A Society of Slanderers

Reference

James 4:11-12

James 4:11-12

Ignorance is no excuse of the law.

Who died and made you the judge?

If you have to blow someone else’s light out for your light to shine your light is not very bright.

James 4:11–12

James 3:5-12

At first, Saul loved David. But then came the women’s song:

“Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.”

(1 Sam. 18:7).

Saul’s heart turned sour with envy. His words of suspicion followed:

“What more can he have but the kingdom?”

(1 Sam 18:8).

“I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the LORD’s anointed”

(1 Sam. 24:10).

Matt 7:1–2

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged.”

Psalm 101:5 “Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy.”

“If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him; for you are worse than he thinks you to be.” Charles Surgeon

Genesis 4:6-7

Stop fueling conflict with criticism.
Stop pretending you’re the judge.

------------------ Transcript -------------

Awesome. Come on. Who's fired up to be in the house of God? Come on, Mike. Got a little voice issue, so work with me.
As. As you know, we've been here a ton, and I love Pastor Trevor and Angie and their kids, and so we love being with you. Thrilled. If you're a guest, you picked a great day to worship, because God's going to do an incredible work in our hearts today. He's just going to do something incredible.
So we're going to talk a little bit about obedience and freedom in the Lord. And we've been. We've been in the Book of James here, Great commission. And so we're going to keep on that road. But before we dive into James, chapter four, I want to ask you to pray a bold, dangerous prayer.
It's probably one of the most dangerous prayers in all the Bible, and I challenge you to pray it, because most people won't. They. They don't want to pray it. We'd rather be ignorant. We'd rather not know.
So I'm going to read Psalms 133, 23 and 24. We're going to just. We'll pray this together. So let's. Let's pray this.
Ask God right now. Search me, God. Search my heart. Hold up the mirror of the word. Search us today, God.
Search us. Anything that doesn't honor and exalt and bless you, God. Would you show us so that we could repent, so that we could crucify that, Lord? God, we ask you to know our heart. You know it better than we do.
It's so easy for us to justify. It's so easy for us to do things that are contrary to your word. But God, we ask you to know our hearts. We ask you to try us. Try us, Lord, and know all of our anxious thoughts.
You know where we are. You know where our fears, you know our doubts, you know our struggles. You know those things. And Lord, would you see if there is any hurtful way in us, anything that builds a fence between us and you, anything that hinders us from experiencing all of you, thank God. We ask you to lead us in the way everlasting.
The everlasting way. And that is if we're going to abide, we're going to obey. And so God help us today as we tackle a tough passage of scripture. We ask you to speak to our hearts, open us up, hold up the mirror is our prayer in Jesus name. And all God's people said so.
We're in James, chapter four, verse 11 and 12. And so we're going to get serious about our calling, serious about obedience, and we're going to get serious about walking worthy of the calling. Now I said some people don't like to pray that prayer. And some folks who say they follow Jesus don't get in the word much because they think they won't be held accountable for what they don't know.
Well, I didn't, I didn't, you know, I didn't know that. But, but ignorance is no excuse of the law. Imagine you're trucking down the interstate and the speed limit is 70. We all have a number, you know, you do that, if you don't exceed that number, they're not going to stop you. Come on, it might be six miles, might be nine miles, but you have one and you're humming down the interstate and you're on your number and the blue lights roll behind you and you look down, you realize I was in my zone.
And state trooper rolls up and says, excuse me, sir, do you know how fast you were Going. And the first mistake you do is you're about to lie because you know you're speeding. Come on. Are y' all with me? But you're not going to confess to the.
To the crime. So you say, I'm not sure. And he's going to say you were driving 78 miles an hour. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize.
Do you know the speed limit is 55? No, I thought the speed limit was 70. Well, when you came through this town, the speed limit dropped 55 four miles ago. And when you say, I'm so sorry, I didn't know that. The police officer says, oh, you didn't know.
Oh, you're free to go. Is that what he says? No, he says, I'll be back in a minute with a big fat ticket. Ignorance is no excuse. I would rather know what I'm accountable for.
Does that make sense? I want to know what God wants from me. And so I'm going to ask a couple questions as we get ready to look at this passage. Why do we think it's okay to judge everything and everybody?
Come on. Before we act real spiritual. We all do it, don't we? Come on. I'll come to your house this afternoon.
Come on.
Honestly, I was working this passage and I thought I should just get me a striped shirt and a whistle, because, man, I am. I can. I can. I could throw down on some judging. I know it's not, but.
But it's. We should. We should just okay scoreboards because most of us daily get on the judge's bench or we get in the jurors box and we judge everybody. This is how we act. And I want to tell you, every time that you get up in the.
Get on the bench, as a judge, hell loves it. Because when you get on the bench, you have tried to scoop God off and you've taken his place. And so hell loves it when we judge.
