Speak Evil of No Man

Okay, it's already been said that this order of service is going to be a little bit different this morning. We're just going to do things backwards, but that don't mean we still can't worship the Lord. And so we're going to have a sermon first, simply because there's a baptism over here at Halsey Mennonite, and some would like to go.

So, just a few announcements here before we get started. Church here, Wednesday night prayer meeting at 7.15. Is there a Bible study? 6.15 in music class, 7.15 prayer meeting. Okay, and there's also a shared meal after, which everyone's welcome.

Anything else, Roger? This weekend, this afternoon, there's a youth deal. Friday evening? What time? I don't have a schedule. 7 o'clock? 6 o'clock? Does anybody have a schedule? I guess you can figure it out.

Probably 7. Probably 7, better. After shared meal, maybe those who are going to go, we can get together and pray. And then go get an old sign.

I'm sure you'll find it. Eugene? 7 o'clock? Very good. Okay, anybody else? We could Wednesday night.

That way they can marinate on it a while. Okay. Okay, anything else before we move on as far as announcements? Okay.

Does anybody have anything they'd like to lift up in prayer? Anybody? A need, personal or abroad? Maybe it's all good. Little Brian? So what's the, have you heard anything from them since we sent that? Yeah. Okay.

Okay, well, Brother Roger, if you want to come, want to welcome Mendy and Lee and Sue here, glad you're here. Shall we pray? Let's stand for prayer for those who care to. Let's pray.

Thank you, God, for today. Thank you for your goodness to us, Lord. Lord, what a beautiful day to worship you.

Blue sky, the sunny skies. Father, here we are, just a few of your believers here. We love you, Lord.

And I pray for Brother Roger as he shares this morning. I pray, Lord, that you would anoint his lips, his heart, his mind, his being, Lord. Also pray for the O'Briens, Lord.

I just pray, Lord, you would just take the ashes and put them all back together, Lord. What the devil meant for evil, that somehow you could just rebuild what was all taken down. And I pray, Lord, that you would just move in their hearts, Lord.

We will never know the impact of those cards, the little bit of money that was sent. Father, what it will do to them, but I just pray, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would just rest upon them today and communicate with them. I pray for the discouraged this morning, Lord, and the hopeless, Lord, that there's hope in Christ and we can find our secure, our anchor in you.

And, Lord, that we would encourage ourselves in you like David of old did. So I just pray, Lord, you would just come and meet every need here, Lord, whether great or small. And you would just meet with us here this morning in this place.

And may we just worship you out of a pure heart. And I just pray against the powers of darkness and the raven of hell that wants to take things away, but you want to grow. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. I didn't know if this was going to be possible to do both, but with this flexibility, that helps. So, anyway, thank you for being flexible here.

Just a couple of pre-sermon thoughts before I get into the main message here. I got an email from a group called the Eternal Prayer Flame. And I just want to encourage you here with this comment here about prayer.

Dear Prayer Flames, the great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer, nor those who say they believe in prayer, nor yet those who can explain about prayer. But I mean those people who really take time and pray.

It's not that they have time. It must be taken from something else. Do you hear that? It's not that they have extra time.

It's time that has to be taken from something else that they would otherwise be doing. And this something else is important. It's very important and it's pressing.

But it's less important and pressing than prayer. These are people who put prayer first and group the other items in life's schedule around and after prayer. These are the people today who are doing the most for God in winning souls, in solving problems, in awakening churches, in supplying both men and money for mission posts, in keeping fresh and strong these lives in far-off sacrificial service on the foreign field where the thickest fighting is going on, in keeping the old earth sweet a while longer.

It is a holy, secret service. We do not know who these people are, though sometimes shrewd guesses may be made. I often think that sometimes we pass some plain-looking woman slipping quietly out of church, gown been turned two or three times, bonnet fixed over more than once, hands that have not known much of the softening of gloves, and we hardly give her a passing thought and do not know nor guess that perhaps she is the one who is doing far more for her church and for the world and for God than a hundred who would claim more attention and thought because she prays, truly prays as the Spirit of God inspires and guides.

