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Empowering multimedia ministry for bold Christian living: Weekend Messages, Deep End Podcast, Deep Dive Bible Study. Tim Hatch, Lead Pastor, Waters Church, 26 years of pastoral ministry, book author.
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0:00 You are listening to Waters Church podcast. Waters Church is a multisite, multigeneration community of faith on the East Coast of America. Now for a message from our pastor.0:13 Oh, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good to be with you. I want you to take out your nose. They look like this. We do have, I think it was already mentioned, harvest hands. 600:25 dollars to help a family during this holiday season. 9 30 service. Boy, you look wonderful today. You feel pretty good about that, don't you? And0:37 I love you, and I thank God for you being here. And if any more of you can filter to the 8 AM service or the 11 30 service, not that I don't want you0:49 here. I just we are filled. We are packed. We got parking problems again. Now we had parking problems before COVID, in the North Attleboro location, but COVID1:01 took care of those parking problems for about 4 years. So we raised a bunch of money for a parking lot, then we used that money to start other locations. That's what happened. And because we didn't need parking, so it1:11 would have been a abomination of duty to do that. So we might need to do that again, but I don't think so. If we can just scoot some of you over to the 8, wake up a little bit early, and this is a lively service, so they1:23 need some of your life. It's hard to say amen at 8 AM. Or the 11 30 service, those are the people who are barely saved, they can't get up early enough for the Lord.1:36 So they need some of your life as well. Okay? I'm just messing with everybody. But that really, the reality is to alleviate some of our parking problems, go to the other, services. Not all of you, but some of you. And
1:47 let me say 1 thing about the election. The election is over. How many are you glad about that? Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. It's over. No matter who you voted for, I wanna remind you all locations, if you were at Monday
1:59 for America, I finished that night asking you for 1 thing, stay hungry for Jesus. Stay hungry for the Lord. Don't let your trust be
2:11 in political power or political people. Your trust is in the Lord our God. David himself, who was king, said, put
2:22 no trust in princes. Put it in the Lord. He is our savior. He is our hope. He is our life. In the Old Testament, there's 4 books. 4. First
2:34 Kings, second Kings, first Chronicles, second Chronicles, and even you can part put parts of the first Samuel in that. So 6 books. 6 books that deal with leadership of nations. And some of the leaders were
2:46 wonderful, and some of the leaders were horrible, and some of the leaders started bad and ended good, and some of them started good and ended bad. You never know what the leader's gonna be. America's
2:57 decided. God has elevated and cast down. That's how it goes. We are going to preach the gospel of Jesus no matter who's in charge. Because through those through those books of
3:09 the old testament, what we see, God preserves for himself a people. Even when wicked king Ahab was on the throne, God had 7000 people reserved. So it's not about who's president, it's about the church. Jesus said, I will
3:21 build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. Amen. Stay hungry for the Lord. Let's get to James part 9. We're and and we're doing 2 verses. I
3:33 don't know if you saw that. We're doing 2 verses, and I wanna talk to you on the topic of words must not be weapons. Your notes look like this if you're in house. Take them out. Fill in blanks as well. If you're online,
3:44 you can go to waters church dot guide, and you can follow along that way digitally, and that's for you available online. And and and I wanna talk to you on this topic of words must not be
3:56 weapons because we're living again in a very contentious age, an age of social media, an age of cancel culture, an age of, slanderous
4:07 accusations, flying through the airwaves, flying through the Internet. And maybe here today, you might be in a contentious situation with somebody that you need
4:18 harmony restored to. And then that's tough when you're in a difficult relationship. But I said a couple of weeks ago, and we're just going if you're not if you're here for the first time, we're just going verse by verse
4:30 through the book of James. And I had in my mind to cover James 4 verse 11 all the way to James 5 verse 11. But I
4:41 got 2 verses into the study this week, and the Lord wouldn't let me go past verse 12. Because I I think God's got something for you today on the topic of your words.
4:53 He's already addressed this in chapter 3. Remember, we talked about this a few weeks ago in chapter 3 when he says, don't be don't many of you desire to be teachers because your tongue is gonna get you into trouble.
