In the sermon 'The Government of the Tongue' by Jason Dohm, the destructive nature of gossip within church communities is thoroughly examined. Dohm emphasizes that gossip can 'kill churches' by disrupting the unity and love that should characterize a Christian community. He refers to numerous biblical texts, such as James 3, Proverbs 20:19, and 1 Peter 3, to underscore the severity of gossip as an 'unruly evil' that can set a community aflame, contrasting with the 'one another' commands in the New Testament that promote mutual edification. The sermon outlines three primary reasons for addressing gossip: its potential to destroy church communities, its relevance to the church's membership covenant, and the continual need for vigilance against it. Dohm outlines practical measures to curb gossip, such as avoiding speaking or listening to gossip, and promoting direct, loving confrontation as guided by Matthew 18. He stresses the importance of controlling one's tongue to maintain a healthy church environment and personal happiness, warning that evil speech can hinder one's prayers and relationship with God. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a church culture that is inhospitable to gossip, fostering instead a community of love, kindness, and edification.

But there are several reasons why we do this, and I'll give you three. One is that gossip kills churches. And if you've been a Christian long enough and been around enough churches, you've seen gossip kill a church. And there are a multitude of one another's in the New Testament. And it's how we ought to conduct ourselves with one another to have a beautiful, healthy, local church life.

And it is bearing the burdens of one another and on and on and on. I think there's something like 40 one-anothers in the New Testament. And gossip stands in stark contrast to all the one-anothers. God desires to plant us in a local church where we're built up by each other. And gossip is the exact opposite of that.

So we want to take time to talk about it. If you would, turn in your Bibles to James 3. James 3. And if you don't have your Bible but it's somewhere in the room, it would be worth the time now to go get it because we're going to be looking at several different passages. James 3 is full of words that ought to terrify us and ought to get us to think really soberly about how we use our words in any context, but today specifically we're talking about in the context of the local church.

James 3 starting in verses 5 going through 10. Is the volume okay? Is it too loud? It's okay. James 3, starting in 5.

Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among your members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature and is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird of reptile and creature of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind.

But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth, proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so." I just want us to consider that gossip might be the thing that sets our church on fire one day.

That gossip would be the thing that would kill what is very helpful to us right now, very appreciated by us right now, very loved by us right now, could be laid low, could be swept away by gossip. If the building burns down this week, we'll have church somewhere next week. We'll recover really fast if the church burns down. But if gossip takes root in our church and we have that kind of burning down, things won't be the same next week or next month or next year. The permanence of the burning down that happens when we misuse our tongues ought to just cause us to stop and to think and to resensitize ourselves to these issues.

So That's the first reason. Gossip kills churches. The second reason is we have a lot of new people in the church. And this is so foundational to our membership covenant. Our membership covenant deals a lot with how we treat one another, how we interact with one another, and the words that we use and how we speak is a big part of that equation.

So you'll find this topic really prominent in our membership covenant. So we wanna familiarize anybody who's new among us to these things. The third reason and probably the most important reason is we're never done in this category. We always have a need to resensitize because we'll, I'll just make it personal instead of saying we. I'll give this sermon and I'll find myself tightening up on these principles and being more careful about what I say and about what I listen to.

And over time there's a drift. There's a natural movement away from doing what's right. And so it's as necessary for me to encounter this, this same sermon year after year as it is for all of us, because there's a natural drift. Things are at work that will take us away from these principles. And so it's always good to reset so that we find ourselves being more vigilant with our words.

The title of the sermon is The Proper Government of the Tongue. And we spend a lot of time talking about the negative side of the coin, Gossip, evil speaking, slander, flattery. But really, these are all just perversions of what God makes. Isn't that always true of sin? It's always just a perversion of what God really intended, which was that we would edify each other with the words that we use.