Let me put it this way. God will do as a result of the praying of the humblest one here what otherwise he would not do. That is from a little book called Quiet Talks on Prayer.

Anyway, I was blessed by that. How much can we do in secret? Nobody knows. Doing it as Jesus said.

Another little story I want to share with you. And this I thought of as the youth going out today or whoever is going out today to evangelize. I just thought I'd share this story.

This man named Alexander over in, I believe it was Russia. And this happened, I believe it was on an Easter. I'm not sure if it was this last Easter.

Probably not. Actually it wasn't. There wasn't time to be written.

But it was some Easter that he was out there walking. And Alexander was planning to end his life. He was even shopping for a rope.

I'm not an emotional person, Alexander confides, but I was so disappointed in this life that I wanted out. Death was at Alexander's door. So with his young life hanging in the balance, he prayed a desperate prayer.

God, if you exist, do something. Three days later, a young woman named Ksenia joined her church youth group for an Easter outreach to share the gospel in her Russian community. And this was an organization called Every Home for Christ where I got this information.

Every Home for Christ had printed great booklets, Ksenia said. My friend Lara and I were handing out booklets and talking to young people. It was during this outreach that Ksenia crossed paths with Alexander.

Flashing her bright smile, Ksenia told Alexander that God loves him. But Alexander just tried to pass her by. I don't know why, but I blocked his path, Ksenia said.

I remembered a verse from scripture. Do not worry about what you should say. And the Holy Spirit spoke for me.

Alexander listened timidly as Ksenia told him that God is a loving father. Then she gave him a piece of literature with her phone number on it. Ksenia suggested they meet again to answer Alexander's questions about God.

He rudely answered, no, Ksenia remembered, but he did take the booklet. Over the following days, Ksenia prayed for Alexander. Then, to her surprise, the phone rang.

Hi, Alexander said, I'm ready to meet. When they met again, Ksenia shared her testimony with Alexander. To him, she was the girl with the burning eyes and even a little crazy.

But they became fast friends and met again. And after their third meeting, Alexander sent Ksenia a text message. I'm very glad I met you.

I can now find the strength to not despair and to live. Alexander put his faith in the love of Jesus. He joined Ksenia's church and became active in the youth group.

Then, several months later, Alexander proposed. He and Ksenia are now married. I want to say a huge thank you to Every Home for Christ for the Easter booklets.

Ksenia says, Alexander has found a new life in Christ and I have found a husband. Thank God for his surprise. By the way, that's not the proper motive to go evangelism.

The greatest surprise of all time happened on that first Easter morning. Jesus rose back to life, conquering sin and death forever. It is this truth that gives hope to the world, hope to people like Alexander.

The love of Jesus rescued him from the grip of death. And with your help, even more lives can be rescued. The most urgent need in the world today is for more people to hear the gospel.

And Easter is the perfect time for them to hear it. So, again, encouragement. Sometimes you go out and this is one form, whether it's passing out tracts or holding gospel signs.

It's a form of mass evangelism. It's not the focused evangelism that you do with a quiet, private Bible study. They're both valid, but they're different.

And sometimes we can get discouraged. After all the rejection, we can even say that. Hey, people aren't interested in hearing the gospel.

And they aren't. Most of them. People are hardened to the gospel.

And they are. Most of them. People don't want to hear it.

They're on their way to a football game. They're on their way to a movie. They're not in a position to listen to you.

And that's correct. Most of them are exactly in that position. But there are a few.

And you might give a tract to one person today who is in a place like Alexander who really does have a desire. And he may get back to you, us, but he may not. He may go and read it and God will do a work in his heart even without us ever hearing about it.

I just want to encourage you in that. I want to encourage you in prayer. Encourage you in evangelism.

Maybe we'll pray again here before I start on the main message. We're going to be reading from Titus chapter 2. And we can open up to there. But before we do that, let's pray.

