Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about gossip, not a minor sin. I want to begin by telling you a true story. Now at first, the story might seem that it doesn't have anything to do with gossip, but at the end of it, I'll show you the connection, and it's a very meaningful connection. In the year 1530, Martin Luther made a proclamation to the German princes saying that the Anabaptists held that Christ was a mere man. Therefore, they should be put to death as open blasphemers.
If that wasn't bad enough, Luther went on to say that since the Anabaptists were open blasphemers, then they weren't entitled to a hearing. And they shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves. Just put them to death. Now apart from the fact that real Christians don't murder other Christians, there was another very serious problem with Luther's proclamation. And that is, the Anabaptists didn't teach that Jesus was a mere man. They always believed in His deity. They still do.
But since they weren't allowed a hearing or an opportunity to defend themselves, they had no chance to clear this up. It was simply open season on the Anabaptist to be murdered by the German princes. Now if you're an Anabaptist or another type of kingdom Christian, would you like to have lived in 16th century Germany? I know I wouldn't. Now, strangely enough, that situation in 16th-century Germany is exactly how things typically work today in most churches, including Anabaptist churches and other kingdom churches.
No, I don't mean that we go around physically murdering people. No, we don't do that. But we do go around murdering their reputations without allowing them an opportunity to have a hearing or to defend themselves. It's all done behind their backs. They don't even know about it usually. Yeah, this is called gossiping, and it's not a minor sin. And that's why I want to talk about gossip today. Very few, if any, Christians are free from gossip. It's one of the most pervasive sins in our churches.
Yet most of the time it's treated like it's a minor sin. It's a respectable sin. It's treated as if no real harm comes from it. And that needs to change. Gossip is a serious sin. It does hurt people. It hurts churches. And we need to clear it out of our churches. So exactly what is gossip? Well, my dictionary defines gossip this way. Idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. End quote. Interestingly, our present word gossip comes from the Old English word God SIB.
That's G-O-D-S-I-B-B. And that word was a combination of two words, God, and then SIB, SIBB, which meant a relative. So a God SIB was a godparent. And because godparents and other relatives tended to talk about the personal affairs of people they were close to, eventually we got the word gossip from that. Now, one of the interesting things is that the word gossip doesn't turn on the truth of a situation. You may have noticed there was nothing in that definition that said anything about falsehood.
It simply said idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. So just because something is absolutely true does not change the fact that it can still be gossip. When we talk about the failings, the faults, the embarrassments, and just the private affairs of others, we are gossiping whether it is absolute truth or not. Now normally, it's perfectly fine to talk about good news and to talk about upbuilding things about other people. I can think of a situation just about a month ago.
A group of us were sitting together at the end of a church fellowship meal, and we were talking about a particular brother who is somewhat well-known in Anabaptist circles. And the entire conversation was about the wonderful qualities of this particular brother, how he was good at this, and he was also good at this other thing. And how much we were blessed by him because of this or because of that.
And I didn't think too much of it at the time, but as I was driving home, I thought, now wouldn't it be wonderful if all conversations about other Christians went that way? Yet the fact is, they usually don't. It is strange that good news rarely travels as fast in our church circles as bad news does. Somehow most Christians are far less eager to pass on good news about their fellow brothers and sisters as they are to pass on bad news about them. And I think that reveals a real dark side to most of us.
So I'm going to give you a real simple litmus test to consider before you start talking about another person. And that applies whether they're even a Christian brother or sister. And that is, would that person want me to tell others what I'm about to say? If not, then don't say it, period. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. If that person would not want you to be passing that on, or bringing that up, or revealing that to other people, then don't do it. Don't talk about it.
Now, there is one exception and one exception only that I know of, and that is in matters of church discipline. Obviously, if somebody is involved in sin, Jesus has laid out a three-step system of handling it. First, he says, " Go and talk to that brother alone. " He didn't say, " Go and talk to other people about what that brother has done, " or what you think he or she has done, but go and talk to them alone. And then if they don't listen, he said, " Bring somebody else.
