The Power of the Tongue

Listen Online:

Transcript:

And tonight it brings us to Proverbs chapter 15. We’re going to look at about four verses in Proverbs chapter 15. Give you just a second to turn there.

It says, starting in verse 1, A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright, but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness therein is a breach of the Spirit. And we could go on through the rest of the chapter. One of the things that for me is hard about Proverbs, not hard to understand but hard to teach and preach on, is the ability to pull out a context out of what the passage says.

Because Proverbs, for the most part, is just a series of short, pithy statements about wisdom and different subjects. And that’s not to say that they’re not important. That’s just to say they’re short.

It just moves very quickly from one topic to another. And again, that’s not to attack the book of Proverbs. That’s just to say, you know, you may have a verse on wisdom.

Then you may have a verse on your speech. You may have a verse on how to handle money. Then you may have a verse on relationships, on marriage.

And it just goes through, and it’s hard to draw out of context. But in the beginning of this chapter, we see about four verses that fit in together on the same subject, which is our mouths. And it’s a very similar passage to the one we find in James that talks about the tongue, and talking about the tongue as a fire, and how great a fire, a little bit of fire kindles.

And basically talking about the destructive power of the tongue. And folks, we all know that to be the case. We know that there’s something powerful about the tongue, and not the literal muscle, but there’s something powerful about our speech, and what that does.

And I believe words have power. The Bible teaches that words have power. Don’t misunderstand.

I’m not a word of faith teacher that says that words have power over the natural world, that we can make things happen just by speaking them. It’s of great concern to me when I hear people that I used to pastor say things like, you know, I’m tired of bad things happening in my life, so I’m going to do what the Bible says and only speak good things so good things will come my way. I’m going to make things like that happen.

I think that is not what I taught you. He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. And it’s true that there’s power in our words, but there’s not power in our words to create our destiny. There’s not power in our words to speak money to come to us and money will come to us.

There’s not power in our words to make us rich and prosperous. And I can’t just go and speak a new truck into existence and there it is. And unfortunately, a lot of teachers teach that because it’s popular.

Everybody wants to know how they can have happy, healthy, wealthy lives. But there is power in our speech in terms of what it does to other people. When it comes to other people’s well-being, when it comes to other people’s emotional, spiritual well-being, we have incredible power that sometimes we don’t even realize.

What a great conflagration this little fire can start, and we don’t even realize it. But we don’t realize it when it comes to our dealings with other people, our words. but we know it to be true from our own experiences.

I’m sure all of you could, I’m sure all of us could share stories about times we’ve been walking through our day, having a wonderful time, everything’s going great, and then somebody says something that just cuts us down. That’s the end of that. That’s all she wrote of that.

We can also, I’m sure we can tell stories of times when we’re just down and everything seems to be going wrong, and maybe we’re our own worst critics and we’re just beating ourselves up and somebody comes along with an encouraging word. Maybe they call us on the phone. Maybe they send us a card.

It’s unexpected. It comes out of the blue, but an encouraging word changes everything. Folks, if that’s true when other people do it for us, whether it’s good or bad, why don’t we stop to believe and think about the fact that it’s true when we do it to other people?

There’s power in our words. He tells us here that when it comes to strife, when it comes to conflict, there’s power in our words. In verse 15, he says, a soft answer turns away wrath.

And we know this to be true. Now, is it a promise? We had some good discussion this week in Disciple Way about how to know which promises of the Bible were actually to us and which were to the people He spoke.

And I still don’t have a concrete answer other than look at the context. But this is not necessarily a promise that in every situation, a soft answer turns away wrath. We know that sometimes you can calmly reason with people and it just doesn’t sink through.

But as a general principle, God’s wisdom teaches us that a soft answer turns away wrath. Those of you who are married, when you and your spouse are starting to get just a little annoyed with each other, and it hasn’t progressed into a full-blown argument yet, you’re just kind of snippy with each other. I don’t know if that’s a real word or not, but we use it in my family.

Just kind of snippy with each other. you can very easily determine the direction that the rest of your day is going to go by the way you respond to that. If you, in harshness and in anger, lash out, man, your party’s over.

If you’re very gentle in your response, I’m going to tell you, that takes some work. Y’all know that. If you’re very gentle in your response, even though y’all are both getting progressively more and more irritated, if you stop and take a little deep breath and you answer gently, you can bring the conflict way down instead of taking it way up.

