1. Spreading Rumours
People do this all the time without checking the legitimacy of what they heard…or they repeat a rumour that does not build up or edify anyone, and once the rumour is repeated there’s no telling where it will go. You need to know this about rumours – they are never benign… they are always malignant. Rumours are always damaging to the truth.
2. Flattery
The Bible warns against flattery in…
• Proverbs 26:28 (The Message)
Liars hate their victims; flatterers sabotage trust.
• Proverbs 29:5 (The Message)
A flattering neighbour is up to no good; he’s probably planning to take advantage of you.
This is not saying that we can’t pass on sincere compliments. It’s always right to affirm and encourage people; but flattery is a form of manipulation; and anyone who flatters is trying to take advantage of you.
3. Insinuations
Or, what the Bible calls whispering. This is to introduce an idea or point of view stealthily – slyly or in a covert way.
• 2 Corinthians 12:20 (AMP)
For I am fearful that somehow or other I may come and find you not as I desire to find you, and that you may find me too not as you want to find me—that perhaps there may be factions (quarrelling), jealousy, temper (rivalry, divided loyalties), selfishness, whispering, gossip, arrogance (self-assertion), and disorder among you.
• Proverbs 16:28 (AMP) A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.
4. Slander
Or another word we’re more familiar with that is synonymous is gossip. I beg you in the Name of Jesus…don’t be a gossip monger or a slanderer!!! Don’t be a party to spreading stories about someone’s children that you’ve heard from your own children. But you might say, “It’s true…so I’m not lying!!!” But is it a good report? If the shoe was on the other foot, would it be something you’d want others to say about you or your child?
These are the questions we ought to ask ourselves before we pass on the poisonous darts of slander & gossip. Now why do people always come to you with their gossip? Is it because somehow you’ve made them think that you are like them? If you don’t want to become a garbage dump for gossip & slander, you must tell those people that you don’t appreciate them telling you what they just told you. And then immediately start praying – out loud – for the person that’s being gossiped about.
• Galatians 5:7-10 (The Living Bible)
You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God who has done it, for he is the one who has called you to freedom in Christ. But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others. [Pastor Nichols translation “It only takes one skunk to make the whole forest smell like skunk”] I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will deal with that person, whoever he is, who has been troubling and confusing you.
In natural law, you can be prosecuted for receiving and passing along stolen goods. According to God’s law, you will be judged and rewarded for receiving and passing along gossip & slander.
5. Silence
Not speaking up for truth when someone is opposing God’s Word. Silence is really nothing more than accommodation or tolerance and they both lead to acceptance. Not standing up for what we say we believe is one of the worst positions we could ever take. Silence is disobedience…believing and obeying God’s Word is what demonstrates to a lost and dying world that we are Christians. A true Bible believing Christian can’t be silent.
6. Hypocrisy
This is lying with your life. You act one way around Christians and then another way around sinners. Hypocrisy is one of my greatest concerns in working with young people in our church. They grow up in our church and academy, therefore they know the language and they know what they are supposed to say but they don’t possess the conviction of what they say they believe in their heart. And when they get to be teenagers & young adults, it shows in their actions - the way they conduct themselves in the presence of God, the way they treat the Word, and the way they relate to spiritual authority. When our youth don’t possess godly convictions, they war against any restraints the Word, parents, or spiritual authority places on their life. They’ll start referring to restraints as rules & legalism.
• Deuteronomy 30:15 Message
“Keep His rules & live.”
1Tim. 1:9 Tells us that laws/rules are not given to control people who obey but for the disobedient. In the New Covenant we keep God’s rules because we want to…not because we have to.
• 1 Timothy 4:1-2 (NLT)
Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from what we believe; they will follow lying spirits and teachings that come from demons. These teachers are hypocrites and liars. They pretend to be religious, but their consciences are dead.
• 1 Timothy 4:2 (The Message)
These liars have lied so well and for so long that they’ve lost their capacity for truth.
Not practicing what we say we believe causes Truth Decay.
All lies are untruth; therefore they are sin. Sin is any selfish decision that violates God’s Holy Word. Sin is always directed against God, and sin is always offensive to God.