But it's what we do. It's all around us. Parents with their kids, bosses with employees, men with women, women with men, spouses, even in church. Wonder what they're driving. Who cut his hair?
Is her hair blue? I mean, we're. You know, we just. We look and then. Forget social media and the cult of comparison.
This is one of the reasons why Gen Z is the most depressed, anxious generation in the history of the world. Just one of the many reasons. So what do we do? We isolate. We feel alone.
No wonder we hide. Everybody is judging me, so I want to hide or I want to cover up, but Everybody is judging me, sort of like I judge them. Does this make sense? Are you okay? Y' all look a little shell shocked.
Are we all right? Well, it's gonna be okay. My name's Chris. I'm your friend. It'll be over in a minute.
So. So just. So my question is this. Who died and made you judge? Who died and made you judge?
Now, Pastor Trevor is a slave driver. I've got lot. I've got thousands of sermons. And every time he calls me and says, would you come preach for me? I should be glad to do it.
And then he sends me a passage. Y' all with me. He doesn't say, bring one of yours that you polished. It's good. I want you to do this passage.
And so I got that a couple weeks ago. And for a week, I. I couldn't get beyond just reading the passage. And every day, this passage was beating my brains out. You know what I'm talking about? The Lord disciplines those that are his, and so he's pounding me.
I'm trying to work on it. I can't even get beyond because I'm so guilty of doing what God tells us not to do in this passage. It's just. It's very, very difficult. So.
But when we criticize and judge, something I heard years ago, if you have to blow somebody else's light out for your light to shine, your light's not very bright. And so it. So let's look at our passage in the book of James. And James is the hardest book in the Bible. It is brutal in its directness.
Others you can sort of hedge around. James is not play. He goes right. So chapter four is all these things that he. That God is telling us not to do.
And then we get to verse 11, and he goes nuclear. In the original, the language is so harsh in verse 11, do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. That means you're setting yourself up above the Scripture. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge of it.
There is only one lawgiver and judge, and we ain't him. Amen. There's only one law giver and judge, one who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? So that's why I asked the question, who died?
Is God still alive? Is he still on the throne? Is he still ruling that he's still judged and the Holy Spirit doesn't need any police.
He Knows. He knows it all, so to speak. Evil means to slander, condemn, critique, or criticize critical. And when you slander someone, that is pride with a microphone, that is. That is me stepping in.
So can we get Ron real, y'? All? Okay. All right. You still look a little shell shocked.
Come on. And so it feels good to judge because it makes me feel better than you. It makes me feel superior to you. Matter of fact, you know, we don't judge people typically doing more than us. We judge people doing less than us so we can brag about what we're doing.
And so we feel good criticizing, we feel good condemning. Why do we judge other people? Makes us feel better. You know, there's so many reasons, but the spirit of the Pharisee is still alive and well in the church in America because the Pharisees were the judges. They were the judges, and we're still alive.
And frankly, I would have made a great Pharisee. I mean, I would have been one of the top Pharisees because I literally. I look and judge everything everybody does. See, I. Let me off the hook and not you.
I judge me based on what my intentions were. When I say something ugly to Michelle and my wife, I said I didn't mean it that way. I mean, you couldn't have took that wrong. That's got to be your fault. Not my fault.
Are you with me? But everybody else, I judged based on their actions. And so I even think sometimes I could judge your heart and your intentions.
See, the. The Bible is a mirror to see yourself, not a window to judge other people by now. So let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Do you really want God to judge you like you judge everybody else?
Excuse me, I didn't catch that grunt. I can promise you. I don't. I want grace and mercy. I want patience and love.
Grace is not getting what you deserve. Mercy is getting what you don't deserve. That's what I want. And yet still I find myself judging, but I don't want to be judged. I find myself feeling superior to other people.
I don't want to do that. See, Paul was a Pharisee, and so he was a judge. But Paul figured out how not to judge other people. And so I had to sort of look and say, how is it that Paul, who was. Wrote all these books of the Bible, who was a superstar, who.
But how could he not set himself up as judge? Because he was a biblically trained judge, and it is because he continued to look into the mirror of the word because whenever God shows up, nobody feels good about who they are. When the glory of God shows up, people have church under the chairs. When God shows up, they say, woe is me. I'm undone.
I'm a man of unclean lips. I do. I'm dad me. This is. This is.
That's what happens when God shows up. So you think about Paul pursuing this relationship with the King so early in his ministry. He writes this. I'm the least of the all the apostles. Well, great.
He's 12th in the top 12 believers in the world.
About 10 years later, he says, I'm the least of all the saints. And he gets near the end of his ministry, and he said, I'm the worst sinner ever.
What happened? See, Paul was having greater and greater revelations of who Jesus is. And the more that Paul looked at the mirror of the Word and the revelation of the Spirit, the more exalted Jesus was, the less he thought of himself. Because, see, when you see yourself as low, you don't really feel qualified to judge.