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus. And once again, we want to ask you to empower your word. We want to ask you, God, to show us what you have for us today.

We want you to change us. We want you to move in our midst. And we want you to move also, Lord, across the tracts for this baptism going on.

I pray that you would build your kingdom. Build your kingdom in Eugene, Lord, with the outreach efforts. Build your kingdom as we pray quietly, privately, wherever we pray.

But teach us to pray. And, Lord, I do pray, like was prayed earlier, that you would just block the enemy forces from snatching away the word that is shared today. Thank you, God, for gathering us here.

Thank you for each person that came. We commit our time to you in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. Titus chapter 2. Turn to verse 11 is where we're going to start, if I can find it here. It's in the T section of your New Testament.

All right. Titus chapter 2, verse 11. Why don't we read this all together? We're going to start at verse 11 of chapter 2, and we're going to go all the way up through verse 11 of chapter 3. And so let's read this in unison.

Titus chapter 2, verse 11, all together. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority.

Let no man despise thee. Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These are good and profitable unto men.

But avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject, knowing that he subverted and sinneth being condemned of himself. All right, we'll stop there.

Thank you for that. Actually, let me have you do one more thing. Let's go back now to verse 2. We read it already.

Let's read it again of chapter 3. Titus 3 verse 2. Let's read the whole verse. To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. All right, let's narrow it down just a little bit further.

And we're going to start with the second word of that same verse. It's the word speak. And we're going to read just those five words right there.

Okay, all together. Speak evil of no man. Let's do it again.

Speak evil of no man. One more time. Speak evil of no man.

All right, we have that up here on the board. It's a little different translation. Speak evil of no one.

Anyway, that's the title of my message this morning. And so you say, well, what's this about? Well, sometimes we call it the sin of gossip. I was reading this book by David Bursell, Secrets of the Kingdom, and he has this one chapter in there.

He says that most people don't consider this sin of gossip all that terribly important or damaging. They kind of know they shouldn't do it, but it's not heavy on their radar of the big sins. But he says it is very serious in God's eyes, and all that God has said about it is important.

Even back in the Old Testament, he says in Leviticus, he says, Thou shalt not go up and down as a tailbearer among thy people, neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor. I am the Lord, James 1.26. If anyone thinks he's religious and doesn't bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is vain or worthless. And so these are some of the warnings that we have against this thing of gossip.

So let's just give you a definition here. What does the word gossip mean? Basically, idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. Idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.

So if that's what it means, does that mean anytime we're talking about anybody else, is that wrong? And I think the answer is no. Talking about other people can be a blessing. Listen to this.

Does that mean it's always wrong to talk about other people? No, normally it's perfectly fine to relate good news and encouraging comments about others. It's fine to announce that Susan has recovered from an illness or Joe had an outstanding series of lessons at a recent Bible school. However, for some dark reason, Christians find it far more interesting to talk about the failings and faults of their fellow Christians than about their victories and accomplishments in Christ.

Bad news usually travels a lot faster than good news. Somehow, many Christians feel that uplifting news doesn't make for a very interesting conversation. And that's sad, but I think it's true.

And here's an example of someone who, they like to share these things, but you also want to be righteous. So here's this lady named St. Lee Sue. She would certainly never gossip about anyone.

She sees herself as an intercessory prayer warrior. On her way back from Walmart one Wednesday morning, she stopped by the house of her Christian friend Rita. After some small talk, Sue informed Rita in a concerned voice, we need to pray for Conrad and Alice Martin.

Oh, why is that? Rita replied, her ears pricking up. Well, they're having a lot of marriage problems right now, she explained in a hushed tone. Shaking her head, she continued, they're constantly arguing.

In fact, I hear they don't even eat at the same table. I'm really concerned they may end up separating. Really? Rita replied in pious amazement.

How long has this been going on? You'd never know it to look at them in church. Well, from what I hear, it all sounds so pious. It's so easy for Sue and Rita to pretend they're not gossiping about the Martins.

