Is Lying, Gossip, Criticism & Division Really a Sin? | Ryan Kramer

what are life words. We're going to have a little conversation around that over the next couple weeks. So if you got your Bibles, turn with us to James chapter three. That's where we're going to hang out today. And while you're doing that, I just want to welcome all that is tuning in online and watching with us really all across the nation through our YouTube and Pando app that is in 13 different states. We've got viewers over 10,000 subscribers that are following along with us. And I also want to give a quick shout out to all the guys at Liberty Correctional Church family. Would you would you show them some love today? We love you guys. We love you guys. Well, today, I want to talk to you and Andrea, talk to you from this title, turn in your resignation. Turn in your resignation. You got everybody's attention now. They're like, and let's let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for an amazing atmosphere and the presence of your spirit that was in this place during worship. And Lord, we just invite you into this moment. We open our hearts and our minds to you. Speak to us today. Lord, let us see some areas in our own life where we can grow areas, Lord, that you're inviting us into a greater kind of blessed life, Lord, as we live the obedient life before you. And so, Father, just anoints our words today. May you receive all the glory. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. So the book of James, fun fact, this is not the same James that is the disciple James. This James that wrote the book of James is the half brother of Jesus. And he didn't start out because he's the half brother of Jesus. Just following Jesus. You could imagine, like in that home, what it might be like having Jesus as a sibling, right? Like, could you imagine that? You break something in the house and it's not like you can go blame Jesus for breaking the vase for horse-blain in the house. And hide and go seek would not be any fun at all because Jesus would always know where you're hiding. You know, just would not be fun at all. But James didn't start out a believer. He was a doubter. He was skeptical and it wasn't until after the resurrection when Jesus came to James that he became a believer. And what's really cool about this is you see this guy James that was a a doubter at first. And then he eventually becomes a pastor of the Jerusalem church. That when he had this authentic encounter, even though it was his half brother, but with Jesus after the resurrection, that it really changed everything in James. And so this book of James, it's important for us to understand what James' goal is in writing this. So he's writing to Jewish Christians. And these Jewish Christians had been forced to leave their area of Jerusalem and to be scattered all around the region due to persecution. And what they've done is they've

began to gather in these small communities and forming these small church communities. So, you know, and honestly, in most of the New Testament, but especially in James, you know, it's not like a church this size that is coming together and worshiping together. We're talking about, you know, a few families, five families or something that are coming together and doing life. And so James is writing this to these regional home churches. And you would think that because of all the persecution that they've been experiencing, because of everything that they had lost, think about that. Like they're having to leave their hometown, their homes, you know, what they've done for occupation, all that kind of stuff. They're having to leave due to persecution, that you would think that they would bond together. You would think they would of persecution and we're gonna come together and we're gonna be stronger together. You would think that that would be their response, but it wasn't. What began to happen is they began to turn on one another. They started playing favorites and so the rich people that would come in, they started giving them front row seats, favoritism, they started arguing over the decisions and the direction of how things were going in some of these small churches. They began to talk about one another behind their back. There was this sense of jealousy because some of the people had more possessions than other people. Some people had more titles or higher titles or status than other people and some were starting to jockey for leadership positions within these little churches. And so what was happening is that all this infighting and complaining was happening within these churches. And so one of the things that I really want you to see before we read this passage is that you would think

that they would be fighting against the people that are persecuting them, but they're not. They're fighting against the people that are sitting next to them in church. And it's crazy to think that because persecution wasn't taking these churches out. Their mouths were. And so James, when he looked at this book of James, look at it almost like a church-wide text message from their pastor. And he's sending this message out to the entire church. And essentially what he's saying is, he's saying, "Listen, I know life is hard right now, "but anybody can have faith when life is good." He's saying, "Real faith that shows up "when life starts to get hard." - So let's turn to James chapter three. I know you're there and we're gonna start in verse one and let's go through these verses this morning. Verse one says, "Dear brothers and sisters, "not many of you should become teachers in the church, "for we who teach will be judged more strictly." - Our small group recruitment just went down for next semester, it just went down. - Verse two, "Indeed, we all make many mistakes." Just let that sit for a second. We all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control our souls in every other way.