And so hopefully we'll spend some of our time talking about that as well. The whole time we'll be consumed with doing three different things. First, we'll just define what gossip is and we'll try to use the biblical definition as best as we can arrive at it. Number two, we'll talk about what the Bible has to say. Looking specifically at four texts, when you talk about the words that we use and the words that we misuse.

There are a hundred texts we could use. And so this represents a substantial whittling down of what's there. And I just say that to say there is a massive deposit in the Bible on our words. And so I've plucked out four that I think really get the range of things that the Bible says, but don't think that there's four. We could throw out those four and bring in Another four and another four and another four, because the Bible has a lot to say.

So we'll look at those four texts, and then finally we'll stop, we'll end with how do we avoid gossip? How do we make sure that we're using our tongue in the right way? And some very practical tips on that. So first, how do we define gossip and slander because those are terms that are used interchangeably. A good place to start with the definition for gossip is Proverbs 20, 19.

Says this, Proverbs 20, 19. He who goes about as a tale bearer reveals secrets. Therefore, do not associate with one who flatters with his lips. So if you look in the New King James, you do a search on the Old Testament for the word gossip, you will not find it. In other translations you'll find gossip in a lot of places.

And then when you go back to the New King James, what you find is the New King James has rendered it tail-bearer. So in your New King James you're only going to find gossip one place. It's in, I think, 1 Timothy 3 or something like that. But this is just a translational matter. New King James is calling it tail-bearing, where other translations translate it as gossip.

But in any event, it's the same thing. Tailbearer is actually a pretty good word because it tells you exactly what it is. It's bearing a tale. It is carrying a story. And it says in Proverbs 20, 19 that it's a tailbearer reveals secrets.

This is kind of at the heart of what gossip is. And then it goes on to say, therefore do not associate with one who flatters lips. The actual dictionary definition of gossip is this. A person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts. So this is the tale that is being born by the gossip.

Habitually reveals personal or sensational facts. A rumor or report of an intimate nature. And the thing about with the gossip is, sometimes it's true. Sometimes the tale that is being born by a gossip is true. Sometimes it's not true.

The gossip usually doesn't know. The gossip usually doesn't care. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it isn't true. So whether it is or isn't true really doesn't have a bearing on whether it's gossip or not. The actual root word for the Hebrew tail bearer means scandalmonger.

So it's a person who's stirring up a scandal. They're a scandal monger. And if you look in the Greek, the Greek word that we translate into gossip is where we get our English word for whispering. So the Greek root has a connotation of whispering. So it is a tale bearer, but it's not somebody who's coming with a trumpet usually.

It's somebody who is elbowing you from the side and saying it under their breath. So let's look at these four passages that bear down on this topic. First, turn to Psalm 15. Psalm 15. So I've selected two Old Testament passages and then two New Testament passages.

The first is in Psalm 15 verses 1-3. Psalm 15, the Psalm of David. Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? He who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart.

He who does not backbite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against his friend." So what's being said here is that for those who are interested in abiding in the Lord's tabernacle, are we interested in abiding in the Lord's tabernacle? I think we are. And so the qualifications for that, some of them, is that we avoid backbiting. The verbal stabbing in the back that is part and parcel with gossiping. And that you don't take up a reproach against your friend.

Often, with gossip, it's not our reproach to be taken up, It's somebody else's reproach. And yet, we're bearing the tail. We're the tail bearer. And so, the counsel of Psalm 15 for those who desire to dwell with the Lord is that we not participate in backbiting and that we not take up the reproach of a friend, a reproach against our friend. Now turn to Proverbs 26.

Proverbs 26, 20-23. Proverbs 26, starting in verse 20, tells us where strife comes from. And strife comes from the gossip. And the writer of Proverbs here is using a language that's very compatible with what we saw in James. That the tongue is a fire, is a world of iniquity that is set on fire by hell itself and then sets on fire the course of nature.