" And normally at that point, that would be someone in church leadership. And then he says, " If they don't listen to that person, then you bring it up to the church. " Not by going around and gossiping about it to the church, but for the church to officially handle it in the manner of church discipline. But it's always for the benefit to save your brother, to rescue them, not to humiliate them, not to have something juicy to tell other people about.
It's done privately if possible, and it's done for the purpose of saving your brother or sister. Now, because we instinctively know that gossip is wrong, we come up with ingenious ways to dress up our gossip to try to make it something saintly. William Law in his book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, gives this description of what he calls a saintly gossiper, saintly being in quotation marks.
He says, " When he visits, you generally hear him relating how sorry he is for the defects and failings of such-and-such a neighbor. " He is always letting you know how concerned he is about the reputation of his neighbor, how he hates to say that which he is forced to say, and how gladly he would conceal it if only it could be concealed. Yeah, we find ways to gossip and then to pretend that we're not gossiping. One way we do this is in the form of prayer requests. I'll give you an example.
This is just a made-up example. I'll call her Saintly Sue. Saintly Sue loves to gossip, but since gossiping isn't very spiritual, she dresses it up in spiritual clothing by putting it in the form of a prayer request. So she stops by her friend Rita's house and says, " Oh, Rita, we need to pray for Conrad and Alice Martin. " And Rita says, " Oh, has something happened or is one of them in the hospital? " And Rita says, " No, it's not that. It's, boy, I hate to say this, but you know, they're having marital problems.
" " Oh, I didn't know that Rita responds. We never know it looking at them at church. They just seem to be the perfect couple. " And Saintly Sue says, " Yeah, I know it's that way, but what I hear is that they've been having marital problems for a long time. They argue all the time. In fact, I hear often they don't even talk to each other. They'll go a whole day without ever talking to each other. " But the point is, we need to be praying for them. So, yeah, please remember to pray for them.
And then, of course, Saintly Sue goes on her way, and she has other people she's going to pass this prayer request on to. The funny thing is that people like Saintly Sue rarely pray for these people themselves, at least not in private. It's simply gossip dressed up in the form of a prayer request, and I think we've all heard prayer requests that are like that. So why do I say that gossip is not a minor sin? Well, there are a number of reasons.
The first one is it violates the second greatest commandment, which is, " You shall love your neighbor as yourself. " William Law made this comment. He said, " You know how it hurts you to be made the jest 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 see or hear of their frailties and infirmities, you are very far from loving such people as you love yourself. You see, that's the essence of it. When you gossip about somebody, you are not showing love to that person. None of us enjoy being gossiped about. So if it hurts us to be gossiped about, it hurts other people. And we cannot love them as we love ourselves if we are gossiping about them.
So that is a major, major sin when we do not love our fellow man. And that's why Jesus said in Matthew 12, " I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. " In fact, even stronger in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, " Whoever says to His brother Raca shall be in danger of the council, but whoever says you fool shall be in danger of hellfire.
" Now, so many Christians imagine that the point of what Jesus is saying here is that we must avoid using the word " fool ", that it's the worst thing we can possibly call our fellow man. In fact, I've read lots of commentaries and articles in Christian literature that explain why using that word " fool " is so particularly odious. They'll point to the Psalms that says, " The fool has said in his heart there is no God.
" They say, " You see, when you call someone a fool, you're saying that they don't believe in God, that they're an atheist, " et cetera, et cetera. And so they imagine the point of Jesus ' teaching is that there's something particularly evil about this word " fool. " But that's not Jesus ' point at all. The early Christians all understood that fool was a rather mild putdown. I think it was a bit stronger than it would be today.
Perhaps idiot would be the modern equivalent, but that's still a pretty mild denunciation compared to the awful slurs and disparagements you hear people call today. So the point of Jesus ' strong warning there is that when we show contempt for our brother, we are very far from loving him. And when we don't love our brother, we place our salvation in serious jeopardy. But do you realize how much worse it is when we gossip about our brother or sister?
