Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You a Fair Judge? | Christmas | Isaiah 11:3-5

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

How likely are you to gossip or listen to gossip? Have you ever been gossiped about? How do you think Jesus would react to gossip and slander? In today's episode, Patrick looks at Isaiah 11:3-5 to find out how Jesus is the perfect judge of righteousness. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast Passages: Isaiah 11:3-5 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilman. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we are in our Christmas series. But starting in January, we're going back to the basics and guiding you through the first books of the Bible. I'm really excited about this. We'll be starting in Genesis.

So invite a friend to go on this journey with you starting on January 1st. I recently wrote an article that went, virally viral, at least by my small-scale standards. And I was tempted to feel good about myself until I looked at the analytics. Despite being shared by hundreds and hundreds of people, hundreds and hundreds of times, only 70 people had actually clicked the link to the article. That means that at the most, only seven people had actually read the thing that they were either celebrating on their Facebook page or in some cases defaming on their Facebook page. They were, quite literally, judging me, judging that article by the headline and nothing else.

And at first, this kind of frustrated me until I realized that I do the same thing all the time. I read a sensational headline about a story and I think I know everything that happened. If I actually sat down and read the article, I'd probably realize that this event was a lot more complicated and nuanced than the headline let on. Or this happens in real life too. Someone tells me what another pastor or another friend did, and they tell me how evil, how hurtful, how malicious or even abusive it was. And I just believe their words. I believe them without actually sitting across the table from the person that they're gossiping about and asking for that person's perspective. I know better than this because, well, it happens to me all the time.

And I know that when I'm the person being gossiped about, it's terribly hurtful and it's really frustrating. reputations are hard to build and they're easy to tear down. And once someone's stolen your reputation, even if they did it by making up things about you, it's almost impossible to undo the damage. The sin of gossip, the sin of slander is among the most wicked out there. It's one of the most morally defacing sins that we do almost every single day. And so it's no surprise that God included false witness in the Ten Commandments, or that Paul, James, and James, Jesus, all of them spoke about how we have to be careful with our words. But here's some good news.

Even if your reputation has been run through the mud, there's at least one person out there who can't be tricked. Jesus. You see, Jesus, he never judges us by what other people say. He doesn't listen to gossip. He doesn't read the headlines. He doesn't think that if he's read the headline, he knows the whole story. No, Jesus listens to our story carefully. when the prophet Isaiah was prophesying Christmas the day of Jesus's incarnation, he put this aspect of Jesus' character, the fact that he listens, that he judges fairly, he put this aspect of his character front and center.

Isaiah 11 verse 3. He, the king that's coming, he will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy. With justice, he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. righteousness will be his belt, and faithfulness will be the sash around his waist. Isaiah is saying, if you want to be able to know who the coming king is, the person who will incarnate Yahweh on earth as in heaven, he said, this is where you start. Does he gossip? Does he slander? Does he judge people by what other people say? Does he think he knows the whole story without listening to it?

or does he judge righteously? Does he judge fairly? Are his words balanced and based in reality? You see, if the king is a gossip, if the king is a slander, then you know that he is not the promised king. That's just another human. But if he judges fairly and rightly based on the facts, based on reality, well, then you know that person, he is the promised king. Because you know, the only human who ever lived without gossiping or slandering? The only person who ever did that was Jesus. He was the only human who never bought the lie of someone else's gossip. He's the only human who never bought the lie of someone else's slander. A few years ago, someone began spreading a malicious lie about me behind my back. They were claiming to a number of people that I'd become a bad sort of person. And it wasn't

because they'd heard me doing anything bad or seen me doing anything bad. What they told people is that they were assuming that I was becoming a bad person if I just continued in my job where I was at. In other words, they were telling people, Patrick's a bad guy, not based on how I treated them, but based on their best guess of, I guess what the future would hold. In the midst of that time, I found that they'd spread this lie, again, not based on anything I'd done, just based on their best guesses about my future, and found out that they'd spread this lie to about a dozen different people. And who knows how many people those dozen people spread it on to. As they say, you know, you can't put the toothpaste back inside of the tube. And so I realized that there was literally

nothing I could do. The only thing that kept me from losing sleep in the middle of this, from feeling overwhelmed with anxiety about what do I do about my reputation and what people are saying about me, the only thing that kept me sober-minded was this. Jesus knows. Jesus knows the truth. Jesus won't buy the lie. Jesus will look into it fairly. He'll look into my life and he'll be the one who makes the final assessment. Jesus, the one who loved me enough to die for me, he's not going to read the headlines that are out there and jump to conclusions about me. Maybe you've experienced something similar in your life. Jesus knows. And his opinion is ultimately the only opinion that matters. Let that set you free. On the other side of things, this series of events, it was a reminder to me

that Jesus doesn't want me to gossip, that he doesn't want me to slander, that Jesus has actually set me free from gossip and slander, and I have to continue to live in this world, set free from that sin. I mean, it's kind of funny whenever I think about it. I know that I've been hurt by gossip. I know that I've been hurt by slander, and yet I find it so tempting to do myself, to bind to the lies that I hear other people saying about other people, or to be the one who is out there gossiping about other people behind their back. And so as a result, I've made a kind of uncomfortable rule in my life. If someone comes to me and they say something negative about someone else, someone who's not in the room, I have a rule that I just go straight to that person, to the person that they're

talking about, I just go straight to that person, and I ask them for their side. And two things have happened as a result of this rather awkward rule. First, I almost always find out that the real story is a lot more complicated than the gossip let on. Maybe the person who's being gossiped about did do something wrong. But when I sit across the table from them, I find out that they're repentant, that they're sad about what they did, that they wish they wouldn't have done it and they're trying to change. Or maybe I find out that the situation was just more complicated, and so they aren't as bad as they really seemed. The second thing that happens as a result of my awkward rule, I go straight to the person who's being talked about.

Here's what's happened. People have stopped gossiping to me. I'm being very serious. If people know that you will go look into their gossip, whatever they say to you, they'll stop telling their gossip to you because they know that it's going to result in them being held accountable by the person that they're gossiping about. They realize, well, Patrick's not a safe person to gossip to because he doesn't keep it secret. this Christmas, I want you to remember how Isaiah told us to identify Jesus. He said, you'll know him by this character. He judges fairly. He listened. He listens to the other side.

Ask Jesus that that same spirit would guide you as you incarnate his love in your life. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.