And this is a theme that wasn't new in James, we find it, in Proverbs 26, starting in verse 20. Where there is no wood, the fire goes out. And where there is no tail bearer, strife ceases. As charcoal is to burning coals and wood to fire, So is a contentious man to kindle strife. The words of a tale bearer are like tasty trifles, and they go down into the inmost part." So a couple of things to notice in this text.

The first is that a tale bearer is the fuel for strife. If you remove wood from a fire, the fire goes out. If you remove the tail bearer, then the strife ceases. So a tail bearer is by nature someone who is stirring the pot. Someone who is stirring up strife among the brethren.

We can go to another place in Proverbs. I forget which chapter it is. But it actually says that this is an abomination when someone stirs up contention among the brethren. And so a tale bearer is a fuel of strife. The next thing that we notice in this text, and this might be the most important thing that's said, is that gossip is a tasty trifle that goes to the inmost parts.

Gossip, the words that are said in gossip are like a tasty trifle. In other words, they're delicious. We all have an appetite for them. They're a tasty trifle, and they go to the inmost parts. Well, what does that mean?

Well, definitely one of the things that it means is it's really hard if not impossible to get rid of. It's hard to unhear gossip. It's hard to after it's been, after this tasty trifle has been digested. It's hard then to unremember it. How do you unremember things?

And so what happens is, once you've consumed the tasty trifle, you're forever given over to suspicion. Whether it was true or partially true or not true at all, you are given over to paranoia with respect to the thing that's being talked about because you've eaten the trifle and it's gone into the inmost parts. So one of the things, one of the admonitions that we need to take from Proverbs is to be careful. There is no unhearing gossip. There is no unlearning things that have been heard that we had an appetite for, we really wanted to know, but now that we know it, we find that we're suspicious of our brother because we've entertained this and because it's gone into the inmost parts.

I just want to make a particular appeal to you about what you allow yourself to digest from the internet. There's all manner of things on the internet. Some of it's true, some of it's half true, some of it's not true at all. But if you have a diet of that because it's a tasty trifle and you have an appetite for it, you'll find yourself being suspicious. Let me tell you, you'll find yourself being very suspicious of your elder if you go on the internet and you look up the things that are pertaining to me.

You Google my first name and you go to the first website, and I'm probably foolish for even saying this because now I've awakened the appetite for the tasty trifle. If you go and read that stuff, you'll find stuff that's true there, you'll find stuff that's half true there, you'll find stuff that is absolutely not true there, you'll have no ability to discern which is which, and you'll be suspicious of me. And it will affect how we relate to each other. Don't give in to the natural appetite that we all have for the tasty trifles. There should just be a recognition that we have this appetite.

We have a nature that laps this stuff up. We love it until we partake of it and it begins to wreck our relationships and how we relate to each other. And then we think, why did we do that? And it's too late. That's the nature of a tasty trifle that goes into the inmost parts.

The final thing we learn from this text in Proverbs is that a tale bearer is not what he or she appears to be. It says, where are we? It says, where are we? Okay, sorry. Fervent lips with a wicked heart are like earthenware covered with silver draw.

So I didn't read far enough. It's actually 20 through 23. So the last verse of Proverbs 26, verse 23 says, fervent lips with a wicked heart. In other words, lips that aren't what's really in the heart are like earthenware covered with silver dross. Now the last time I preached this, Barry Damien came up to me afterwards and said, that is Kentucky chrome.

I said, what? And he said, yeah, we have an expression for this. There's a certain kind of paint that from 10 or 15 feet away looks like chrome, but it's just a paint on finish. You make anything look like chrome. We call it Kentucky chrome in Indiana.

And I think in Kentucky they call it West Virginia chrome or something like that. You always put it on the state that you think is lower than you. But the point of it is, it's just a facade and a gossip is like that. They come masked with flattery often, that's what we saw in Proverbs 2019, with the best of intentions, with concern for you. And really it's just Kentucky chrome.

It's high gloss painted over the top of earthenware. That's what Proverbs is communicating. Now let's turn to 1 Corinthians 5. In 1 Corinthians 5 we have a single verse, but it's a really important one. 1 Corinthians 5 verse 11.