Jesus describes how bad it is when you tell your brother to his face that you think he's a fool or an idiot. But the gossiper does far worse. The gossiper is a coward. He or she does it behind their brother's back. Whether they use the word " fool " or " idiot, " it doesn't matter. What they are trying to do and what they succeed so often doing is making others think that their brother or sister is a fool or an idiot or a scoundrel or whatever. And that is even worse.
If you're in danger of hellfire when you tell your brother to his face you think he's a fool, how much more so when you do it behind his back? But I think the worst kind of gossip there is is when we gossip about our husband or our wife. Think again of the original meaning of the English word gossip. It comes from God SIB, meaning God parent. In other words, it's somebody close to you who knows a lot of things about you and reveals them to other people.
The Bible describes the relationship of a husband and wife as being one flesh. There is no closer human relationship we can have. We know every fault, every failing, and just about every sin that our spouse commits. And when we use that knowledge to gossip about our spouse, what we're really saying is to the person we're talking to, I want you to view my husband or my wife as an idiot, as an unreasonable person, as a monster. I mean, you name it.
You fill in the blank there what we're doing when we gossip about our spouse. And when we do that, Jesus says we are making ourselves liable to Gehenna, to the lake of fire. That is no small sin. And I think after spouses, perhaps the next most serious type of gossip, and all gossip is serious, is when we gossip about our parents. We are not honoring our parents when we gossip about them. And by the way, it is not right for parents to gossip about their children either. That too is a sin.
When we stab people in the back, we are murdering their reputation. And maybe that's why we use that expression, stabbing them in the back. But you know, we're not just wronging that brother or sister or that person out in the world that we're gossiping about. We are personally wronging Jesus Christ. In Matthew 25, he explained that when we do something good to another person, we feed a poor person, we visit somebody who's sick, we visit somebody who is in prison. He said, " You're doing it to me.
" And if you don't do those things, he's saying, " You didn't do it to me. " So what about when we gossip about our brother? Well, we are doing it to Jesus Christ. We are telling people, " You know, have you heard this and that about Jesus? Did you know such and such? " I know that sounds almost blasphemous to even use that in an illustration.
But that is the point of Matthew 25 of what Jesus said there that the things we do to our brothers and sisters, whether it's good or whether it's bad, we are doing it to Jesus Himself. So again, that is why gossip is not a minor sin. It is a horrible sin. It is a grievous sin that we need to root out of our lives and out of our churches. Gossip is included in what the New Testament calls " evil speaking. " Paul wrote this to the Ephesians. This is Ephesians 4:31 and 32.
He said, " Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. " So Paul contrasts evil speaking with being kind to one another, being tender-hearted. Gossip is neither kind, nor is it tender-hearted. And he says, " Instead, forgive one another. " See, our tendency when somebody wrongs us, or we feel they have wronged us, is to go and gossip about them.
Go and tell other people the wrong that that person did, rather than clearing it up with that person, or simply just forgiving them, recognizing we sin as well. When we gossip about someone who has wronged us, it shows that we have not forgiven them. And Jesus said, " If you do not forgive your brother his sins, neither will my heavenly Father forgive you your sins. " Again, we are talking about something very serious. James puts it this way.
He says, " If anyone among you thinks he is religious, but does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. " He didn't say it's defective. He didn't say it has a flaw in it. He says it is useless. Up to this point, we've been talking about gossip that is true, and we've seen how seriously wrong it is, even when it's absolutely true. However, gossip is rarely absolutely true. Even when it's mostly true, it nearly always has some falsehood mixed in with it.
Often the person who is doing the gossiping doesn't have firsthand information himself or herself. Often they're passing on something that they've heard. And as stories get passed on, they invariably get altered. They get changed. People misunderstand something. They remember it wrong. And so what started out maybe as being mostly true ends up with an enormous amount of falsehood connected to it. I think we've probably all played the telephone game.
It's a game where you sit around in a circle and the first person will whisper something to the person next to them. Not something malicious, just any kind of statement at all. You know, it rained today for three hours and the high temperature today was 95 degrees or, you know, whatever. And then that person whispers it to the person next to them, and that person whispers it to the next person. It goes around the circle. And then finally, the very last person states out loud what they've been told.