And that’s just a general principle. That’s not only true in marriage, but that’s true in our relationships in general. That God tells us it’s a good thing for a soft answer. That doesn’t mean that soft answer is always agreement.

But the spirit behind our response to other people, a soft answer turns away wrath. That grievous words stir up anger. We know what grievous words are.

They’re the opposite of a soft answer. Grievous words are the harsh responses that become so natural, especially the closer we are to people. I don’t understand this.

I see it in my own life and my own family, but I still don’t understand why we do this. But it seems like the people that we’re closest to are the ones we’re most likely to have the grievous answer with. We’re the most likely to be harsh with.

And I don’t know, maybe it’s because we figure family has to love us no matter what so we can unload on them and they have to stay with us. Or maybe it’s just that we think strangers are more likely to deck us if we talk to them. I don’t know.

But for whatever reason, we’re more likely to have these harsh words with those that we love the most and that we’re closest to. These same situations are where the soft answer comes in handy. And it matters immensely.

It matters immensely the spirit with which it’s done. Now, I feel silly telling you all much of anything about marriage because, as I’ve pointed out before, Some of you have been married longer than I’ve been a lot. I’ve been married a little over four years now.

But I’ve learned a few things, just a few, in those few years. I was excited. I saw y’all look at each other.

I was excited, Brother Alfred, to find out that Christian and I have been married longer than y’all have. We’ve been married a long time. No.

What was I saying? Oh. We’ve been married just a few years, but I’ve learned a couple of things.

One of those is that when you try this, because I tried very early on. Christian and I don’t fight a whole lot anymore. I think it’s because we’re too tired.

But there were times when we first got married, we fought all the time. It’s just, it happens. And I learned, I started trying to put this verse into practice.

A soft word turns away wrath. And I discovered it matters immensely the spirit in which it’s done. Because if I can be honest about my failings here for a minute, I am the king of trying to win an argument by feigning the moral high road.

You know what I mean? I’m going to look like the bigger person. I’m going to look like the good one.

And that’s a fault of mine. It should be more important that I actually be the bigger person and not just look like the bigger person. But sometimes that’s a good way to win an argument until you get married.

And my wife can tell when I’m really giving her a gentle response because that’s what I feel and hear, and when I’m handling her. And when she’s wanting to argue and I’m talking in that therapist’s tone of voice and trying to handle her because God tells us in His Word that a soft answer turns away wrath, that just enrages her more. If we’re going to give people a soft answer, we need to do it in a genuine way, not just try to handle them.

And whatever you do, man, don’t quote Scripture at your wife in an argument. That has nothing to do with this passage. But if you haven’t learned that, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that or not, but if you haven’t learned that, that’s something I learned very early on, does not help.

It’s not that my wife doesn’t care what Scripture says, but at the point where she’s mad at me, she doesn’t want to hear it out of my mouth. A soft answer turns away wrath. Ladies and gentlemen, when it’s with our families, when it’s with our spouses, when it’s with one another, brothers and sisters in this church, or even the world at large, we need to give people a soft answer.

And not just because we’re trying to handle them. Not just because we’re trying some Proverbs mind control technique, but because there’s a spirit of peace and gentleness and humility about us. And that’s the hard part.

It’s easy, well it’s not easy, but it’s easier to try to respond in arguments and conflicts by taking a deep breath and saying, okay, let’s talk about this. It’s much harder to actually come into that from a spirit of humility. But as Christian believers, there ought to be a gentleness about us that the world doesn’t understand.

They see us and say, what is that? Why are they so different? As believers, we should not just act gently.

We should be gentle, and we should give people a soft answer to turn away wrath, because these grievous words stir up anger. And tonight, as we’re talking about the power of the tongue, The first lesson we can learn from this passage is that the tongue has the power to pacify or to inflame. In any given situation, our response, the way we handle it, the words we speak, as well as the spirit behind those words, can either pacify the other person, they can either calm the other person down, they can either bring peace, or they can inflame the situation further.

Sometimes we say, well, I don’t know why they acted like that. Did we think about how we spoke to them? Did we think about the words we spoke?

Did we think about the tone of voice? this little muscle in our mouth, between our jaws, has the power to bring peace, in most cases, has the power to bring peace between us and other people or to create bigger conflict. Now, why is that important?

Because it’s important that we try to live peaceably with other people. I remember, I may have told you this story before, but when I was in high school, we started a Christian group in our high school, and we met every Friday morning for Bible study and prayer and all these things. Occasionally, we’d have outside speakers, And we could get away with a lot of stuff because we did it before school started.

