Bill Johnson - The Danger of Gossip in the Church
Gossip and slander mirror the value system of an inferior kingdom, causing evil to increase. It tries to bring death to its target and ultimately to the one gossiping. It’s a two-for-one deal for the enemy; it’s the reason it is one of the primary tools the enemy uses to weaken the strength of a believer. He can’t cool my affection for the Lord; he can’t dissuade me from my pursuit of Him; he can’t get me to stop wanting God to be glorified through a gospel of power. But what he can do is try to bring that fly into the ointment to defile the entire container of anointing. Thank you! Yeah, yeah, good morning! Still morning? Yes, got 20 more minutes of morning. Good morning; nice to see you! Glad you showed up! Tell you what, that sun is shining outside. It took willpower for all of you to show up. Finally, there’s that ball of fire in the sky, and it feels so nice to be out there. I plan to sit in the sun this afternoon after two more services.
And then, some funny signs: «Toilet out of order; please use floor below.» That’s okay! «Automatic washing machines; please remove all your clothes when the light goes out.» «London department store; bargain basement upstairs outside of a second-hand shop; we exchange anything: bicycles, washing machines, etc. Why not bring your wife along and get a wonderful bargain?» I’m just reporting the news; I didn’t make this up. This is from a farmer’s field: the farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the bull charges. Here are some newspaper headlines: «War dims hope for peace.» Yeah, wow, I bet it did. «Cold wave linked to temperatures.» «Red tape holds up new bridges.» «New study of obesity looks for larger test group.» Just two more; just two more: «Astronaut takes blame for gas in spacecraft.» Last one, and the winner is: «Typhoon rips through cemetery; hundreds dead.» Oh, goodness! Why don’t you open your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 20? Proverbs 20. I have a bit of a different word today. In fact, I wanted to get it exact and precise, so I’ve got a whole bunch of things I’m just going to read off to you—scriptures and thoughts.
Back in the 1950s, many of you have heard of the healing revival. It was a glorious time where things were happening around the world, especially across the United States, that were literally unparalleled in history. One of the tragedies that occurred is that some of those involved in that stream of miracles began to slowly compromise in their personal lives. When they did, they saw the miracles continued, and it seemed to—I don’t know—in their logic and reasoning, they seemed to think that God using them in miracles when they compromised a little was actually His approval of their lifestyle or His acceptance of their lifestyle. Some of them just increased and fell into horrible, horrible sin. When God performs a miracle through someone, it is not His mark of approval upon that person; He is affirming the power of His word. The reason that the whole idea of God using people who are outright in sin is offensive to us is that we don’t understand His value for His word. The reason that’s offensive to me—and maybe some of you—the reason I have a problem with that is because I don’t fully understand how and why He values His word so much. It is the value of His word that He adds the favor, the breakthrough, and the increase.
What I’m going to talk to you about today is our words, but I’m going to get more specific. I’m going to discuss gossip, but we’ll touch on gossip, rumor, slander, and offense. It’s an ugly family right there that needs to be taken out back and shot! That family of values and perspectives and shapes— I personally believe that the enemy cannot cool our affection for the Lord; he cannot dampen our desire for greater breakthrough; he cannot rob me of my zeal and my love for Jesus. But what he can do is try to infect what I carry, and he does so through offense, through rumor, through slander, through gossip. If he can involve me in those things, then that’s what we’re going to talk about. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Put on your seatbelts! Yay!
I’m going to read most of the scriptures off my paper. It’ll help me. I like the New American Standard on this first verse better than what I normally study out of, and it’s Proverbs 20. Are you there? Verse 19—did I tell you where to open? Proverbs 20. «He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a gossip.» Now think with me: «He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets; therefore, don’t hang around the gossip.» What’s the point? Gossip will always give birth to slander; they are related. Gossip is a foul misuse of our ability to bring life. Many people talk to be heard; another way to put it is they talk to vent instead of to redeem. The Bible says to speak the truth in love; it doesn’t say to speak your opinion in love. I don’t have a right to project my stuff onto you, and the greater my need to be right, the greater my bent towards gossip and offense.
Alright, here’s a couple of points. Just hang on; it’s going to take us a while to realize what actually happened to us. There’s an interesting series of verses in Proverbs 26, beginning with verse 20: «For lack of wood, the fire goes out"—that makes sense; «and where there is no whisperer"—that’s gossip—"contention quiets down.» What would happen in mainstream extreme media if the whisperers stopped talking? «Recession is just a bad idea; that’s all it is, that people believe.» «For lack of wood, a fire goes out; where there is no whisperer, contention quiets down. Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so a contentious man is to kindle strife.» «The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels; they go down into the innermost parts of the body.» Stop right there; this is kind of a strange verse to me. «The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels; they go down into the innermost parts of the body.» It is strange to me that this exact verse is a repeat of Proverbs 18:8—exact verse! Why would he say such an, I think, odd statement twice in the same book, word for word? «The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels.»