5:05 And he goes on this long diatribe about the danger of the tongue. What he's talking about is our words. And he says in chapter 3 verse 6, he says, the tongue is a fire. It's a world of evil amongst some members of our
5:17 body. It stains the whole body. It sets on fire the course of your life and it is set on fire by hell itself. Those are not kind words about our tongue but they are true. Now here in chapter 4, James
5:29 revisits the topic of the tongue because it can get us into trouble more than once. It can cause us devastation in our relations. It can help or hurt. It can uplift. It can tear down.
5:41 Some of you need to realize today, your words are like elevators. You're either bringing people up or you're bringing people down. And where James talks about the tongue affecting your life
5:53 in chapter 3, here in chapter 4, he's addressing how your words can hurt or help somebody else's life. Write this down at the top of your notes. Words can become weapons and
6:04 lead to war. Words can become weapons and lead to war. Now, our text today, James chapter 4 verse 11 and 12, is in the context of humility. Just
6:16 before chapter verse 11, James says, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. And then right after that, he starts talking about how we talk to each other. So
6:28 here's the thought that I had that I think James is trying to convince us, call us to attention to, and and that is this, humility starts in the mouth.
6:40 Humility starts with our words. So he says a line. Do not speak evil against 1 another. Underline or circle the words speak evil. I wanna give you a definition
6:52 about this. The word speak evil means to slander someone. To slander someone. The NI the New Living Translation has do not speak lies about
7:03 each other brothers. At the end of the day, church, we are here for each other. We are the body of Christ. The scripture says that I cannot
7:14 say to a member of the body, I don't need you. On the contrary, I need every single 1 of you to be part, your part, of the body of Christ. Turn to your neighbor at all
7:26 locations and say, I need you. Let us not be in the business of tearing each other down. Let's get back to the business of
7:37 building each other up. Slander is a serious sin. And what it is is backbiting, gossiping, tearing people down. Here's what it really is,
7:49 sharing unverified information about somebody in a negative way. Verify the information before you share it. Here's another way we slander. When we have a problem with person
8:01 a, but we go to person c to talk about it. Here we are person b. Why are we going to person c when we should be talking to person a? Too much of this is happening in our culture. Too much of hap too much of this is
8:13 happening in our political context. The church is not the world. We are the church. We are the people of Jesus Christ. They will know we are Christians, Jesus says, by our love 1 for another.
8:26 How do we love? When we lift each other up. There's somebody here today. They need lifting up. There's somebody here today. They need a good word. They need an encouraging word. There's somebody here today. You might not
8:36 like how they look. You might not like how they're dressed, but God sent his son to die for that person and loves them with an everlasting love. Let's be people who bring up people up and not tear people down.
8:50 When when when we're when we're called to be different than the world, I think it has a lot to do with our words. So are you making war? Some of you, your life is filled with conflict because you don't got a hold of this
9:01 tongue. The scripture says in Proverbs that the words of a gossip are like choice morsels. Oh, they're just so they're like a McDonald's hamburger in
9:12 America. You know, RFK is coming for that McDonald's hamburger. Come on somebody. And it's overdue. It's time to change, like, what we are putting into our bodies. But gossip
9:24 is like a contaminated McDonald's American burger. It's filled with all kinds of evil ingredients that get down into the spirit and poison our souls. This is what James has
9:36 taken on here with these 2 verses. This is why I believe the Lord stopped me from going to verse 13. Because some of you need to get this under control. You're causing way too much damage to the people around you and
9:46 your own life because you can't control how you talk. Causes war. There's a passage in the old bio in the Old Testament that actually illustrates this pretty profoundly. It's it's in second
9:58 Samuel chapter 10. David is at the pinnacle of his kingdom. He is on the throne of Israel, and and he decides to share condolences with a rival king, the king of the
10:09 Ammonites, because his father died. And it says in chapter 10 of second Samuel verse 1, look at it. After this, the king of the Ammonites died, and Hanon his son reigned in his place. And David said, I will deal
10:21 loyally with Hanon son of Nahash because his father dealt loyally with me. So David sent by his servants to console him concerning his father. And David's servants came into the land of the
10:33 Ammonites. So this is a noble gesture. He's sharing kind hearted words. It's hard to lose a father. This is a rival king, but he's not an enemy king at this point. David wants to share condolences with him. But the
10:45 scripture says that slander comes into the picture. Look at verse 3. But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanan their lord, do you think that David has sent comforters to you? He is
