. You go through an orderly process. And it's, I think, you know, the Bible just gives us such a simple way to deal with offenses like that.

A lot of people don't realize that that whole multi-step process of church discipline is always for restoration and reconciliation. That's the goal. I talked to a person just recently who said that the reason he's not in church, And there's probably other reasons beyond that. He's a libertarian, but, he said the reason he's not in church is because every time he's in church, he hears so much slander and gossip and backbiting. I thought, wow, what, what a, that a church would have.

And we need to be a culture that exemplifies, in fact, larger catechism, 144 and 145, I believe it is, does a magnificent, with proof texts, a magnificent exposition of the Ninth Commandment, many of which deal with these issues that you've been talking about. Very very good. That's wonderful. Well, God desires a church where people don't have things hanging between them. You know, they're clear and they don't have offenses that stand in the way of their relationships And they deal with their offenses directly offenses will happen in the church.

They absolutely will I guarantee it Somebody's gonna say something Somebody's not gonna look at you the way you want them to look at you Somebody's gonna pass you by and not say hello, and they won't even know it So don't get offended because these things are just normal. And how do you deal with it? Well, you deal with it the way that God has designed. And the first order of business is to think the best of that person. Right.

So, yeah. Well, brothers, thank you so much. Great stuff. We could talk a long time. There are so many passages of scripture that deal with this.

Like you said, Jason, particularly in the book of Proverbs. But I pray that God would use this to sweeten people's relationships in their churches. So thanks. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next Monday. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us.

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