Assumptions A Root of Slander and Gossip

Well, good morning, greetings in the name of Jesus. I have a short story I'd like to open with, illustrates what I want to preach about today. A woman who was waiting between flights at an airport bought a small package of cookies and sat down in the waiting area to read her newspaper.

She was interrupted by a rustling noise. Lowering her newspaper, she saw a well-dressed man helping himself to the cookies lying on the table in front of her. She couldn't believe it.

Not wanting to make a big scene, however, she leaned over and took a cookie herself as she continued reading. A couple of minutes later, she heard more rustling. She was appalled.

He was helping himself to another cookie. She decided she'd better take another one for herself just to show him up. This back and forth between the two kept on going until all but one cookie was left.

The woman was so furious at the man, she was afraid to say anything for fear she would say something she would regret. Then, as though to add insult to injury, the man broke the last cookie in two, pushed half to her, and left. Still fuming over the matter, sometime later when her flight was announced, the woman opened her handbag to get her ticket.

To her shock and embarrassment, there she found her pack of unopened cookies. The title that I labeled, I struggle with different titles, but the final one I came upon was Assumptions, a Root of Slander and Gossip. I believe ever since we were down in Belize, I wanted to preach a message on this.

The Lord taught us some real good lessons in this area while we were down there, and it's come through some of my sermons here and there, but finally I felt at liberty to actually take the whole time and talk about it. Let's turn to 2 Samuel for a text this morning. 2 Samuel, and we're in chapter 10.

In verse 1 it says, And it came to pass, after this, the king of the children of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead. Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me, and David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his father. And David's servants came into the land of the children of Ammon.

And the princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanun their lord, Thinkest thou that David does honor thy father, that he hath sent comforters unto thee? Hath not David rather sent his servants unto thee to search the city, and to spy it out, and to overthrow it? Wherefore, Hanun took David's servants, shaved off the half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away. When they told it to David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown, and then return.

And it goes on. And as the story progresses, David goes and they go out to battle. And it says later here, I don't know what verse it is, but it says that they ended up killing 7,000 charioteers and 40,000 foot soldiers in this false assumption that this name, what was his name? Not seeing it over there in verse one or two, but the son of Hanun, who was now reigning, I guess it was Hanun.

And Hanun was the father, and his son reigned in his stead, it says here. And he made an assumption. He made an assumption that, as his peers were telling him, that these guys, David's servants aren't here to actually comfort you.

They're here to spy out the land, so they can come in and take over. And so they made a big mistake. They shaved off half the beard, which was very disrespectful, very shameful.

They cut off their robes right in the middle, and they sent them off on their way. And this made David pretty upset, and they went out to war. 7,000 charioteers died, 40,000 footmen.

And then if you read in 1 Chronicles 20, let me read it to you. And this is just reading out of the New Living here. It says, in the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, Joab led the Israelite army in successful attacks against the land of the Ammonites.

In the process, he laid siege to the city of Reba. However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem. When David arrived at Reba, he removed the crown from the king's head, and it was placed on his own head.

The crown was made of gold and was set with gems, and he found it to weigh 75 pounds. David took a vast amount of the plunder from the city. He also made slaves of the people and forced them to labor with saws, iron picks, and iron axes.

That is how David dealt with the people of all the Ammonite towns. Think of this mistake, this assumption that was made, and all the people that died, and all the people that became slaves through one assumption. You know, I wonder how many wars have started because of false assumptions.

In fact, there was a war I read about where there was some unrest going on down in Cuba back in the late 1800s, and the United States sent a military ship down there, and Spain was somehow in charge of Cuba. Somehow, the ship blew up and sank, the U.S. Maine. The journalists of the time, they started saying all these slogans, Remember the Maine, and all this stuff.

It was stirring the people up to where the United States declared war. At some point later, research found that it's possible a boiler just blew up in the bottom of the ship, which caused an explosion with all the gunpowder in the ship, which sank it. Just think, a country could go to war over an assumption.

So what does assuming mean? What does this word assuming mean? I do want to draw this little picture here. I titled it Assumptions the Root or A Root. I don't think it is the root, but it is a root of gossip and slander.