And so we’d have outside speakers come in. We’d have missionaries. We’d have various different people.

There was a pastor, and I’ve told some of you about him, and some of you may know him, Harold Hodges. He was the pastor, not while I was there, but he was the pastor at Southgate for 35 years. And in the BMA of Oklahoma, people call him the Pope because he’s so respected.

He hates that, by the way. If you ever meet Harold Hodges, don’t call him the Pope. He threatened to throw water on me at an olive garden one time for that.

But the man came in. We invited him to come and speak to us. And he came to our Friday morning meeting and sat down with us.

And knowing Brother Hodges, his preaching was very, I won’t say it was hellfire and brimstone, but he would get excited. He’d work up a sweat. He’d pound the pulpit.

And we expected him to just come in and get us on fire to go out and take over the school. And he came in and he taught us. I was mad at first. He came in and taught us about the verse that says, if it’s possible, as much as lies within you, live at peace with all men.

And when I say I was mad, it was for a brief second, because I was ready to get fired up. And he talked to us about living in peace, and I thought about it through the rest of that day. I thought, that is important, because nobody cares the testimony that we have if we’re living in constant conflict with each other and the world outside.

There will be times when our stands as Christians are unpopular with the world outside, But it’s a matter for us of disagreeing without being disagreeable. And it’s important that we live at peace because we claim to be the ones that are, if I can say it this way, possessed by the Prince of Peace. He owns us.

And so the idea that we can be good witnesses for Christ, that we can represent Him well, while we see these people that seem to always be at the center of the conflict, and it’s usually because they’re somehow the ones who perpetrate that conflict. And the idea that we can somehow be good witnesses, good representatives of Christ, our world is always doing this because we’re in constant chaos and conflict. It doesn’t work.

We’re to live as much as, you know, he doesn’t tell us to compromise. He doesn’t tell us to surrender. But he says, as much as it’s possible, as much as lies within you, live at peace with all men.

Well, then this is an important principle to learn here because he tells us that the tongue has the power to pacify or to inflame. If we want to live at peace, we need to think about the way we speak to other people. The words, the tone of voice, the spirit in which it’s spoken.

In verse 2, he says, The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright, but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright. A wise man not only has knowledge, but he knows how to use it.

He knows in what situation that knowledge is to be applied. There are a lot of people with a lot of knowledge who just feel the need to show everybody how much they know. And this drives me crazy, the people that are know-it-alls.

And the reason it drives me crazy is because I see that tendency in myself as well. And it’s easy to see other people’s problems when they’re the same ones as ours. And I don’t struggle with it so much anymore, but especially as a teenager, I felt the need to make sure everybody knew that I knew things and knew about everything.

Then I came to the realization, not only are there things that I don’t know, I don’t even know all the things that I don’t know, if that makes sense. I don’t know. I think that’s part of growing up.

But there are people out there that are full of knowledge, and yet they’re not wise because they don’t know how to use it. And I think of the example, I’ve not watched the show a lot. When it was on, my parents didn’t let us watch it, and that’s okay.

But the show Cheers, there was the man, Cliff Clavin, the mailman, who was full of every bit of useless trivia you could ever want to know, and a lot of it was wrong, by the way. But he just knew so much or thought he knew so much, and yet everybody thought he was a buffoon. Because he might have known a lot of things but had no idea how to apply it, had no idea how to use it, how to talk to people.

And folks, we can know a lot of things, but our job is not to convince the world how brilliant we are, how smart we are, Or else we end up looking like the fool whose tongue, whose mouth pours out foolishness. I love the imagery there. When the foolish man speaks, when the mouths of fools are open, it’s not just foolishness trickling out, but it just pours out.

It’s like a fire hydrant of foolishness that pours out. And the opposite is the wise man who knows how to use his tongue to impart wisdom. Now, the foolish people that the book of Proverbs talks so often about are not just dumb people, if I can say it that way.

We would hear the word fool today and think of somebody who’s not all there, who’s maybe not as smart as we are, who’s not this or that. A fool back then was somebody who had no fear of God. If you read this in context, if you read this whole book, what he’s talking about is somebody who has no fear of God, no respect for God, doesn’t act like it.

And when he contrasts this with the wise man, He’s talking about somebody who knows the Word of God, who knows God, and knows how to apply what he knows and build other people up and instruct other people in the truth. Wisdom here is not a matter of how much you know. It’s a matter of what you know and speak and how you speak it.