10:56 not. He is not honoring your father. Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city to spy it out and to overthrow it? Now friends, that is an example of slander. False
11:08 information, unverified information shared through the mouth. Well, Hanan listens to his princes, and they actually decide to turn on David's servants. And verse 4 says, Hanan took David's
11:20 servants, shaved off half their beard, and each of them cut their garments off at the middle at their hips so that their the old King James says, so that their buttocks were exposed. And he sent these men away. They
11:32 humiliated them. They cut off half their beard, cut off half their pants, and sent them away. And this enrages David. And David decides to make war, and Hanan knows he's blown it. So he hires up the
11:44 the Syrian nation. Now now you got another nation involved in this potential hot pot of conflict, and he calls the Syrians in to muster their armies against David's armies. And the problem is David's never lost
11:55 a battle. David's never lost a fight he ever took part in. David is thoroughly unlike Mike Tyson. He knows how to knock people out. So there's a war
12:07 that breaks out. Why did the war break out? Because of false accusations against David. The war breaks out. Skip down down to verse 18 of second Samuel 10, and the and the Syrians fled before
12:19 Israel. David killed the Syrians, the men of 700 chariots, 40000 horsemen, wounded. Show back the commander of their army so that he died there. 40000 plus men lost their lives
12:31 because of slander. You know words can kill. You some of you are killing your marriage with your words about your spouse. Some
12:43 of you are killing your kids' future because of your words about them. Some of you, that's your life. Your parents, nothing ever came out of their mouth toward you that was positive. That's where you are. How many kids
12:53 are on drugs? How many kids are hooked on alcohol because they can't get positive words from their parents? I'm thinking about today as a serious message because we've got serious things to do
13:05 in the church to help build the church. And and I I don't know if you know this, but Jesus is building his church. He's not tearing it down. If you're gonna partner with Jesus, build the church up. Don't tear it
13:16 down. Don't listen to things about people third party. Don't entertain the gossipy morsels that are all around you. Don't let somebody tell you something's wrong with somebody when you don't know it for yourself.
13:29 So much of this happens without even thinking about it. Let not our life groups become gossip centers. Come on somebody. Your job is to talk about your life. Your job there is to talk about what you need to do to serve
13:41 the Lord and honor the Lord and love 1 another and build each other up and encourage each other, not be the devil's voice. I thought about this passage and I stopped at verse 12 because I didn't realize this and I
13:52 learned it this week. The number 1 sin the Old Testament takes on, the number 1 most often mentioned sin in the entire Old Testament is
14:03 slander. More than adultery, more than murder, more than stealing. God takes this pretty seriously. I think of Numbers chapter 12 where Aaron
14:15 Aaron and Miriam, the bible says they spoke against Moses because he took a Kushite wife. Moses' wife died, So he took up another wife. The Kushites were were
14:27 black people. Good chance that Moses being an a Jew was a brown person, ancient Jew, brown person. They were racist. They were they had a heart against the the
14:38 Kushites, and they spoke. And the bible says, God struck Miriam, Moses' sister, with leprosy because of her words. The bible says that the people of Israel spoke against the
14:50 Lord numerous times. They complained. They murmured. They challenged the Lord's goodness. And because of their murmuring, eventually, they lost out on the promised land. The bible talks about
15:02 Job's 3 friends. They they come and sit around and they mourn with Job after his trouble, but then they start speaking against Job and against God and against the law. And they get corrected at the end of the book of
15:13 Job. The Bible talks about how people will speak. Non believers will slander unbelievably. They will speak against us because we follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I think about the fact that the
15:25 only reason the Romans crucified the Lord Jesus was because of false accusations against him when they put him on trial. You understand that they couldn't find a reason to crucify Jesus in the
15:37 truth. They had to slander him in order to get him crucified. And then, probably, the archetype of slander in the Bible is Satan himself. The Bible calls him Satan, the accuser
15:49 of the brothers. He accuses you. He slanders you. He says evil things about you day in, day out. We call him Satan. We also call him the devil. The word devil
16:01 comes from diabolos in the Latin. The word diabolos in Latin means to slander somebody, speaking lies over somebody. Let me just put it as come come as strongly as I can. To slander other people, to call
16:13 out evil on based on lies is to do the work of the devil. I'm not here to do the work of the devil. You're not here to do the work of the devil. Watch what you say about other people. Learn how
16:25 to be a builder. Learn how to be an encourager. Learn how to be somebody who celebrates the gifts and callings of other people. God's got good things in store for you, but he's got good things in store for other people.