If we have a little plant here, let's see. At the bottom of this plant are some roots. What we want to talk about today is, we all know that gossip is wrong.

We all know that slander is wrong. We all know that anger is wrong. We all know that worry is wrong.

But how do we get rid of it in our lives? I want to go after one of the roots this morning. I want to lay the axe at one of these roots. When you pull a plant out, they have many little fingers out there.

I want to go at one of them. I am going to propose this morning that one of those things we, maybe more often than not, is we make assumptions. What does assuming mean? What does that word mean? It means to accept something as true without question or proof.

Let me just tell you, we are all humans this morning. We are all mankind. There is something naturally in us that just does not tend to see it in ourselves.

Somehow we think everybody else assumes, but we do not tend to assume. We tend to get it always right. As we go through this this morning, I want you to think about that.

Watch for that in your life. Think about those times where maybe, oh, you can see that little thing. It is so subconscious down in us that sometimes we do not even know we do it.

Assumption means accepting something as true without question or proof. Another meaning, a thing that is certain to happen without proof. Here is a quote I found.

Simply put, assumptions are the filters that we look through to guide our decision-making processes. They are based on our history, our experiences that we have observed, and are generally used as a way to help us feel confident in how we move forward. For many people, assumptions are unconscious thoughts that frame up our mindset and approach to life.

For others, there is a level of conscious thought that goes into it, but the assumption is utilized as a way to protect them from future harm based on previous experiences. Did you get that? It is a subconscious thing that is made up of who you are, the experiences you have gone through, the history, the perspectives you see things from, and many times it is a mechanism to protect yourself, to protect yourself from something bad happening. When we observe something, when we observe with our eyes, when we hear something, and we put the facts together, we take all those facts that we have, and then we deduce or we discern something from that, that is the assumption.

The facts may be true, but the assumption may be false. Most of the time, we don't think that our opinion is most likely not true. We think it's most likely true.

If you stop and think about it, most of the time, we think our opinion is most likely true. Now, we have some nice words for this. I've heard this in the past.

People say this. They say, I'm really good at intuition. The Lord gave me a gift with intuition.

I've heard that said before. We have nice words to paint over this idea of assumptions, and we call it intuition. Or we might call it, I have a gut feeling about this.

Or I don't know if you've ever heard this. Well, it's just obvious. Or it goes without saying.

We have some terms that we use for that. Reporters will say this. They'll go on and on what he did say, and then they'll say, and he stopped short of saying, and then they'll go on and say everything he didn't say, but to lead you into thoughts ill against him.

He stopped short of saying, and then said this. I watched something where they were talking to a man, interviewing him, and they kept saying, so are you saying, and they would go on this huge bent that he was, you're saying that this agenda, you're out to kill people. No, I'm not saying that.

Albert Einstein said this. He said, assumptions are made, and most assumptions are wrong. Assumptions are made, and most assumptions are wrong.

Here's another thing I read. When we make assumptions about other people, we don't see things as they really are. We are viewing life and the world around us through our own lenses.

So we really, so really we are seeing things as we are. We make assumptions about other people's lives based on our experiences in life, and so we assume that we are correct because we know our experiences to be true. One of the reasons why I decided to preach this week is I was just recently thinking about a time I received a call from a friend, and he was pretty worked up, and he was frustrated, and he told me an experience that happened with one of his children.

Someone did something to the child, and the action itself could have been wrong, but it could have been right, all depending on the motive of the heart. But he went on to tell me why this person did it, and it was, of course, assumed to the negative. So he called that person, and he accused him of wrong motives, and it got to be a big issue.

It got to be to where lots of people became involved, and it was causing a lot of stir. So when he called me to get advice, I just asked him this one question. I said, Is it possible that this person who you believe is offended could have done it without any ill intention? And he stopped and thought about it and said yes.

After he thought about it for a while, he had to actually go back and apologize to the person because he deduced, he took the facts that he knew and deduced that he must have meant it for the wrong. So why do we assume? Well, I've got a couple of things here written down. The first one I wrote down was pride.

I'm human. We're all human here. I think we all like to discern people, right? We all like to have juicy information.