And really when you stop and think about this verse, it's quite stunning. 1 Corinthians 5 verse 11, Paul writes this, But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner not even to eat with such a person. So here's this list of abominable sins. It's the really bad ones. It's the ones that we really like to shake our finger at.

It's sexual immorality and drunkenness and extortioners. And right in the middle of this list we see a reviler. And in God's economy, a reviler belongs in this list. Now we think gossip is one of the little sins. We were talking about gradation of sins today, greater and lesser.

We're going to put gossip in the middle or even maybe below the middle. We shouldn't do it, but we all know we all indulge in it from time to time and it's really not that big of a deal. Well, in Proverbs it's called an abomination. And in 1 Corinthians, it's actually listed with sexual immorality and extortion and what else? And being a drunkard, being an idolater.

And so I just want to submit to you that God thinks differently about gossip and our use of words than we do. And He attaches a seriousness to it that we wouldn't attach to it if we were ranking things. God thinks it belongs on this list. And it's a list of very serious things. And the exhortation to us is that if there's someone who is consistently a reviler, then we wouldn't even keep company with them.

And actually, I could call in several other places that talk about the same thing in association with the use of our words. If somebody is out of control, consistently out of control with their words, they're a person to be noted and avoided. You noted and avoided. Now does that mean if anybody gossips to you one time that you never associate with them? No.

This is a reviler. This is a person who is characterized as someone who that is part of who they are and they're consistently doing it. And we'll talk in a minute, hey, if somebody comes and gossips to me, what should I do about that? We are going to talk about that by the end. But The message of 1 Corinthians 5 is that if there's someone who's characterized by reviling, by gossiping, by evil speaking, by slander, that they're a person that you note and you avoid.

If there's a so-called brother, If there's anyone named a brother, do not keep company with them if they're characterized by this. Finally, 1 Peter 3. Turn to 1 Peter 3. If I could have only picked one, I would have picked this one. 1 Peter 3 is fantastic.

And starting in verse 8. 1 Peter 3 verse 8, reading through 12. Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers. Be tenderhearted.

Be courteous. Not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." So, Peter in 1 Peter sets up a contrast. He's saying, be this, don't be that. And So he sets some things in opposition to the other. And he's saying that reviling is the opposite of compassion, of love, of brotherhood, of tender heartedness, of courtesy, of blessing, and he says, to which we were called.

In other words, Jesus Christ has called us to be a part of His people, to be subjects in His Kingdom, and He's called us into a certain life and listened to the life that Jesus has prepared for us. It's a life of compassion. It's a life of love. It's a life of brotherhood. It's a life of tender heartedness.

It's a life of courtesy. It's a life of blessing. And that is what should characterize our life together in the local church. And yet, something is set up against it that thwarts these things, and reviling is one of those things. Speaking evil overthrows the type of local church life that God desires us to have.

Imagine if we cultivate this type of culture where our church life together is characterized by blessing and tenderheartedness. It's a beautiful church life. It's what we desire. And we just need to realize we can tear down with our own hands by choosing the wrong words, by speaking the wrong way, we can tear down that life and eliminate the possibility that that's the life that we're living together just by the words that we say. The tongue is like a rudder on a ship.

It's this little member, but it turns the whole ship. And that's what James is communicating and Peter has picked up that theme as well. Peter is actually arguing that the proper government of the tongue is a requirement for happiness. The government of your tongue is a requirement for your happiness. I'll just read it again, and this is Peter, not me.

For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it." Brothers and sisters, if we do it for no other reason than selfish reason, that reason should be good enough. If we would love life and see good days, we should keep ourselves from evil speech. Reviling, look at the last verse there, Reviling puts the face of the Lord against us and it hinders our prayers.

So there's a lot at stake with how we govern our tongues. It will set God against us. It will keep Him from hearing our prayers. So finally, how do we stay far away from evil speaking? How do we stay far away?