16:36 And this world is not all about you, so learn to lift up others. 4 points, what and then we're done. Number 1, write this down. Slander separates us from the people we need. We need
16:48 each other. We need brothers and sisters in in Christ. I need your faith. I don't know about the if you know this, but I I need you to show up on Sunday
17:00 morning. I don't know if you know that. It'd be awfully stupid to be here alone. Somebody say amen. Amen. But you need brothers and sisters in Christ in your life. And this is what James says in verse
17:12 4. Do not speak evil against 1 another and circle the words brothers because it shows up 3 times times in this 1 verse. You think that James is making a point there?
17:21 Or you
17:21 could write in in the notes, sisters, if you're a biblical feminist. That's fine too. Sisters or brothers. That's
17:29 what
17:29 it means. You need sisters. You need brothers. We're sisters and brothers. We're children of God today. Now how many know that sisters and brothers can fight? Raise your hand if you ever had
17:41 a sister or brother kick you or pull your hair out or do something. But then 6 hours later, dinner comes around, and a good mom and a good dad says, make up and get yourself to the kitchen. Take
17:53 to the dinner table. Come on, somebody. A good dad says, alright. That's enough. We're all eating together. What are we doing right now? We're all eating the word of God. The bread from heaven is the word of God. We're
18:03 all coming together to hear and receive the word of God. We might have scuffles. We might have little tiffs. We might have little fights, but we kiss and make up. We grow up, and we get stronger as a result. And then we
18:14 come to the dinner table, and we remember at the end of the day, we are family. We are family. I say that because so many people say, oh, that church, I got hurt at that church. Well, welcome to the world,
18:25 friend. Welcome to real life. I would have given up this job in my first month if I let what other people said about me cause me to leave. You gotta
18:37 press on. You gotta learn how to grow up and grow through the challenges of relationships with other people. I was just shocked to learn, again, the Old Testament spoke against slander more than any other
18:49 sin. Do you know that in the old colonial times in New England, they had a a serious punishment for slanderers, for gossips, and it's something I wanna show you. It's called the gossip bridal. They would put this on
18:59 people's face. This iron mask that they would put on their face. If you were a gossip in old New England, in old colonial New England and by the way, they also called it the
19:11 scolds bible. It was also used for a wife who nagged her husband too much. Make America great again. Come on, somebody. No. No. No. Choking.
19:23 Choking. Choking. I know I just earned myself a 1 star review on Google for that 1.
19:36 That let me give you another picture of this thing because I wanna show you that little tongue would stick in your mouth, and sometimes they'd put a little a little a point on the bottom of it so it would press down on
19:45 your tongue. I mean, I don't know. Maybe we should think about bringing it back because there's we don't know how to talk to each other today. We don't know how to tweet and text each other today. We don't know
19:57 how to post. Some of you won't be familiar with this up in up in New England, but the Florida location in South Carolina, they'll know about this. It's it's it's called your HOA
20:09 Facebook group. I'm telling you, it gets nasty on that page. Everybody's just labeling everybody. Everybody's just attacking everybody. The Karens and the Ken's come out
20:21 strong. I mean, it's just 1 thing after another, just nailing each other to the wall. And then there's serious things that happen. People get catfished online and
20:33 and and bullies. And some of you, you've got kids that come home crying because of a post of their friend on Instagram that's completely based on lies. And in fact, there's a
20:44 suicide epidemic amongst our young, and a lot of times it's because of those not those lies on social media about children. This is another reason why you've got to protect your kids from social
20:56 media. The tongue is a fire. The Old Testament had another, actual It was so serious to God, and I just I I I bring this up because we've gotta get this
21:08 right. But it was so serious to God. Deuteronomy 19 tells us that the in the law, the punishment for slander look what it says. If a malicious witness this is verse 16 of Deuteronomy 19. If a malicious witness
21:20 arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office on those days. The judges shall inquire diligently. And if the
21:30 witness is a false witness and has accused his father falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. In other words, you're gonna let him be the bearer of whatever
21:42 he's claiming his brother did. Ouch. God takes this seriously. We need to build each other up because at the end of the
21:54 day, we're all each other's got. And that's why James says, you gotta watch how you speak to 1 another. If you hear something about someone at Waters Church, don't entertain
22:06 it. Let Waters Church be known as a place of encouragement. Let our church be known as a place where we don't vilify based on faulty or hearsay
22:17 information. Let's be a people of truth. The scripture says love rejoices in the truth. It does not delight in the lies of the devil. Now there
22:29 are some things that are serious and we need to address those things and we'll get to that in just a moment. But there's something else that James says here in verse 11. He says, whoever speaks against his brother or
22:37 judges his brother. Circle the word judges. The word judge here means to condemn someone. Write that down. To judge. The word in Greek means to condemn. Condemn means that you cast them off.