We all like to make judgments. That's our natural fallen nature. We can see what is obviously going on in someone else's heart, right? That's just how we are.

And so something deep in us likes to assume. If we stop and think about it, we're built that way. Nowadays, I'm a computer technician, and nowadays the big thing is all this machine learning, AI, artificial intelligence, robots that watch your every move and then make decisions off of your moves to determine if a real security risk is happening.

And in the industry, we all like this. It's great because it's no longer static rules that it runs off of to determine a threat. It's, hey, George here is communicating with this person, which normally he doesn't, so this doesn't make sense, so maybe it's a threat on an email or something like that.

Well, we're built that way. God built us already to have all of that kind of logic. We're not just static rules.

God built us to have discernment, but we have to realize when that is a fallacy, when we don't know the information. Another reason we might assume is fear. Fear may protectively assume the worst.

It may dwell on hurts. It may recount offenses. But the Bible teaches us that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things.

That means if I'm reading that right, it means we assume the best. We try, we have to remind ourselves to give them the benefit of the doubt. I remember many times driving down the road, I don't know if this ever happened to you, somebody cuts you off, and I'm immediately frustrated.

And my wife says, maybe they're on the way to the hospital. Oh, right. I don't really believe that, but right.

Give them the benefit of the doubt. One time when she was getting ready to have a baby, we were driving 100 and something miles an hour down the road, and she was hyperventilating, and I thought she was gonna die, and I was calling emergency, and I wanted people to give me the benefit of the doubt at that moment, right? It's funny how we want people to give us the benefit of the doubt, but we don't want to give the benefit of the doubt to others. It's kind of our human nature.

So fear, we want to protect ourselves. Another reason we end up assuming is we fail to distinguish between method and motive. We tend to judge another's motive based on their method.

Somebody comes up and speaks really rude to you, their method was wrong, and so then we say, well, then your motive must be wrong too. You know, you must have something in your heart against me because you spoke rudely, but we have to disconnect those. We don't know man's motives.

We can say the method was maybe wrong, but what was his motive? We don't know. We fail to distinguish between the method and the motive, and when methods seem insensitive, we must assume that motives are evil. Do we let the enemy cause division because we assume we know another's intent because their approach seems rude, confusing, or ungentle? That was something I read.

We do it everywhere we go. We walk into a room, people are all talking, we start making assumptions. Someone cuts us off in traffic, somebody gives you a strange look, we start making assumptions.

I remember recently I had an old clock and I wanted to get it fixed, and so I got on to contact this man. He's an older gentleman, and I sent him an email. I called and left a message.

He even had some kind of chat feature. I tried chatting, no answer. The next day, I kept trying to get a hold of this gentleman, and I started thinking, this guy doesn't know how to run business.

This guy is so unprofessional, but everything I read is this guy's been doing it for 30 years. He's just the old school or amazing kind of guy, but I'm thinking, I don't understand. He doesn't respond, he doesn't do anything.

I call him, and it's like all these messages about, well, I'm only working from this time to this time on these days. Man, do you ever work? I showed up finally at his office, and I thought, I'm going to be transparent. I thought, maybe this guy's a creep.

I took a picture of me holding the clock in front of his door, because I thought, he may never give me back the clock, and I need to prove that I had a clock. I dropped it off here. Sorry.

But I got in there and started talking to the man, and he tells me he's so sorry that he's been on these appointments because he just had cancer, and he showed me this huge scar on his neck and how they've been removing the cancer. And he did a great job fixing the clock, by the way. But we make assumptions, and thankfully, I never said anything to him.

I let that assumption just die out, but sometimes we make big problems for ourselves because we do say things. So, how do we make assumptions? The next question on my list is, how do we arrive at assumptions? Well, I think what we do, a lot of times, is we take fact A, or I'll just put fact number one, and we add it to fact number two, and then we add in a little bit of our perspective, and we arrive at our assumption. So let me go through this.

Like I said, I'm an IT guy. I have a customer up at Washington, where Brother Larry lives. And I remember one time, I think I just had sent her a large bill, and I felt a little bit like maybe she's struggling because it was a big project.

