Destruction In Our Midst
Do you ever get tired of watching the news? Do you ever get tired of the talk shows on T.V. or radio? I do!
I can just take so much (not much) of the haranguing without it grieving my spirit. Why is that? Let me tell you why.
Proverbs 16:28 (NASB95), “A perverse man spreads strife, And a slanderer separates intimate friends.” Proverbs 16:28 (NIV), “A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends.”
The Holy Spirit within the believer is grieved when we listen to and/or participate in spreading strife, dissension, slander or gossip. This is contrary to the character of the true Christian.
The verse literally says, “A perverse man (“a man of perversity”) stirs up dissension, causing strife between friends. And by his gossip he causes close friends to doubt and distrust each other.
I know this applies to men and women alike but I think it is noteworthy that it is presented in the masculine. Men are just as guilty of these sins as women!
Dissension, strife, contention, discord, slander, and gossip are not characteristics you and I would want on our resume. Most people of any spiritual maturity run from those who participate in these sins. If you are a partner to or promoter of these sins, you need to check you spiritual temperature. You may be dead and not alive in Christ.
In my forty years of ministry, I have known many people who have been as the “King James” puts it, “whisperers”. (Proverbs 16:28 (KJV), “A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends.”)
They hide behind a cloak of “know it all”. They want the weak and unsuspecting to think they have a corner on the truth or some juicy morsel of “truth” that no one else is privy to. They want to build themselves up by tarring others down.
In the church, you will see them in the corner talking quietly. You will see them with their bible open having their own private “Bible Study” with “their own” audience. When a church leader walks up, they suspend their lesson and conveniently postpone the lesson. Have you known people like this?
The Bible calls them “perverse”. Not my words, God’s Word. The Hebrew here comes from the verb “to turn, turn from, overturn,” which suggests something that is “turned away” from the normal.
These are the ones described by Paul in 1 Timothy 6:3-6, “If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.”
Note carefully this passage and compare your understanding of the “gossip”, the “slanderer”, the “whisperer” to the truth here.
This one is “conceited and understands nothing”. He has a “morbid interest in controversial questions”. He disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strive, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction”.
These people “suppose that godliness is a means of gain”. They have their own agenda. They hope to “gain” importance in the eyes of their audience. They hope to build themselves up in their own pride. They are pretentious, loud, overbearing and stubborn. Do you know someone like this? Is it you?
One of the saddest things is that according to 1 Timothy 5:10, “they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” For all their trouble they are tagged, eventually, by their audience. They are eventually known for what they are by those they have tried to persuade. They are abandoned and left in their own perversity.
The word “diabolos” is the Greek word for Devil. It is used some thirty-eight times in the New Testament. It means: prone to slander, slanderous, accusing falsely, false accuser, slanderer. It is metaphorically applied to a man who, by opposing the cause of God, may be said to act the part of the devil or to side with him.
Whose side are you on?
Pastor Mike Padgett