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🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 So thank you so much to everybody who participated in that. I heard that the town still looks like the tornado just went through and so definitely it's great that we could bring some hope to that area and preach the gospel over there. So thank you so much for everybody who participated and it's great to go to these different areas and preach the gospel. Also a couple other upcoming events. There's a ladies event October 7th on Saturday. Is there a location for that yet or is it meeting here? Yeah it's gonna meet here so just FYI October 7th and then we have the FBBF conference down in the Dallas Fort Worth area. It's October 12th through the 15th and so that's gonna be a great fellowship event to participate in. Is anybody here planning on going to the FBBF this year? Alright so got some people coming that's great. And Thursday night we're gonna have Pastor Mejia and Pastor Jimenez preaching for us. And then Friday evening we're gonna have Pastor Berzins and Pastor Anderson preaching for us. And then Sunday morning Pastor Thompson is gonna be preaching for us and I'm just gonna preach the Sunday afternoon service. So we've got a lot of great creatures. We have some new events. I think Saturday we're gonna kind of have like a picnic in the park where we're having like hot dogs and stuff. And then we might have like a softball game for people that want to come and join and play in that. And we also have a spelling bee on Saturday morning for the kiddos. We have some other activities on Thursday and Friday. And so if you're interested in participating you know it's pretty much a whole the whole time is gonna be things going on. Whether it be fellowship activities, soul winning, a lot of other things like that. And so it's a great opportunity to just meet other people, fellowship, have fun, kind of refresh. And so we're really looking forward to that event this year again. I think that's pretty much all that's in the bulletin. I did bring my family with me today so it's great to see you guys again and to be here. It was great to fellowship with some of y'all yesterday. I got to see y'all at the tail end of the soul winning marathon. And one thing I love about this church is just even though it's kind of smaller, just in general, that there's just so many great people that are that are coming here and like already plugged in. And you guys have a lot of talent here already. And Evangelist Fur has been doing a great job. I feel like the church is going really well. And so, you know, I definitely appreciate that. It's always great to come here and to visit with you guys. And in addition to that, you guys have a lot of other really talented people here. And so I want to try and utilize that talent to the best of our ability. And so we have Brother Salvador here and this guy is just like really awesome. And so and he could be used greatly to serve the Lord. And so I want to also try to use him a little bit more here at the church. And so you can anticipate that Brother Salvador might be preaching a little more often and getting plugged in. And it's just an opportunity to help develop him a little bit more and to help for his future. Just because he has a bright future, I think, in serving the Lord. And we want to really use him. And so, like I said, you have a powerhouse here, even though it's a small church. And so I want to try and also use Brother Salvador a little bit more and see where the Lord takes him. But Evangelist Fur is doing great and so I'm really pleased with how the church is going. You've got a great team here. And we want to keep it as a team and everybody plugged in. And of course there's lots of other people here that are really dedicated and really help this thing going. But I just want to let you guys know from afar that I'm really pleased with how the church is going. And like I said, when you have so many talented people, it's hard to know what to do with all of them. But I guess we go to the nursing home, right? And then we preach to them too. But it's really great to be here and with my family. And I think we have potluck right after the service. So please stick around, have lunch, have some fellowship with us. And I'll be here all day preaching this evening as well. So with that, we can go ahead and go to our third song. 401 Set My Soul on Fire. Song 401. Alright, number 401 Set My Soul on Fire. Sing it out. Set my soul afar, Lord, for thy holy work. Burn it deep within me, let your voice be heard. Millions grow in darkness in this day and hour. I will be your witness, fill me with thy power. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Make my life a witness of thy saving power. Millions grow in darkness waiting for thy word. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Set my soul afar, Lord, for the lost in sin. Give to me a passion as I seek to win. Help me not to falter, never let me fail. Fill me with thy spirit, let thy will prevail. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Make my life a witness of thy saving power. Millions grow in darkness waiting for thy word. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Set my soul afar, Lord, in my daily life. For too long I've wandered in this day of strife. Nothing else will matter but to live for thee. I will be your witness as you live in me. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Make my life a witness of thy saving power. Millions grow in darkness waiting for thy word. Set my soul afar, Lord, set my soul afar. Good singing, let's go to Proverbs chapter 18. Proverbs chapter 18, is it going to take up the offering? All right, Proverbs chapter number 18. Bible reads, through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh an inner metallism of all wisdom. A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt, in which ignominy of reproach. The words of a man's mouth are his deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook. It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool's lip enter into contention, and his mouth call for strokes. A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul. The words of a tale-bearer are his wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it, and is safe. The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and has an high wall in his own conceit. Before destruction, the heart of man is haughty, and before honor is humility. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear. The heart of the prudent get at knowledge, and the ear of the wise seek at knowledge. A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men. He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh in search of them. The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. A man's belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth, and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Whoso findeth the life findeth the good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord. The poor useth in treaties, but the rich answer it roughly. A man that hath friends must show himself friendly, and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Let's pray. Lord, we're so thankful for this church. We're thankful for your word above all. Lord, pray at this time you'd help us to keep distractions to a minimum that you fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit. Help us, Lord, apply the word to our hearts this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. So it's great to be here. I want to focus on one verse here in Proverbs. Verse number eight, the Bible says the words of a tail-bearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. And the title of my sermon this morning is this, the wounds of gossip, backbiting, and railing. The wounds of gossip, backbiting, and railing. Now, I've preached several sermons on topics like this before, just kind of addressing what these words even mean. What is gossip? What is backbiting? What is railing? And I'll spend a little bit of time in the sermon today kind of defining some of these terms, but I kind of want to really focus on the fact that when you do these things, it hurts people. People are hurt by these things. It causes problems. It's not a victimless crime in the sense that this sin actually affects other people. And so it's really important that we as God's people, that we try to avoid these things of gossiping, tail-bearing, backbiting, and railing, because it really does cause problems. There's a lot of injury as a result of these things. And especially in a church like this, where the congregation is a little bit smaller, it's a lot easier for you guys to rub each other the wrong way. And because of the fact that you get to know each other better, you spend more time with each other, it's just the nature of being a lot closer. When you get closer to people, it's just easier to fall victim of these types of sins or problems. And it can really cause issues in a church. Families have these problems. Churches have these problems. Businesses can have these problems where the workplace gets to become filled with a lot of gossip, backbiting, and railing. And it's just something we as God's people need to constantly have a reminder of and try to avoid to the best of our ability. The Bible is saying when you tail-bear, it's like a wound that's going to go into this person and it hurts them in the innermost part of the belly. When you find out that everybody knows something really embarrassing about you, it can just hurt. Like it just kind of physically hurts. And it's weird how no one did anything to you physically. It's not like they actually punched you or hit you or you were impaled. But rather your physical body actually reacts to being embarrassed, ashamed, or something happening to you. And my first kind of just point this morning is this, that when you gossip, backbiting, or railing, do these things, it hurts people's feelings. Their feelings get hurt when you do these type of activities. And the Bible tells us that we're supposed to avoid this. Now if you went to Leviticus chapter 19, Leviticus chapter 19, the word gossip is not found in the Bible. The word tail-bearer is mentioned a lot. And they're very similar. Tail-bearing is pretty much just in the context of going around and telling people things about other individuals. Typically in the context that they wouldn't want you to say that in front of them. You know, I always try to help people understand the difference between just sharing news and gossip is would you share this information about someone if they were with you? Right? So it's like, hey, you're