James is telling us that the struggles that we have, if we could control what comes out of our mouth, our life would change. We would be able to allow the Lord to give self control in every other area of our life. Verse three says, "We can make a large horse "go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. "And a small rudder can make a huge ship turn "wherever the pilot chooses to go. "Even though the winds are strong. "In the same way, the tongue is a small thing "that makes grand speeches, but a tiny spark "can set a great forest on fire. "And among all of the parts of the body, "the tongue is a flame of fire. "Think about this church and acts. "When the Holy Spirit came down, "what does it say? "It was like tongues of fire on their head. "God has been after our speech "since we became Christians, "and allowing that to be purified by the Lord. "And James is telling us again here." Says, "It is a whole world of wickedness, "corrupting your entire body. "It can set your whole life on fire, "for it is set on fire by hell itself. "People can tame all of them. but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison.

Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. Friends, that is one of the most sobering verses on worship. Been a worship pastor for many, many years. My mama is here this morning, and just so thankful to have her this morning with us. And she was my worship leader. She taught me how to lead worship, and she taught me scriptures on worship. And one of the most sobering verses is this, as a worshipper, that our mouths try to praise and worship the Lord. And at the same time, curse those who are made in his image. Verse 10, and so blessing and cursing, come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely my brothers and sisters, this is not right. - Yeah, and I think that these two words, I just wanna bring clarity to blessing and cursing. Obviously blessing, we get that, right? We're speaking good, the life words over people. But when we see this word cursing in the original language, like we can read in our context, in our culture, we can read this word curse, and we instantly think evil, right? It's like Halloween season, so we think witches and casting spells. And so what happens is we just make this assumption, well, we don't curse people, because we're not witches, we're not casting spells,

but when you look at this word in the context in which James is giving it, he's not speaking of witches that are telling somebody that they're going to hell. He's talking about people who hope that people experience hell. Like it's speaking down on people, not just cursing per se, but it's just, it's hoping, it's kinda like this karma idea, right? Of somebody hurts us, and so we want bad to happen to them because of what they've done to us, and that's what James is talking about here in verse 10. - Verse 11 says, "Does a spring of water bubble out "both fresh water and bitter water? "Does a fig tree produce olives "or a grapevine produce figs?" No, and you can't draw fresh water from a salty spring. - Can you imagine getting this text message from James? (laughing) Oh man, but let's look, I wanna look back at one of these verses. I wanna look back at verse six, because there's something in verse six that really, really jumps out that I think that we've got to wrap our minds around. In verse six, he says, "Among all the parts of the body, "all the parts, the tongue is a flame of fire." It is a whole world of wickedness corrupting your entire body, like what she was saying earlier,

how the words that come out of our mouth, they impact every area of our life, and then James says this, that it can set your whole life on fire. Has anybody ever said something, responded in a way that set some things on fire, like maybe in the marriage, maybe at work, maybe with a close friend, and James is like, "Listen, it can set your whole life on fire, "and here's why, for it is set on fire by hell, "it's self." You see, when we speak death words like this, oftentimes we chalk it up to having a bad day, or, you know, we're tired, or we're stressed, we talk some about that last week, or does anybody in the room ever get hangry, right? You just, you get hungry, and then it shifts to angry, and so we can use things like that as excuses for the words that come out of our mouth, or, "Man, I'm just keeping it real," you know, and we tell ourselves those things, that it's not that big of a deal but what James is trying to help them see and help us see is that it's a bigger deal than we think. You know, James is helping us see that death words, they may come out of us, but they don't come from us. Like they come out of our mouth, but they come from somewhere that we're going to look a little closer at this morning. See what's crazy is, is I don't know if you've noticed this

or looked at it, but when you look at the word devil in the original language in a Greek language in the New Testament, it's the word diablus. That word means slanderer. Think about that for a second. Like the devil's name is literally a death word, right? And so when we look at how the Bible describes the devil, we start to realize that every death word that comes out of our mouth that we speak, that it starts to sound more and more like him. And so we want to share just four. There's many more, but we want to unpack four death words that really all of us wrestle with from time to time in our life. And the first one is lying. - And so I do want us to take a step up for just a second. I understand this is hard. You know, when I looked at the preaching calendar for the year, because my husband, he is an inner, he prays and he's a planner. Listen, the devil is not in the details. God is in the details. He is so detail oriented, he cares about every single detail. And when I saw this on the preaching calendar, I was like, Lord, no, because we don't want to come up here and just share things with you that we think you need to hear. That would be wonderful. But this is something that if we're going to get up here and do this, we've got to look internally