When I go to my favorite restaurant, they serve me dainty morsels. I have my phone with me at all times because it’s important to me that I record my experience. Why? Just so I can review them later, reset my priorities about what’s important in my life. I was actually in a restaurant overseas, a three-Michelin star restaurant, and I ate the meal before I took pictures! Oh, it was horrible! It was horrible! I waited until they brought the same meal out to somebody else, and I went and took a picture. I did! I crave dainty morsels! And here’s the point: the words of gossip are dainty morsels because a person has a wrong appetite. The seeds of a gossiper are the fruit of slander. Gossip and slander are romantic partners, and their offspring is death, loss, and destruction. Words of gossip destroy, and they can never be retrieved. Gossip always seems reasonable; there’s always logic behind it, but it’s from the wisdom of this world.
According to James, that which is earthly, natural, and demonic—gossip always lacks information. Proverbs teaches that the first person to present his case always sounds right until you interview the second person. And in gossip, you only get one person; gossip is always deceptive in nature. Gossip reveals a stronghold that exists because of the need to be right. Those with the strongest need to be right are the most easily persuaded or bent towards gossip, slander, and offense. It’s called self-preservation; it’s called fighting for personal interests. I heard John Paul Jackson say the Lord spoke to him one day and said, «You don’t have a right to be right; you have a right to be broken.» Now, I’m giving you information for other Christians so that you can pass this on. I know it doesn’t apply to you, but you might want to take notes for those friends of yours. Gossip reveals strongholds. I talked to you about strongholds and thoughts that are actually created by patterns of thought; gossip actually does that. It creates patterns of thought that give a place of resonance for demonic influence. Gossip, in essence, is agreeing with what the enemy says and thinks. Gossip and offense exist where there’s a need to protect self-interest.
Gossipers usually veil their dysfunction with virtuous titles, which gives it permission to stay in shape. Personality gossips most often have to believe their evil reports to justify the suspicion or hatred. If you have undealt animosity towards an individual, you will attract misinformation about them because you need it to justify what you feel towards them. It’s the reason you don’t let the sun go down on your anger; you keep yourself free from that kind of contamination because if it’s not dealt with, then you will attract misinformation and believe it to be true. Gossip gives a false sense of being responsible as it hides under the guise of giving necessary information. It’s for that reason many leaders fall prey to gossip in efforts to be responsible with information.
I have a lot more jokes, and it looks like I’m going to need them! While I’m talking, I better flip those up so I can turn to them quickly. Gossip and slander mirror the value system of an inferior kingdom, causing evil to increase. It tries to bring death to its target and ultimately to the one gossiping. It’s a two-for-one deal for the enemy; it’s the reason it’s one of the primary tools the enemy uses to weaken the strength of a believer. He can’t cool my affection for the Lord; he can’t dissuade me from my pursuit of Him; he can’t get me to stop wanting God to be glorified through a gospel of power. But what he can do is try to bring that fly into the ointment to defile the entire container of anointing. Gossip is a seed that will be harvested. The one who gossips reaps the fruit of it but will always blame others for the injustice they’re experiencing.
I would never say that when you and I have difficulties or troubles, we brought them upon ourselves, because that wouldn’t be true. We live in a world where there’s conflict, but I have watched people who suffer season after season, knowing they’re just eating the fruit of their own words, and they’ve not yet learned the power of sowing and reaping. They don’t realize they’ve actually brought stuff upon themselves through their slander, their criticism, their resentment; they’ve actually increased the trouble in their own lives. My goodness, let’s face it—there’s enough trouble without us adding to it, right? Gossip is an effort to control the narrative according to our conclusion. Gossip is an effort to control the narrative about an individual or circumstance. Control and manipulation are actually witchcraft in diapers; that’s what it is! It’s the nature, the essence of witchcraft: control and manipulation. And while none of us would ever overtly embrace witchcraft, yet compromise in these areas in our speech about another person, the willingness to spread a story, a rumor, is actually our partnership with the spirit of witchcraft. Gossip is consistent with the thoughts and intentions of Satan.
People who gossip have made conclusions without or unaffected by prayer. The conclusions are often values-driven, but they are, in and of themselves, a contradiction, much like robbing banks to give to the poor—it’s a contradiction! You break one value in order to show you have virtue in another. I think I already stated it, but it says to speak the truth in love, not your own opinion in love. If somebody comes to me and they have a concern, and I know through their conversation that they came to a conclusion and then prayed, I’m going to be suspicious of their advice. If they come to me, having come to a conclusion through prayer, I will pay attention to their advice. What’s the difference? If you come to the wrong conclusion and then pray, you can have a self-imposed burden that isn’t of the Lord.