Some practical tips. The first thing I want to say is that we should recognize that there are two sides to this coin. One is the one that we've been talking about, which is the words that we're speaking. And that is wrapped up with gossiping and slandering and evil speaking and reviling. The Bible has a lot of different words for that, but they're all things to be on guard against.

That's one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the listening passive ear. A gossip to bring destruction, to add wood to the fire, requires a listening passive ear. Listen what Proverbs 17, four says. An evildoer gives heed to false lips.

A liar listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue. We cannot be those who give heed to false lips or who listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue. This takes us right back to the tasty trifle and the fact that we all have an appetite in us for it. And there's an eagerness to listen to spiteful words. Just be aware.

This resides in your heart and it resides in mind. We have an appetite for it and there's an eagerness that we were born with to hear spiteful words, but they should not be heard and we should not have an eagerness about. If you have an eagerness for spiteful words, you'll attract them like a magnet. If people know that you have a passive listening ear, you'll be hearing gossip all the time. Practical tips for speaking.

When in doubt, zip it. That's a good practical tip. Are there any of us who cannot say with great confidence that we would be better off looking over the course of years had we said less? I can think, when I say that, I immediately have to mind a half a dozen things popped in my mind. It's just if I had said less, when I was teetering on the edge of speaking or not speaking, If I had teetered to the not speaking side, I would be better off today.

All of us have that testimony. When in doubt, when it comes into your brain, should I say this? That's probably a great indication that you should not say this. Air on the side of silence if need be. Air on the side of quietness so we don't find ourselves sinning with our tongue.

Like your old mama said, if you can't say anything nice, Don't say it at all. Your mama read the Proverbs. That is a word from God for us. If you can't say anything nice, we should not be saying it. Another practical tip.

Don't share your pain. Now, am I arguing that there's never a time to confide in someone about something in an area of struggle? That's not necessarily the argument that I'm making. I'm just saying there's a lot of sanctified ways to gossip. There's a lot of ways where we let ourselves off the hook for what's actually happening by saying we're sharing with something we're really struggling with.

We have a prayer request. That is another sanctified way to actually gossip. It's a way to get information out, but it's kind of a holy way to gossip. Except for it's not holy at all. So we just need to be on guard when we feel like we need to share our pain, when we feel like we need to get a prayer request out on something that fits the nature of revealing a secret.

That should cause the red flag to go up and cause us to be warned. Don't consider it your mission in life to warn the world about everyone else. There are people out there, they think that's their ministry in the church, it's just to go around warning people about this, that, or the other. And they're destroying their churches. When we're going to talk about, well, what do I do?

Is it ever inappropriate? And By the way, I'm going to send out to the church an article by Richard Baxter on gossip. And it really helps draw the lines. What's gossip and what's not gossip. Because sometimes it is appropriate, and sometimes it's not appropriate.

And so in terms of deciding what we ought to be saying or not saying, and Richard Baxter helps us draw those lines. So I'll send that out. It's about an eight page read or something like that. Invest the time. It will really clarify your thinking on when it's appropriate to speak and when it's appropriate to hold back.

So finally, don't answer every question. Some people fish for gossip. Some people solicit gossip. And they'll draw you into sin by asking certain questions that shouldn't be answered. You know a great answer to that is, oh you know what I'm not the right source for that.

You should just ask them. You know, You should just ask them. And then see if they'll really go ask them, or if they'll go straight to the horse's mouth, or whether they were just fishing for gossip. That will tell you. But you need to have a response ready.

When people go fishing for gossip, and they ask you a question that really you shouldn't be answering. You need to know what you're going to say in that moment because that moment will come. So practical tips for listening or for not listening as the case may be. I just want to say we cannot allow gossip and evil speaking to go unchallenged. We cannot be passive listeners who are good listeners to gossip.