inside of ourselves, Ryan and I, and say, okay, Lord, where are we missing it? Where can we get better at this? Because this is human nature. This is the fallen nature. This is us not leaning on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the self-control, the fruit of the Spirit, the baptism, the power of the Holy Spirit. This is us being human. And so this morning, these that we're going to share with you, please, be a receiver today. So can you do this for me real quick? Because I know this is heavy. This is hard. Can you just open up your hands right now to the Lord? Just ask the Holy Spirit to allow this sweet conviction. Lord, let it fall like rain. Lord, there are dry places in our life that our words have set a forest fire and it is barren. And today, fall like rain. Bring life back into us. Show us those places that are unlike you, those words that we've spoken, that are unlike you. Help us today in Jesus' name, amen, amen. So the first one is this. The first word, like he said, is lying. There was a study in the University of Massachusetts,

co-patriots that found, thank you, that found that 60% of people can't get through a 10-minute conversation without lying. - Dov? - 60% of people cannot get through a 10-minute conversation without lying. We exaggerate the story to impress people. We tell half-truths to stay out of trouble. Anybody that have had kiddos, right? They're not gonna tell you all of it. They don't wanna get in trouble. We leave out some details because they might make us look bad. We say, "I'm on my way and haven't even left the house yet." (audience laughs) - Cannot get a name, man. And we call them just lying. But Jesus tells us where they come from. And then John 844 says, for you, okay. Remember we opened up our hands, we conviction the Holy Spirit, here we go. John 844, for you are the children of your father, the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth. And what an attack in our culture right now on truth. Because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Did you catch that when Satan lies,

he's not acting out of character, he's just being himself. And so when we lie, we're not just bending the truth, we can't make excuses for it. We've got to understand that we need to speak the truth in love. And so when we lie, those are death words. When we bend the truth, those things are death words. And it aligns us with the character of our enemy, not with the character of our father. - Another death word is criticizing. (laughing) Now think of this, criticizing critical words. They point out what's wrong with everybody else, right? Or criticizing or accusing how somebody parents, how somebody dresses, how they drive. I did that last week about the fast lane, slow drivers in the fast lane, like, which by the way, I'm really interested in the new Tesla car because apparently you could fly over those people and just move past them. I'm like, yeah, are we living in George Jetson days or what? We criticize how people spend their money. A couple of things that we did earlier on in marriage that we realized needed to be really a curse word in our marriage, we needed to stay away from it or statements like, you always do this or you never do this. If you say those in your marriage right now, I would highly recommend that you take those out of your arguments. And when they surface in a argument,

apologize in the moment because there's nothing that our spouse is always doing or never doing. And so those are the kind of statements that they're death words, they're death words. Bringing up somebody's past and bringing it up over and over and over again. I mean, if you think about it, some of us are really good at spotting a speck and somebody else's eye. And we call it just being honest or trying to keep it real, you know, I'll say for me and maybe there's some of you, like I'm what you would call a seer, which means that everywhere I go, it's pretty annoying, but everywhere I go, I see opportunities, opportunities to make something better. The negative about that is wherever my heart is in those seasons, it could either be an opportunity or it could be critical. And I have to be very careful and I'll be on it. Like I'm back and forth on that. And Andrea will call me out, a coworker will call me out, our kids will call me out. And what I've learned to do with that is I've learned to receive it when they help me see that I'm being critical in that moment, not helpful or looking for opportunities that it helps me to go inward to see, okay, right, tracing the root. Like what's going on inside of my heart in this season

that is causing me to drift in an unhealthy space when it comes to my words. - And I think having people around you that can help you with that is so important. We want people around us that are gonna champion us, but we also want people around us that will let us know, hey, this might not be the best way to use that gift or that was a little harsh and, I played college ball. I went much further than him, and he stopped in high school. But I played college ball. And so our kids were just naturally athletic, and we love going to sporting events. That's one thing we found things in our marriage that we love to do together. And one of those things is going to sporting events. And so, but when our kids were playing, it was a little difficult. Because when you sit there and you watch, and you're like, why aren't you running harder? Why aren't you diving on the floor for that ball? Why aren't you-- the criticism starts to come out. And I remember-- so Journey and Jordan and Jeremiah, all three played basketball. But Journey stopped in middle school and started again her junior year to have fun. I don't understand that. You just play a game to have fun. We play a game to win. We cannot play board games at our house. As the young adults, they've seen way too much with Kramer's playing board games. And so he would be sitting there and he would start to like, and we're videoing-- I don't know why we were videoing her play. She wasn't going to the WNBA.

