Well, I'm glad you're here tonight, and I appreciate your faithfulness. Some of you just hear every chance you get, and I appreciate that. We are ready to start on verse 11 of chapter 4 tonight, but first I want to share with you a little something that I read about on the internet, thanks to my wife's help pointing it out to me. read this little story. There was a young man, he was a bachelor, and he was looking for a wife. So he kept bringing ladies home to meet his mother. And every time he'd bring one home, his mother would just be super critical. Didn't like anything about her. Just was unmerciful. Now, I don't know whether she was in front of her or not, but that was the critique. And this happened several times. Finally, he was getting so frustrated, he talked to a friend of his and he said, you know, I don't know what to do about it. He said, what do you think I should do? And the friend said, well, Sounds like you need to go out and find a girl that's just like your mother. And so he thought, well, that's not a bad idea. So he looked and looked and looked, and sure enough, he found this lady. She looked like his mother. She walked like his mother. She talked like his mother. She even thought like his mother. And so, sure enough, he takes her home. And the friend didn't know what happens. He was kind of, you know, he'd heard about this. He was on pins and needles. Next time he had the opportunity to speak with his friend, he said, well, how'd it go? How'd it go? And the young man who took the lady home to meet his mother said, well, you know, so-so. He said, well, didn't your mother like her? And he said, oh, yeah, my mother loved her. That was great, but my dad couldn't stand her. I don't know if that's a true story or not, but it makes the point I want to make tonight begin with. We all have our opinions. We all size other people up. We all tend to judge people on some level. And that's our topic for tonight when we come to chapter four, verse 11. We've been looking at these themes, the recurring themes in the book of James, and tonight we just extend the section on wisdom. But you'll remember twice before, he has in one of those earlier sections talked about the tongue. And he doesn't really refer to the tongue here, but he's talking about our speech, the way we treat people, what we say to people. And so that's a reoccurring theme within this theme of wisdom. We're all going to go two verses tonight, verses 11 and 12. So we're going to talk about the evil of slanderous speech. The evil of slanderous speech. James is pretty blunt about it, as James always is. We tend to excuse it. Think of it as a, you know, well, that's no big deal. We call it criticism. We call it, sometimes we call it constructive criticism, and it may be. Some people call it, well, I just speak my mind. So we call it speaking our mind. Some people say, well, I'm just being honest. But here's the thing. It's the attitude, it's the intention, it's the motivation that can even make honesty a weapon. I mean, some people, some people you could say a lot of things about that's not very flattering, that's very honest, right? But that doesn't mean you should go around doing it. Some people, I think, relish using the truth to damage someone's character. Now, you might say, well, they've already damaged their character. Well, that's true, but that's their doing. What does the scripture call it? I've labeled it slanderous speech. In verse 11, the first part of the verse, James says, do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He doesn't warm up to the subject. He doesn't ease into the subject. He just hits you right between the eyes with this next subject. Now, we just talked about hedonism, the desire for pleasure, and we connected that with the sin of pride several verses back. And when it comes to slanderous speech, well, that usually flows from a heart of pride. Now, listen, we all do this from time to time. None of us are free of this. But we have to understand when we know that, when we recognize that, And when we confess that, we're growing in the Lord. It's the people that just excuse it and never deal with it that have the problem. Well, we just saw the New King James Version where James says, do not speak evil. The New American Standard says, do not speak against. The NIV says, do not slander. I normally do not like the NIV. But once in a while, they get it right. And I think they probably have the best translation here. It's easy to read. It's not a bad translation. I just prefer the New King James myself. New American Standard, I like it. I read it. But I don't know. Sometimes the King James is just not the best translation. It's just the way it is. They're all translations. Now, the Greek word is a compound word which means to speak against or literally to speak down, to talk down to somebody. The word evil in the New King James is It's not there, it just says don't speak against. And the translators use the word evil, so you know, you just have to sometimes compare different translations to get at it. I think we all know what we're talking about. What we could use here is, and this would be one of those dynamic equivalent translations, but we could use the term character assassination. Because that's what James is talking about here. That's why I use the word slander. Now, here's the definition I got off the internet for character assassination. It's really good. It says, character assassination is an intentional attempt to influence