The Power of the Tongue

Constructive, Destructive, or Instructive

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Proverbs 18:21 - KJV

I’m going to be filling the pulpit at a local congregation for the next two weeks. Pulpit supply is a new challenge in which preparing messages the speaker needs to keep “the main thing the main thing”.

Here’s some of what I pray about whenever I have the opportunity to fill in for another teacher.

• What does God want me to teach on?

• I want the message to be applicable today.

• The sermon must be useful in life

• Whatever I teach should be simple, memorable, and most of all actionable.

I’m going to speak on how we speak and conduct ourselves as Christians. OK, maybe not “how we speak and conduct ourselves”, but surely on how we should act and speak.

Why do you so clearly see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but you fail to consider the 2x4 that is in your own eye?

As I’ve spent the last few weeks praying, the Lord has allowed me to remember the times I have been the speck and the beam. Being a beam while the problem I’m concerned about is really just a speck leaves me feeling somewhat immature.

Perhaps you’ve seen the common spp. “tempertantramus minor” on your trips to the market or local park? These smallish creatures writhe with animated agony as their perceived woes are expressed with great dramatic skill. Unless the poor creatures are either pacified or denied, they are being trained for a lifetime of misery for themselves and all who cross their path.

Some children never get to grow up.

I was listening to a bible study by Pastor John Courson on James chapter 3. In it he reminds the listeners of the tale of Jesus healing the blind man. Jesus touches him and asks the man “What do you see?”. The man answers that he sees men like trees walking.

Jesus touches the man’s eyes again, and sight was restored, and he saw every man clearly.

We who are mature in Christ should be able to see every man clearly. Instead, too many Christians see men like trees walking.

It’s firewood cutting season here in the mountains of Northern California. A firewood permit only allows for the taking of dead wood, either standing or downed. If we see men like trees walking, we’re not to take our axe to them.

The immature believer wants to cut others down, cut them up, split them into pieces, and burn them up.

When I was a single man, I loved getting together with other Christian singles. We’d go places together, sit in church together, just hang out together, street witness together, and do Bible studies together.

In that group of friends there was a gal named Rena. Bold and somewhat extroverted, I remember being out street witnessing and she charged right into the middle of a group of young people in the city park.

“I know something about you that you probably hate about yourself!” She said to them. They looked at her confused and a little shocked. No one had invited us into their conversation.

“You don’t do the good things you want to do but find yourself doing those things that you don’t want to do!” she continued, “I know someone who will help you start doing the right things and help you stop doing the things you hate that you do anyway”

That person that Rena knew is the same person that can help you and I with our disease. Jesus can help us to speak rightly to each other.

Solomon wrote hundreds of proverbs, and Rena had a few of her own. She poignantly inquired “Why do Christians use the sword of the Word to hack their fellow Christians to pieces?” as she would remind us that Christians are probably the only soldiers who bury their wounded alive.

A lying tongue hates those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth works ruin - Proverbs 26:28-

We are living in a season of divisive and destructive speech. The nicest things being said about the presidential candidates are that “He’s a threat to our Democracy (supposedly we are a Republic”) and that “She’s a Marxist”. It’s all downhill from there, and a full speed descent into the biggest mudslinging event in the west.

I’m not encouraging false compliments and insincere flattery. I’m not really getting political at all. If we are true Christians, I just want us to take a moment before we look, smell, and act like the rest of society.

Before you grab and go with the latest and most fashionable slight and slander harvested from your favorite fake book or media marketplace, ask whoever you are in conversation with a simple question.

Have you prayed for her? Have you prayed for him? Ask yourself the question.

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men. For kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth —1 Timothy 2:1-4