22:50 Condemn means that you just waylay them with your words. Now there is a nomenclature in America 20 24. It's been here for a quite a long time now. America's favorite
23:01 bible verse, it used to be John 3 16. Now it's Matthew 7 verse 1. Do not judge. And this, unfortunately, has been misinterpreted and misrepresented as to condemn
23:13 anyone who calls out wrongful behavior. So if somebody does something wrong and it's everybody can see it's wrong, and then to justify themselves, they say, don't judge me. Didn't Jesus say, don't judge? Isn't that the
23:25 heart of the gospel? Don't judge. No. No. No. That's actually completely a wrong interpretation of what judgment is. There are 2 kinds of judgment. 1 that the bible condones, 1 that
23:37 the bible condemns. Condemning judgment is when you cast people off, consider them worthless, or say that they're just not Christians
23:49 even when they might very well be Christians because their faith is in Christ. And on false information, you condemn. But there's another kind of judgment that I would call discerning, where we
24:00 absolutely have to make a discernment about certain situations. We absolutely have to call sin sin. We have to share truth in love where it needs
24:12 to be shared. So 2 things I I thought we could write down about this is we don't judge for condemnation, but we must judge for evaluation.
24:24 We don't judge to condemn and destroy people. That's what Jesus means because he says with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you in that text in Matthew 7. In other words, you don't throw people away
24:35 simply simply because they've messed up somewhere or or or they've misspoken somewhere. But you do judge the actions. You do judge the sentiment and make
24:47 decisions about that. First Corinthians actually tells us Paul says, we don't judge those outside the church. Do you know who we do judge? The church.
24:59 Our job as church people is to judge and evaluate each other. At the end of the day, we are our brother and sister's keeper. So we have to make some moral judgments. We have to make some
25:10 righteous judgments about what's good behave. We can't let somebody go sleep around with a bunch of women who aren't his wife and then say, well, the Bible says don't judge. We ought to judge. And by the way, when you
25:21 tell me not to judge, you're making more judgment about me judging. You understand? It gets to be an Abbott and Costello routine. But nonetheless, the point the point of the matter is we judge for
25:33 evaluation, but not condemnation. Let me show you a picture of judging for condemnation. Luke 18 verse 11. 2 men go to the temple to pray. One's a Pharisee, a religious person. One's a tax collector. Here's what the
25:43 Pharisee says. God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. I'm not like extortioners or adulterers or even like this tax collector. That's condemnation. Jesus says, by the way, when
25:55 the tax collector prays, he says he beats his chest, and he says, god, have mercy on me, a sinner. And the tax collector, not the religious pharisee, went home justified that day. That's condemnation. Cast somebody up.
26:06 Oh, by the way, who wrote the first gospel in our New Testament? Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. You know what happens when you condemn when you cast somebody out?
26:18 You might be casting somebody off who you need to witness to you about the goodness of God in the Lord. That's what Matthew became, a tax collector turned into a gospel teller.