the portrayal or reputation of a person in such a way as to cause others to develop an extremely negative, unethical, or unappealing perception of him or her. Well, That's what we're talking about. That's what James is talking about. So let's see where James goes with this. Did you catch it? He said, do not speak evil of one another brethren. Now he's used that term brethren over and over so far in the first four chapters. He's writing to believers. Now it's true. We shouldn't go around slandering unbelievers. But James' concern here was this is going on among people in the church. I mean, they believed in Christ. They fled away from Jerusalem at some point, if they didn't just go home from the feast where the thousands were saved in Acts chapter two and so on. They didn't have a lot of instruction. They didn't have a New Testament to turn to. They just pretty much operated the way they always operated. That's why James has to talk to him about their hedonism. He said, that's why you guys can't get along. That's why you have wars and fights and trouble between you because of your desires. So it takes time for the word of God and the spirit of God to change people. I mean, we talk about the change that happened the moment we got saved, and that's true. There's a tremendous change, but all of our character flaws don't evaporate. The Holy Spirit has to work on us over time for that to happen. And these people were struggling big time with it. So, the real grievous thing that James is dealing with here is Christian against Christian. Brother and sister in Christ, you know, just slandering each other. Now, if you want a really good example of what I'm talking about, all you got to do is think back to our recent election. You don't have to think very far. I mean, look at all those ads you saw on TV. What are they? They're slanderous. Some of them might be absolutely true, but the purpose and the motivation behind it is character assassination. Three reasons we're going to look at here as to why we should not slander our fellow believers. The first one is this, it involves judging others, judging others. Now, when we go to verse 11 again, we're going to notice that slander here means that you are rendering a verdict about someone. You are giving what you believe to be, or what you intend to be, an epitaph, if you will, a characterization of somebody that is bad, and you want to place that on the hearts and minds of somebody else, which does damage to the person that is being slandered. The word verdict, of course that's a legal term, And if you look again at verse 11, do not speak evil of one another brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother. You see the word judges. It is a particular Greek word, which means to render a verdict. It was used that way in Greek culture. A judge's verdict. A verdict is not an examination to see if you're guilty. A verdict is judgment because you're found to be guilty. So, this is what the scripture condemns. Now, such verdicts might be falsehoods, accusations, exaggerations, Just endless repetition of, you know, defaming material, words, name-calling, labeling, cursing, gossiping, all these things could be avenues by which we slander someone. And it is definitely prohibited in the scripture. We can see it right here. James says, do not speak evil. That's a present tense verb with a negative connected to it, which means stop doing it if you're doing it. And if you're not doing it, don't ever do it. It's a prohibition. It should never happen at any time. So the scripture is making it clear that judgment of others, especially non-believers, is a no-no. It is prohibited in Scripture. So let's, having made that point, 11b, we also notice he says, anybody that speaks evil of his brother, judges his brother, and speaks evil of the law. Now he's talking about Because there's no definite article with law here, he's not talking about the Old Testament law. He's talking about God's law, the royal law, James called it in chapter 2 verse 8. All of that which the New Testament tells us that we are to use as a guide and a reference for how we should behave, what we say, what we do. And if we judge others, we're violating God's moral law for us in the New Testament age, because he's told us over and over, don't do this. Jesus, Matthew chapter seven, verse one, we're all pretty familiar with this one. Judge not that you be not judged. Don't render a verdict against someone because it may happen to you. Now we have to understand this. In speaking to believers, he's not talking about eternal damnation. He's not talking about someone being judged in the final sense of being thrown into hell. What is the judgment that believers endure? I don't think it's something that we really are going to endure so much that there will be some loss associated with it. We call it the judgment seat of Christ or the Bema seat. We've referenced that two or three times in our study of James. So when the Lord comes back, raptures the church, the rest that have went already to be with him come back in spirit and their bodies are resurrected. We go to be with the Lord and You go to the book of Revelation, one of the first things that John reveals to us, that the four and 20 elders, which obviously reference to church age saints, take off their crowns and throw them before the feet of the Lord and worship the Lord. So they have these crowns, whatever they are. And we also had a list of those crowns last fall when we were in chapter