So that was fact one. I sent her a large bill. Fact number two, she called me, and she was frustrated, not about the bill, but about something that was taking me a little bit of time to get accomplished, and she just had this tone of, like, when are you going to get this fixed? We need to get this fixed.

Mind you, she's been a long-term client ever since I lived in Washington. This is a pediatric clinic. And then I mixed in a little bit of my perspective, a little bit of my insecurity.

Well, I live in Oregon, and there's lots of IT companies up there that would be better, and, you know, why would she want to stay with me anyway? And so then I assumed maybe she's looking to find another IT company. And I began to worry, and I called her one day. I just called her and said, so are you, you know, I don't remember how I asked her.

She said, no. She said, of course not. I was just frustrated that day.

Things weren't going well. We love you. You're the greatest IT... That kind of thing happens, right? Here's another one.

So you meet some guy, and you're like, I think that guy's on drugs. Well, why? Well, he doesn't sleep at night. He works all night long.

And when I'm around him, he just seems kind of jittery. And now let's mix in a little of my perspective. I'm a little frustrated with him lately.

He's been annoying me a little bit. So I think he's using drugs, right? We do this kind of thing. Here's another one.

Fact number one. That person seems a little distant lately. And they haven't come around and sought me out.

Fact number two, when I'm in meetings and stuff, they don't come around and seek me out. And I maybe struggle with a little bit of insecurity. I'm a little insecure of who I am.

And assumption, they must be mad at me, or they don't like me anymore. We do this maybe more often than we realize. Listen to Job's friend.

Randy shared this with me last week. So Job, you know, we all know he was innocent. We know the whole story.

And all his friends come around, and they've got the answers for everything, right? They sit him down over and over, and Job responds, and they respond, and finally at the end, God responds and puts them all in their place. But in the middle of that all, let's see, this was Elphaz. I'm just going to read it to you in a modern way so you can understand it, but it says, this is what he says to Job.

Now, we all know that Job was innocent, right? We all know Job didn't make a sin, but this is his big assumption. It is because you're so, is it because you're so pious, Job, that he accuses you, God, and brings judgment against you? No, it's because of your wickedness. There's no limit to your sins.

For example, you must have lent money to your friends and demanded clothing as security. Yes, you stripped him to the bone. You must have refused water for the thirsty and food for the hungry.

You probably think the land belongs to the powerful and only the privileged have a right to it. You must have sent widows away empty-handed and crushed the hopes of orphans. This is why you are surrounded by traps and tremble from sudden fears.

That is why you cannot see in the darkness and waves of water cover you. See, they took the facts, Job's in a big problem, you know, all the stuff happening, and they made a deduction. But they totally got it wrong.

In fact, at the end, God was pretty upset with them for how they got it wrong. So that's how we arrive at assumptions. We take facts, we mix it in with our perspective or our insecurities, and we arrive at assumptions.

So, how do assumptions become sin? Well, I would venture to say when we act on our assumptions. So, number one, what we can do is we can allow our minds to dwell on that last thing right there. We can allow our minds to fabricate and begin to build a house of cards, begin to build up this monster that's not really there in our minds.

We can begin to have negative thinking. The scripture says, Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things. Set your mind on things above, right? But we can begin to let our mind, if we're not careful, if we're not taking into the obedience of Christ our thoughts, we can let it go down this track.

That's number one. And if it stopped there, at least it stayed in your mind, right? At least it didn't come out. But where it becomes real bad sin is when now we go and we tell others.

Maybe they started off with a very unbiased mind towards the person and we begin to tell them all of our assumptions. We begin to plant negative thoughts in their minds. We begin to plant or change the way they view them.

I had a shock this week as I was studying. It's hard sometimes when we think about gossip. I've wondered sometimes, why don't we find the word gossip in the New Testament? It's just not there much.

But then I ran across this. Colossians chapter 3, if you want to turn there. Colossians chapter 3 in verse 8. It says in verse 8, but now you also put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

You may wonder which one of those in that verse would equal slander. Maybe you would think, well, it must be the filthy communication. No, it's not filthy communication.

Did you know that the word blasphemy is the same word for slander? Maybe I was the only one that learned this this week. But when I think of blasphemy, I think of it against God. I think of people speaking ill against God, but it does not mean that just only God.