If St. Lee Sue honestly examined her heart, she would know that she didn't really talk to Rita about the Martins' marriage because she has a godly concern for them. In fact, she rarely intercedes for them in private. The plain truth is that she likes to gossip.

But she certainly has enough savvy to dress up her gossip in spiritual clothes. So, that's human nature for us. We like to talk about people.

We like to discuss other things. We like to discuss other people, especially negative things about other people. And according to this definition I just read about gossip, it's just any discussion of people's private affairs, things that are not our business, and we're bringing those things into our conversation.

One of the verses we read here, it says, A man that is an heretic after the first or second admonition reject. Well, another translation uses this one. I think this is actually a better word for our common English.

It says, Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time, and then after that don't have anything to do with him. And so, when we have this kind of thing going on in the church, it is devastating, and God hates it, and we need to weed it out. We need to get rid of it.

I struggle a bit to know, when it comes to talking about the issue of gossip, and what am I going to share about, is it something, I mean, if we were just to absolutely go cold turkey, and first of all admit that we have it, we have this problem, and then, okay, we're not going to ever do this ever again. I'm afraid the focus would not be narrow enough for us to accomplish that. And so I decided I'm going to narrow this down and talk about certain areas of gossip that we can be on the lookout for.

I think all gossip is wrong, but the problem is if we don't narrow down and get specific about what we're talking about, we're probably not going to gain any ground in this area. So here's what I want to do. There's four areas of gossip I want to put up here on the board, and say let's especially focus on those in our talk among each other.

The first one is simply this one, and that is things that are not true. Now that should go without saying. We're Christians, we shouldn't ever go down that road.

Talk about things that are not true. We heard a couple Sundays ago about things that are not supported by rumors, conspiracies, theories that don't have truth behind them, or at least we don't know that they do. Maybe they are true, we just don't have enough evidence to know the answer, and yet we pass them on as though they are true.

So that should go without saying. Another one is we could put beside that the word rumor. We could put beside that the word slander.

If you say things that are not true about others in a negative light, that's called slander, and it's a form of lying. I think we know that this is wrong, but I want to say it anyway. Just watch out for that.

But there's a second one, and this is revealing secrets. Revealing secrets. Now if you notice, the rest of these things that I'm going to list up here, they may not fall into this category, the first one.

They may actually be true. So if I know something, someone's confided in to me, says, hey, can you pray for me, I've got this struggle, it's a secret between me and him. If I take that and pass it on to someone else, it's not that it's not true, it is true.

It's very true information, but if I pass it on, it's breaking confidence that he had. And I thought it'd be, it's one of those areas, you know, with my business, I run into this a lot, and I thought it'd be good for everybody, you know, to work in an accounting office for about a year. You see so much information, and yet there's very heavy penalties, even on a legal sense, even out in the world, for revealing that information to the wrong people.

It's private, it's their financial data. You don't tell anybody, it's secret. And you just got to learn, I mean, some of it is juicy detail that you just can't say.

And as much as you'd like, wow, I've got these great stories to tell. I mean, at least you got to make it anonymous. People do tell stories about accounting clients, but they can't ever attach it in such a way, a name to the financial data in such a way that anybody has any possibility of making a connection.

It has to absolutely be kept private, very strictly, you lose your license if you don't do this. So, not true. Number two, revealing secrets.

Another danger I see. I'll just put up here, boy-girl relationships. I'll just put boy-girl, you know what I'm talking about.

So, this is another one. Again, this may be true. It may be true.

When we start this realm of teasing, and talking about relationships between boys and girls, and nothing's official, but wow, I think... And we whisper, and there's gossip that goes on, but it's damaging. It's damaging to a youth group. It's damaging to a church.

It's damaging to a lot of different people. And it's not that it doesn't necessarily fall into the not true category. It might be true that so-and-so is keeping an eye on this girl over here, or this girl has an eye on this.

Or it might even be true that if we talk about our own feelings, this is especially probably for the younger people, I think. Maybe not them. Maybe the older people can fall into it as well.

