Gossip: The GAteway To Hypocrisy

 I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

 

Let’s talk today about gossip. We Christians are often guilty of going after the big blatantly obvious sexual sins of the culture, but we kind of shy away from the not so obvious sins of the tongue. Those sins “spoken in the ear in inner rooms.”

 

Gossip is the breeding grounds of the fatal error of hypocrisy. And we ought to pay attention to the fate of full blown hypocrites on the Last Day! Jesus compared them to wheat look alike weeds (tares) and on the Last Day they will be separated from the wheat (true believers) and be burned in the fire of hell! Mt 13:30 'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

 

In Luke 12:1-3 Jesus tells His followers to stay away from hypocrisy and gossip! Lu 12:1 In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples first of all, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 "For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. 3 "Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.

 

Hypocrites, actors, pretend followers of Jesus will be found out on the Last Day, and it will be a Day of universal embarrassment for them! The hypocrite will stand before the Judge of the World and every careless, secret word spoken against another will be revealed.   Mt 10:26b " For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

 

So what do you and I do about this? We are to “beware of hypocrisy!” Stay away from gossip! Keep the faith! Keep trusting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, Confess your gossip as sin and ask the Holy Spirit to check your tongue and spare your ear from participation in this gateway sin to hypocrisy. Once you start whispering about others, you begin to think more highly of yourself than you ought, and you open the door to full blown prideful hypocrisy! God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Let’s admit it my brothers and sisters, we could all use a little more grace and a lot less gossip!

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word.