And it's amazing how often, just going around a circle in a room like that, that by the time it gets to the last person, it will be totally altered from where it started out. And that's just from people either mishearing what was told them or misremembering it and stating it incorrectly to the person next to them. And the other reason why gossip is almost never totally true is that there are almost always two sides to every situation, to every event.
There's normally a good side and a bad side to every brother and sister. There's two sides to every marriage argument. There's two sides to every difficulty in a marriage. There's always two sides to every controversy between human beings. If I didn't know this growing up, I certainly learned it from years of both practicing law and also serving as a pastor. I actually only practiced trial law for a couple of years before I came to New Testament convictions against taking others to court.
But just in those few years, I got a real education because I opened up my law practice with this idea of, oh, this poor innocent client was going to come to me and I was going to be like Perry Mason on TV if you ever saw those TV shows long ago or read the books that they were based on. Well, I remember the very first lawsuit that came to me, it was a rather minor one. This man and his wife came to my office and the controversy was they had purchased their tract of land from their neighbor.
It was carved out of their neighbor's larger tract of land. And in the deed to their property, it gave them the right to go over and fish in the pond on their neighbor's property. Okay, simple enough. Well, they came to me and said their neighbor had put up a fence around the pond that blocked them from fishing in it, and the neighbor wouldn't give them a key to the gate. Well, I thought, good, here's one of those black and white cases we're easily going to win.
I mean, he showed me a copy of his deed, and yes, he definitely had the right to fish there. So I filed suit on his behalf and you know was feeling all excited about good. I've got a case. I'm going to win my first case for sure. Well, then we got into what's called discovery. And that's where you start hearing the other person's side. You find out what all the evidence is on both sides.
Well, it turned out the neighbor put a fence around the pond because my client, he and his teenage children, were riding their four-wheelers onto their neighbor's property and tearing it up. And so to get even, the neighbor put the fence around the pond. So I came back to my client with that and was like, " Whoa, things aren't quite like you presented them because my client hadn't said anything about that. " Well, then the client had a reason for that. The neighbor had done this or that on his property.
And oh, by the time this thing, we never went to trial. I mean, before long, both the other attorney and I, we both realized both of our clients were in the wrong. They just needed to forgive, forget, get this thing settled and be done with it. And none of the other lawsuits were any different. There were always two sides, and there never was a black and white. And the same thing in marriage counseling, I found as a pastor. I mean, you'd hear one side.
It would just seem like, oh, it's so evil that this person was so clearly in the right and their husband or wife was just so much in the wrong. And then you'd hear the other side from the other spouse. And I mean, so often the stories were so different, you'd wonder if they were even talking about the same marriage that these people even live in the same house. I mean, it was so night and day different, the two stories. And that's the way it is in life.
And so when we hear gossip, we're hearing one side of a story and we are only hearing a half-truth. And a half-truth is still a lie. A one-sided account of an incident is still a falsehood. And when we spread half truths about someone, when we tell only one side of the story about an incident, and maybe that's the only side we've heard, we are slandering our brother or our sister.
Psalm 101:5 says, " Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, secretly meaning you're doing it by gossip behind their back, " it says, " Him I will destroy. " Well, given the fact that gossip is such a serious sin, why do so many Christians do it? After all, most Christians don't go around and steal, or murder, or assault other people. Why is it that so many of us gossip? Well, there are several reasons. And part of that is because there are several types of gossip.
When it comes to the type of gossip that is just idle talk, passing on personal or juicy stories about other people, embarrassing stories, that kind of thing. I think that people do it mainly because it makes for entertaining conversation. They want to have something interesting to talk about. They want to be known as a fun person, an interesting person to be around. And let's face it, we don't always have interesting conversation. And so gossip almost always makes for interesting conversation with other people.