so-and-so's pregnant. You'd have no problem sharing that information when you're with them just because you're just excited to share that news. Or hey, they got a new house. Or hey, they're pregnant. We're praying for them. We're excited for them or something. You know, there's lots of times when you talk about other people and there's nothing wrong with that because you're simply just sharing good news and kind of celebrating people. But if you were to say something about them that you wouldn't say into their face, that's typically the alert like, hey, maybe I'm gossiping here. Maybe I'm tail-bearing or doing something that I shouldn't. And the Bible tells us not to be a tail-bearer. Look at Leviticus chapter 19 verse number 16. Thou shalt not go up and down as a tail-bearer among thy people, neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor I am born. So the Bible just has a straight commandment that we're not supposed to tail-bear whatsoever. Go back to Proverbs. Go back to Proverbs chapter 20 now and I'll show you another verse here. Well, here's the thing. If God doesn't want us to do this, then there's got to be a way for us to kind of define this and make it clear what we're talking about. And again, that's why I try to use the example that I did. If you would not say or speak about this person in front of them, then you just should never say that information. You should just decide not to talk about it, not bring that up. And of course, little kids are notorious for this. They're constantly tattletaling, right? Where they notice their brother's doing something wrong and so they want to go tell mom and dad real quick, right? Or they want to tell on everyone in the church. It's basically just this attitude of like, if someone's doing something wrong, I want someone to know about it. And I want to alert someone about it. And you know, of course, there's a time and a place, right? Like if you're, if their toddlers are basically playing in the street or they're trying to put metal objects into the outlet, like, yeah. There's a time and a place to go and tell mom and dad, hey, they're doing something wrong. But a lot of it just becomes annoying and it's just kind of like, okay, but I don't want to know about every infraction that my children have and I don't want to know every infraction of every other person. And just in life in general, right? Do we really just want to know every single sin you committed this week? So we just all just like make out a list of every sin we've committed and I'll pass it around right before the service and just say, hey, what have you done this week? What have I, you know, it's like, that would just be embarrassing. It's fruitless. It doesn't really help. So if you just happen to notice someone doing something wrong, making mistakes, being dumb, whatever, what the Bible really wants you to do is just keep it a secret. Right. Keep it a secret. Now look what the Bible says about tailbearers. What did they do? Look at Proverbs, chapter 20, verse 19. He that goes about as a tailbearer revealeth secrets. Therefore, meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips. So notice what the tailbearer does. He reveals secrets. Go to chapter 11. Go backwards for a moment and go to chapter 11. I want to show you another verse on this. So we're just trying to kind of get a good idea of what we're even talking about because the word tailbearer is not something you typically hear, use that often. But I think if you kind of look at all the different mentions here, it starts to become a little clearer what we're talking about. Proverbs, chapter 11, verse 13 says, a tailbearer revealeth secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter. So notice it contrasts the two, right? One person is constantly telling everybody secrets. The other person is concealing things. Now, again, you have to take the Bible as a whole here. There is a time and a place to report people, right? If someone's committing a crime, we report crimes, right? If someone's doing something serious, of course, we want to alert everybody and let people know. But what the Bible is basically trying to insinuate here is that there's some people that want everyone to know every mistake that every person has always done. And this is just an annoying person to be around. You don't want to be around the person that every time you make a mistake, every dumb thing you've ever said, every dumb thing you've ever done, every dumb thing you wore, every social media post you've had for the last 20 years, they're going to rub your nose in it. That's just not really a godly attribute. A godly person will notice the errors and the issues that people have, and they'll basically just keep them secret, keep them to themselves, conceal them, and not let everybody shame everyone else. We don't want to constantly shame one another. Go to Proverbs chapter number 26, Proverbs chapter 26. Some things need to be kept secret. And, you know, it's annoying that we live in the world we do. I feel like no one can keep a secret anymore. You know, you typically say like, hey, this is just between us, and then it never is, right? Then they just have to tell someone else, they just have to blow up their mouth, they have to let somebody else know. And we really should live our lives where we have a lot of information that just no one else knows. Now, of course, if you have that purpose in your heart, you'll often forget it yourself, and then you don't have to worry about it, right? You're not necessarily burdened with all this. But at the same time, you know, a godly person is going to conceal things, they're not going to just tell everybody. And as you get put in positions of leadership, whether that be in your boss, you know, at work, whether that be in the workplace, whether that be in church, whether that be in your household, you're going to get opportunities where people are going to come to you, express their concerns, express issues, and a godly person is just going to keep that in, right? Like a good pastor would be one where people can confide in them, and the pastor's not going around just spreading everybody's secrets to everybody else. And sometimes that happens, you know, I've heard of it, and I've seen, you know, some people talk about this, where they explain things to the pastor, and then the pastor's wife is just telling all the other ladies in the church, and then they're just shaming other people in the church. They're performing cliques in the church, or they're causing issues in the church. You know, if someone confides something into you, and especially if you're in leadership, you should be someone that's concealing that, keeping that just private between you and another person. If you have an issue with someone in the church, you don't need to tell everybody else. You know, just let them know, deal with it privately, and then just kind of move on. Because sometimes what will happen, and you kind of see this, is you'll have like factions of the church that hate each other based on one person's beef. Like, you know, Cameron gets mad at Brother Fur, and then basically Cameron's posse starts kind of like, yeah, Fur's bad, I can't believe he did that, and then Fur's like, can you believe Cameron did that? And then it's just like this west side versus the east side. It gets silly. And it's like, whereas it could have just been between them, they could resolve it, they can keep it, you know, just between men, and then they don't have to worry about it. And once it gets resolved, it's just, it's done. There's no hard feelings anymore. But when everybody's just spreading, like, if Cameron's telling everybody every bad thing that Cameron's ever done, and Tanner's telling everyone every bad thing Cameron's done, they now already lose their respect for both of them. And both of their feelings get hurt. Their family's feelings get hurt, right? Their wife gets hurt, her feelings are hurt when their husband's being, you know, ridiculed. The children could possibly be made fun of because of that. And so you just like start hurting everybody's feelings unnecessarily. And it's just as a result of just wives have to say, you don't have to say anything, right? And the only person that you should really tell Bear to, quote unquote, is Jesus. You know, if you really feel like, hey, I just I'm really concerned about this, I need to tell someone, just tell Jesus, right? Get in your prayer closet and let him know about it. But at the end of the day, we should be better Christians than the world and not just be the same and just telling everybody everything. The world loves to tell you every dark secret, right? The tabloids. The tabloids will tell you every dark secret of every celebrity, every place they win, every girlfriend, every boyfriend, every dumb thing they've done. And they do this to politicians. They do this to everyone. This is what the news media is. It's just like a gossip rag. And really, the news is soft to be news. And it's just gossip and propaganda at this point. But we as God's people should be different. We don't want to just constantly be spreading all kinds of gossip and backbiting and railing with other people because you're hurting people. It's not like, and it doesn't benefit you. It doesn't benefit me to tell you somebody else's secret. Like, it's really just kind of an all around negative thing. Now, the Bible says in Proverbs 26 and verse 20, where no wood is, there the fire goeth out. So where there is no tail bearer, the strife cease it. Notice it's saying that if you're in a group of people, when there is nobody going around spreading all these secrets and gossip and everything, then there's just no problems. And so really as a result of people tail bearing, that's where a lot of strife, contention, and problem happens in a group of people, albeit family, workplace, church. It doesn't matter the dynamic. This is just always the case. And so it really helps to eliminate tail bearing completely. It also says here, as we keep reading, as coals are to burning coals and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. The words of a tail bearer as wounds, they go down on the innermost parts of the belly. That sounds like a familiar verse. Do you know there's a handful of verses in Proverbs that are like directly repeated? That always tells me that it's something important. Because if God's going to take the space to add a Proverb again, just over and over, it sounds like this is something that we need to actually pay attention to. It's something that we need to put some effort, energy in towards. And you know, I get it. There's times when I hear something