But just be careful. It has damaged and ruined so many youth groups, relationships, and so forth. So, those are three of them.

And then the last one that I want to put up here, and this is what I want to spend the rest of my time talking about, is just simply this one. And that is negative talk. And so, these are the things I thought I'd bring in here, but really the focus of the message is on this one right here.

Just negative information. And again, a lot of it is very, very true. Negative things about other people.

And that's why this verse here, Speak evil of no one. It doesn't say speak evil of no one unless it's true. It says speak evil of no one.

And it is so easy. Now I know that at some point people will hear a message like this and they'll say, yes, but there's exceptions to the rule. There's commands given that we're supposed to warn about the heretics.

And we're supposed to watch out for this false doctrine. And we're supposed to guard against whatever. You know, heresies and sin and so forth.

And so therefore, there are some of these isolated cases where we have to bring up the negative and focus on it and avoid it. But the problem is those exceptions soon become the rule. And because those exceptions are there, we take license to totally cross this verse out.

And here we go talking evil, evil, evil about just about everybody in our past. And it could start with people the very closest to us. You know, our spouses.

I talk about my wife and how she's failing and she talks about me and how I'm failing. And then we say, hey, wait, that's not right. So we back up.

And I could put a whole list of people up here. You know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And we could start listing who are you the very closest to in your life. And probably we'd put spouses at the top.

And then we'd probably put maybe our parents or children on the next. And so we might back off from talking evil about our spouses, but now we're talking evil about my dad. He failed me in this.

My mom failed me in this. My children, I wish... And on and on it goes. And then maybe, well, okay, we back away from that.

And we start talking about siblings or extended family, uncles and aunts. Still close to us, but not as close as our immediate family. We talk about fellow church members.

We're not related to them by blood, but we're in the same church. And so we talk evil about people within our church. And again, this is where it says, being divisive, stirring up discord.

What are these things that God hates? Those who stir up discord among brethren. God hates those kind of things. And we realize, well, wait a minute.

God doesn't like this. This is among my church people. So we back away from even that.

And we get into our workplace, our bosses, our coworkers, and all of their failures. Maybe we'll back away from that. And we'll go to our former bosses, former coworkers.

And we'll speak negative things about them. When I say negative things, you all know what I'm talking about. Just think about any conversation in which someone's reputation is going down.

Any conversation is a negative thing. We talked about some of the very rare exceptions that the Bible talks about when Paul would warn against these heretics. He would write about them sometimes.

But for the most part, this is the rule right here. Speak evil of no one. So as we back away from people that are closest to us, and we start getting out there, instead of talking about people in our own church, we talk about former churches.

We talk about the church across the tracks. We talk about the church down the road this direction. We talk about not my boss, but the boss that I used to have.

We don't talk about the guy sitting next to us in church, but we talk about our next door neighbor. And it seems like it's so easy just over and over again. Government leaders.

That's a common one. And it seems less serious. You know why it seems less serious to talk about people down here than up here? I think it's because it is less serious.

It's not as serious to talk about somebody from a church you're not trying to get along with than it is someone right here among us. There's a problem though by saying it's less serious. If we say it's less serious, and therefore, we've got to talk about somebody negative because it's boring if we don't.

So we don't want to talk about family members that are close to us, church members that are close to us, maybe not even our current workplace people, but if we still get into the habit of talking about people in a negative light, it changes who we are. That's the point that I'd like to point. And that's even if it's true.

It's not in this category. We're not lying about these people. We're saying very accurate things, but the fact that I think in terms of negativity, it will very likely bleed up the list, and I'm only talking about the people that sit next to me in church.

It'll bleed up the list, and I'll eventually be talking about people that are close to me. Because it changes who I am when I get in the habit of talking negative. And it does hurt them.