Of course, that's a terrible indictment of both the gossiper and the ones who listen to gossip, but that is our fallen nature, unfortunately. And I often ask myself the question, why do we find it so interesting to talk about the sins, the imperfections, the problems, and the private affairs of other people. I think it definitely reveals something very dark inside of us, as I said earlier. Jesus put it this way. He said, " Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. " So Jesus says the problem is in our hearts. It's what's inside of us. If we like to gossip, if we like to say evil things about people, idle things, disparaging things, it's because there is evil in our heart. And that was the context of Jesus ' next words, which I read to you earlier, where He said, " I say to you that for every idle word, men may speak.
" And he said idle word, he didn't say evil, but every idle word, they will give an account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, that means declared righteous, and by your words you will be condemned. So it shows there's something evil in our heart that we're willing to hurt the reputation of others, to embarrass them, just so we can be interesting and entertaining. And we're going to pay a very steep price on Judgment Day for this kind of entertainment.
And again, I'm just talking about the gossip that's mainly idle talk, juicy stories, that kind of thing. But there's another kind of gossip that's even more serious. We spoke about that kind of gossip a few minutes ago, the kind that Paul calls evil speaking. And Paul hinted as to why we engage in evil speaking when he told us to forgive one another rather than to be speaking evil about them. So that's another one of the reasons of why people gossip, especially the more malicious gossip.
It's a way of getting even with someone. We feel that someone has wronged us, so we get even with them by gossiping about them. We broadcast to all of our friends what a rotten thing that so-and-so did to us. I earlier talked about gossiping about our spouses. And it's one of the reasons people gossip about their spouses is to get even.
Their spouse has hurt them in some way, or they're mad at their spouse about something, so they go out and they gossip to their little special circle of friends as a way of getting even. A third reason why people gossip is that they want to enhance themselves by painting others in a bad light. Sometimes this is just other Christians in general. They talk about other people and they think it enhances them in the sense of, see, I would never do that kind of thing. Wow, can you imagine so-and-so does this or that?
Isn't it good that I'm such a reasonable person? I don't do that kind of thing. I mean, they don't ever say it in those words, but it's in that kind of sense of elevating themselves by putting others down. And back to people who gossip about their husbands or about their wives. Again, so often it's to enhance their own standing in addition to getting even with them. It's like, wow, look at what a saint I am to live with that man or to live with that woman. Look at what I have to put up with every day.
And so all my friends are going to think, wow, what a wonderful person I am. What a martyr I am living with this person. The last reason I want to mention as to why people gossip is it's sometimes out of envy. When we're jealous of another person, we sometimes try to lower their standing or their reputation by gossiping about them. In fact, at the most malicious level, we try to destroy them by gossiping about them.
Now, on all of these, normally no one will ever admit it to themselves that this is why they're doing what they're doing. They're simply just, you know, telling the truth. They're simply whatever, unloading on someone. They've got this burden that they've got to share. They're just making conversation, et cetera. But there's always a reason as to why we do that. But whatever the reason is why we gossip. And it may be all four of these reasons depending on the various persons we are gossiping about.
No matter which four it is, we are talking about some really dark, evil things here. We are not talking about some light, innocent shortcomings. Gossip is almost always rooted in deep evil. It's rooted in hatred of our brother, in unforgiveness, in envy, and in such a lack of love that just so we can be entertaining, we're willing to destroy their reputation or to cause them hurt and in embarrassment.
Now, my reason for going into detail about the seriousness of gossip and about the reasons why we gossip has been twofold. First, I've wanted to convince you of the crucial need we all have to break free from the habit of gossiping. Second, in order to break free, a person has to understand the reasons why he gossips in the first place. Because happily, gossip can be cured. That's the exciting news. So let's talk about the cure. Well, the cure begins with prayerful, honest examination of our hearts.
If you have a problem with gossip, you should ask yourself, why do I gossip? More than likely, you're going to find it's because of one or more of the four reasons that we've just been talking about. Number one, you may gossip because you want to have something entertaining to talk about and put entertaining in quotes there. So perhaps others won't view you as boring, etc. Or maybe you gossip because you're getting even with someone because you haven't forgiven them.