and I really want to share it. Like I kind of just like, man, I just would like to talk about this or tell someone else about it. But we need to just exercise ourselves in discretion and say, you know what, I just shouldn't. I just need to not think about it or not talk about it, not bring that up because it's going to hurt other people. It's not beneficial. It says in verse 23, burning lips and a wicked heart are like a pot shirt covered with silver drops. So it kind of gives this in this situation of burning lips. It's like, I just got to say it like they just they just have to let other people know. And notice it's tied to something, a wicked heart. So a wicked person just has to blurt everything out, has to tell everybody every juicy story, every bad thing that's ever happened. Whereas a faithful person is someone that can conceal things. And notice it says in verse 24, he that hated, dissembled with his lips and layeth up deceit within him. Now the word dissembled is again, another word that we don't use often, but it's just kind of deceit is just kind of what it means. It's like doing something deceptively. So when someone hates you or hate someone, they typically don't just come out and say it. Don't just say like, I really hate this person. They kind of conceal it. And notice what it's saying in verse 25, when he speaketh fair, believe him not. So they'll pretend like they care. They'll pretend like they actually are genuine, but they're really not. And you see people doing this all the time, especially online. Trolls do this notoriously. Or they'll ask a question and they'll just say, hey, will someone show me what the Bible says on this issue? Because apparently I don't understand. It's like that person's fake. That's not real. This is a dissembler. They didn't they didn't sincerely want you to give them information. They're just trying to attack someone. And so when they make these kinds of comments, you realize like, whoa, this guy's not sincere. Oh, you're just so wise. Why don't you enlighten me? It's like that person's not being sincere when they say that. So we have to pay attention to these rhetoric tools. You know, the sarcasm or the insincerity or the flattery when someone's saying something that's so over the top, like you're obviously the wisest person I've ever spoken to. So why don't you tell me? That's like, why would I engage in a conversation after they just flatter you that hard? Right. And so you kind of have to pay attention to these things and notice what it says for their seven abominations is hard, meaning like his agenda is sevenfold what you even anticipate. I think that's what it's trying to communicate. It's saying like, just on the surface, you don't even know how many bad things he's actually thinking and dreaming up right now. But there's a lot going on with this person. So when they start flattering and using this deceptive speaking, you know, in their conversation, you need to just be like, I want nothing to do this person. Look at verse 26, whose hatred is covered by deceit. His wickedness shall be shown before the whole congregation. Who should dig at the pitch of father and he that rolleth the stone, it will return upon him. A lying tongue hated those that are afflicted by it and a flattering mouthworketh ruined. So it's saying finally, you know, someone's going to eventually catch this person and expose them to everybody and say, look, this person's just bad. Like this person's actually lying. They're not sincere, don't have anything to do with them. And so their whole attempt at ruining someone ends up just exposing themselves. That's why you should be careful and not just go around exposing everybody else's dirty laundry and exposing everybody else's issues and just bring out a big deal about their issues. That's just a bad person. You know, and people love to do this of people that can't defend themselves. You know, I saw recently someone, a lot of people were attacking Jack Hiles online. And I'm thinking like, okay, well, you know what, no one's perfect, number one. So I guarantee there's things that we could find about Pastor Jack Hiles that were bad. Like, it's not even a question. It wouldn't matter what man you pick. There's always something to criticize. So you have to ask this question, what's the motivation to criticize this individual? Right. And you know, when it comes to people in the Bible, is there really any guy in the Bible that we could pick apart from Christ and say there isn't something to criticize? But should we just have this just evil, affected mind and attitude towards all the people in the Bible and just isolate ourselves to only the bad things that they've done? You know, let's just think of all the bad things David's done. It's like, okay, well, he killed Uriah. He committed adultery. He also basically raised several really horrible children. I mean, he had multiple wives. Obviously, many of these women weren't very godly. He ended up having Amnon, who took advantage of his own sister, and then David did nothing about it. Then he ends up having Absalom, which clearly like just flatters his own father and caused all kinds of problems. And he allows Absalom to kill his own brother. Then David still does nothing about it. David then allows Absalom to take the entire kingdom away from his father and to be with his own father's wives. And at some points, David is just kind of being, you know, undecided about the battle. After they win, he's not even like congratulating his own soldiers. He's basically mourning the death of his son, which is just kind of bizarre. I mean, like, that's just on the surface. There's other things that we can bring about. That doesn't sound like a good guy if we just only focus on David's bad attributes, is it? But then when God talks about David, what does he say? Hey, here's a guy who's a man after God's own heart. And God was upset with him for one thing. It was like the matter of Uriah. It's like, he's like really pleased with David, save the matter of Uriah. And that's kind of like how it describes David. But you know, God's not sitting here just like, well, do you remember this bad thing you did and this bad thing you did and this bad thing you did? You know, to some degree, we have to not necessarily blame only the parents when children are terrible. Okay, because how is it entirely David's fault that his children are bad? Because doesn't he raise Solomon and Absalom? So it's the same dad, the same parent. How does he have completely two outcomes that are the exact opposite when it comes to children? It sounds like those children actually have free will, doesn't it? And at the end of the day, you know, you can't just put 100% blame on a parent for a child's actions because we all have free will. We all have the ability to make our own decisions. And parents only have so much control over their children. They're not robots. They're not soldiers in the military. And look, even soldiers can disobey. Even soldiers don't always follow orders perfectly. So we can't necessarily just say, well, Dave is just a horrible person because look, he has some bad kids. Is that a mistake? Should he have probably stayed with one woman and been more active in his children's lives? I'm sure he should have. But does that mean that he's just a bad person as a whole because of that? No. And here's the thing about children that you have to understand. None of us, no person on this planet knows how their children are going to turn out. Like when you're raising your children, you don't know how every single decision you're making right now is actually going to affect them into adulthood. And what's the unfortunate part about it is you only get to see the fruit of it once you're already there. And then you don't really have the opportunity to change it. So because you're not getting any real feedback necessarily, you don't really know exactly how they're going to turn out in the future, it's very, very easy to not raise children that great. Because you just don't really know. You don't know if you're disciplining them enough necessarily. You don't know if you're spending enough time with them necessarily. You don't know if you're praying for them and in their lives actively as much as you should be. But you can't necessarily know that. It's hard to quantify. It's hard to objectively realize. And it's so easy for people that haven't raised children to judge other people that have raised children and think, well, my kids would never be like that. You don't even know yet. And why is it that you're so quick to judge other people and their adult children when you yourself have little tiny children? We have no idea what they're going to be like yet. And if so many great men of the past struggled in that area and so many people even today struggled in that area, you should start thinking more soberly about yourself on that issue. And look, I'm not saying that we shouldn't strive to have great children and try to pay attention to these things. Of course we should. But there's just no way to know. And it's a difficult thing. It's a lifelong process. And at the end of the day, they have free will. And sometimes you have children that are just stubborn. You do all the right things. You even put more effort and energy in them and they still just don't have the right attitude. And the other kids, you're kind of like not even doing anything and they just have the right attitude automatically. It's just like, how is that fair? How is it fair to then judge those parents based on those children? Like I've had some children that were just super obedient without even trying. And then there's other kids and it's like, you can't like it's just like, what is going on with this child? Right. And you just don't get it. You don't understand. I mean, my parents, they had three children. I'm one of those three. And we're all very different. But we have the same parents basically. Okay. So why is it that we're very different? I wouldn't just say it's like, oh, it's my parents' fault. Like, you know, they did this or this. We're all different. We're just all different people. And I guarantee if you take a godly person and you put them in Jack Heil's home, he would have probably been a pretty godly child. Okay. And you take the really horrible children that turned out really bad, whether it be Pastor Heil's or somebody else's, and you put them in your family. I would love to see how you would have raised Absalom and how you would have raised Cain and how you would have raised Caiaphas. I mean, I know that you're so amazing. I wonder how you would have raised Judas. Like, would you have just been so amazing? And