There's no question about them. Even if it's some guy, I'll never meet him again, but the fact that I share commonly, that's my habit, I like to do it, negative things about him, it does bring his reputation down as a result. And so I think we need to stop and say, wait, why am I doing this? Is there a good reason? Is it really an honest prayer request? If we get into the habit of just stopping and assessing our speech along these lines, I think it would be a very good thing.

And even if it's true, we've got to realize when we're tearing down someone else's reputation, it's taking something from them. Again, if they truly are a danger to us as a family, as a church, if they're truly coming as a wolf in sheep's clothing, there needs to be a warning. Again, we can talk about those exceptions, but the problem is so often we jump straight to the exception in every case and say, I have a right to talk about this guy because he's dangerous.

And here's the thing. It's not just the other people that are hurt. I think sometimes we don't realize that.

If you could put, I don't know, a thermometer on the board and say, this is the guy's reputation. And before I start talking about it, he's just right there at zero. He's not negative.

He's not positive. And over here is me. And I'm just at zero too.

But then I open my mouth when I start talking about this guy. And as I talk about all the negative things he's done in the workplace, in the church, all the bad things he did when he was a preacher at that church, his reputation starts to go down. Negative two, negative four, negative six, negative eight, negative 10.

It's down in the hole compared to the beginning of the conversation. And it might be true, remember. Let's not say we're lying about this guy necessarily.

At the end of the conversation, here he is. He's down at negative 10. And I'm the one that's doing the talking.

But what we don't realize is that my own reputation got hurt as well in that conversation. It's normal, it's natural for us to think my reputation will go up a little bit as a result of his going down. But it's not true because here, watch what happens.

I'm not down as low as he is. He's down at negative 10. I'm on just negative two.

But you see, now I'm in the habit of it. And so here comes another guy. And this is somebody else in my life.

And I have another conversation and his drops negative two, negative four, negative six, negative eight, negative 10. And now he's down here in a different conversation about somebody else, somebody unrelated. Well, mine just dropped another two.

So now I'm down at negative four. Because as people hear me talking negatively about others, guess what they're thinking? I wonder what he says about me when I'm not around. That's what happens.

And you could do this about revealing secrets. If you get in the habit of revealing secrets, people say, well, I'm not going to share any secrets with him. Because he can't keep a secret.

I've proven that to him. But this scale of me right here sharing negative things every time I got a new guy that I'm running down, my own reputation. And this is not so much a spiritual thing.

This is just normal psychology. This is the way even the world can relate to this. They'll say the same thing.

As I run down other people, some of this is wisdom, whether it's from the Bible, the Proverbs, whatever. It's normal wisdom that works in a lot of different environments. Now, what if I reverse this? And I start getting in the habit of always looking for the positive in other people.

Look, I know some negative things about him, but, you know, I appreciate this about him. And this. And somehow I boost him up to a four or a six above ground.

Now, I've changed my way of thinking. I've changed the... I'm getting in the habit of looking for the positive. And there usually are positives.

There usually are something I can find about... Whatever church is out there, I can find something positive about them. Whatever guy that used to be in my life as a brother, sister, co-worker, church member, I can probably find something positive about him if you look hard enough. And if that's what I focus on, and everybody that I talk about in their absence especially, I'm boosting them up.

It's going to change who I am. And people will acknowledge this. And again, when we have things in Scripture here, Paul isn't so much focusing on what do people around me think.

He's focusing on what does God think. He wants you to behave in such a way that God will think differently about you. But what's interesting is so often people will also follow suit.

They will also be looking at those same things. So, to gossip about others or to speak negatively about others, it's a violation of the second greatest commandment. You should love your neighbors as yourself.

It's a violation of the golden rule. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Jesus talked about that.

If you talk about people and say, rake up. If you talk about them and say, thou fool, whether they're faced or not. It's running them down.

Gossip is kind of a cowardly way of going about the same thing because it's running them down, but it's so much easier when they're not around. When they're absent, you can do it without any repercussions. Let's see.

There was something I was going to read here. William Law. He says this.

