Gossip

Who likes having a yawn?

Standing around the Webber with the mates, having a yawn, a little bit of a chat, some banter.

It's enjoyable, sharing a funny story around the dinner table, late night conversations on the couch with your partner, where you're just on the same wavelength.

It's so good.

Going out for coffee with a friend, catching up.

It's what we're built for.

Relationship, connection, community, knowing each other.

But too often, we find ourselves using these good things for destruction.

We gossip, we slander, we tear down.

Tonight, I pray the Spirit of God awakens you to the joy and unity and love that comes from receiving God's abundant grace and letting it seep right through into how you communicate, in Jesus' name.

Proverbs 16-28 tells us that a perverse person stirs up conflict and a gossip separates close friends.

A toxic tendency for many of us is to forget the significance of the ways we choose to communicate.

The ways we choose to talk about other people and the consequences that can have.

We forget that gossip is actually impactful.

We forget that it serves to tear down, condemn, destroy.

It's an insidious sin.

It seems so tame on the outside.

When we read Ephesians 4, as Abby just did, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth.

We think, ah, yes, as long as I don't speak from that little list of four-letter words Christians aren't supposed to say, I'm set, I'm wholesome.

No, it's obviously more than that.

But gossip has been normalized to some degree.

Sometimes we strive to justify gossip, and sometimes we just don't really care anymore.

We get into a comfortable zone with a family member or a friend, and what a delight in rhetorically ringing someone's neck out.

It can be fun, that's what's so tempting about gossip.

Sin feels good in the moment.

We do forget, we forget the clear warnings against gossip the Bible gives us.

But hey, don't worry, I got you.

I'll jog your memory a little bit.

Remember when Aaron and Miriam talked badly about their little brother Moses getting married to a woman from Kush, of all places?

No, of course, you don't remember, because it's in numbers.

When was the last time you read that?

I think I actually skipped the book when I was 12, because I thought it was about maths or something.

Anyway, Miriam and Aaron do a little slander here, a little slander there.

Moses sucks, and this is troubling to God.

They are dragging the name of Moses, a representative of God's authority through the dirt and casting their judgment upon him.

And even at a more basic level, they are disrespecting a human being, someone made in God's image.

I don't know how much they meant it.

They were probably talking, taking out their frustration about something else.

Maybe Moses left the oven on again or something, so to cope, they're having a grumble.

But either way, it does trouble God, and the words do carry their meaning, to the point that God actually leaves Miriam's skin leprous for a week for defiling speech.

She was given a defiling skin disease.

Remember, and this is a far more recognizable story, when there was this beautiful garden called Eden, where humans walked with God, free from sin, shame, separation.

It was good.

And then one thing led to another, as it often does, and Eve finds herself befriending quite the charming, polite little gentleman of a snake.

There was a bit of back and forth, a bit of rumor spreading a little from the snake, a little implication that God doesn't love you.

He's holding you back from being the best version of you.

It's all a facade.

The fall of humankind came straight out of gossip.

It doesn't end at gossip, it never ends at gossip.

Gossip gives birth to more sin and more sin.

But, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, seems we've gotten a little ahead of ourselves.

Okay, apparently gossip is bad, God does not appreciate it.

But what exactly is gossip?

It's an important question because there's a difference between sinful conversations and hard conversations.

There's sinful conversations and there's hard conversations and we do not want to get them confused with each other, ever.

We could sit on one end of the spectrum where our conception of gossip is some amorphous consortium of ideas that never really applies to what we say.

There's always an excuse.

Well, actually, I'm allowed to say this because it's not technically gossip because, well, it's true, and they started it, and I'm sad, and I'm stressed right now, and they had it coming, and really, it's a hard conversation that needs to be had.

This thinking leaves us prone to sinful conversations filled to the brim with gossip.

But if we don't develop any nuance in our conception of gossip and conclude that talking about stuff is bad, we throw the baby out with the bathwater, don't we?

We stiff-arm the goodness of healthy communication and conflict resolution.

We adapt Michael Scott's business advice.

Don't ever, for any reason, say anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where or who, or who you were with, or where you were going, or where you've been ever for any reason whatsoever.

If this is how we choose to avoid gossip, we will never have the hard conversations that really do need to be had.

We will end up doing more harm than good.

God wants healthy relationships with healthy communication, and the key is it comes down to Grace.

As Christians, we are to take the example of our Savior Jesus, who gave his own life instead of taking ours.

God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

And in the same way, we can use Grace-filled words to restore rather than to condemn.

What is our speech being fueled by?

Is it fueled by Grace, or is it fueled by bitterness, contempt, or anger, or pride?

Do we aim to restore goodness to unhappy situations with our conversations, or are we bent on seeing people pay the price for what they have done?

I love the succinctness of this verse from Proverbs 17.9.

It tells us, whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeals the matter separates close friends.