So one of the things that I ask the Lord for almost every day of my quiet time, I want a greater revelation of you so that I'll have a less view of me. My word for last year was decrease. It's probably one of the best words I've ever picked for the year, because every day the Lord showed me how I could decrease. Well, the Lord and Michelle, she. She wanted help.
She. She found some ways I had to keep my journal hid because I had a list of things I was going to do to decrease. And she wanted to add to the list.
And so it is.
So what we need is more mirror and less judgment. And the Bible is a mirror. The more we read it, the more it reflects who we are. The more we realize we need to repent. The more we realize we haven't got it together, the more we realize we need God.
So again, to speak evil, to speak against is to. Is to slander, to criticize. It's not a voice of concern. It's a speech that tears people down, that questions people's character and undermines the law of love. And so that's why James said, when you're doing that, you're speaking against the law and you're judging the law.
We put ourselves above the Bible. Does that make sense?
Like, imagine you're. Imagine you're at your neighbor's house, catches on fire, and all the neighbors come out, and now it's too hot for the water hose. And you hear the firemen, they're Coming, they're booking, they jump off. And you're expecting to hook on the hoses, grab a hydrant or the water, the big water truck, and start putting it out. And they all run out of the truck, truck with five gallons, buckets of gasoline.
And those firemen start throwing those. Throwing those buckets of gasoline on the fire. And explosions start happening. And people looking hard because those explosions are causing all the shrapnel come out of this house and hurt everybody that's all around the fire. Does that make sense?
That's what criticism does.
It brings gasoline to a fire and everybody gets burned. Everybody is hurt. That's why God is so clear that he doesn't want us to do that. But that's what happens when we. When we criticize, when we slander, we bring.
We don't bring water, we bring gasoline. This criticism never calms conflict, it multiplies it. Great. Bringing peace and grace douses the fire. Slander is a fuel that makes it rage.
Remember when Moses was in the wilderness and the people got tired of manna? Now when I think of manna, I think of Krispy Kreme. That's how I imagine it. I mean, it's Krispy Kreme. And they're griping about the manna.
They're griping, and God shows up, and God says, you're not grappling against Moses. You are griping against me. So when we criticize and slander other folks, we are. We're speaking against the law. We've decided that we are a judge of the law.
See, the criticism we think all goes this way. But when we start judging and criticizing, it goes this way. When you gripe about your station in life, I can't believe that I got this house. Or why don't we have. When you start complaining about what you have, you are complaining to the face of the father that he hasn't given you enough.
Does that make sense? And so don't you hate it when your kids grip and complain? Y' all hate that? Am I the only one y' all hate that? Of course.
What you want. What I want to do is just go take everything out of the room, including the furniture, and throw it in the yard. Okay, let's go and complain. We'll take everything out of your everything. So you don't have anything to complain about.
And we don't like it when our children do it, but we do it to our Father. And so it is. It is it. It's brutal. What does God do?
He sends snakes to the Camp it is absolutely. What does Jesus say? Matthew, chapter seven, verse one and two. Judge not that you be not judged. For what judgment you judge, you will be judged.
Do we still believe the Bible? Do we want grace and mercy? We don't want to be judged like we judge others. Let's all quit judging. Amen.
Let's just stop criticizing because Jesus tells us that our words become our yardstick that God is going to use to judge us. It's what happens. Conflict fuels criticism fuels conflict. Grace makes peace. Jesus said in sermon about blessed the peacemakers, not blessed, are the conflict makers.
See every. I don't care where you live, work, study, shop and play. You're to be a peacemaker. You're to be salt and light. And when you walk into a conflict, you don't pick sides.
You're on God's side. You walk in with peace and grace. Does this make sense? That's how. That's who we are.
That's what we do. That we don't jump on a side and criticize the other. That's what God wants us to. It just doesn't happen. In Genesis, chapter four, Cain is furious with Abel because Abel's offering was accepted and Cain's offering was rejected by God.
And so God shows up and Cain's hacked. He's mad. And God says, cain, what's. What seems to be the problem?
And you know, they're having conversation and God says, hey, Cain, sin is crouching at the door and it seeks to be master over you. Criticism is always crouching at the door. Judgmental Pharisee spirit is just always right there. If we don't crucify, the flesh will begin to walk in that.
So there's only one judge I love. There's only. There's only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able. The word able is power. Who is able?
Who has the power to save, has power to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Romans said to his, o master, does one stand or fall? So there's only one. There's only one law giver.
So let me ask a couple questions. Are you ready? Okay. Anybody here want to be used for the kingdom of God? Anybody here?
Anybody want your heart to be soft and pliable for the Lord? Then A, stop fueling conflict with criticism and B, stop pretending that you're the judge. Amen. Like I said, I would have rather had a real wonderful passage.