Like, she was-- she hadn't played since seventh grade and she decided to play for fun her junior year. And he is over there and I'm like, she's going to watch this back. Like, you're going to-- but she's going to hear those comments. What-- run, run, why aren't you shooting that, right? And I was like, babe, it's okay. And sometimes we criticize because we want people to-- an opportunity to be better. But, man, we've got to make sure we know the heart behind why we're saying what we're saying and what we're doing, what we're doing. >> Yeah, look at Revelation chapter 12. This gives us a title that we just-- we want to connect the dots with criticism. Revelation chapter 12 verse 10, "For the accuser of our brothers and sisters," that's Satan's title, "the accuser of our brothers and sisters," has been thrown down to earth. He's the one who accuses them. That's you. That's us. He's the one that accuses them before our God day and night. Think about that. Day and night. That's his full-time job is to criticize and accuse how you're living your life, how we're living our life. And so, you know, when we, as followers of Jesus, when we keep that running list of everybody's faults and we keep criticizing people's decisions, what's happening is we are doing Satan's job for him. And that's something that you and I have to feel the weight of that, that when we have a critical spirit and we're speaking critical words, that we are doing Satan's job for him. >> The third thing is this, it's slander. >> Slander is talking about people behind their backs in a way that tears them down. >> Kind of like I was doing with the referees for the Florida State Miami game last night. Hmm.

>> Listen, let's move on. >> Let's move on. >> That was-- but, you know, we pull down people's character and reputations when they're not in the room. Man, that is the enemy of our souls. Did you hear about? I'm only telling you so you can pray. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Questioning their motives when they're not in the room. Friends, we cannot assume someone's motives when they're not in the room to defend themselves. You know, there are pastors that we follow and they're on television or, I guess, now YouTube, Instagram, whatever reel you have. And there are some that we don't. But one of the things that we did early on in our marriage was we chose not to criticize people that we don't. I don't know what God's called them to do. I don't know what God's called them to say. We've done that even in our own home. We've tried to protect our home from a place of criticism because we know this once it starts to, I'm sorry, of slander because once it starts to infiltrate our mouths, it will come out. And so I couldn't think that I'm just not going to slander people. I'm going to slander people out there, but I'm not going to slander my husband because I didn't make sure that when my kids came to me, I wasn't talking bad about their father when he wasn't in the room. There were things that I needed to do to protect and to bring harmony and unity in our home that I protected that. Now, it doesn't mean that if something wasn't right, I'd be like, you know what?

That really, I'm sure that hurt you. And you know what I would do? I'd be like, why don't you go talk to your dad about that? Just like you came and talked to me. Why don't you go talk to your dad about that? Because he loves you. See, I knew that was his heart motive. When my kids fought, even though it didn't look like they loved each other, one of them would come to me talking about the other one and telling them what they did and why they did it. And I'd be like, you know what? Why don't you go talk to them about that? You're going to have to work out that conflict if you can't. I'll come in and help you. But why don't you try to talk that out and work that out with them? Because see, this is what slander looks like. In Job chapter 1, we see Satan bringing slander against Job. And Jesus said, have you seen my servant Job? And this is what Satan replied. He said to the Lord, yes, but Job has a good reason to fear God. You always put a wall of protection around him in his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is. But reach out and take away everything he has. And surely, he will curse you to your face. Slander, that's not what Job did. And you see later, Job's wife says, curse God and just go ahead and die. Those words had already been spoken in the presence of the Lord. Those words of slander, when people aren't there to share their heart motive or to apologize, we've got to give them those opportunities.

Oh, I'm sorry. He's waiting for me and I'll say the point. Job isn't in the room. And Satan is questioning his motives. He only loves you because you've blessed him. When we slander someone, we are tearing down their character. And we are casting on them a motive that we don't know their heart. Only God does. Yeah, we're not just tearing down their name. We're living up to his. We're living up to Satan's name. And then the fourth one, the last one that we want to share with you is Death Word is dividing words of division. If you've ever split firewood, you know that if a log is big, you just don't start attacking that log with an axe. You use what's called a splitting wedge, right? And what you do with that wedge is you look for a crack that has naturally already started to form in the log. And you take that wedge and you kind of put the corner of the wedge into that little crack. And then you just, some little taps, little tap here, little tap here, in order to get the wedge, the tip of the wedge kind of buried in that crack. And then you begin to hammer it. You begin to drive that wedge deeper and deeper into the log until it splits. And dividing words, when we speak those kinds of words, they operate in a very similar way. you've said, that we've said, that essentially what happens is it starts out by looking for a little crack, right? A little disagreement somewhere. Or maybe it was a hurt. Somebody said something and it hurt. Or maybe it's a difference of opinion. And you find this little crack of a difference of opinion and it starts small, right? The wedge that starts getting tapped in, starts small. It's a little comment here. It's a little sarcasm here or there or a comment like, did you notice this person did that or didn't do that? And once

