01/10/2025 – Day 201 – Proverbs – Chapter 11 through 12 / 11:13 – “The damage of gossip”
Search on “Day 201”. Check out “Lifestyle Evangelism disciple guide” commentary to verse 11:30, the post dated 12/04/2020. . Also see: “Pascal’s wager” on the post dated 11/07/21.
For today: “A talebearer reveals secrets, But he who is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter.” (Proverbs 11:13). It’s funny, I read right through this without picking up on the fact it is about gossip, for I thought: Why should you conceal it?
Here is the commentary for this verse in my “The Evidence Bible – NKJV”:
“11:13. The damage of gossip. A woman once spread some juicy gossip about a local pastor. What he had supposedly done became common knowledge around town. Then she found that what she had heard wasn’t true. She gallantly went to the pastor and asked for his forgiveness. The pastor forgave her, but then told her to take a pillow full of tiny feathers to a corner of the tow, and in high winds, shake the feathers out. Then he told her to try to pick up every feather. He explained that the damage had already been done. She had destroyed by his good reputation, and trying to repair the damage was like trying to pick up feathers in high winds.
the Bible says that there is life and death in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21: see also James 3:8). Pray with the psalmist, ‘Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips’ (Psalm 141:3). Remember the old saying, ‘He who gossips to you will gossip about you.’
The attached article (link below) – “The seven things God hates” – (Proverbs 6: 16-19):
https://www.gotquestions.org/seven-things-God-hates.html
Gossip sits under two of these categories. I submit the fact you didn’t know a gossip you spread was a lie, does not take away from the sin behind that gossip. In fact, it could very well increase the gravity of the sin…
Thoughts?
Soli Deo Gloria!