Sorry, whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

As Jesus covered our offenses with his sacrifice, we can afford the same love to others.

In James chapter 4, we read, Do not slander one another.

Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.

When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.

There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy, but you, who are you to judge your neighbor?

Isn't that interesting?

We read, don't slander, and might think, I never lie, I'm honest.

I say it like it is, better out than in.

Put everything into the light.

But James clarifies, this is not the same slander in the legal sense we know today, where a valid defense is actually proving that an allegedly defamatory statement is true.

No, James clarifies, do not speak against a brother or sister.

Do not speak against.

Whether it's honest or not, don't do it.

There is a type of brutal honesty that is pointless and only serves to tear down.

We have to be strategic.

Don't speak against, James says.

You are putting yourself above the law.

Every time we get home from work and feel the need to have event, a gossip, an unleash on a co-worker.

Randy is the worst.

He is a massive suck up.

But as soon as the boss is gone, he is a lost cause.

Hopeless at his job.

Rude.

It's a joke that he hasn't even been let go yet.

And get this, get this, he is left handed.

I know.

James says, the implication of this gossip, this speaking against is that we are claiming to be a lawgiver and a judge.

But there's only one lawgiver and judge.

So, slandering someone, speaking against someone, is putting ourselves in the position of God.

For many, some of us here, I'm sure, gossiping has become a way of life.

2 Thessalonians 3, 11 says, We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive.

They are not busy.

They are busy bodies.

A busy body being someone who prides, who meddles in other people's affairs and gossips about it.

Verse 12, Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.

Now, often the challenge for a busy body is that they're excuse to gossip and to amass information and to pry.

Is that they care.

They just want to know how people are doing, how people are getting on.

Nothing malicious.

They're a neutral party.

They just have an insatiable itch.

They need to know what's happening.

Their NorthernLife core value, they get fixated on, is find out, help out.

And this is where it gets complex, and I need to be careful, because obviously we need to care for each other and support each other.

But here's an illustration.

The youngest member of my family is a little beagle ear named Misty.

And I'm hoping here that gossip doesn't apply to animals, because I'm throwing her under the bus a little.

But Misty is so cute, and the problem is she always has her nose up in everybody's business.

What are you getting out of the fridge?

Oh, carrot, wow, yummy.

Why is there a possum in the tree?

What was that noise?

Who just knocked on the door?

What does your leg taste like?

Yeah, she genuinely loves and cares about us, but it's an insatiable curiosity of a beagle within her.

And she'll pretend to help.

Oh, you're pulling out weeds?

Let me pull out grass with my teeth.

Oh, you're putting the washing out?

Let me come and help you.

Just stands there and watches.

It's extraordinary how much she knows, how busy she seems, yet how little she actually accomplishes.

It's like when I was a kid when my mom would bake a cake.

My job would be to lick the mixing bowl clean afterwards.

I'm helping.

In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul says to busy bodies, do something productive.

Ask yourself, what are you accomplishing with all this idle chatter?

Because earlier in the chapter, Paul tells Christians not to associate with busy bodies.

This behavior is not as benign as it might first seem.

Because maybe sometimes the best way to care for someone is to let them have a bit of privacy, to keep their matters from being turned into fodder for our entertainment.

God's grace takes us to a place of being controlled by temptation and sin, to a place of freedom from it.

He works in partnership with us.

He's not dragging you against your will.

His grace will push you along when you choose to walk in the right direction.

You want to start walking in the right direction away from gossip?

Well, this is so practical.

You just got to be willing to give it a go.

Start noticing gossip.

Start vocally withdrawing from conversations of gossip.

This is gossip, and I'm not comfortable continuing to talk about this.

And set strong boundaries in those comfortable zones you've constructed where gossip is okay.

The family dinner table, that is now a sacred place, have no allowance for gossip there.

You've got a problem with someone?

Go directly to them and sort it out as Jesus commands.

Bringing other people into it is not going to help unless you can't actually fix the problem one on one.

Stop enabling gossip.

If someone asks you about private information, you know about someone else, don't answer either way on principle.

Become a trustworthy person who can't be taken advantage of by busybodies.

Replace gossip.

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things and build up other people with those things that you think about them.

We can't overcome gossip by ourselves, and we will find ourselves slipping up, but His grace is sufficient to forgive us of gossip.

And Jesus' grace is sufficient to overcome gossip.

The beautiful thing about this is if we all avoid gossip as a church community, it becomes easier and easier for all of us.

And that's my prayer, if you pray with me.

Lord, gossip is a complex issue when you dig into it, and I pray that you would help us truly understand the impact that it has on our lives and how much we choose to engage it.

Help us to notice the times when we gossip and convict us to avoid that.

Give us the love for our fellow brothers and sisters, that we would value them and not choose to slander them, but we would be voices that build up others around us.

Well, give us your grace to do all of this.

Pray that we can overcome this struggle together.

In Jesus' name, amen.

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