That's not what he gave me because he's not a nice man. I mean, we all understand.
If we can be honest, most of us are failing on this passage. Is that right? So let me ask you a question. How many of you with every head up and every eye open, say, hey, I'm ready to repent because I've been repenting for two weeks. All right.
Father God, we raise our hands and we repent. It's so easy to fall into the flesh. It's so easy to want to feel better about ourselves by hammering and blasting and trashing other people that are made in your image. You said, from the same spring, can fresh and polluted water come with our mouths? We bless you and then we curse people made in your image.
God, I pray that you will give us an incredible revelation that you are the mighty God, you are the judge, that we will see you so high and lifted up that we need not try to get up on the bench as judge. We don't judge you. We don't judge your word. We repent. We say, forgive us.
We're going to walk a new walk. And God, when we stumble, would you. Would you hold the mirror up and show us so that we can re repent?
This is a tough, tough topic. So, God, we ask you to forgive us. Fill us with the Holy Spirit. We ask you to move in power is our prayer in Jesus name. Now some of you say, I'd love to do that.
Now, we all understand this is very difficult, difficult for someone who has the Holy Spirit. It's impossible if you don't have the Holy Spirit, if you don't have a relationship with God. What I preached about today is pie in the sky for you. It's just not. It's not happening.
And so maybe you never repented of all your sin to turn to put your faith in Jesus alone. And you say, hey, I think my life would be better if I actually lived this way. And so I just want. I want to promise you from I gave my heart to Jesus. I surrendered.
I repented in 1982. I hadn't gotten over it yet. I'm so excited to know God. I was talking to Pastor Don today. He used to talk about his conversations with God and what God is doing with him.
And I feel the same way. But you got to have a relationship except you be born again. You will not enter the kingdom of heaven except you repent. You will likewise not enter the kingdom of heaven. So if you're ready to turn from your old life and turn to the cross, the one who gave his life for you died on a cross, rose from the grave, and loves you today.
If you're ready to receive that in Revelation 3:20, I stand at the door, knock. If anybody hears my voice, it opens. I will come in and sup. Party, barbecue. That's how I take that passage.
With you and you with me. And so with every head bowed, we're gonna pray a simple confessional prayer. Let me help word it. If you're ready to repent, just pray this prayer with me. Dear Jesus.
Jesus, I know I've sinned. I know we're separated. It's all my fault.
I see it today. You died for me. You rose from the grave, so I want to live for you. I turned my back on my old life.
I put you as Lord. Show me how to walk it out. Now the heads bow and eyes. Could you say, pastor Chris, I prayed that prayer with you. Just me and you.
Slip your hand up and say, hey, I just want you to know I prayed that prayer with you. Lift it up. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, cool.
Gotcha. All right. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right.
All right. Look up here. About four or five people that just said they opened their heart up to Jesus. Can we give the Lord some praise for that?
Wow. And Pastor. Pastor Don will tell you what to do. I just want you to know we love you. I pray for your pastor.
I pray for you every day. Don't let me out. Pray you for your church. Y' all with me ever. You go to my journal Every single day.
T T A Pastor Trevor, Angie. Every single day. So it's good. Are we okay? We okay?
Come on, Pastor Don. We love you guys.
Well, look around your seat and you'll find one of these cards that says welcome on the front and prayer on the back. This is so important, not only for your church, but for you as an individual. This is a great way for you to go. Well, what do I do next? Well, communicate with us so that we can follow up with you and interact over your spiritual journey, however it's taking place.
And you can read, you can look down there. And if one of those applies to what you've experienced this morning, then you check that, make sure your name and phone number is on there, and then drop it in one of the wooden boxes on your way out. Or if you come up for prayer at the end of the service, we're going to have prayer teams available. You can share with them what's on your heart, and they'll pray with you. You can even give that card to them.
And so what I want to encourage you to do is you may be experiencing something right now, that's very, very important in your life. You're feeling a yes toward God that you didn't experience when you walked in. But I'm telling you from my years of experience, if you don't do something right now, you'll walk out that door, and that yes will start fading.
So this is the opportunity. God is speaking and you're hearing. So act upon that today. Now, I'm going to ask our prayer teams to go ahead and come forward. They're up here.
They've devoted their week and asking God to help them to be strengthened, to pray for you and to hear from him. And you need to come up and share with them, and they will pray with you. If you have fresh, new spiritual concerns, tell them about that. So y' all are with me. All right, well, let's stand together.
I'll dismiss us in prayer and then drop your card in the wooden offering box as you leave or give it to a prayer ministry team and let's pray. Heavenly Father, come in power. Minister to your people. Lord Jesus, meet with us now in your precious name. Amen.
You are dismissed.

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