that wedge is set with our words, then we begin to hit harder and harder until a family member or a friendship or a marriage or sometimes even a church splits. And the scary thing is, is that those kinds of words are so common in our culture today. They're so common that we don't even see them anymore as divisive words. We give them the label discernment. Not divisive words, but we look at as discernment. And I think about, I can't help but to draw the conclusion or the connection as a better word to the Pharisees that we looked at earlier in this, the series. People that wanted things to be done their way and if it wasn't done, their way, then the other people were wrong. And so we end up saying things like, a lot of people are saying this or saying that or maybe it's with the church, maybe it's like, I'm concerned about the direction of the church that then is a little wedge that's put in a little crack that then other conversations start hammering that in and creating division within the church. We see it culture wise, like this is a big one, like, well, if you vote that way, you can't be a Christian. It's a little crack that then starts driving just a wedge and their little comments that began to create more and more separation. Because here's what I would, I would just pitch out to you that if we make a statement that's that defined, you have completely lost your witness to that individual. And when you think about Scripture, that Scripture talks about that love covers a multitude of what? Sins. That's exposing dividing. That's not loving and covering. And can I say this to you? You know, you said something. We, it is rampant in our culture, church family, we have got to be different. It is rampant in our culture, division, separation. Years ago, the statistics of, of families being broken was the same inside the church as it was outside. Political environments can radically divide families. And we have to be so careful and cautious and remember, we are not citizens of this world. We can vote and we have that opportunity and freedom in this nation. Thank you, Lord. But this place is not my home. And so making sure that we don't, we heal the cracks, not drive the wedge deeper into it. And will we be a church in the capital city of Tallahas Florida, Tallahassee, where we say we will We will bring together. - Yeah, I wanna give you just a very practical example. And I'm gonna end this.

I'm going to, I wanna kinda shine the spotlight on pastors for a second. And because I think that this helps us see the amount of division that we see in the body of Christ. I'm not talking about this church, I'm talking about capital C church, right? There was an event that happened in the last 12 months that was a national event. And this actually led me to go off of social media for three months because it was so painful to watch on social media. And so pastors were having to respond to this event and there was a variety of different types of responses. But there were groups of pastors that were well known pastors that were going on social media and they were saying, if your pastor didn't stand on the platform this Sunday and say this or this, you need to leave your church and go find another church. And I'm just telling you like that, that's not Holy Spirit led like, and we all have moments that we step into the flesh, right? And the more that we become a follower of Jesus, the more Bible we know, the easier it is for us to not recognize when we do it. So there's certainly grace that's there. But those are the type of statements that are blanket statements that what you are making the assumption of is that if a pastor didn't respond to an event the way that you responded to the event, then they're not following the leading of the spirit.

And that's demonic. Like that is demonic because what you're saying is your ability to hear what you're supposed to do for the congregation of which you are leading is what everybody should do, whether they're in a rural city, whether they're in big city, whether they're leading a white church or a black church or a multicultural church. And it's just, that's the kind of division that we have to really be careful of because if you think about what we've been talking about with these words, that idea of if it's not done your way, then it's wrong. That's a pharisaical spirit and we wanna try to, we wanna try to step out of that. And when we step in it and we're all gonna step in it that we recognize it or we have people in our life that can speak into it. And we make it right, we ask for forgiveness and we walk in Greece. - And just so you know, it wasn't something that was anti-bible. It wasn't a theological, there was no chapter and verse that you could look at and be like, "Oh, in this verse and this chapter, "this is how you're supposed to deal with it or handle it." We're not talking about something that was biblically written. It was something that was an opinion. And friends, that can divide our homes, our jobs, our opinions and assumptions can bring division