Let me illustrate this through a rather humorous story: one of our prophet friends was awakened in the night by a demonic figure in the corner of his room. He prayed, rebuked, and bound; he did everything he knew to do all night long, and the thing never left. His burden for prayer, his intensity, his focus was intense. When the sun finally rose in the morning, he saw it was a coat rack! Was the burden that he felt real? Yeah! Was his intensity of prayer real? Yeah! But it was all misdirected because it was misinformed, and gossip always misinforms you!
That was a good point! Dash! Gossipers are both judge and jury, passing their judgments as insight and conviction when, in reality, it’s the ultimate expression of fear, insecurity, and arrogance. Gossip comes from an inflated ego. I bet you’re glad I’m talking about all those other Christians! Gossip creates misinformation. How many of you ever did this in grade school where the teacher would line up 20, 30, or 40 students and whisper a secret to the first one? They would tell it to the second one, then to the third, the fourth. By the time you get to the end, it’s a completely different story! That by itself should make us stay as far away from gossip as we possibly can because it creates misinformation.
You could start with «Julie bought a white horse, rode it to church, and her hair was all messed up,» and by the time you get to the 30th student, «she bought a white Mustang convertible while she sat in the parking lot because she was embarrassed about her hair.» That’s what gossip does: it creates and invites misinformation because it’s interpreted through the perspective and values of the individual that heard. Wow! Gossip is a coward’s way of dealing with a problem. If there’s a problem, you go directly; at a minimum, you go to somebody who is involved in a solution—not someone you think should be involved in the solution, because then you’ll come to me. Stay away!
I had somebody come to me once; they unloaded all their stuff about somebody else, and I listened to everything. I just milked it, and they just gave me all their stuff. I said, «Now, have you gone to them—the person?» They said, «No, I can’t; they’re, uh, whatever. They’re too hard to talk to.» It’s usually a spiritual excuse. «I just didn’t discern,» you know, whatever. So I said, «Well, I will give you seven days to talk to them because in seven days, I’m going to go to them and tell them what you told me.» It really cuts down how many people want to confide in you, which I felt tremendously inspired by the Lord when I shared it! It’s true: gossip, in essence, devalues relationship, connection, and trust.
We attract the words we value. Luke says—in fact, both the Gospel of Mark and Luke have this concept that teaches, «Be careful what you listen to, because whatever you listen to, whatever you value, whatever you let through your quality control, more will be given to you besides.» In other words, what I receive will attract more, and that really is a principle of the kingdom for life. If you constantly have people who come to you with gossip, it’s not a moment for shame; it’s just a moment to make a decision: if you value it, you will attract it. If God inhabits praise, then who inhabits gossip? Words are, uh, I don’t know if «entities» is the right word; words are that which hosts presence, and it depends on what presence we host, which is determined by what we say. Jesus taught that He only said what He heard the Father say, but in John 6, He said, «My words to you are spirit.»
Gossip is often used to force someone to change their conduct and/or position on a matter through manipulation. And as I stated earlier, both manipulation and control are expressions of witchcraft. Gossip perverts the beauty and the wonder of the power of the tongue, just as prostitution perverts the beauty of sexual intimacy in marriage. That which was given to us as a gift to use for building up and creating is then used to kill, steal, and destroy. Gossip is the preferred tool of the enemy to destroy the life of a believer—it’s a two-for-one deal!
I want to read one more portion of scripture to you, and it’s out of Ephesians 4, beginning with verse 29: «Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.» I’m going to come back to this verse. «Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.» Notice what is in the context of our speech towards one another: «Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.» Gossip is the hiding place for unbelief. Gossip is the hiding place for unforgiveness. «Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.»
Here’s where I want to end: I want to end with verse 29 and just talk through this verse with you. I would say, you know, the concept of Ecclesiastes 10, verse 1 and 2, about the fly in the ointment: we’ve got a perfumer who makes this beautiful perfume, and one fly gets in it and ruins the entire batch. That’s what happens in the anointing: the Lord has given us a grace to call something extraordinary that He’s imparted to us, but through our words, we can actually plant small things called flies—things that are attracted to death and decay—we can put that in the ointment, and the entire thing is affected.
We’ve been given something— as Dan mentioned earlier, it’s obviously not the only thing going on in the world, but we get to be a part of it, which I’m glad about. We get to play; we get to be in the game, and I’m happy about that! But in such a crucial moment, if there were anything that I would say Bethel family, let’s be careful of, it would be this right here: be careful of this! Because in the zeal of life, it’s easy to misspeak, misrepresent, and say things out of a conviction of being right, out of a conviction or whatever, and misappropriate words that create damage and actually become the fly in the ointment.