In fact, if you search this word out in the New Testament, the Greek word, it's used in all kinds of occasion. They blaspheme in the holy place. They blaspheme the law.

They blaspheme Paul. It's not just God. And so New Testament Christians are to put off blasphemy.

But guess what? In the ESV, in the NIV, in the NLT, they all translate it slander. And interestingly enough, it comes from two words. It's the two words are blast and that means to hurt and this is in Greek, by the way.

And fame, I think, is how they pronounce it, which sounds like fame. And that equals fame or report. So blasphemy simply means hurting somebody's fame or report, their name.

And it's translated here as blasphemy, but over in Ephesians, listen to how it's translated. Ephesians 4.31. It says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you. That same word, G988, for blasphemy, is translated here, evil speaking.

This is a big deal. It's all over the place. Slander, and by the way, the other versions also translate it slander here.

Slander means the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation. Did you hear that? A false spoken statement. That many times happens with assumptions.

Now you could be so deprived to just make up a false statement and say it about somebody, right? You could be that evil. But many times, we're not going to probably do that. But we're going to probably assume, make an assumption, speak it out as fact, and now we are guilty of slander because you're making a false spoken statement and it's spoken out and it hurts the reputation of others.

In 1 Timothy 6, it says this, talking about someone that's proud. He says, he is proud knowing nothing but doting about questions and strive of words whereof comes envying, strife. Once again, here's our blasphemy word.

This time it's translated railings. When you're reading in King James, when you see railing, when you see blasphemy, and when you see evil speaking, you need to think of this idea of slander. You need to think not just towards God but towards your brothers and your sisters here too.

And that is speaking something, a false statement about your brothers or sisters, or anyone really because one of these verses says speaking evil of no man. Titus 3.2, to speak evil of no man. We're not to speak evil, we're not to slander anyone.

And this is a problem with conspiracy theories honestly. This is not even my note, it's a little side note. Conspiracy theories are many times assumptions and if we go down and start speaking those assumptions like they're facts, we are slandering the people that God, the Scripture says he puts kings in and he takes kings down.

We're slandering the person God put in, in my mind. This is how I would interpret it. And I was just recently somewhere and somebody said Campbell O'Harris is an idiot, and they said it so strong I was shocked.

I'm just not used to hearing people talk like that. And this was a professing Christian and I'm thankful in our circles we don't talk like that. But, you know, we have to be careful because, and I think it's one of the epistles toward the end of his Jude or something like that said they're not afraid to speak evil and the words blasphemy there of dignities.

We don't want to be caught up in that. We don't want to be caught up in speaking evil of anyone as the Scripture says. Here's another little free tidbit.

You know, it talks about deacons. They says their wives must not be slanders. Did you know the Greek word there is Diablos? Anybody want to guess what that stands for? Other than the blade that cuts that you buy at Home Depot.

What's the logo on the blade? Anybody know? Devil. Devil. Did you get that? When it says not slanders it's literally the word for devil.

Not devils. Because the devil is a false accuser of the brethren. He falsely accuses.

So women are not to be slanders. They're not to be caught up in tearing people down with false information or you're taking on the job of the devil, really. Proverbs 10 19 says he that refrains his lips is wise.

He that refrains, that means he that holds back. You have that assuming thought? I had an assuming thought this morning. I'm not going to tell you what it was.

But I was sitting right here and I had an assuming thought. Don't say it. Just let it die.

Let it go away. He that refrains his lips is wise. Another verse here.

The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels. You ever feel like that? Somebody comes along with a little good bit of information, a little gossip, a little slander. It's tempting.

It's like a truffle. We need to fight against our human nature. Amen.

Let's not get lost where we're at. We're in the middle of how do assumptions become sin. We dwell on them.

We tell others. We speak it out. Third, you act on it in a way where you distance yourself.

Maybe I come in and I notice Abe's being a little bit awkward today. He's looking at me strange. He's not making eye contact.

Instead of going to say, hey Abe, is everything all right? I just start to begin to distance myself from him and distance myself from him week after week. He probably notices I'm being a little odd. Pretty soon, he starts distancing himself from me.