how would you have raised Ham? You know, how come Noah has two great sons and one terrible one? Right. And at the end of the day, like, is it really fair to judge a man if he has 10 children and nine love the Lord and are godly and one's not? Like, are we going to sit here and be like, well, he's just a bad father now, right? Like, that doesn't really make a lot of sense. It kind of goes against what the Bible is saying here. Plus, just human reasoning and logic. You know, my parents, honestly, you know, they really didn't raise me very much in the latter portion of my life. They both worked till very late. So I basically took myself home, made my own dinner, did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Like, I don't remember. We didn't have cell phones, which is kind of crazy to me. Because I'm thinking like when I was like just young, like 10 or 11, I would just go out in the city. Like I would just go to the college or ride my bike or just hang out with friends. I never told them where I was going because I couldn't. Like, there wasn't cell phones, right? So I just was just do whatever I want, just show up whenever I want, have friends over whenever I wanted. Whenever they gave me a car, I would just go out, do whatever. Like, I had the potential to be as bad as you could possibly be, okay? And I was invited in high school to go to every party you could think of, to do every kind of activity you wanted. And I just didn't really want to do that. So is it really fair to say that if you put me in a different environment, let's say you put me in Pastor Jack Kyle's home, where I'm going to church three times a week, being told to read the King James Bible, plugged into a really good church. Do I think I would have magically just been a bad person because of that? It's like, here's a scenario where I'm not getting any training, not really being put in a good environment, not getting the King James Bible, not learning about soul winning. But let's put you in that environment. I'm sure I would have done better. I don't think I would have done worse. So, you know, when you look at some of the children of Pastor Hiles, some of them were bad. You know, there's no there's no way to get around that fact. But does that just mean that Pastor Hiles is the worst person that's ever lived? No. But see, what makes me mad about it is when people go around and they just basically want to dig up dirt, tail bear about the individual, bring up a bunch of accusations that are unprovable, and then just make him seem like he's the worst person that's ever lived. When it's like, look, how about Joe Biden? I mean, are we really going to look at America and be like, you know what the problem with America is? Pastor Hiles. You know, it's not the people in our government. It's not T.D. Jakes. It's not Kenneth Copeland. It's not Joel Osteen. It's not even these independent fundamental Baptist pastors who have started hundreds of churches in America, have led soul winning movements and revivals in our country. Like that's the guy who's really destroying America. It's like that's silliness. And, you know, I heard someone say this really foolish thing about him where they basically insinuated that Pastor Hiles just doesn't read the Bible. He doesn't care about the word of God. They said and additionally, they said this, that the new IFB worsens him like an idol. And I'm thinking like, man, I don't even know if I've ever mentioned his name in a sermon one time. So I decided to do it now since he's my idol, apparently, you know, or whatever. But and of course, if you go to the Hiles Anderson College, there is like a statue, I believe, of him and his wife. And, you know, I don't think that was a good idea. The Bible is really clear on graven images. And I personally think you should have zero graven images, whether you're worshiping it or not. But I would love to know the last time someone in the new IFB went there and literally bowed down before the statue of Pastor Hiles. I'd love to know when the last time someone even praised that and said, like, I'm so glad they made that statue. Let's make one in our church. Right. And look, I've heard some churches, they'll have like a big portrait of Hiles on the wall and, you know, whatever. I'm not even saying that's necessarily the worst thing ever. But like, when have you ever seen that at the new IFB? Like, just have a portrait of him on the back wall or something. Like, if we really had that and like every sermon, we're just like only talking about him and saying he's the best ever and let's model our families over, you know, exactly how he did. Then maybe there's a reason to say like, hey, let's preach about this and say this isn't appropriate. But it's like when people share one of his sermons every once in a while about soul winning, it's like, I don't think there's a problem, folks. So why would someone do this? Why would someone make such a big deal about this? Well, it's because they're a tail bearer. And the Bible says to not be a tail bearer, it says that you should be concealing secrets, not going around trying to cause a bunch of drama and cause a bunch of issues and just try to stir up strife. And you know what? The strife is where the tail bearer is. As soon as the tail bearer is away, then no more strife. It's just peace again. It's like, hey, get rid of this bozo and then now there's peace. Or if the bozo could just shut his stupid mouth, then you don't have all the strife, you don't have all the issues, you don't have all the problems. Go into Proverbs 25, go back. And that's just one example that I'm giving you. But of course, men can be just as guilty as what I'm talking about this morning as women. And so that's kind of an example I've seen where even guys do stupid things like that, in my opinion. But obviously, if we were going to be honest, women are more affected by tail bearing and gossip. And you know, it not only hurts people's feelings, and let's just be honest again, women's feelings get hurt easier. It's a little harder to hurt men's feelings. Women's feelings get hurt very easily, they're very sensitive. And so when you're telling other ladies about things that other ladies are doing, it will really, really drive them a wall. Like, if brother Cameron's dressed ugly today, and I say like, man, that shirt looks ugly on you, he'll laugh and it'll never matter again. He may burn the shirt, he may wear it again on Spite. But if the ladies said something like, you're dressed as kind of ugly or outdated, that would hurt her feelings for years. Like, maybe even a lifetime. Like, she might always remember. Like, it could be 50 years from now, and she's like, remember when you insulted my dress or whatever? And it's just like, dude. So let's just be real that because women are so sensitive in these issues, let's be really careful then, right? It's a landmine out there. You don't want to step on it. And it not only hurts their feelings, it'll actually affect the friendship. Like, guys can just make fun of each other, and then they're like closer friends. Whereas ladies, you can't do this. You guys have no idea how to do this. Like, I don't think I've ever seen this where ladies could make fun of each other and then be friends. Like, even if they tried it, it wouldn't work. Don't try this either, okay? I'm not suggesting this. Because they'd say like, that wasn't really a joke, was it? You meant that, didn't you? It's like, you know, it'll really hurt their feelings. Because they care, they're very sensitive about this. And when you're tail-bearing about other ladies, it's just going to ruin friendships. Look at what it says in Proverbs 25, verse 23. The north wind drived at the way rain, so does an angry countenance of backbiting tongue. You know, when someone wants to tell something to you about other people, you know, you just, you need to try and stop it. And this is one way to stop it, right? It's just saying, just by even giving a kind of a bad look on your face will cause people to just be like, oh, okay. And women are usually more perceptive on this. Like, women can read people's faces a little bit better, just generally speaking. And so, if another lady's kind of giving her like an ugly face about something, they'll stop talking about it. Like, they'll kind of just be like, oh, she's not interested, or oh, she's better than me, or whatever. But the reality is, it's good to just stop it in its tracks. And to not let her know, like, you are a vehicle, you are a door open to share gossip and tail-bearing. And when people start bringing stuff up, you know, you don't have to necessarily always be like rude about it, even though I'm all for it. But like, sometimes the best is to be tactful in the way to just say like, hey, you know, I don't really know what's going on with her, I just wouldn't, I just prefer not to know. And then bring something else up, right? If she's like, hey, did you hear about so-and-so? I didn't, but I, you know, I don't really want to hear, you know, let's talk about something else, right? And I think girls like to talk about end times Bible prophecy or whatever you guys like to talk about, but, you know, just bring that up or something, right? And so, at the end of the day, though, you know, we need to try and make sure that we're all going to handle this appropriately. Is it uncomfortable when someone tries to gossip to you and you try to stop them? Yes, it will be every single time. But you know what? The person that doesn't want to be your friend because of that isn't a real friend. The person that, you know, they might be mad at you for a little bit, but then they'll realize, you know what, this person at least is kind of a loyal person, they're an honest person, I can confide in them. Here's another thing, when someone can find something in you and then you tell everybody, they're going to stop wanting to confide in you. And you're just going to ruin relationships, you're going to ruin real friendships, okay? And you're going to end up being friends with people that you don't want to really be friends with when you let them gossip to you about other people. Because they're going to gossip about you. Go to 2 Corinthians, chapter number 12, go to 2 Corinthians, chapter number 12. You know, we talked about gossip and tail bearing and they're pretty similar. You know, I don't really know that there's much of a distinction. Gossip can sometimes also be not true. I think tail bearing is typically things that are actually true, whereas gossip sometimes is just unverified information. And a lot of times the gossip ends up turning into railing a little bit because you're spreading