into our homes. And scripture says a house divided against itself will not stand. If there is anything that you can pray for our nation right now, it is to pray that the spirit of division, leave Washington DC. And I'm not talking about a political party. I'm talking about a demonic spirit that wants to pull down a nation that is built on the principles of our God and principles of the word of God. If there is anything that you wanna post on social media, anything that you wanna say or to pray for our nation, that God will use us as believers to bring unity back because a house divided against itself will not stand. - Watch how division works and we're beginning to wrap up. But in Matthew chapter 13, you may remember we talked some about the seed and the sower in a series or two ago. In Matthew chapter 13, verse 25, here's what Jesus says, but that night, he's telling a story, but that night as the worker slipped, his enemy, the enemy came and planted him. And then later Jesus says that enemy who planted the weeds among the wheat is the devil. I want you to notice in these verses and especially in this parable that the devil doesn't burn down the field. He just plants some weeds, some small weeds in, and then slips away. You see, the devil doesn't need to split your family, he doesn't need to split your marriage or your friendships, he doesn't need to split the church.

He just needs to find a crack, right? And then what he does is he starts with a little wedge and then he hands you and I, the hammer. We go on social media and we're hammering the divisive words in with the things that we say. It's not the enemy that's doing that. He is handing us the hammer and we're doing the work. So friends, when we are using divisive language, we're not just picking aside, right? We're not just Democrat or Republican or whatever the different like Baptist or Pentecostal or we're not just picking aside, we're picking his side. We're picking his side. So think about it. When we lie, we're taking on his character. When we criticize, we're doing his job. When we slander, we're living up to his name and when we divide, we're picking his side. Listen, I doubt any of us in this room or watching online would say that we worship the devil, right? Like I doubt, if there's a few of you that do like welcome to TC, we love having you here. I would love to hang out with you and we'll do lunch or something, but listen, we don't have to worship the devil to work for the devil. And when we choose to operate in death words, no matter what reason or excuse for giving, we may not be worshiping the devil, but we're certainly working for him. And so how do we make sure kind of back to the title of today? How do we make sure that we're not on the devil's payroll? Like we're not working further, we're not coming to church and worshiping out at church and then working for the devil throughout the week? Like how do we do that? Let's look at our challenge. We'll look at our last two weeks challenges and then today's. So week one's challenge was weigh your words before you release them, right? We're going to weigh the weight of the word that we're about to say, weigh it.

Is it the time and the Holy Spirit helps us with this because it might need to be something that is said, but we weigh it to say is now the time. Do we say it now? Holy Spirit lead us with this. Do we weigh our words? Week two challenge was trace the fruit to the root. Are we producing good fruit with our words or bad fruit, rotten fruit? And this week, this is our challenge. Stop doing the devil's dirty work. And listen, friends, we don't know him a two week notice. We can resign today. We don't have to put what we can't put him on notice. But today we can choose not to speak words of death. Words of death over our community, over our jobs, over our workplace, speaking words of death over our children, over our finances, speaking words of death over our friends but we can today turn in our notice, say no more, no more lying. [BLANK_AUDIO] but instead words of life asking ourselves, who Lord, who am I working for? See these words and these things come out of my mouth. Who am I working for? Am I doing your bidding? Am I am I doing better for the kingdom of God? Or am I bringing division in my, in my office, in my workplace? Am I bringing division in my family? Am I dividing one friend against the other? Lord, who am I, who am I working for? All right, all right. Fred, we're going to slip up. I can tell you right now that some of us are going to lie, some of us are going to be critical.

Some of us are going to slander, some of us are going to divide, that we're going to slip up. But I think the hope of today is that that we quit making the excuses for it and that we begin to recognize it. We begin to recognize who we're working for. Our words in my mouth may say we're working for Jesus on Sunday, but is it, are they saying we're working for somebody else? We're working for somebody else during the week. For in today's a heavy talk next week is life hurts. It's going to be a little lighter. But I think for all of us it's listening to be challenged by a word like today so that when we leave this place it's a desire to bring life and wholeness and unity to lift people up to have the kind of love that covers a multitude of sins. It doesn't mean we excuse sin, but it means we don't expose it. And, Fred, I don't know about you, but that's the kind of person that I long and I desire to be. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it and if you did make sure you subscribe. Also, if something spoke to you in a special way

share it with a friend because you never know how it could transform someone's life. If you're interested in checking out our service times make sure you go to our website at transform tlh.com and we hope to see you at TC on a Sunday. Thanks so much and have a great day. [BLANK_AUDIO]