26:31 Be careful of writing people off. Be careful of cutting people off. Some of you, that's your technique. This is why you're lonely, because you cut everybody off who offends you. You cut everybody off who says something,
26:42 and you don't verify the information. Sometimes you just go on hearsay. So you say, well, I'm never talking to that person again. But have you actually talked to them and seen if it's actually true? We've gotta watch out
26:53 because the enemy loves division. The enemy loves division. He loves wives hating on husbands, and husbands hating on he loves children against their parents and parents against
27:05 their he loves a church divided over politics. That's why at this pulpit, we're not gonna say those things. We're gonna talk about Jesus and lift him up because no matter who you vote for, Jesus loves you. Jesus has a
27:17 life and a purpose and a plan for you. And and while we can make a judgment about what we think is right for our country, at the same time, some of us might be mistaken. Some of us might be right. We don't know. At the
27:28 end of the day, the Lord will make right. The Lord will do right. But we come together around the gospel because we need each other. Turn to your neighbor 1 more time and say, I need you. We need
27:40 each other. Number 2, slander sets our hearts in opposition to God. Slander sets our hearts in opposition to God. Here here here's how
27:52 James, writes about this. This is a powerful text. He says, if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. And what he's saying here is when you condemn someone else, you
28:04 are picking and choosing what you choose to believe and obey about God's law. So when it comes to the law, James has already talked about what the law is. In James 2 verse 8, he says, here's the real law,
28:15 the royal law. You shall love your neighbor as who? As yourself. That you love other people. When you judge and condemn, when you criticize without finding out the truth,
28:28 you're not loving your brother or sister in Christ. This is where the church is called to be different than the world around us. You hear something about your pastor. Don't just share that. You hear
28:40 something about an elder. Don't just go around and talk about it. The scripture says, by 2 or 3 witnesses shall all things be established. How many times we see that men who have been jailed or their life has been
28:52 dragged through the mud because of an accusation? Football players on national prominent football teams dragged through the mud because of a rape accusation, or or somebody dragged
29:03 through the mud because of a a false statement, and we don't do the work to verify. Or entire corporations dragged through the mud because of somebody's speech. Whoopi
29:15 has had a bad week. You hear about this. She she made a comment about a bakery that didn't serve her, and she assumed. That's what judgment does. That's what condemnation does. We assume they didn't serve her
29:27 because of her political views. Big news conference, mayor, city leaders, everybody around this bakery. Now now this bakery is making money hand over fist. Sometimes God uses what the devil meant for evil and uses it for
29:39 our good. But it goes both ways. It goes both ways. People attack each other based on unverified information. We assume the worst. We gotta get back to the love of God, the heart of God. I believe that we
29:51 need to start believing for the best. Believing in each other. Sharing good thing. Why do we get so attracted to negative things about other people? Think about
30:02 that. It might be because we don't have a good self image about ourselves. I think that the people who are most attracted to gossip are the lowest self esteem people
30:14 in the world. They need to hear that other people are bad so that they can feel good. Now that's just part of the sinful
30:26 condition. The the good the the the truth is that we don't wanna face is that we're all bad. We're all evil in
30:38 our hearts. Not a single 1 of us is righteous all the time. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The gospel message is good
30:50 news, but it's bad news first. You're a sinner. You're evil. Your heart is deceptive. You're wicked. You're dead in your trespasses and sins, but the good news is God loves you anyway. God saves you anyway. God graces
31:02 you with the salvation of Jesus Christ. Undeserved favor, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he makes you a child of the most high God, not because you're good, but because he loves you. You get in touch with
31:14 the gospel, you start to have a you start to have a a love for other people. You don't have a critical heart toward other people. Get in touch with the gospel, you start to see the potential in people. You
31:25 don't see the evil in people. That's what the gospel came to do, to heal us and to bring us back together again. The story of Richard Jewell comes to mind this week as I studied this.