Gossips need to come into our church and find a church culture which is not really friendly to gossip. Now, I don't mean an unfriendly church culture, that's not what I said. But I mean a church culture that really is not friendly to gossip. So I want to suggest three approaches that you can use to head off gossip. The first one is the biblical approach, and maybe that's the only approach we should do.

But in a sense I think all three of them are biblical. And it comes out of Matthew 18. And you're familiar with it, but it is the cure for gossip. So someone comes to you and they have the tasty morsel and they launch into it. This is your question.

Have you spoken with them privately about this? Have you spoken with them, not me, have you spoken with them privately about this? And this takes them down the road of Matthew 18, which says if someone has offended you, then you tell him his fault between you and him alone. Matthew 18 is a process that keeps the matter direct and keeps the matter small as long as possible. Now sometimes these things spiral out so that they can't be kept direct, they can't be small, but that should always be the starting point for every offense that is given.

Keep it direct. In other words, the parties that have the issue are talking directly to each other, so it's direct and it's confidential, It's kept small. It's kept between the two people. A commitment to this would eliminate gossip. So that when somebody comes to me with something, I'm sending them back to the person.

I'm indirect, right? I don't have any dog in this fight. I don't have any part in this offense. So it's indirect. If it's indirect, then it's inappropriate at that stage.

And so I'm sending them back so that it'll be direct. The reason that we don't do this is that we're chicken. The reason we go indirect, The reason I would rather, when I'm offended with Taylor, that I would rather go talk to Jonathan about it than to actually go back to Taylor is that I'm a chicken. That's the reason. And that I lack love.

It's some combination and it's usually both. None of us like confrontation. We grew up in a culture that really is not a confrontational culture. And so we'd rather go talk to somebody else where we'll get a little sympathy and a listening ear rather than to just do the courageous thing and go back and talk to Taylor about why he's been a jerk. I need to speak with you afterwards if we could.

So somebody did this with me within the last seven days. I got an email saying, brother, you're probably not even aware about this, but you were a jerk to my wife on Memorial Day. And he laid out the circumstances as he understood it and I came to the conclusion that I had been a jerk to his wife on Memorial Day. I had not meant to but I had actually been. His analysis was precisely correct.

Now, 99, I spoke with this brother yesterday, and I just couldn't wait to express my gratitude that rather than talking to other people about what a jerk I was, he came to me to say, why were you a jerk to my wife? And so you don't know who it is. And you're not ever going to know who it is because I'm not telling you and I'm confident he's not going to tell you either. If he was going to tell you, you would have heard it from him before I heard it from him. He was direct and he was keeping a matter small.

And so now he's gained his brother. That's exactly what Matthew 18 says. If he repents, you have gained your brother. And he's gained me. I repented.

I pled guilty and threw myself on the mercy of the court, and I found the court very merciful. But this is exactly how it should be handled. It was direct, it was small, and now we're past it. In fact, we're probably better off than before I was a jerk to his wife because he knows that I'm willing to acknowledge when there's sin and be humble and come back and repent. And I know that he's not just interested in it.

I know that he loves me enough to come directly to me rather than just talking to other people about it. And you know what? It would have been gossip for him to do that, even though he was true and right in his analysis. But for him to not come directly to me and go talk to other people about it would have been gossip. And so it serves as a good case study.

The second approach, the stop them in their tracks approach. And that says this, you know, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable with this conversation. I think we're crossing over the line into gossip here. We should probably stop. Now, you need to be prepared for the awkward silence that happens after that.

But honestly, I use this approach. I've used this approach within the last two weeks. And in the last year I probably used it three times or something like that. And it's very effective to just serve notice that I'm not a passive ear, I'm not willing to go where it appears that you want to take this, I'm not willing to go there, and it just resets that this is not going to be the culture of the relationship between me and you, where this is not how we're going to spend our time when we're talking together. You know, I think sometimes it's just appropriate to do that.