And he tells us, the tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright. That tells me that somebody that’s speaking wisely is using their tongue in a strategic way. But the foolish man, he says here, it just pours out of his mouth.

And I struggle with this too because I talk a lot. I like to talk. I’d be in the wrong business, not really a business, but I’d be in the wrong line of work if I didn’t like to talk.

Not just up here. I like to talk to people. That’s why my wife gets irritated when we’re here until 1 o’clock on Sunday afternoon just trying to get out the door.

I like to talk to people. And I worry a lot. Do I just talk so much to hear my own voice?

Should I maybe at times scale back how much I talk? Because a wise man is skillful and strategic about the things he says, but a fool just lets it rip, just pours out foolishness. But the things that the fool is teaching, as somebody with no respect for God, is he’s teaching falsehood.

He’s teaching lies, promoting deception about God and his character and about what’s true and what’s good for our lives. The Jezebel that we talked about this morning in Revelation chapter 2 would be a good example, I think, of a fool. Somebody who just opened their mouths all the time and spouted and poured out all kinds of lies and deception about God.

From this we see that the tongue can edify or the tongue can deceive. The tongue has the power to edify or deceive. Every time we open our mouths, we have an opportunity to tell people the truth, point them to the truth at the very least, or point them in the opposite direction of the truth.

And again, sometimes this can be the words that are spoken and sometimes it can be the spirit behind it. But a good question for us to ask whenever we open our mouths is, are we pointing people, is what I’m saying pointing people to the truth of God’s Word? Is it pointing people to who God is?

Or am I leading them in the opposite direction by what I’m saying? If we’ll ask ourselves that question, if we’ll apply that little rule, that little standard to our lives, I have a feeling it cut down on a lot of the unnecessary chatter. Again, not that talking is a bad thing.

But if we were careful, if we were strategic about what we were saying, and asked, is this going to edify the person that I’m hearing? Is this going to point them in God’s direction? Is it going to point them the right way?

Or am I just a fool pouring forth foolish things? Am I deceiving those who hear me? He tells us in verse 3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.

That almost seems out of place because the other three verses we’re looking at here talk about the tongue, talk about speech. But to me, I don’t think it’s out of place. I don’t think it’s just wedged in there because it’s a reminder to me that as it teaches in the New Testament that one day we’ll give an answer for every idle word.

That’s one of the scariest verses in the whole Bible to me. One day we’ll have to give an answer for every idle word that’s spoken. For some of us, that’s going to take a long, long time to give an answer for those.

But he says, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. That means we are never outside of God’s watch. We’re never outside of God’s hearing and knowing.

God sees and knows everything that we speak, everything that we do. And it’s a reminder for us to be on guard as to what we’re saying because we’re going to give an answer to God one day for the words that we speak. That’s why this morning I said, you know, the Bible teaches that not every man should desire to teach.

And that’s not saying, well, I teach and so I must be better. I ran across the passage by accident this afternoon because I couldn’t remember where it was. I was looking for something else.

But it’s in the book of James. It says, desire not many men to be masters. That means teachers.

For theirs is the greater condemnation. That means I’m responsible. I feel like I’m doubly responsible for the things that I stand before you and teach.

That’s a sobering thought. But it’s not just true of the pastor or the teacher. Each and every one of us will stand before God one day and give an account of the idle words that we speak.

If we really kept that in mind, that’s a sobering thought about how we use. . .

I can’t really point at it while I’m talking. But how we use this. And verse 4 says, A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness therein is a breach of the Spirit.

This tree of life is an allusion, I believe, to what the Jewish readers would have originally understood and what we can understand today as being the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Now, it’s not saying that the tongue can become the tree of life. But if you think about what the tree of life was, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened and they knew the difference between good and evil for the first time.

And God got them out of the garden and He said, lest they eat from the tree of life, because it would have given them the ability to live forever. And this tree of life is a picture of life being given. That tree, had they eaten from it, could have imparted life to them.

Well, he says, a wholesome tongue is a tree of life. Again, it’s not that we can speak eternal life into existence for other people. If I say nice things about you, I can make you live forever.

But it’s talking about the ability to give life, the ability to build up. But perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit. The word breach is used many times in the Bible as though in case of a wall around a city.

And there would be a breach in the wall. That’s a hole in the wall where the wall has crumbled and been torn down. And attacking armies can surge through.

And a breach in the spirit is a wound to the spirit just like a breach in the wall is a wound to the city walls. And it brings destruction and it brings death. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.