Pretty soon we get to this big thing and we talk about it and we're like, oh, we made all of these assumptions. We made all of these false conclusions of how did we ever get here. That's how we could turn to sin is by distancing ourselves.

It's a protective measure. We begin to avoid people. Assuming is a way to protect us from future harm based on previous experiences.

Think about that. We've gone through all these past experiences. We say, I've seen this before.

When Abe looks at me like that, that last friend of mine, this is what he did. I need to put up protective walls so we don't end up down here. Thankfully, that hasn't happened.

I'm using as an example. We were on a trip some years ago. Two different vehicles.

We were going on a long trip several days. We're the front car. We had the person with us who knew the way.

They were our guide. We had made instructions. We don't want to go long.

We have little children. We want to stay the night, our two families. We began going.

We did not want to stay out late. For safety reasons, we wanted to be in our room in a hotel by nightfall. It began getting later.

This guide was just around the corner. We're coming up here. We're getting there soon.

We didn't get there. An hour goes by. It's just going to be up here soon.

We didn't get there. Pretty soon, it was 11 o'clock at night. We finally pull in and are there.

We finally made it. We were in the dark the whole time. Somehow, we noticed our friends were becoming a little bit awkward.

We couldn't tell. There was some distance between us. We finally sat down at some point.

This was maybe weeks later to find out what's going on. It turned out they thought as we were up there, they thought we were in the dark the whole time. They thought we were up there with our buddy making all these plans.

We were just keeping them in the dark. We knew that it was four hours away. We were just as much in the dark.

Once we got it out, we understood, okay, let's move on. Those things can happen so easily if we don't watch what we're assuming or come and talk to the person. How does it become sin? We dwell on it.

We tell others. We distance ourselves. Lastly, we get angry or we worry.

Maybe those are your two methods. We take all that house of cards we built up and it makes us angry or maybe we worry about the situation. How do assumptions cause and create problems? I read a quote.

Somebody said, assumptions are the termite of relationships. Assumptions are the termite. Think of a termite eating all the wood.

Down in Belize, they eat all the wood out. You don't even know it. All of the structure of the house is there.

It looks all good. Everything else is eaten out from inside. All the bones of the house are rotted.

The house has to actually be torn down. That's what assumptions will do to friends. In fact, Proverbs tells us that gossip separates the best of friends.

King James puts it, whisperers separates the chiefest of friends. Gossip definition. Listen to this.

I thought this was very interesting for the definition of gossip. It's casual or unconstrained conversation. You're not watching your lips of what you're saying.

Or reports about other people and then listen to this last sentence. Typically, not all the time, but typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true. That's an assumption.

You're passing on this information. It's interesting to talk. It's interesting to get into it, but you don't even know.

It's not even confirmed that it's true. So what is your desire? Ask this question when you're in the middle of that. What is your desire? Are you about peace and building up relationships? Or is it more about pride and sharing that juicy truffle, that morsel? Or, even better, impressing people with what you know? I mean, I felt that way.

Haven't you? If you can tell them things you know, it brings a self-satisfaction that you are in the know. So how can we stop assuming? Here's one thing I saw. Before you assume, try asking.

Before you assume, try asking. What that means is be brave enough to go ask if it's true. When we were down there in Belize, I got the reputation down there.

Anybody would say something about somebody, I'd go and ask the other person if it was true. So, for example, if Abe told me, you know, George, and this and this and that, I'd go to George and say, hey, George, is this true? Is this what I was told? Oh, boy. Did that put the thing to death quick? Because, like, that's not what people that tell you juicy information want you to go do with the information.

And I don't... Somebody actually told me that I got that reputation. So, I didn't just make it up. So do that.

Get the reputation of... If you're not sure, ask the person. Is this confirmed? Have you... Whatever. Ask yourself and the other people, how true is this? Did they actually say it? Is this a fact? I've heard Brother Roger say that to me before.

Did they say that? Do I know for sure their motives? That's one thing you better really think about. Do you know their motives? How do I know this? What might be going on for the other person in that moment? Here's a really interesting thing to give that. I can't forget how remarkably rude the cashier was on Christmas Eve at the Hallmark store.