You know how it hurts you to be made just and ridicule of other people. You know how it grieves you to be robbed of your reputation and deprived of the favorable opinion of your neighbors. If therefore you expose others to scorn and contempt in any degree or if it pleases you to hear and see of their frailties and infirmities, you're very far from loving such people as yourself.

In fact, you may be justly supposed to have as much hatred for them as you have love for yourself. So, you know, that's quite a warning there. What are we doing? Are we actually exercising hatred when we do this? So what's the solution to this problem of gossip and evil speaking? Well, first of all, repent.

Let's call it sin. You know, if I find myself that this is something that I do, let's call it sin what it is. Number two, let's be content to be, listen to this, a less interesting person.

You know what? I used to be really interesting. We had conversations. We could talk for hours.

But now I've given up some of these conversational habits. I'm not as interesting as I used to be. Are you OK with that? Is it OK to be less interesting? Are you content to only, if you stick to only saying positive things or maybe neutral things, you know, there's neutral things that people can talk about.

Oh, yeah, this and this happened and this event happened and nobody's reputation is hurt. They're not necessarily build up either. But, you know, those are interesting tidbits to talk about sometimes.

But they're not running. They're not pushing the other guy's reputation down. But better yet, discuss ideas, scriptures, discuss, you know, plans for whatever we're doing, outreach, how to build God's kingdom.

So I heard a quote years ago. I'll share it with you. I'm not sure how, if it's exactly across the board true, but I think it has some truth in it.

So listen to it. Get some truth out of it. Here's what it says.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Well, interesting. Sometimes events include people. Sometimes ideas include people.

So how much truth is in there? I think there's some truth. Get whatever out of it you can, I guess. And at a minimum, hey, let's be willing to learn to sit in silence, you know, if the other people are talking and if the only thing I have to say is something negative, I can just listen.

And I think there's some code words I thought of. Just have these code words. If you don't get anything else from this sermon, think of these two words, negative or positive.

You know, think of two guys standing at opposite ends of a pair of jumper cables and they're trying to decide how to put these things on. And somebody else says, hey, negative or positive. Well, you know, or they're doing some kind of wiring system and they're negative or positive, or they're balancing their books, you know, and somebody gives me a number and I write it down.

Negative or positive. You know, but think of those words. Whatever it takes to memorize, keep those words in the back of your mind.

Just keep asking that question as conversations begin to develop. And maybe you're talking. Maybe somebody else is talking.

Hey, negative or positive. Just throw those two words out there. It's a good reminder to us to think, is this particular conversation, is it boosting somebody's reputation? Or is it pushing it down? Or maybe it's a third category.

Maybe it's neutral. Again, I have no problem with that if it is. But if it's actually putting somebody's reputation down as a result, be very, very careful and say, hey, should this be stopped right now? So, here's another verse from Timothy talking about people who fall into traps.

I think it's talking about women here, but I think it fits anybody, men and children. And besides, they learn to be idle, wondering about from house to house, and not only idle, but gossips and busybodies saying things which they ought not. Therefore, I desire that younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity for the adversary to speak reproachfully.

So, those are some of the reasons. We could ask the question, why do Christians gossip? It makes for interesting conversations. They think they're enhancing themselves.

Remember this? So often we fall into this trap. Let's get rid of that idea even in the world's eyes. That doesn't work.

Another reason is jealousy. So often there's people that are out there, they're successful, they're doing well, and people get jealous of them. And so they start running them down in order to lift themselves up, in order to somehow deal with the envy that they have.

So, here's a way. Here's just one solution that I wanted to share with you. What do we do if jealousy is really a problem? We really look at somebody else and say, I wish I had what he had.

Well, we shouldn't just pray for them. We should pray for the people that we're jealous of. Don't just pray for them in a general way.

Do this. Let's pray that God would bless them in those specific areas that we're envious about. So, do we envy someone's successful ministry? Let's pray that God would make His ministry even more fruitful.

Do we envy someone who has more friends than we do? We should pray that God would give her even more friends. Yes, it will be like driving nails through our flesh to pray in this manner. However, if we persevere, God will help us root out all the jealousy in our hearts.