information that's just actually not even accurate. And so it's dangerous to do these type of things. There's also the term backbiting in the Bible. And that's kind of just, again, similar in the idea of like you're talking about people behind their backs and you're attacking them behind their backs. You're saying mean things about them. So like, here's some distinctions, right? Tail bearing is like something that's just true about them, but it's kind of embarrassing. Gossip is something that you've heard, but you don't even know if it's true or not. Backbiting is you're just being mean about them behind their back, right? Like they look ugly, their dress is ugly, their face is ugly, their hair looks bad. I don't even think they shower. Like those things are just designed to just be mean towards the individual and try to shame them and make them feel bad about themselves. Whereas if you notice it, you know, just don't say anything or say something to them privately. You don't necessarily have to go around and tell other people the bad thing you noticed about them. This is the back talk, the backbiting. And this happens in church settings. Look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verse 20. For I fear, lest when I come, I shall find you, such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you, such as ye would not. Lest there be debates, envings, wrath, strife, backbiting, whisperings, swellings, tumults. And lest when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall be well many which have sinned already, and have not repented of uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness. Now there's a lot of issues and there's a lot of sins being brought up. But notice one of them in verse 20 is backbiting. And what the Apostle Paul is trying to say is, you know, I like how the Bible brings up a lot of things that are practical to us. Where the Apostle Paul is not always in the church that he's providing leadership in. And that's similar to like this church, right? I'm the pastor of this church, but I'm not always present to provide the direct leadership. So there's going to be different times where I'm coming and going, providing leadership from afar. And so there's some similarities there. And what the Apostle Paul is trying to say is when he comes and visits this church, what he doesn't want to have to do is deal with issues. He wants to show up and to be on fire for God and be spiritual and serve in the Lord and talking about soul winning and talking about baptisms and talking about doctrine. But what he doesn't want to do is talk about how so-and-so is lying about so-and-so and this other lady said this about this other lady. And this faction of the church doesn't like this faction of the church. And these people are upset because of this. And have you heard about the rumors about this person? Like no one wants to deal with those issues. And so what he's saying is like, I don't want to show up and find debating and envying and wrath and strife and backbiting. Like everybody's mad at each other and people are talking bad about each other and there's all this gossip. He's saying like, they're just going to ruin this experience. Plus, notice what he says in verse 21. Unless when I come again, my God will humble me among you. What does that mean to humble him? I think what he's trying to say is that he's going to be embarrassed that this is his church. Like he's embarrassed he's providing leadership for this church and this is how they're acting. So I think a similarity that he's bringing up in this passage is how like when you go into public and you take your kids out in public. And your kids are just screaming, yelling, fighting with one another and throwing a fit. It's embarrassing, right? You're embarrassed by your child's behavior because it kind of reflects on you as a leader. And I think that's what the apostle Paul's trying to say is, hey, when I show up at this church and you're just so carnal and strife and envy and backbiting and all this stuff. It just, it makes me seem like a bad leader. It's humbling me and it's like basically embarrassing me, shaming me. And he kind of uses this parent-child analogy. Because if you look in this chapter, just a few verses before, prior to, in verse 14, notice what he says. Behold the third time I am ready to come to you and I will not be burdensome to you for I seek not yours but you. For the children ought not to lay up for the parents but the parents for the children. So he uses this analogy or metaphor in talking about himself in the church. He's saying he's kind of like the parent and they're kind of like the children. So in a sense, you kind of use that same analogy when we talk about this latter portion of this chapter. How when he is showing up at this church and the church is filled with all this carnality and strife and all these different things. How it kind of embarrasses him as a metaphorical parent. In the sense that the same would be with us, right? You show up at someone's house, they invite you over and your kids are acting really, really poorly. Then it makes you seem like a bad parent, right? It embarrasses you, right? You're out in public and they do this, it embarrasses you. You're in the church and they're acting inappropriately, it embarrasses you. And the same with how a church would potentially embarrass its leader, embarrass the leadership because they themselves can't have proper behavior. So it's important because you're not only going to destroy and hurt people's feelings, you're going to also destroy friendships. You're going to hurt the friendships in the church. You're going to cause literal division in the church, cause people to not be friends anymore, ruin relationships. You're going to possibly even ruin the relationships that you have with leadership as a result of backbiting and tail bearing and gossiping and doing all these sinful activities. Notice what he had said in verse 21, which have sinned already. So he's bringing up this list as things that are sins. It's a sin to tail bear. It's not like, well, we just shouldn't do it. No, no, it's just a sin. It's just wrong. It's not something that you should participate. Just as much as you think lying is bad, you should think that tail bearing is also bad. They're both sinful and they hurt people, they hurt the friendships, they hurt a church. And if we want to have a healthy church, then we need to make sure that we're not backbiting and gossiping to one another. Go if you would to 1 Corinthians chapter 5, go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Notice also though, it's affecting the church. Cause this is an epistle written to a real church with real people in it and there's strife in a church. You know, think about visitors, right, or new people. What if new people come and they don't know, they're just showing up for church, right? And then they hear like, hey, which team are you on? The Cameron team or the Fur team? Cause there's a big controversy and we need to settle this. They're like, I don't even want to get involved in this strife or drama. I just want to show up to serve God, right? And so new people get tossed into this mix. It's going to cause them to not want to come to church, not show up. People can get their feelings and friendships hurt so much, they'll stop going to church. They'll stop serving God. And what that'll do is it'll destroy people's faith. So that's kind of my three points I had this morning of the wounds of gossip, back bailing, and railing. It's going to hurt feelings, it's going to hurt friendships, and it's going to hurt people's faith. And we want to make sure that we're not doing these things so as we can help people have better feelings, better friendships, and better faith. Whereas when you're tail bearing, gossiping, and railing, and these type of things, you're going to hurt people's faith. Now 1 Corinthians 5, verse 11 deals with another matter here, railing. It says in verse 11, So, you know, the Bible says that we're not supposed to be around railers. And I bring this in the context of this subject matter because a lot of times tail bearing, gossip, and backbiting will even just turn into railing. And railing is for some reason, it's just like a word that people don't really have a solid definition for out there in the world. I've looked it up in countless dictionaries, even very old dictionaries. And it's usually just harsh, insolent language, appropriate words, and you read these things and you're thinking, well that didn't help me. Appropriate, so I was like, what does that mean? And you look that up and it's just like harsh, and it's just like saying the same thing again. But railing is, I believe very clearly in the Bible, has to be something that's not true. It's not just harsh, because Jesus Christ upbraids people. That's harsh, that's literally what upbraid means. Rebuke is harsh. But the difference between rebuking and railing is rebuking is true, and railing is not true. And so, also, if you're not even supposed to be around a railer, how could you then say it's just being harsh or scolding people? That would make Jesus a railer, that would make preachers railers, and then you have no real meaningful distinction between a rebuke and a rail, whereas the Bible's commanding people to rebuke, and it's telling them not to rail. So how am I supposed to be harsh and rebuking where I can't be harsh? You know, like it basically just strips that meaning from that particular word. Plus, if the Bible wants us to not do something, we should have a real clear boundary here, right? It's like, when does it cross the harsh mark or something like that? And people get this confused, and they'll say, well, I don't like your preaching or your pastor because he's really harsh or he's really mean or something. But you know, the Bible doesn't say thou shalt not be mean, okay, or thou shalt not be harsh. You know what the Bible is like trying to tell you not to do? Lie, mislead people, be deceptive. Because plenty of times in the Bible, you could argue Jesus being mean, you know. When he's telling people that they're twofold more the child of hell, that wasn't nice, okay? When he's yelling at them and screaming and saying they're hypocrites and vipers and servants, well, that's name calling. It is name calling. Jesus did it, okay? So I don't think you can really start making these doctrines of no name calling, no harsh language, no rebuke. They have their proper role. But what we don't want to do is start using that attitude and saying it about things that are not true. Because now, all of a sudden, it's turned into extreme railing. I would say, you