Or maybe you want to elevate yourself by putting others down and you think that that makes you look better. Or you want to elevate yourself by letting people know how much you suffer because of the person you're married to or that you work with or something like that. Or finally, maybe you gossip about certain people because you're jealous of them and you want to hurt or bring down their reputation a bit. Now of course you might have another reason that I haven't listed here and that's fine.
But I'm sure whatever, and if you're not sure of the reason why you gossip, then pray that God will help you to determine the real cause for your gossiping so that you can cure it. Also seek the counsel of your spouse, or of your church leaders, or of godly Christians who are mature in the Lord, who might be able to give you insights into your life.
And then once you've figured out or think you've figured out the reason why you're gossiping, then pray for God's Holy Spirit to cleanse whatever defect there is in your heart that causes you to want to gossip about other people. Now when I say to pray for cleansing, don't imagine that God is going to do all the work for you. That if you pray about it, boom, he's just going to take away any desire to gossip from you. Now he's fully capable of doing that, but that's not normally the way that He works.
Rather, He wants each of us to carry our cross. Jesus told us that that would be part of being His disciple. And one of the crosses we all must carry is crucifying our flesh. And gossip is very much a desire of the flesh. Now on the other hand, the good news is that God hasn't left us alone to fend for ourselves. When we exhibit the willingness to change and when we make whatever sacrifices we are able to make to bring about the needed changes, God will supply the extra power that we lack in ourselves.
So with that in mind, let's look at some of the specific cures tailored to the four major causes of gossiping that we just discussed. The first one I had talked about was people who gossip in order to be an entertaining, put that in quotes, conversationalist. So what's the cure? Well, to begin with, you've got to make a resolution that you will not talk about other people unless you're saying something positive or upbuilding about them.
Or if you're talking about their needs concerning things to which they would have no objection. For example, they may have medical needs, and you're talking about that to other people. But you might think, well, boy, I'm going to run out of things to talk about pretty soon. Well, start collecting good news about other people. We seem to have a habit of collecting bad news. We don't have to go to any effort to do that. So put forth a little effort and start collecting good news.
I guarantee you there are more items of good news that go through the church than there are bad news. Follow the example of the Apostle Paul. He was someone who made it a habit of collecting good news, and then he liked to boast about other Christians. And this is one kind of boasting that God has no objection to. Not long ago I was noticing how Paul did this in his second letter to the Corinthians. Go to 2 Corinthians 7, and I'm going to just read some of these passages.
Verse 4, he says, " Great is my boasting on your behalf. " And then again in verse 14 of chapter 7, he says, " For if in anything I have boasted to Titus about you, I am not ashamed. But as we spoke all things to you in truth, even so our boasting to Titus was found true. And again, chapter 8:24, he says, " Show to them and before the churches the proof of your love and of our boasting on your behalf.
" Again, chapter 9 verse 2, he says, " For I know your willingness, about which I boast of you to the Macedonians, your obedience has become known to all. Therefore, I am glad on your behalf. " Now get this, he's talking about the Corinthians. He's not talking about boasting about the model congregation of the New Testament period. No, these are the Corinthians who had so many problems. But they made progress. They repented. And so he boasted about them.
So if Paul could boast about the Corinthians, surely we should have no trouble boasting about plenty of other Christians ourselves. Let me encourage you to keep abreast of the ministry of CAM or of other Christian organizations that are doing similar work. Or the ministries of various individuals and churches. That way, like Paul, you'll have things to boast about concerning other Christians. Paul could boast about the Corinthians because he kept abreast of what they were doing.
You can also talk about exciting answers to prayers in your life or in the lives of other people you know. And I'm not trying to imply that it's wrong to talk about non-spiritual subjects. Certainly we can talk about anything. So long as it's upbuilding. If you want to talk about humorous or awkward incidents, then talk about things that have happened to you. It's not wrong to laugh in life as long as you're not laughing at the expense of somebody else.
But it may be that in the end, you're going to have to simply accept the fact you won't be as entertaining a conversationalist as you once were. After all, what's more important, pleasing Christ or pleasing others by having something entertaining to talk about? Now, as we've discussed, gossip is ultimately a heart problem, and that should be our primary focus in finding a cure for it. However, there might be physical steps we can take as well.
