.  Living Hope Fellowship Church....Sermons by the Pastor 

DON’T BITE

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

            Galatians 5:14 says, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.”  Verse 16 says, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

            Biting and devouring are works of the flesh, showing hatred and strife and other manifestations of the flesh (see Galatians 5:19-21).

            In Mark 12:28 one of the scribes came, and asked Jesus, “Which is the first commandment of all?”  In Mark 12:30 Jesus answered him, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”  In Verse 31 He continued, “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these.”

            A sure sign that you love God with all of your heart is that you don’t bite, devour, and eat your neighbor!  Some people eat others and don’t even know they are doing it, because it has become a habit.  Be watchful.  Gossip is eating somebody!  I don’t want to be around a person that is eating on somebody, because I figure sooner or later they will be eating on me.

            If I know much, and I am right, and I don’t have charity toward those who don’t, I am eating them!  Paul teaches us about charity in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.  How can you convert somebody you eat?

            As a kid I used to go fishing in the pond.  I could catch catfish over night.  However, sometimes a turtle would come and eat all of the fish except the head and the hook!  When I fished, I put the ones I caught on the stringer.  I’d put a stick in the mud, connect the stringer to it, and throw it just off from the bank in the deep end.  However, if I waited too long to get them out, one of those fish was liable to be partly eaten!  Have you had to deal with somebody that is being chewed on?

            The devil will have you chew on somebody so he can get to yet a third party!  Husbands and wives chew on each other and then they will chew on the kids.  It isn’t their fault, but the kids pay the price.

            Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

            My aunt and uncle had big white leghorn chickens. I watched as one of them got down.  The others started pecking on him until the blood came out.  As a teenager I had hunted before, and we had slaughtered animals, so I was kind of tough, but this wasn’t fair.  I watched that chicken just hunker on down.  They pecked him around the back on the spine, and he couldn’t fight back, because he’d been pecked so many times that he was weak.  Blood just started crawling out on those white feathers.  Every one of them came around and took their turn at pecking him.  I watched them kill that chicken.  Every chicken in that pen was guilty.  No ONE of them killed it, but all of them together did it.

            I don’t think of chickens when I think of something violent or aggressive.  I might think of a lion, a serpent, a gorilla, or . . . a human.  Take heed.  It is possible to be involved, think you are righteous, yet have no clue you are doing it.  It becomes second nature to your personality, and it is like a cancer that spreads.  People will say you are a gossip.  Stay away from them.  Don’t tell them anything, because they will tell somebody else.

            There was no denying that the chicken had a problem, but why did they all come around and kill him?  Have you ever gossiped?  Have you ever been venomously critical?  When you get saved by the blood of the Lamb, that garbage is supposed to cease, not become anointed!  God wants us to turn around.            

            The one we eat on with our tongue is worth as much as we are.  The sinner on the street is worth as much as you are.  Jesus died for him just like He died for you and me.  God didn’t graduate us into the kingdom of God by His Spirit and the blood of Jesus that we might consider ourselves more precious and thereby gain light to destroy them.

            Luke 9:56 says, “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. . . .”  1 John 3:8 says, “. . . For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” 

            What God is looking for is mercy.  James 2:13 says, “. . . mercy rejoiceth against judgment.”  We need to run God’s mercy as far as we can, not for ourselves, but for somebody else.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  God does not ask us to compromise what we believe or to lower ourselves to a substandard.  He asks us to have mercy on others.  It is the same mercy he gave us.  I am a product of a daily dose of mercy and grace.

            Have you ever looked back and seen that you have been stupid?  We repent and plead the blood of Jesus, but what if someone is standing over you pecking that last drop of blood out of you?  Don’t let the church take up Satan’s job!

            Don’t chew somebody out for somebody else’s wrong doing to you.  You don’t want to agree with the devil and be in league with him, so don’t get together with somebody else that the devil is using to chew on people.  Don’t let speculation, evil surmising, or just plain old sinning gossip use you to destroy somebody!

            After you get doctrinally sound, don’t change into an alligator.  The more we know, the more we ought to tremble before the Word of God.  Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am. . . .”   Praise God for goodness and mercy.  If you have been guilty of gossip, ask God to forgive you and wash you in the blood.   1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”