know, there's like lying, and then when you're doing harshly, it's like railing, okay? There's slander, and slander is a little bit different than railing because I believe slander is lying with malicious intent. But it doesn't have to be harsh, right? You could just slander someone in a casual way or through the newspaper or something like that, and you're not necessarily like being really reviling them and have like aggressive attitude about it. Where it seems like railing is more, it's all of it, right? You're harsh, aggressive, and attacking, and it's lying. Slander, you're just lying about them in kind of a malicious way with a malicious intent. Lying is just you're saying something that's not true. You could lie about someone mistakenly. So sometimes some people will, they'll basically just spread all this gossip about someone and it was lying, but they didn't mean to lie about them, they just relied on that information. Or some people will lie on purpose, that's like slander. Then some people will lie on purpose aggressively and harshly, that's kind of like you're railing, and you kind of have a little bit of distinction with these particular words. This is going to destroy people's faith. When you're around, railers. Railers are going to destroy a church. When people are going around actively attacking people with false information, this is a quick way to destroy a church. That's why the Bible is saying that person is not even welcome in church. Like they have to completely get that right before you ever let a railer back in because it will just very easily destroy the church dynamic, it caused all kinds of problems. And notice how God describes them in verse 13. But them that are without God judgeth, therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. It's not even saying this person is unsaved. They're saved, and they're a brother, and they're wicked. So you know what, you could be saved and wicked. And you know there are people like this, there are people that are just, they're a saved person, but they're just very wicked, they're very sinful, they're causing a lot of harm to other individuals. And most of these sins, what you have to understand about these sins, is these sins are hurting other people severely. You know when you're doing idolatry, you could cause people to just completely walk away from Christianity and go to a false religion. You could literally be sending people to hell by your result of idolatry. When you're committing adultery, nothing will hurt a man's heart and feelings more than adultery. And women are very similar. And so you have all these different sins that are being brought up. Fornicating, covetous, idolater, railer, drunkard. I mean these are causing serious issues in the church, extorting people. I mean that's obviously going to be hurting a lot of people when you're taking information that they have about them and using it against them. The Bible says about not revealing secrets. The extortioner takes those secrets and basically uses that as their advantage over people. They'll say, hey I won't tell anybody about this as long as you do whatever I say or give me money. But it doesn't always have to be a monetary exchange. It could just be twisting their arm to get them to do what they want. Most of our politicians are probably being extorted. What you have to understand is that you kind of wonder why they're doing what they're doing. And it's because they've been taken advantage of by evil people who are extorting them. They're saying, you better do what I say or this information is going to be released about you. And so anytime you see one of these politicians, like the headline is all about them and the bad thing they did, know that they probably just didn't comply with the extortion. So you kind of start thinking they're bad, but it's like they probably did something right just to get that story released about them. Because they weren't willing to go along with the extortion that was planned against them. But these are just evil things happening in a church. They can destroy a church. And we should strive to do the opposite. Go to Ephesians chapter 4. We should strive to keep unity in the church. Now for sake of time, I'm not going to give the definition of railing from the scripture. That would take a little bit of time. I've done that in other sermons. But you can look it up. You know when Nabal is railing on David, because rail is mentioned about eight or nine times in the Bible, he's saying false things about David. When they railed about Jesus, when he's on the cross, they're saying false things about him, saying if he was the Christ, then he would save himself off the cross. But that's not true, because if he's the Savior, he's going to die on the cross. So, you know, they just say things that are not true as an effort to rail. That's how you can kind of get the definition from the scripture itself. And you know about Jesus, you know, if you look it up, it says that he despised the shame. So notice that when they railed about him, it hurt. It hurt his feelings. You know, it's going to hurt friendships. It's going to hurt people's faith when you're saying things that are not true. It's going to affect people negatively. So we as God's people in the church need to endeavor to keep the unity. Look at verse three. Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. If you kind of tie this to some of the proverbs we talked about, casting out the tail bearer is going to get rid of strife. And when you don't have strife, you have peace. So we need to make sure that we're not allowing tail bearing. When someone wants to tail bearing you, you give them that angry countenance to try and cut it off. You know, try to bring up a different conversation. Try to just basically cut it off at the head so that you don't allow it to continue to fester. It takes two people. If you have the one person and everybody cuts them off, then there can't be a problem. Or just get rid of that person. But it takes at least two people for this to start and we want to make sure that we're not allowing it to happen in the church. The whole chapter is about basically trying to have unity and be one. And if you read in the latter portion, it's bringing up some of the things that could happen to destroy that. Look at what it says in verse number 25. Now, wherefore, meaning because of all the things that are said, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. Be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Now, when we put that in context, it kind of shifts, I think, what a lot of people use these verses for. Notice what it's really trying to emphasize. It's trying to emphasize the fact that we should be speaking truth with one another and trying to have unity one with another and not what? Bring up people's baggage and sin and issue and bitterness. What is bitterness? You have to understand what bitterness truly is. Bitterness is when someone actually did you wrong and you still feel bad about it. So, bitterness is legitimate in the sense that something legitimately bad happened, but it's saying, get over it. It's saying, okay, yeah, they did something that you didn't like, they hurt your feelings, something bad, get over it. Don't let that bitterness then turn into tail bearing, turn into backbiting, turn into railing, let it go. And you say, well, but they didn't ask for forgiveness or they're not treating me better. Okay, get over it anyways. You know, you don't have to hold on to bitterness. Bitterness will destroy you just like it destroyed Absalom, just like it destroys many people in the Bible. And so we need to just make sure that we're just letting it go, not letting ourselves be taken over by bitterness and these other issues. Go to First Timothy chapter number five, you know, no corrupt communication. Of course, this could be broadly applied, but in the main context, it's just the railing, the tail bearing, the lying, saying things that are not true. Some people will say, well, that's just saying cussing, don't cuss. And look, I get it that we should be careful how we use certain words and I'll try not to offend people with the language that I use. You know, a lot of what is considered cussing is words found in the Bible. And it gets it kind of makes me mad when preachers are more concerned with people using a bad word than they are with people actually lying, railing and backbiting and gossiping and slandering. Yeah. And it's so funny. There was a there was some guy on TikTok that posted something about some pastor, Pastor Stacey Shifflett. You may have heard of this guy. He's talking about how he said Christians don't cuss or whatever. And so I just kind of asked him for it. I said, do you have a list of the words so I can be a real Christian? Because I just want to make sure, you know, I'm a real Christian. And then they brought up the fact that I had used a certain word in a sermon one time. That's not very nice. But I was just saying, OK, sure, that happened. But then someone else, some other pastor gets on there and he says, oh, well, you're not saved. And you should get out of the pulpit and you're stupid. And I was like, you're going to take the verse, let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. And then you're going to say that I'm stupid, that I'm not even saved, and that I should get out of the pulpit as as an exercise of obeying that verse. I think you're literally violating the whole essence of that verse and attempt to try and fit your cussing doctrine, which is not even in the Bible. OK, but you just want to just make it your manmade tradition. You whole self reject the doctrines of God for the traditions of men here. And look, I don't think it's a bad tradition. Right. Like when you think about the traditions of men that Jesus rebukes, they're washing their hands before they eat. Is that really a bad thing? There's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. Right. Just like if you say I don't want to use certain profane language around certain people or anywhere in my life. Go for it. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. If you said, hey, I want to make sure I'm not using language that's going to offend people. I'm all for you. And I totally get that. And I think that's a totally valid viewpoint. And I get it. What I don't like is when people take this over the top and they start getting mad at words in the Bible or people that use them or pretending like they're more holy because they don't use certain language. OK. And it's so funny how people literally reject what the Bible is really emphasizing here about slandering and lying and being bitter and angry to then basically prop up their tradition of men. OK. And so we want to make sure that we have the right viewpoint on that passage. The passage is not mainly dealing with cussing. It's dealing with lying and slander and backbiting and all those things that are so much more prevalent and so much more of an issue in the church. You know, some people may hear a bad word and decide to leave a church, but it's probably more likely they're going to leave church because of lying, really gossiping and all that stuff. OK. Now, first, some of the Chapter five, I want to show another few verses here. The Bible says about younger women, it says in verse 11, but the younger widows refuse for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry having damnation because they've cast off their first faith. And with all they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies speaking things which they ought not. Notice a temptation for women. And, you know, verse 13 is saying that they learn to be idle. Laziness is a learned behavior. Isn't that kind of interesting? Like you would think that laziness is just you just do it like you're just like, oh, I'm just lazy. But in fact, it's kind of like a learned behavior. And what I think why it's saying this is in the sense that no one's just going to sit around and do absolutely nothing. Like, you know, when you ask a guy like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, nothing. He's not just literally just sitting there just like. It just means they're kind of wasting time on a certain activity. Right. So how you learn to be idle. What that means is there's activities that you learn to do that produce nothing. Right. And our society has learned to be idle through what? How about their phone? Yeah. Right. That's probably all of our biggest. That's all of our problems. And there's a lot of things. TV used to just be TV. They learn to be idle because, look, if it was just like, hey, you have nothing to do and you're just staring at the wall. You won't do that. You wouldn't just go home and just. But, you know, you would do if there's a TV there now, the sudden you'll just stare at the wall for hours. Right. You also you know, you would not do you won't go home and just do this. But if you have a phone in your hand, you could do this for hours, couldn't you? And so what is saying you're learning to be idle, you're learning to do these things, you know, even just sitting down like I like sitting down. But if I were just to just go somewhere and just sit down after a while, I'm just going to get up and do something like I'm not going to just sit down and do nothing. But if you have TV, phones, all these different things, you can literally just sit down the whole day and just do absolutely nothing. All day. And it used to be that women had to literally get up and go to some lady's house to hear gossip and whatever, communicate because they didn't have phones and Internet and whatever. But today, you don't even have to get off the couch. You don't have to get out of bed. You don't have to roll over from the covers. You can just from your phone. You can go to every other lady's house just so easy, can't you? And you can hear every single thing that they could ever want to say. You can even just you can even see things in their house. Women will literally judge other women. They'll post these pictures and they'll be like, look at the trash they have in the background. Or they didn't make their bed or oh, man, those curtains are ugly. Like, they'll say that, you know, they didn't even have to leave the house. And they can already gossip and tell Bear about every other person, find out all the scuttlebutt, find out every little bad thing that's happening. How does the Bible address this? It's saying that they become toddlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not. And here's the problem. If you do this and we've probably all been guilty of this to some degree. But it's definitely easier for women to do this when you do this for hours or for the whole day and then you finally interact with a person. You know, your conversation ends up usually being a lot of tail bearing gossip. Why? Because it says in the Bible, we cannot but help but speak the things we've seen and heard. That's right. So whatever you do all day and whatever you see all day and consume all day, it's like it's ready to come out. So if all you do is just look on Facebook and Instagram and social media all day, then whenever you have a real human interaction, it's just going to be Facebook and Instagram and whatever. Just that much more. Just, well, did you see what this person did? You see what they said? You see this issue? Do you see this stripe? Do you see these people arguing? Do you see what this person's opinion about this person is and this person's opinion and this comment and this? And it's just like, it starts becoming just nonsense. And then it's just at the end of the day, it's worthless. It just didn't really produce anything. It didn't benefit anything. And a lot of times what happens is someone's feelings, friendships changed and it hurts someone's faith. Now again, I'm not against social media saying that it's inherently evil or wicked. What I am saying is it's afforded us an opportunity to be idle and to learn how to be idle. And for women to learn about a lot of things that they shouldn't even know. And you know how you don't, tailbearer, don't know anything. Like if you didn't know anything about any other ladies, you'd have nothing to say about other ladies. If you didn't know anything about the other church members that are bad, you wouldn't have anything to say about them. You can only help but speak the things that you've seen and heard. And of course, you know, this is just something that we should try our best to keep in check. Now, when your husband comes home from work, I guarantee he does not care at all what some other lady said on her Instagram. Like I just know for a fact, like he doesn't really, he's not interested in that at all, right? Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 14. And if you want to engage other people in conversation, have interesting things to say. But you know what? Tail bearing and gossip is just not that interesting. You know, why people are not fun to hang out with is because they have nothing interesting to say. And the reason why someone has nothing interesting to say is because garbage in, garbage out. So, you know, how do I get something interesting to say? Do things, right? Stop being idle. Stop wasting your life. Read something, go somewhere, do something, learn something. Just be active. You know, if you don't exercise your mind, if you don't exercise your legs, if you don't exercise your arms, if you're not exercising your body, you will lose it. There is a reason why elderly people are completely different from one another. Some elderly people can't even get out of bed. And some elderly people are like still very active. And it's like, why? Because the ones that were active were being active. And the ones that, look, you see some people, they're just sitting in a chair all day. You know why? Because when they were 20, they sat in a chair all day. And when they were 30, they sat in a chair all day. And when they were 40, they sat in a chair. So if you just want to sit in a chair when you're old and do nothing and be immobilized, just keep sitting in that chair. You know, if you want to actually have some stamina and go soul winning when you're 60 and 70 and 80, then, you know, get up and do stuff. Make something of your life. Who cares about these stupid influencers? You know, everybody wants to be an influencer, but it's just like, you know, it's vain. Be an influencer in your family, right? Be an influencer in your church. And, you know, this would be a cool thing. Is when the husband comes home from work, you know what the wife wants to ask him about? The Bible. Look what it says in First Corinthians chapter 14, verse 34. The Bible says, Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also sayeth the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. So women have a great opportunity to talk about the Bible with their husbands at home. But you know why sometimes, and probably most of the time, women are not asking their husbands questions about the Bible? It's because they weren't thinking about it at all. It's like, why am I not talking with my husband about things that are important? Because you're not doing anything of importance, right? I think both men and women should be having daily time where they're thinking about the Bible, praying, seeking the Lord. And if you're thinking about things, you know, when it comes to the Bible, you're going to talk about them. If you're not reading, like, you're never going to have a question about the Bible when you've never read any of it. Like, I don't have questions about what's in Harry Potter because I've never read it. Like, what did this mean in chapter four? I don't care because I didn't read it. I don't even know. I didn't know what questions to ask. I don't even know what the characters are. You can start bringing up the characters and I wouldn't even know what to say to you, right? It's like, I don't really care about all the drama that's going on in this world. You know, I care about things that actually matter and actually have value. And what I really like is we sang this song earlier. I'm going to pull up the hymnal for a moment, okay? And we sang in 401, Set My Soul a Fire, and I really like this third verse because it says, Set my soul a fire, Lord, in my daily life. That just really, you know, kind of spoke to me because I'm thinking like, we shouldn't be zealous from 1030 to 12 on Sunday morning, right? Why can't I be zealous for the things of God on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Monday morning and Monday night and Tuesday morning? And I know there was a point in our lives where me and my wife started reading the Bible together. And when she had questions and stuff, she would text me or remind me or want to talk to me when I got home. And it was fun. It was fun to actually just talk about things that actually have value, that actually have importance, things that are interesting to both of us. And it's not just because I'm a pastor. You know, this happened way before I was a pastor. And, you know, don't let Christianity be one person in the household. Don't let it be like, well, that's the guy thing or that's the wife thing. Like, let it be both of you. Both of you should be talking about things of God. I mean, if we really look at the Bible on this issue, it's saying that