You know, there was a gossip problem in the New Testament church involving young widows who simply had too much idle time. Speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul gave this directive concerning the situation. He wrote in 1 Timothy 5, he said, " They learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not.
Therefore, I desire that the young widows marry, bear children, manage the house, and give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully. " So eliminating idle time can help the problem of gossip in many situations. If you see that you have too much idle time and that's leading to gossip, let me strongly encourage you to use your extra time for the kingdom.
Take on a kingdom ministry, cooking meals for people who are sick or for new mothers, visiting people in your local jail or prison, visiting the sick and elderly. Just when you visit them, don't gossip with them. It's been my experience that there are so many needs in every church. There will always be plenty of Matthew 25 types of ministries you can fill your life with. Now obviously, if you're a married sister, you want to be sure that this would have your husband's blessing.
You don't want to get involved in a ministry at the expense of managing your household properly. But you know there is one thing that has changed in a major way since the days of Paul. In the first century, you could pretty well end the vast bulk of gossiping by staying at home. However, the invention of the telephone has changed all of that. Today, a mother can stay home all day. She can keep an eye on her children. She can do housework, and she can still gossip to her heart's content.
This is particularly true with Bluetooth headsets, which allow a person to move about and to do routine tasks while still talking on the phone. So again, the ultimate place to attack the problem of gossip is focusing on our heart. Now I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons why some people gossip is because they're getting even with somebody, or somebody has hurt them, and they want to tell others how they've been wronged.
Well, if that's your situation, then the answer is actually to learn to forgive and not repay evil for evil. This is what the Christian life is all about. If a major reason why you gossip is because you feel this need to elevate yourself at the expense of tearing down others, then learn to humble yourself before God and to seek meekness instead of seeking to elevate yourself. The kingdom of God is a place for the humble, for the meek. Jesus said that it's the meek who will inherit the earth.
So if you feel like you occupy a fairly lowly position, we'll be happy with that. That's exactly where Christ wants you to be. Now, in addressing the problem of gossiping about our spouses, if this is something that you do, that you regularly talk about your husband or your wife, or it doesn't even have to be regularly, if you gossip at all about them, I would like to ask you, what is it that you're after? Is it help? I mean, if you want help, then gossiping isn't going to get you the help.
And I think you know that. To get help, you're going to need to talk to your pastor, and then he needs to hear both sides of the situation if he's going to make any progress in bringing any help to it. Gossiping is not going to bring you any help. But is it possible that you don't want both sides of the story to come out? You want people to only hear your side of it. You see, in the end, it may be that it isn't help that you're after, rather it's sympathy and/or revenge. You're getting even with your spouse.
Or you want sympathy from someone who is likely to simply take your side of the story without asking any hard questions. They'll just side with you on whatever you tell them. And if that's the case, do you honestly think that you're loving your spouse with Christlike love? I think you know inside that you're not. As I mentioned earlier, some people gossip about certain brothers or sisters because they're jealous of them.
They're jealous because maybe that person has spiritual abilities, abilities in ministry, or something like that that they wish they had. Or that person may be more popular. They have more friends or they're better liked, et cetera, or maybe they have some other quality that this particular person wishes that they had. And so they try to tarnish that person a bit by gossiping about them. I think we instinctively all know that that's very, very wrong to do. But what's the solution?
Jealousy can be a hard thing to fight. And in fact, it deserves a message just on that subject alone. So I'm not going to go into it in great detail. But William Law offered a suggestion as a cure for jealousy and envy that I have personally tried, and I can tell you firsthand, it is very effective. It's also pretty strong medicine. It's like heaping coals on your own head. And this is his suggested remedy. Start praying for that person of whom you are jealous.
Now I know that's very hard, particularly because you and I know God reads our heart. So he knows whether we mean it or not. And I think to be honest, like I say, I've gone through this. The first few nights, it probably wasn't honest. I was doing it. I wanted it to be honest, but it really wasn't in my heart. It was in my mind. Father, I want you to bless this person, but he knew in my heart I hardly wanted that to happen.