31:37 Richard Jewell, I don't know if you know that name. In 19 96, he was a security guard during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
31:49 And during a concert, he had spotted a suspicious bag sitting underneath a chair and started to warn people to get away from the bag. It might be a bomb. Get away from the bag. And and and and the evidence suggests that
32:01 he saved over 100 people's lives because they all fled from the bag. And when it exploded, it injured 100 people. Only 1 person lost their life, but it coulda it coulda killed hundreds. And then a couple of
32:13 days later, while the Olympics were still going on, the FBI leaked information to the press that they were considering Richard Jewell was actually the bomber himself. And this just took off with
32:25 the news media because we all know how careful the news media is to verify facts. And they dragged this guy's name through the mud for 88 days. They
32:37 the FBI even tried to trick him into making a confession on false pretenses. And, 88 days, this guy's life is a mess. And then they finally find out
32:49 88 days later that he wasn't he wasn't the guy. And the guy who did do the bombing went on went on and bombed 3 other locations in the process. This is the danger of
33:00 slander. This is the danger of speaking evil about each other. And when we do it in the church, we look just like the world. CareerBuilder did a survey in 2018. The number 1 reason why
33:12 people leave their job is because of gossip and infighting. Just an uninhabitable environment. They can't stand it. They're always under the pressure of performing a certain way or
33:24 fitting into the crowd. Some of you know the ridiculousness of the statements of our political discord over the past few years and and and things like the Me Too movement, the hashtag movement, where at some points, it
33:35 exposed on injustices. But at at other points, it went to an extreme, and it demonized an entire group of people. Not based on real information, just on hearsay. And some of you know this
33:47 personally because your reputation your reputation is at stake. And it's like people pulling tissues out of the tissue box when they make accusations against you, and it's and then it escalates because other
33:59 people come and pull those teeth. And before you know it, you've got nothing left because nobody actually verified if that was true about you. How much more so we need to get our tongues under control to be people who
34:10 build up and not tear down? How are you using your words in your relationships with other people? Get in touch with the Lord. He wants to build up, not tear down. Which brings me to point number 3. God's word joins
34:22 us to people we need. Where slander divides and does the devil's work, God's word brings us back together. We come together through loving each other, sharing goodness and
34:34 mercy with each other. This is what James says in verse 12, that there is only 1 lawgiver. Underline the word lawgiver. Notice that James identifies God's judge. He's first lawgiver.
34:46 Now this is actually a very positive fact about God. He is a lawgiver. Some of you are gonna take this negatively, but you shouldn't. Because the reason why you take it negatively is because the law can be difficult to
34:57 live. But James has already identified that the law is so that we learn to love each other as we love ourselves. And and I and I think some of you gotta get a frame of reference about God's law that is far
35:09 better than you currently have. God's law is intended to bless you. I don't know if you know this. This this is so true.
35:21 God's law is intended to help you. If a man commits or a woman commits adultery
35:32 and they sleep around with someone that's not their spouse, the children get hurt. The community gets hurt. The church gets hurt. It does untold
35:43 damage. Now, yes or no, does not committing adultery help or hurt you? Help. I was a little bit
35:55 shocked at how quiet you were about that answer, but it does help you to not commit adultery. Understand that the underlying motivation of everything that God says not to do
36:07 is to help you. Don't steal. Why? Because you'll go to jail. Don't murder. Why? You'll take someone's life, and you'll end your own life. Don't don't lust. Why? It
36:19 leads to adultery. Don't get angry. Don't don't go to bed on your anger. Why? It leads to murder. These things are for your good. When God speaks law, he is speaking love. I wanna protect you. I wanna
36:31 guide you. I want to draw you close to each other. And ultimately, the ultimate royal law that James has talked about in this text is that you love 1 another. God's God's law is so that we love 1 another, not that we
36:43 level each other with accusations and complaints. Building others up in the faith. And scripture says, as we see the day of Jesus Christ approaching, we need to do this even more.
36:55 As the days get darker, we need to encourage each other even more. Some some of you are attractional because you've already got this down. People love to be around you because when they're around you, they get built up
37:05 by you. They get encouraged by you. They get prayed for by you. How are you doing? I just wanna let you know that God loves you. I wanna just encourage you. You look nice today. I wanna thank you for what you did the
37:15 other day. You're just a good person. I thank God that he put you in my life. Some of you gotta learn how to plant seeds of positivity in the people around you so that you start to become an attractional person.
37:28 This is probably 1 of the easiest ways that you can be as witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ, by just sharing goodness out of your mouth toward other people. When they come to you with the with the office gossip, you
37:39 say, don't wanna hear that. I don't want any part of that. You you tell somebody, I don't want that. That's not what I think about them. They're they seem like a good worker to me. And and and here's the other thing,
37:50 because no matter how much we share about this, the reality is is that relationships are difficult. Raise your hand if you've ever had a difficult relationship. Yeah? Every hand should be up. If your hand is not
38:01 up, please tell me what you're doing right after the service. We're always gonna have a challenging relationship no matter who we are. So I got good news for you. God has
38:13 put in his word the arrangement of how you handle a difficult relationship. Top of the list, don't go talk to other people. I got 3 points from this.Show more
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