It was so bad that when I came back in a couple of months later, I mentioned it to the manager. Her polite response caught me off guard. I know exactly who you are talking about, sir, and I'll just say this.

You never know what people are going through. You don't know what's in their heart. You don't know what they're going through.

You don't know their motives at that moment. You may also ask yourself, what are other possible reasons for this to be this way? So, first of all, how can you stop assuming? Before you assume, try asking. Number two, don't trust your intuition.

The scripture says, lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and lean not unto your own understanding. I would take that to mean, don't lean upon your own assumptions.

It also says in Proverbs 3, be not wise in your own eyes. Here, listen to this another way. Don't be impressed with your own wisdom.

You might think you've got it all figured out. You may think that you've got everybody's motives all figured out in your heart, but it says, don't be impressed with your own wisdom. I just did this recently.

I was dealing with a situation. Somebody who was upset. I talked to him.

He was upset. He calmed down. Then, by the end of the day, he got upset again.

Then I started assuming in my mind. I thought, I wonder if his wife is like, this all makes sense. His wife was riling him up.

His wife was probably the one that got him upset in the first place. I started making all these assumptions. Then, I was in the middle of a conversation with somebody else about the situation.

I was so tempted to give this juicy morsel that I figured out that it's his wife that's doing this. I said, no, that would not bring about peace. Don't say that.

Of all the anomalies, it comes out that when he went in, he hadn't even talked to his wife. His wife was like, oh yeah, basically what Jeremy was saying is right. That totally convinced him.

I just almost falsely assumed, and yet, his wife was taking that side. He just hadn't even talked to her. It would have been bad.

Don't trust your intuition is the next one. How do we stop assuming? Try asking. Don't trust your intuition.

You remember what Samuel said when he made a couple wrong assumptions? Remember he went in there? He was trying to find the next prophet. Oh, this guy looks handsome. He looks like the right kind of guy.

We should anoint him to be the king, right? What did God say to him in that situation? Anybody? He said, don't judge by the outward appearance. Only God can see the heart. We need to be careful of that because we don't know the motives.

If they tell you that was their motive, well then, now you know that was their motive. Maybe you need to go ask. Remember, Jesus said this.

He said, judge not, lest you be judged. Later, he said this interesting statement. He said, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

I think I could loosely say it like this. Don't judge based off your assumptions, but judge off of facts, off of things that a righteous, wise man would judge. He wouldn't judge just because he sees an appearance and makes an assumption, but he judged after he looks into the matter and he finds out all the facts.

That's how we should be. That's what righteous people do. That's what Jesus calls us to do.

In fact, Paul says this. He says, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. Paul tells us Christians to not be in the business of judging people's motives because we don't know them.

Only God. He says it's a light thing if you judge me, he says. And he tells us, don't judge anything.

So how do we how does it become a sin? Sorry, I think I've got mixed up here. I've got too many papers floating around. Yes, I think this is right.

So we don't dwell, we don't tell others. I think I've mixed the paper somewhere in the wrong way. But anyway, I think you've got where I'm at.

We need to remember what Jesus taught not to judge. Okay, next one is to give the benefit of the doubt. Remember Stephanie said maybe they're on their way to the hospital.

I know it's hard to say, but try to lead your heart into at least giving them the benefit of the doubt. Instead of falsely assuming, try positively assuming. And then lastly I have here, remember, Jesus said do unto others how you want done to yourself.

Remember how you want to be treated. You want to be given the benefit of the doubt. You want people to take into account the whole story and the whole reason and why you struggled that day and all the things that happened before that moment.

So give people that liberty, that benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're having the same kind of day. Okay, so how can we stop assuming? I think I found my paper.

Try asking before you assume. Don't trust your intuition. Remember that Jesus taught not to judge by outer appearance.

Give the benefit of the doubt and remember to treat others how you want to be treated. Now lastly, before our conclusion, what if you have acted on your false assumption? What if you've done it? What if you falsely assumed and you've acted on it? Maybe it left your head and you said something or you distanced yourself. Well then I would encourage you today, repent of that.