So, the question comes, is there ever a time to speak any kind of warning, any kind of negativity? And again, we talked about some of those. Let me just give you one example of this. There was an example of a certain church.

A man who attended the church was accused of molesting a boy in the congregation. The pastor privately but thoroughly investigated all the facts. He heard the victim's account of the incident.

He confronted the accused with the information. The accused admitted to the wrongdoing. The police were notified in accordance with the law.

The next Sunday, after the service was over, the pastor called all the heads of households into a private meeting. He related all the facts that they needed to know about the situation. He did not go into explicit details as they did not need to know them.

He told the family heads enough to be on guard of the wrongdoer and safeguard their families. There was no need for his hearers to discuss the matter further, nor was there any reason to spread the news to others who had no reason to know about it. That's one example.

There's a warning and it had to be given. There's another side to this that we can enter in. I think the focus of this has been on the gossiper, the speaker.

Part of this, too, is the guilt of the listener. I'll admit, it's hard for me when I start hearing things that are negative to stop it. It's interesting a lot of times.

It's kind of, I think, well, hey, he's the one doing the talking, not me. But what can we do as listeners? Is there a way we can gently redirect the conversation? Maybe that doesn't work. Maybe we can just walk away from the discussion.

But maybe we just need to go to the person and say, hey, look, is this really a godly thing to be doing? It's not going to be easy to break the habit of any of these things. It's not going to be easy. But I just wanted to give this message.

I thought if there's ever a thing that the devil uses to destroy churches, this is it. Talking negatively among ourselves, about ourselves. And if we learn to even weed it out of our lives when it comes to other people, other churches, we're a lot less likely to talk about... If we weed even these out, which seems kind of harmless, talking about people that are out there.

They're not part of our church. They're clearly the bad guy. But do I enjoy talking about that? If I start enjoying this, it so quickly is going to bleed up into these close relationships.

And that's especially what the Bible warns about when it comes to heresy, when it comes to division. We're talking about people that are very close to us, and God expects us to have a relationship. He doesn't necessarily expect us to have relationships with people down here in the world, the atheists, the people that are persecuting, the government officials.

That's not going to divide the church to talk about the Democrats too much. But if we get in the habit of talking about them, and it's always negative, and I don't know how to build other people up, I'm going to soon start talking negative about people that are closer to me. In private, of course.

They can't hear me in these little quiet conversations. And it's human nature to do that. That's what we're talking about here.

We're talking about doing things that are against our human nature. Anyway, I appreciate you being willing to think about these things. I appreciate the warning that David Berceau gave in his book, Secrets of the Kingdom Life.

I thought, man, sometimes after reading through this, it would be nice to go through it as a church. I don't know if we ever will. Or in the Bible study or something.

But I thought at least that one chapter I wanted to share. So we're going to end with prayer. I'll turn the time back over to Glenn.

Let's pray. Lord, we come to You in the name of Jesus. Thank You, God, again for everyone that's gathered here.

And Lord, we just pray that You would help us to be alert and on guard against sin. And Lord, we especially pray about this sin of gossip and slander and evil speaking and the damage that it can do. And I pray that You would teach us, Lord, to be people of blessing and people who look for the positive in others and bless them as much as we can.

And Lord, just teach us these habits. And Lord, help us to take steps today. We may not conquer this all in an afternoon or in an hour, but Lord, can we take steps today to put Your commands into practice and to weed out of our lives things that discredit Your name? We just bless You for this, Lord.

Thank You for being with us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright.

Well, again, thank you for being here. I'm going to turn the time back over to Glenn. But whatever you do from here, if you're going to discuss, I think we're going to be kind of sneaking out while you're discussing as a family.

Again, for those who weren't here, we have a baptism. My nephew is getting baptized over at Halsey Mennonite. So we're going to go over there to support them in that.

Thank you again. We'll be back, I think, probably for the fellowship meal. God bless you all.