But just by persisting and doing it night after night and throughout the day, after a while, I did mean it. I meant it in my heart, and God knew that I meant that. But now here's the other part that really makes this hard. And that is pray for that person of whom you're jealous and pray that God will bless them in that particular area about which you're jealous. If they've advanced faster than you have in the ministry and you're jealous of that, then pray that God will use them even more.
If that person is more popular than you, then pray that they will have even more friends and will be even more liked. Yes, that is very, very hard to do. But if you will do that, after a while, you will find it's pretty hard to be jealous of that person. After all, you're praying for them, and God knows you're praying for them, and God is answering your prayers. So let me recommend that. Certainly, that is the solution, not gossiping about that person, but praying for their blessing.
And then you can rejoice in their success. It doesn't stay hard medicine. After a while, yeah, you find you love this brother or sister the way you should be loving them, and you're happy for their success. And so you come out the winner as well as they themselves. All right, now up to this point, I've been talking about the gossiper, that is the one doing the talking. But the one who listens to gossip bears just about as much guilt as the one who gossips.
In fact, in God's eyes, we may bear just as much guilt if we listen to gossip. So what can we as listeners do? Well, if we're in a conversation and the subject turns to talking negatively about another person, then we should quickly change the subject. And if it gets back to the negative subject, then we should change it again. But if that doesn't work, then the Christian thing to do is to simply say, " You know, I think we've unwittingly crossed the line into gossip.
" And I can guarantee you, that will definitely bring it to a stop. And if it truly was unwittingly, then the other person isn't going to mind that you did that. But if they were wanting to gossip, I can almost guarantee you what's going to happen the next time. The next time they want to gossip with someone, it won't be with you. They'll find someone who doesn't mind listening to gossip. And that's why I say the listener is almost equally as guilty as the one doing the talking.
Because if everyone in our churches just simply refused to listen to gossip, well, it would eliminate that sin from our churches. It only exists among Christians because far too many of us are willing to listen to gossip. If we all changed the subject or brought it to a stop, well, people wouldn't gossip, at least not to other Christians. The final thing I want to say tonight before closing is that if you have heard gossip, you may have a duty to try to straighten things out, at least as far as yourself concerns.
In fact, if it has affected your viewpoint of another person, the one who's been gossiped about, you almost certainly have a responsibility to hear that person's side of things if there's a way that you can do that. Now, if it's someone far away or someone you hardly know, yeah, you may not be able to do that. In that case, I would say you should simply hold judgment about that person until you have more neutral information about them. But often you can find out what the other person's side of the story is.
I can't tell you how many times I've been at a conference and someone has walked up to me. I'm talking about a total stranger and they'll say, " Brother David, " or something like that, " Could I talk to you a moment? " And I'll say, " Sure. " And they'll say, " You know, I've heard that you teach such and such, " or " I've heard that you say blah, blah, blah. " Or I've heard that you and something I supposedly did. And, you know, they'll explain what it is.
And they'll give me an opportunity then to straighten it out if what they have heard is incorrect. And I can't tell you how much I really, really appreciate it when somebody does that. Instead of just believing a rumor they've heard or just believing gossip about me, that they've given me an opportunity to set the story straight if what they heard is incorrect. And it seems like 99% of the time, what they have heard is incorrect. And no doubt it's the same way with gossip about other people as well.
So don't form an opinion until you have heard the other side. And if you can get an opportunity, do find out what the other side is. And then if possible, straighten it out with the people who gossip to you about it, who passed the original story onto you. Tell them, " You know, I talked to that person, and this is what he said about it. " And you can get it straight. I want to conclude tonight by just reading to you the familiar directive that Paul gave to all of us in his letter to the Philippians.
And I'm going to make one little change in the way that he phrased it. He talks about meditate on the things that he listed, and I'm going to change it to talk about these things. I don't think Paul will mind mind making that change. So with that in mind, let's listen to what he says.
He says, " Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, then I'm going to make the change here. Talk about these things. "