And in this case, he says, «Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth.» I’ve had a couple unwholesome words—two or three in my lifetime! Yeah, forgive me for lying right there! «Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification.» So the target of my words is to be redemptive—not my chance to vent. A large percentage of people talk to vent, not talk to redeem. «That it might give edification according to the need of the moment.» Now the need of the moment means I have to be present: if I bring this problem, this conflict, this situation into it, it will tarnish and taint what I have to say to you. But if I am with you literally for your welfare, for your benefit, I will speak edifying words according to the need of the moment.
It will be a timely word. Proverbs talks about the beauty and the wonder of a timely word in season; «apples of gold in settings of silver"—it’s this beautiful picture of what timely words look like. But then, the last phrase of that verse is that it may give grace to those who hear. Okay, think with me for a minute: I can come to Ben and Heather, and I can say, «God is really promoting you as a father and a mother in the house, and the prophetic grace on your lives is making a mark on who we are as a church family.» I can see and recognize the grace that’s on their lives; I call attention to it. I speak wholesome words, edifying words according to this moment that we are in as a church family.
But what have I done? This is the most unusual thing, because the grace of God is divine favor! How can I give them divine favor? What the Lord, I believe, is saying in this passage is that when I choose to strengthen and edify somebody, God comes behind me and says, «Who you choose, I choose!» And I will now add divine favor upon the words of blessing that you just declared. So in a very real sense—this is going to sound wrong, and you’ve already called it a cult, so it’s too late! Oh, sorry, I just slipped out; sorry, I don’t know how that happened! —in an unusual sense, we get to, in some measure, direct the grace of God by our words.
There are a lot of things He can do without us, but there are also a lot of things He won’t do without us. There are things that are in His heart, and it’s to release the grace of God over individual people’s lives. So if my words edify according to the need of the moment, if that brings grace, what do my words of condemnation, criticism, gossip, and rumor do? They actually partner with the thief! I’m not saying if you’re gossiped about, because all of us have been at least one time in our lives. You’re not this lost victim to the careless comments of people, but if you’re not aware that what their comments add to your life, you can think that you’re doing something wrong when, in fact, you have to boldly stand in who you are in Christ.
Did that make any sense at all? That’s a kind of an awkward place to end this thing, but I think I’m just going to end it right there, and it’s over with! Once you stand! The most graceful ending ever! Yes! Smooth, yeah! Smooth, smooth like butter. Frozen butter!
You know what? I’m not going to do an altar call for this, but I would like to bring the altar to you and say probably most everybody in this room needs to come forward. So I’ll just send the altar your way, knowing that you would come if you were given the chance. Honestly, I feel like we just need to repent and intentionally mark gossip, rumor, and slander—all that stuff—as enemies of our soul, refusing to give any place for that stuff to set down roots in our thinking, our emotions, our values, the way we see. Gossip always perverts perspective, and if I am an audience of continuous gossip, I will always see the world around me in a perverted sense.
I don’t mean sexual perversion; I just mean distorted. It’s like those mirrors in the funny houses, you know, where you’re fat and skinny and tall and small. It distorts stuff! So, Father, we come before You and ask that You would forgive us as a people for carelessness in speech—carelessness in what we think. Gossip is actually a contradiction in terms of us being members of one another. Gossip is self-harm. Father, I ask that You would heal us and forgive us for any involvement in this stuff. I renounce gossip; I renounce rumor and slander. I renounce these things and declare You will have no place in my life, in my heart, and that You’d heal us as a people.
Thank you! Now I’m going to take a moment here just to invite people to come to know Jesus, and here’s something to remember: if gossip destroys the concept of family, then gossip is actually an anti-evangelism movement because it brings people into something they can’t be a part of. How many of you say you just renounce gossip, slander, all that stuff; you just have no part of it? Amen! Amen! I know that we do that, but sometimes I think it just needs to be said.
I know there are also chances that people in the room have never made a commitment to Jesus as your Lord, as your Savior, the one who is to be truly the master of your life. The Bible says, «What does it profit a person if he gains the entire world, but he loses his own soul?» That’s one of the most profound questions in the whole Bible: «What do you profit if you get everything, and then you lose the only thing that matters—that’s your own soul.» You have the opportunity this morning, if you’re outside of that place of relationship with Jesus. Today is your opportunity to say, «I surrender everything to Him.»
If there’s anybody in the room that would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave until I know I’ve found real peace with God,» then I want you to put a hand up where you are. We’re going to make an agreement with you. If that’s you, put your hand up real quickly, please! Right down here. Yes! Wonderful, wonderful! Anybody else? Yes! Thank you!