one. Rewards that God will give to us rewarding everything we did for him that we did with the right motive and purpose, our good works. But if we are judgmental of other people, that judgment that'll be applied to whether or not we get a reward for what we did will be applied to us. Does that make sense? In some way, then, even what we say and speak and do and excuse is going to affect our eternal rewards. We're not talking about any loss of blessedness in heaven. It's just a loss of a special reward we could have had. and some people like to picture that as being very traumatic and people uh carrying grieving into their eternity and that's not the case either because the first thing that happens when we go to be with the lord is we're going to be like him so we're not going to be upset with that judgment that loss of reward we're going to understand it's righteous and we're going to be just joyful to be there and we can get what other other rewards we have So, judge not that you be not judged. Four, with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. So, the way we treat other people is going to either benefit us or cost us in terms of our ability to function the way we could to the capacity we could in eternity, perhaps in our ability to worship God, because we don't have those. The rewards are not for us. They're given back to him. Now, don't forget, too, the next verse. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye. And look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye, and then you'll be able to see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. You see it at the end? He's not saying, he's not saying that we should never evaluate other people. Yes, we do. So we can see clearly to remove the speck that is in the brother's eye. that there's a difference between evaluating a person's actions and rendering a verdict on the person. That make sense? If a brother or sister is caught in a sin, you that are spiritual should restore such ones as Paul in the book of Galatians. How do you restore them? You have to confront them, have to make them aware of their sin, you have to try to do your part, to get them to confess that sin, counsel them, confront them, whatever you need to do. That is wholly right and righteous. But if you have that tendency to do that in terms of everybody else's spec, when you got a big plank, you're moving into a whole different category. Remember, Also, 1 Corinthians 2.15, but he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged of no one. Now he's talking about human beings here. Spiritual people evaluate all things, not people. Spiritual people then evaluate the actions of people, but they don't render a verdict on the person because that's not our prerogative. But how do we do that? Well, we say things, well, so-and-so is just not a very good Christian. That's a verdict. We could say, so-and-so, need some assistance, understanding what they should do, how they should live their life. You're not rendering a verdict. We say things all the time over the years. I've heard just so many times. I just cringe every time I hear it. When I hear one person in the church say of some other person in the church whose actions are not measured up to their standard and say, well, that old so-and-so must not be a Christian. Or they'll say, I just don't believe he's a Christian. You're rendering a verdict. That you're prohibited from doing. You can recognize what they're doing. You can try to assist them with that. But you're not to assassinate their character. Well, there's all sorts of things. We could say, oh, you know, so-and-so's a hypocrite. I've heard that one all my life, too. Especially from unbelievers who will be quick to tell you, you've got so many hypocrites in the church, I wouldn't go over there. Well, you know what? Everybody in the church is a hypocrite, somewhere, somehow, someway, okay? If they got some real bad problems, it might stick out, but that's labeling, that's rendering a verdict. Even saying someone's not spiritual, or somebody is immature, or somebody is carnal, if you say that for the wrong reason, it might be true, but if you publicize it, you're rendering a verdict in the minds of others. So how do we guide our speech? How do we make sure that we do not engage in this? Well, here's a little guide, also not original with me. I thought it was really good. A guide for our speech, an acrostic, N-E-E-D. When you speak of someone, the first question you have to ask yourself is this, is it necessary that I say this? First of all, if you're dealing with something that is unflattering to a person or their character, you don't need to be saying it to anybody else except that person. So it's not going to be necessary if you were, you know, just talking it around or causing other people to, you know, alter their opinion of the person. Is it necessary? Number two, will it encourage? We all understand what encouragement is. All of our speech and interaction Paul deals with this in Ephesians 4. He says, always let your speech be for edification, building somebody up. So encouraging, edifying, they're really so close together. But here's the difference. Encouragement is more counsel, and edification is more instructive. Doesn't mean it can't be both, whichever one is at the forefront, but there's a little bit of a nuance there. So, if you're going to speak something to somebody, be encouraging. Build them up in the Lord. Help them to understand what they need. And