Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Please turn to .

If you weren’t here during the early part of 2019, we have been going through the letter of James and studying it verse-by-verse.

As your pastor, I strongly believe that teaching and explaining the Bible is my responsibility and my calling.

I am responsible for me to be faithful to God by feeding you God’s Word so that you would gain a deeper understanding of God and to live a godly life.

Text

Please turn to .

If you weren’t here during the early part of 2019, we have been going through the letter of James and studying it verse-by-verse.

As your pastor, I strongly believe that teaching and explaining the Bible is my responsibility and my calling.

I am responsible for me to be faithful to God by feeding you God’s Word so that you would gain a deeper understanding of God and to live a godly life.

I think

Doing verse-by-verse is known as Expository Preaching or Expositional Preaching.

We don’t want to have a superficial or shallow understanding of the Bible.

We should go deep and discover the truth.

We are returning to the book of James to learn about the sin of slandering.

READ.

We are returning to the book of James to learn about the sin of slandering.

Expositional (verse 11a)

James begins by giving us a very clear instruction, “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.”

James is addressing to the Christians by referring to them as “brothers.”

He’s commanding them not to slander one another, speak ill of one another, speak degradingly of one another, OR defame one another.

James knows clearly that there are Christians who are slandering each other.

Why is that?

You may remember that there were some problems happening.

For instance, there were Christians who were favouring the rich over the poor; there were Christians who had issues with their language and words and not knowing how to control their tongue; there were Christians who wanted to be teachers or in authority, but they could not; there were Christians who were fighting each other because of selfish desires in their hearts.

When Christians are fighting and quarrelling (or arguing) with each other over a lot of issues, they usually end up including personal attacks and judgmental attitudes.

For instance,

This sometimes happens in debates.

When both sides of the debate are making their case, and one side is losing the debate badly and do not know how to defend his/her position, that side could start attacking the other side personally by putting labels on them.

This is known as “Ad Hominem.”

People who have little to no experience with debates sometime resort in personal attacks because they do not know how to distinguish the difference between attacking the IDEA vs. attacking the PERSON.

What Is Slandering?

People who have little to no experience with debates sometime resort in personal attacks because they do not know how to distinguish the difference between attacking the IDEA vs. attacking the PERSON.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines slandering as:

“The utterance of false characters or misrepesentations which defame and damage another’s reputation.”

The definition of slandering could broken down into three ideas:

To speak false about someone.

To destroy someone’s character, integrity and reputation.

To publicly proclaim this message

Slandering is a destructive speech.

And it comes in...

Three Ways Of Slandering

1. Gossip Secretly

Gossip is talking about a situation with somebody who is neither a part of the solution nor a part of the problem.

If we’re honest with ourselves, what we’re doing is making ourselves feel a little more important at somebody else’s expense.

We’re talking about their hurts and their problems to make us feel like we’re morally superior to them.

That’s the danger and the hurt of gossip.

(Rick Warren)

Gossipping happens everywhere.

Talking behind a person’s back.

Spreading false rumours and false information about this person.

2. False Accusation

Accusation

False Accusation is making a claim or allegation of someone who did something wrong that happens to be untrue or otherwise not supported by facts.

This person may have misunderstood something about the person he/she is accusing.

This happens when someone misreads and misunderstands something this person wrote on a blog or email, for instance.

This person has a malicious intent to destroy a person’s character and reputation.

Why would a slanderer want to do that?

Perhaps he cannot attain to the same level of the individual?

Perhaps he doesn’t have what the individual has?

Perhaps he couldn’t have the same lifestyle that this individual has even though he tries.

This happens to politicians.

In recent case, our prime minister was exposed, again.

In his yearbook, he was dressed up as a middle eastern person and had his skin painted black.

Without understanding why he did, people started smearing him and saying, “Oh he must be a racist.”

Of course, this happened when he was young and maybe he was unwise during that time, but remember that there is a specific context of why he’s being exposed.

It is election time and some political leaders of a party are trying to attack his character so that he would lose voters.

Criticism

3. Destructive Criticism

Criticism

Destructive Criticism is someone who is being overly critical about everything and questioning authority.

This is someone who constantly points out problems and complains that there are problems without attaching a positive tone to the criticism.

The goal of this criticism is perhaps to tear down the idea and the person.

In school, when you are slandering someone, do you know what else you may be doing?

You are being a bully.

Slandering is not acceptable.

Slandering destroys and recks people’s life.

I have personally seen a church closed down because someone slandered or accused the pastor for being a liar.

The members of the church lost trust in this pastor.

Subsequently, people left the church.

Eventually, this church had to close down.

Marriage, friendships, life-long legacies and companies could be destroyed because of slander and defamation.

Hence, James warns us about the impact that we can have with our tongue:

James 3:5-

Expositional (v.11b)

Notice what else James says afterwards.

READ.

So, we just talked about slandering against a brother (or speak against), but James also adds in another phrase, “Or judges his brother.”

Simply put, judging probably takes “slandering” even further.

What he is saying is that criticism of a Christian involves standing on the throne of judgment over that person whom you are slandering.

James clarifies what he means by judging at the end of verse 12.

Judging someone in a slanderous manner makes you feel more superior and the other person more inferior.

Judging someone in a slanderous manner makes you feel more superior and the other person more inferior.

For instance, you slander a Christian for being “lazy” when you also struggle with laziness.

OR you slander and judge a Christian for being so unloving while you are also using unloving and harsh tone.

You capitalize other people’s shortcomings so that you can make yourself look better and feel better.

Again, this happens in politics.

When a political party leader is allegedly exposed of a wrongdoing, the other political party leader would jump in and take advantage of that opportunity to gain votes.

But, James has another reason for mentioning slander

James is not done here yet.