In Proverbs it actually says that you should use an angry Look. I'm just thinking of it now. I need to look that up so when I teach this again next Sunday over at Hope that I'm ready with that one. But we'd like to think, you know, within Christianity it's never appropriate to have an angry look. Not so.

With Proverbs it says this type of speaking ought to be met sometimes with an angry look so that you're serving notice that this is inappropriate and we should not be going in this direction. And then finally, and this might be my favorite, The constructive approach. Let's pray for this right now. Just shut it down before you get to the gory details of it and say, oh, you know what? That does sound like an issue.

Let's pray right now and just start. Oh God. And pray. At the heart of gossip, no one has helped. No one has helped.

Help isn't solicited. Help isn't given. I mean you might give each other advice or something like that. Hey, Do something constructive. Pray right there on the spot.

Before the gory details are out, you kind of know the general direction, so just say, hey, let's pray right now. At least something constructive will happen out of that. I want to suggest that we need to use 1 Corinthians 13 as our measuring stick. And you don't have to turn there if you don't want to. You're familiar with it.

You should hear the words of 1 Corinthians 13. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind.

Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own.

It is not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things. Believes all things.

Hopes all things. Endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease.

Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as also I am known. And now abide faith, hope, and love." These three. But the greatest of these is love. Gossip and backbiting and slander and reviling and evil speaking, whatever you want to term this, is an extreme violation of love. That's the problem with it.

Is that it's contrary to love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Love of God and love of neighbor is what all the law and the prophets hang on. And often when we speak this way, it's born out of pride and it's a refusal to believe the best. It's just simply a violation of love.

We are speaking that way because we're willing to not love and to do the opposite of it. Love isn't like that at all. It suffers long. It's kind. It does not envy or parade itself.

It's not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It thinks no evil. It believes all things and hopes all things.

It says love never fails, but it is a failure on our part if we let our words get away from us. And as James makes so clear, it's so easy. No man can tame the tongue. And so we need to raise our sensitivity in this category and know that we can set a large forest on fire with a little spark, and that spark is our tongue. So in conclusion, do you see what's at stake here?

Do you understand that we can symbolically burn our church to the ground through what we say or what we don't say? So we have to be so careful. Don't speak evil. Don't slander. Don't backbite.

Don't revile. And don't be the passive listening ear that invites it. Be vigilant. We're never done with it. Are we going to give this again next year?

You betcha. At some point next year we'll give it again because we all need the refresher course so we're thinking rightly about our words. Use the words of your mouth to build up and be a blessing. Psalm 19 which Gary read this morning, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

I'll leave you with a story from Kent Hughes' commentary on Acts 21. And he talks about one of the practical problems with gossip. In an eastern land, a woman repeated a bit of gossip about a neighbor, and within a short time the whole town knew the story. The slandered person was deeply hurt and most unhappy. But then the lady responsible for spreading the rumor learned that it was completely untrue.

So she went to a wise old sage to find out what she could do to repair the damage. After listening to her problem, he said, go to the marketplace, purchase a fowl, and have it killed. Then on your way home, pluck its feathers one by one and drop them along the path. Though surprised by this unusual advice, the woman did as she was told. The next day she informed the man that she had done as instructed.

Now go and collect all those feathers and bring them back to me, the sage said. The lady followed the same path, but to her dismay the wind had blown all the feathers away. After searching all day, she returned with only two or three in hand. You see, said the wise old man, it is easy to drop them, but impossible to bring them all back. Likewise, It does not take much to spread a false rumor that you can never completely undo the wrong.

We Christians must take this to heart. Let's pray. Father, help us to obey You in all categories, But God, as we're considering this category today, we pray that You help us to obey You in this category. That we would use our words for blessing and that we would have the courage and the love that You call us to whenever we're offended to go to our brother and to always be direct about these things and not indirect in a way that would bring harm to your church. We thank You in Jesus' name.

Amen. Does anyone want to pile on? So, three things. Three things. So, The Matthew 18 approach, of course, excellent.