A wholesome tongue gives life. But perversity in the tongue destroys. And when he talks about perversity, he’s not just talking about filthiness.

He’s not talking about obscenity. He’s talking about taking what the tongue is intended for. He’s talking about taking this wholesome tongue and twisting it into something that it’s not supposed to be, where our speech becomes destructive to other people.

From this, we learn that the tongue has the power to build or to destroy. When it comes to other people, the tongue has the power to build or to destroy. With a word, with a word, we can build somebody up.

But with a word, we can tear them down. As a pastor, as a preacher, I can tell you this from experience. I’ve told you many times before that it’s nice to hear, oh, that was good.

I enjoyed that. What I really want to hear is, I’m going to use that. I think I’m supposed to do this as a result of what you shared from the Bible today.

That’s what I really want to hear. But at the same time, it is encouraging to hear, that was a good message. Well done, preacher.

And so while I don’t really do it for your compliments, it is nice and it is encouraging. I mean, just like any of you would want to hear a job well done at whatever you do. At the same time, there have been times at various churches where somebody has said one thing critical. And maybe it’s just my personality.

But 50 people come through and say, good job, preacher. And one comes through and says, well, you went a little long today, didn’t you? And I just..

. Folks, you might as well quit living the dream. I’m going to go long.

That’s just all there is to it. But one person comes through and said, you went a little long today, and that just let the wind out of my sails. There have been times I’ve left here, and I’m my own worst critic, and I get down from the pulpit, and I’ll hear a voice in the back of my head that, yeah, why take 20 minutes to explain the point when you can take 40?

Yeah, that was good. And that kind of. .

. You think I’m joking. I’ve literally said that to myself in the last few weeks.

Why take 20 minutes to make the point when you can make 40? And it comes from people in the past that have critiqued, that have said those things. And maybe there’s some truth to it, but it also can wound.

And it’s not just the pastor. I’m just telling you my story because my story’s the one I know. But each of you have instances in your life that one thing said that’s good can stand out and build you up, and one thing that’s said that’s bad can stand out and tear you down.

I remember visiting a church years ago. I remember visiting the church. I don’t remember this happening.

I was probably about eight or nine years old, and our church had disbanded. We were looking for another one, and so went to another one up the road. And we’d been visiting there for weeks, and everybody had been so incredibly friendly toward us.

And one day we went in and sat down, and they all said nice things. We’re glad to see you, glad you’re here, all this sort of thing. And apparently the few weeks we’d been there, there had been a family that had been out on vacation, and apparently we’d been sitting in their pew.

And my parents came in after Sunday school and sat down in the auditorium, and the woman walks in and looks at them and throws her Bible down on the pew in front of my parents and hollers back to her husband, well, I guess we’ll have to sit here because they are in our seat. And my dad, my dad blesses his heart, oh, no, no, I wouldn’t want you to be without your seat. Here, you have your seat.

And we got up and we left, and we never went back to that church. And it’s not that my dad was being petty, but my dad is very sensitive to things like that. It made him feel about that big.

And at that point, it didn’t matter that hundreds of people had told us, we’re glad you’re here. One person had treated him like an inconvenience, and it destroyed him. Folks, with one word, we don’t even realize the power that we have to build up or tear down.

We don’t realize the power of this tongue. I could go on talking about this for a long time. There are so many other passages that deal with this same thing.

The book of James where it talks about the tongue is a fire. I encourage you to go and read that for yourself. But tonight, I just want us to leave here thinking about the power that’s in our tongue.

The power to pacify or inflame. The power to edify or to deceive. The power to build up or to destroy.

Folks, we can’t speak wealth and all these things into existence, but when it comes to other people, we have power we don’t realize. And as Christians, as people who go through our lives, our daily lives, not just here on Sunday, but go through our daily lives representing Christ. It’s our responsibility to do that in speech as well as in deed. Sometimes it’s easier to say, I’m going to go do nice things for people because I’m a Christian than it is to watch what we say.

Matter of fact, James says that if anybody can control his tongue, he’s a perfect man. Because Christian was asking me about that a couple weeks ago. I said, well, what that’s saying is that the tongue is the hardest thing to control.

And if there’s anybody out there, and by the way, it’s rhetorical because there’s nobody, according to what James is saying. But if there’s somebody that you could show him that had his tongue completely under control, he could show you a perfect man. This is the hardest thing we have to control.

And yet, as Christian believers, it’s one of the most powerful things we possess in dealing with other people. And we need to use it in a Christ-like fashion.