you're supposed to speaking about these things when you are in the bed, when you're rising up in the morning and at night. And you say, well, you sound like a fuddy duddy. All you want to do is talk about the Bible. Well, look, it's not that that's the only conversation you're allowed to have. But why can't we have it often? Yeah. Right. Like, are we really supposed to just succumb to the pressure of the world and say like, oh, people don't want to talk about the Bible or, you know, hey, we need to be talking about other things. Why can't we talk about the Bible? I love talking about the Bible. I love discussing doctrine. I love discussing application. I love discussing these things. And, you know, it's going to help a couple grow together spiritually when you're both thinking about the scripture, thinking about the Bible, bringing up different stories. Tons of times, my wife gives me a great idea for a sermon because she can bring up a different perspective or different ideas or different passages. And I take inspiration from all. OK, so I'm not I don't neglect. I mean, she wrote a really good sermon this morning. So, you know, but it's just we all should be interested in the things of God. And, you know, you say, well, I'm not interested in things of God, but you're not trying. If you if you're not even reading the Bible, then you're not going to be interested. Right. You know, I'm not interested in Harry Potter because I never read the book. OK, I'm sure if I read it, it'd be pretty. I'd start getting interested into it because a lot of people like it. So I'm sure it has good plots and different characters and whatever, even though it's satanic. I'm just saying, like, I'm sure it's interesting. Right. Just like TV. There's sometimes there's shows where I had no interest in them. I didn't want to watch them. I never would have. But just by chance, I end up kind of watching some of it. And then you kind of get involved. Right. And then you're kind of like, well, I want to watch a little more. I want to watch the next episode. You just start getting involved in the show, even though you didn't want to. And that's the same thing as with God. Like you kind of force yourself to read the Bible some days or you go through certain chapters. But then eventually you just get into it. And at the end of the day, like it's not going to hurt you to read a little more Bible or talk about a little more Bible. But you know what will hurt you? Talking about gossip, railing, learning about all these other things. You know, get a hobby. Learn something that's of value. Train, train your brain and your body to learn new things. Because I'm telling you what our social media world is designed to just basically send. It's like most of it is just programmed to get you to think about the wrong things, to be constantly thinking about fornication and adultery, constantly thinking about drinking, constantly thinking about being lazy. I mean, most of the people follow these social media influencers and their lifestyle is not a healthy lifestyle. It's not one that you should even be striving for anyways. They're not doing what the Bible says. Because if they're doing what the Bible says, they don't have time for all this influencing. OK. And we need to make sure, you know, most of them, they're selling stuff. OK. They're just trying to sell you something. We need to make sure that we ourselves are thinking about the things of God, training ourselves to be productive. Instead of learning to be idle, let's learn to be productive and say, is what I'm doing right now going to benefit me, my spouse or my family? If it's not, get a new activity. Right. Learn a language. Learn. I mean, you know, nobody cooks anymore. Sorry, there's a pet peeve of mine. All right. But let me just I'm going to finish on this point. All right. Learn how to cook again. OK. Like we need we need to bring back where all the food is just amazing. And it's like women have all this time, effort and energy to put in social media. What if they put it only in making a meal? Right. Then instead of just like thinking about all the other things that are going on in the world, we could be eating some of the greatest meals ever. And here's the thing. If they started doing that, I guarantee you'd eat out less and you'd save more money. Plus, you just enjoy life. I remember, you know, I talk to my wife about this, but when we were dating, I would say your your family eats to survive. My family eats to thrive. I was saying like when we have a meal, it's exciting. Like I'm so excited to eat with my family because it's like skillfully prepared. Everybody put all this effort and energy into some of the best things you've ever tasted. You go over there and you're like, I'm just going to have to finish my plate to be polite. Right. Like I'm just doing it so that I have the energy to leave. Right. Like it wasn't because I wanted to eat this or be here. And we have to eat like you're going to have to eat lunch, dinner and breakfast for the rest of your life. Like, why not enjoy it? And I'll tell you, like my sister, God bless her. She is good at cooking and she was a fun to be around. Every time you go to have a meal, it was just always good. It was always enjoyable and it just makes everything so much better. But you know why I like that? Because she was putting all this effort and energy in it. If I went over to my sister's house and she's like, well, I haven't made anything. I might make some ramen noodle later. But do you want to hear what Suzy did? Do you want to hear what Jacqueline did? Do you want to know what this happened? I've been like, no, I don't care. Right. But if you go to my sister's house, she's not going to talk about Suzy and Jackie and whatever. She's like, hey, I've been spending hours making this lasagna and I'm like, I'm ready to eat it. You know, I'm excited about this meal. And look, that's just one example. What I'm saying is, you know, gossip doesn't benefit things. The proverbial woman, she opens her mouth with wisdom and kindness. And we need to make women kind again, not gossips, not tailbearers. You know, as men, we can fall victim to this, too. But we should avoid railing and saying things that aren't true. And putting our effort and energy into something that's worthwhile. You know, again, here's another thing, men. Your wife does not care about how you just totally dunked on a troll on a YouTube comments. OK, like maybe she did and she's just kind of patronizing you. But like out of true sincerity, she's not like hoping you come home like, yeah, and then he said, you know, this stupid thing. And it's like, I don't care. She doesn't care that you dunked on him about his systematic theology. Right. It's like they don't they don't have any interest in that necessarily. So we should be careful that we're not just going around focusing on everybody else's dramas and issues and strife and the gossip magazine. Rather, we should just do something with our lives. Don't be an NPC. Don't just be a mirror to the world. Do something with your life. OK. And for our church's sake, please, please don't allow gossip or tail bearing to exist in here. And if you have bitterness towards someone, just let it go this morning. Just say, you know what? It's not worth it. I'm just going to let it go and then I'll forget about it. But if I keep holding on to the bitterness, then I'm just going to keep thinking about it and treating them differently. You know, we have great opportunity here to do a big work for God. And tail bearing could destroy it, gossip could destroy it, railing could destroy it. So let us endeavor to keep the unity. All right, let's go to prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for this church and this opportunity to have a fellowship. And I pray that you would just help us all to be motivated to not be a tail bearer, but rather keep secrets and conceal things and not feel like we have to always share every negative thing we know. And I pray that we would change our attitudes and help us in this world to not seek after drama, to not seek after strife, to not seek after what's going on in this world, to not care about all the drama, news and tabloids and all the different posts and all that. I pray that you would help us to be motivated to do something worthwhile with our time, that we wouldn't just waste our lives being idle, that we wouldn't just stare our lives away, but rather we'd find something to do and we would use all of our strength and might to do that, that we'd seek to do things that are pleasing unto you. I pray that you'd help set our souls aflame and afire that in our daily lives we'd have zeal to serve God, we'd care about the Bible, we'd talk about things of eternal value, and that we wouldn't just waste the opportunities you've given us. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Hymn number 40. For the final hymn. Hymn number 40. No disappointment in heaven. Let's start on the first. There's no disappointment in heaven. No weary day, sorrow or pain. No hearts that are bleeding and broken. No soul with a minor refrain. The clouds of our earthly horizon will never appear in the sky. For all will be sunshine and gladness with never a sob nor a sigh. I bow for that beautiful city, my Lord, as prepared for His own, where all the redeemed of all ages sing glory around the white throne. Sometimes I grow homesick for heaven, and the glories I bear shall behold. What a day that will be when my Savior I see in that beautiful city of gold will never pay rent for our mansion. The taxes will never come due. Our garments will never grow threadbare, but always be faithless and new. We'll never be hungry nor thirsty, nor anguished in poverty there. For all the rich bounties of heaven, His sanctified children will share. I bow for that beautiful city, my Lord, as prepared for His own, where all the redeemed of all ages sing glory around the white throne. Sometimes I grow homesick for heaven, and the glories I bear shall behold. What a joy that will be when my Savior I see in that beautiful city of gold. There'll never be grandpa at the doorknob, no funeral train in the sky, no graves on the hillsides of glory, for there we shall nevermore die. The old will be young there forever, transformed in a moment of time. A mortal will stand in his likeness, the stars and the sun to outshine. Sing it out now. I bow for that beautiful city, my Lord, as prepared for His own, where all the redeemed of all ages sing glory around the white throne. Sometimes I grow homesick for heaven, and the glories I bear shall behold. What a joy that will be when my Savior I see in that beautiful city of gold.