I'll give you an example of what happened to me a couple weeks ago. A man came to me seeking advice. I let it go too far and heard the substance of the matter before I said, have you talked to this man? You need to go talk to this man. And I sent him away to go talk to this other man that he had an issue with.

Here's the problem. Because I already knew the nature of it. For the last couple of weeks it's come up in my mind, huh, I wonder how it happened. I wonder where that conversation went. And a couple times I've been tempted to call the man or if I ever saw him ask, no, it's not my fight.

I don't have a dog in the, like you said, it's, and so, I mean, even, you don't nip it at the bud, and you're, it's going to be tempted. You're going to be tempted as I have been in that, because I didn't nip it in the bud. The other area, lost my thought on one of them, but another area anyway is gossip. We as parents in general, maybe I'm much worse than most of you, but with our children, we'll tend to do okay on this subject with our children. They come to us talking to us about their brother or sister, And we have various reasons.

A lot of my reasons for not listening to it is, don't bother me. And I'll send them back with a godly attitude of, this is against you and your brother. You need to go talk to your brother. You need to go talk to your sister. We're good at that, maybe for wrong reasons at times.

But we're even good at that. But with other adults, we're not as good. Because we may not be as interested in hearing about our other son or other daughter's activities. Now that's not that tasty morsel. We know their sins pretty well.

And it's not as tasty, because you've tasted it many, many times. An adult will welcome that in. And just what it does is it's made me say, I need to really be vigilant more of my children when they come to me and explaining to them better, this is why you go back. And this is what you are training yourself to do. This is, Lord willing, what you are being trained to do by God by doing this, and it will benefit you later on.

But you need to take this up. Have you gone privately to your brother or sister and talked about this first and gone through that? We'll do it sometimes, but most of the time, it's probably more inconvenience than others that it may look like to somebody in my house. Hey, look at that, James is doing what's right. There's probably more of an inconvenience in really trying to make it right.

Five years ago, Our church literally burned to the ground over gossip. The issues at the heart of it were not church split issues. They weren't things that ought to split a church. This is my view of it. There were others of you there.

Maybe somebody has a different view. To me, I think it was the gossip that did us in. Because the disagreements that existed were disagreements that exist between us and a lot of different people. There might have been a parting of ways or something like that. But it turned what might have ended up as a parting of ways into a church split.

And hey, this is the nature of gossip. So this is really simple and somewhat elementary, but an application for this that is similar to me in preaching the gospel is you have to break the ice as far as that attitude that you were talking about about going to your brother. Meaning, you know, if it's your personality to be non-confrontational, or a more truthful way of putting it would be for most of us, if you are a coward really and don't want to go and share your truth with your brother, Seek strength from the Lord and go and do it. Because when you do it and see the beauty of that whole process versus the opposite, you'll want to do it again. And it's something that just like the reason I was saying it's paralleled with the Gospel is, if you don't go and preach the gospel to people, if you don't learn how to start a one-on-one conversation and change a topic to it, it's going to be very unnatural for you and very difficult for you to do that.

Versus if it's just a natural way of you, I mean some people are more gifted than others, but it's different when you break the ice and you're like, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready, and I want to keep doing this. And I think this is in the same type of way. It's a way of life, right? It's something that comes up often. It's something we will deal with this week and next week and the week to come.

So in the same way of the gospel, we should just be ready for it. And we should break the ice and cry out to God that He would give us the strength to make that initiative and then pray that it will become just a natural way of life for us to confront in that way, in a loving way. And for that to be our natural response, not our natural human response, which is to immediately to be the gossiper. I'm not sure I know anybody who doesn't have butterflies when they're going to have the awkward conversation with their brother or their sister. We hate it and we have to force ourselves to fight our way through it, I don't know of another way, right?

If you wait until you're comfortable, Most of us, 99% of us hate it and have to fight through it to make it happen. Okay, I think we're done. Thank you. We are dismissed.