Stop your action, whatever you're doing today. Stop your action that's based on your assumptions and go back to the people that you've either distanced yourself or that you've spoke and slandered against or you've spoke evil to and apologize to them. And maybe you need to ask them, was this your motive? Or what are the true facts? Remember when you hear one side of the story, there's always a second side of the story.

Don't make all of your judgments until you've heard both sides of the story. Did you follow Matthew 18 where you went alone to your brother and talked to him and if he didn't hear, took two and if they didn't hear, then take it to the church? Or did you make assumptions and just spread it all around without even going to it? So in conclusion, if you are a human here this morning, which I think everyone is, you make a lot of assumptions and so do I. That is how we were built and how our brain works. We need to realize how many times our assumptions are wrong.

Remember Albert Einstein said, we make a lot of assumptions and most of them are wrong. Stop leaning on your own understanding. We need to recognize what are the facts? What are the facts? What's the perspective? And what's the assumption? These we can stick with.

These are facts. But don't go there until we know all the facts. If we don't have all the facts, we should not talk to others to float the assumption.

We should not change our actions towards the person. Be brave enough to ask. Don't assume something to be true until you've heard the other side of the story.

Give the benefit of the doubt. Try positively assuming. Fight your fallen nature.

So I challenge each one of you this week, all of us, to purposely monitor how many times you make assumptions. I remember when the Lord just brought us to our heart. Oh, man.

I don't know where Matthew is, but he to this day will still say, Papa, you just assumed. Because we made such a big deal about it in our home because the Lord just really convicted us about it. And I'm like, oh, you're right, Matthew, I did.

But make a big deal about it. Look in your life because this is very subconscious. Look in your life where you're making assumptions.

And every time you see that, recognize it. Do a little push button in your mind. That's an assumption.

And then deal with it. Talk to yourself. Tell yourself, well, do I know all the information? Could there be another side to this? Maybe I need to go ask them.

So watch that this week and see how many times it happens. We know that anger, back to this beginning here, we know that anger and slander and worry and gossip are all wrong. But how do we get rid of it out of our life? I believe we need to go back to at least one of the roots.

One of those roots is assumptions. And we need to lay the axe to it. God bless you each, each one this morning.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Jeremy, very much for that message on assumptions. I know it spoke to me and I expected it spoke to a lot of you.

I'm going to open it up. If you have things you'd like to say, things you'd like to testify to, maybe even a confession, I want to open it up. You said at the beginning, Jeremy, some of these ways that assumptions are called, what were those again? I wrote a couple of them down.

Somebody says, I just have a gut feeling, intuition. Intuition. And what was the other one? Or it goes without saying.

Yeah, there we go. They stop short of saying. And then you say what you wish they would have said.

Wow. I know for myself sometimes I get intimidated when someone uses those terminologies. Maybe I'm feeling insecure in my own opinion, so when someone walks up to me and says, well, I've got an intuition that it kind of, wow, okay, well, hey, I sure wouldn't want to contradict anybody's intuition.

I mean, that might be the Holy Spirit. I mean, there's a story in Acts where the work of the Spirit was being done, and people were getting healed, and they're speaking in tongues, and then this guy Simon walks up. Hey, I'd like to buy this gift.

And was it Peter or Paul turned and looked at him and says, hey, fella, you're a wicked man. And I think you've got bitterness in your heart. How in the world did he come up with that? You want to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then this apostle says, I think you have bitterness there.

Well, that was the Holy Spirit. And so when I hear someone around me say, I've got intuition, I kind of, whoa, I better not contradict that because it might be the Peter thing or the Paul thing, or it might be the Holy Spirit. But I think a lot of times it isn't.

And we better not, I mean, yeah, sometimes we get, we ascribe to ourselves the idea that I'm being led by the Spirit when it's your own Spirit. It's not the Holy Spirit. And you're led by your own intuition, and you call it an assumption.

Or you said I have a gut feeling. Wow, that's, I mean, who's going to, you know, I'm sure not going to argue with your gut. I mean, come on.

But maybe I should. Maybe we should just not trust the other person's gut or, more importantly, our own gut. And instead say, hey, that was an assumption.