finally, will it dignify the other person? I still remember I think I was a junior in high school. I was playing baseball in the summertime. We traveled from our little place to a bigger place to a really nice stadium instead of a cow pasture, which was basically where our high school field was. And it was summertime, so I don't know, it was Babe Ruth, Senior Babe Ruth, something like that, I don't know. But the first time in my life. It was an all-star game, too. So, it was a new guy that came, and he had a really strong arm, and I'd been the third baseman that had played in the previous all-star games, and instead they put this new guy in the third base, and he promptly just proceeded to strike out three times in a row, I think. And the pitcher was a knuckleballer. None of us had ever faced a knuckleballer. And Finally, when we were about 10 runs behind, Coach Dixby in third base and I came up to bat, and I don't know, he threw that knuckleball right down the center, and I guess it didn't knuckle. It was the biggest, fastest looking ball I ever seen, and I hit it hard. I hit it up against the left field fence, which surprised me that I could hit it that far. In fact, I thought it was going to go over the fence, and I was just kind of jogging to first base, watching it the whole way. And I get to first base, and I realize the left fielder has fielded the ball through. I don't want to get any more than a single out of it, because I've been watching the ball. And the coach over on the first baseline yells clear across the diamond, that's what you get for not hustling. It just burned me up. First of all, I had a pulled hamstring muscle. I probably wouldn't have made it to second base anyway. And I didn't tell the coach because he would have surely not played me then. And he didn't listen to me. He didn't talk to me. He just embarrassed me in front of everybody. That sticks in your mind. Now, I didn't have words with him. I didn't say anything, kept my mouth shut. went home a loser like the rest of the team. But I didn't much listen to what he had to say after that. Fortunately, he wasn't my coach much more. It damages you when someone embarrasses you, slanders you, puts you down in front of other people. So this is very, very important to remember. Every person we meet, every person we meet, we should be in our mind, how can I encourage them? How can I lift them up? How can I affirm them? Not, how can I put them down? But the world's idea of fun is putting people down. It's just the opposite. We must not fall into that. So, do not slander other believers. Number one, it involves judging others. Number two is the rejection of God's authority. a rejection of God's authority, because it is a violation of God's will. We are not doing what we should be doing. We are violating the command that we have before us. And so James says, He who speaks evil of the law and judges the law. We're putting ourselves, here he's using that term verdict. We're rendering a verdict on God's word. When we choose blatantly to do the opposite. It's a rejection of his authority. It is also an omission. There's two types of sin. There is commission, or a violation of something we know we ought not to do, and we do it. And the other side is, we don't do something we should do, which is the next thing James says. He says, or, are you not a doer of the law? Or are not, Let's read it again if I get it in the right context. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There's the omission. A little bit later on, in fact, I think it might be next week, he talks about the fact if we know to do good and doeth it not, it is sin. He's just stating it differently in this context. So again, God's authority is set aside. Just going back to the importance of encouraging and lifting people up versus stubbornly being slanderous, putting them down, talking against them, assassinating their care, whatever it may be. If you go back to that NEED, and I told you a little story, just came to my own mind, but here's a quote from a book. The author is Jim Burns. The book is titled The Youth Builder. I assume he must have been in youth ministry or something, where the book was written for that. He made this statement, and I wish I had some research to maybe confirm where it came from, but he says this, for every critical comment we receive, it takes nine affirming comments to even out the negative effect in our life. That's pretty amazing. One person unjustly criticizes you. It takes nine people edifying you to lift you back up to where you're even. And we have to have that mindset with every person we interact with because they're going to get all the rest in this world. Well, let's move on quickly to number three. We've noticed two reasons. It involves judging others and we're not to render verdicts. Number two, it is a rejection of God's authority. And number three, all judgment is God's business. It's not our business. So that means only God is qualified to render verdicts. Only God is qualified to do that. We are not. If you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 4, jot this down. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verses, about the first six verses, Paul talks about the fact that he is being criticized by the people in the church at Corinth. Believers criticizing Paul. Now remember that, okay? And Paul says at some point in there, it's a very small thing that I would be judged of you. And he uses a different word, not verdicts. He uses a word that just means that you would examine me. He doesn't say you're wrong in doing this. It's a small thing if you want to, you know, observe me and, you know, critique me. But a little bit later he says, and he uses the other word about verdicts, and he says only God could look into the heart and see the thoughts and the intentions and the motivations of the heart. That's why God is the only one qualified to judge. There is one lawgiver, says James in verse 12. Not many, only God. And then moving to the next statement, only God can righteously execute judgment. Only God can execute judgment righteously. And James says this, there is one lawgiver, only one qualified. Who is able to save and to destroy? We cannot condemn somebody eternally. We can hurt people. We cannot obviously do what God does through his mercy and grace to help us, give us his grace, God's final judgment described in Revelation chapter 20 verses 11 to 15. That's the final judgment of unbelievers, the great white throne judgment. And it is there we see God's final judgment of all that reject Him. We mentioned earlier, He will also judge us in terms of whether or not we give rewards, but we will not suffer punishment. There's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. So we have three reasons. Don't slander fellow believers. It involves judging others. It's a rejection of God's authority over your life. And you're interjecting yourself into something that's God's prerogative. Can we take it as a challenge this week? Let's just all think about this as we go out of here tonight, tomorrow, maybe. It'd be a good thing to do all the time, right? That little acrostic is good. But just think about your conversations with people, your interactions with people. Some are so brief and so fleeting, you know, we can't do much, but we can at least have a smile on our face and be somewhat cheerful, nothing else. But we need to constantly have that thought process. What can I do to encourage this person? What can I do to lift them up? That should be our purpose in every conversation, every interaction, every relationship, every day. It's so easy to do the opposite. So easy. Edgar Guest. Anybody know who Edgar Guest was? My wife. He was a poet. Right. The home. I did not know anything about him other than he wrote this poem I'm going to share with you, until I did some work looking up and researching him. He immigrated to the United States from England in 1891. He didn't have much education. He had to go to work because his father died at age 17. He lived in Michigan. He got a job at the Detroit Free Press as a copy boy. I don't know what a copy boy is, but it's got to be the lowest rung in the newspaper. Do we even have newspapers anymore? I'm not real sure. Maybe we do, somewhere. Somewhere along the line, he wrote a poem or two, and they put it in the newspaper. For the rest of his career as a newspaper man, He wrote poems daily. He ended up having his poems syndicated in 300 newspapers across the United States and collected into more than 20 books. He reputedly had a new poem published every day for 30 years somewhere in America. Think of that. He was wildly popular. He had a radio program. later in his life as back in the early days of radio. I can see why because I just I love his work. I don't like this poetry that just sounds good. I can't understand what they're talking about, you know. He just was so practical. And he was so uplifting, and he always, if you read it, I almost read it wondering if he was a man of Christian, and I don't know that he was at all, but he always had a moral, something good to apply to your life. So listen to this, it's called The Wreckers. Now understand, I'm describing something that he saw as a boy about the turn of the century. So, They did things a little different back then. We didn't have explosives to bring buildings down like we do today. They used the old wrecking ball. I think this was even probably before that, maybe. But he wrote this poem. It goes like this. I watched them tearing a building down, a gang of men in a busy town. With a ho-heave-ho and lusty yell, they swung a beam and a sidewall fell. I asked the foreman, are these men skilled as the men you'd hire if you had to build? He gave me a laugh and said, no, indeed, just common labor is all I need. I can easily reckon a day or two what builders have taken a year to do. And I thought to myself as I went my way, which of these two roles have I tried to play? Am I a builder who works with care, measuring life by the rule and square, content with the labor? Excuse me, I missed that last one. Measuring life by the rule and square, or am I a wrecker who walks the town, content with the labor of tearing down? Doesn't that speak volumes? That's exactly what James is trying to tell us here. We don't want to be those who tear down, but those who build. That's what the word edify means, by the way, to build up. That takes labor. It's a lot of hard work to edify people and encourage people. Don't take any effort at all to tear them down. I don't know, I expect you're probably in the same position I am. I don't think of myself as being overly critical or putting people down, but I still feel convicted when I read this because I do it in my mind if I don't do it with my tongue, especially those crazy drivers, you know, out here on the roads. and the incompetent people you have to deal with in the world today. Anyway, I'll confess. Confession is good for the soul, I hope so.