Seasonings for the Tongue

Listen to James as he writes, if anyone considers himself truly religious and yet does not control his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.

Worthless. Ladies and gentlemen, the point is here, we are children of the king. And if you say you're a Christian, talk like it. If you say you belong to God, don't use his name or anything about him in a way that would be profane. Stay away from the dirty innuendos. Stay away from the off-color jokes. Walk away. You might even be tempted to laugh.

Leave. Sometimes Christians who have walked with God for many years are still tempted to say things they shouldn't or laugh at inappropriate things that others say. What can we do about our tongue? There's no cosmetics for the tongue.

There's no diet to get your tongue back into shape. Yet, it's your tongue that defines you more than anything else. It's your tongue that makes the greatest impact on your life and the lives of others. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Today, Stephen Davey continues in Romans chapter 3 with this message called Seasonings for the Tongue.

I want to begin our study today by asking you a question. How beautiful is your tongue? I imagine you've probably never considered it in terms of attractiveness. More than likely, you didn't stand in front of the mirror this morning and make sure it curled just right.

You probably didn't even look at it. I doubt anybody has an appointment with a tongue beautician this week or anytime soon. Avon, Revlon, do not sell cosmetics for the tongue. I was walking through JC Penny's at the mall this past week trying to find the men's section. I ended up wandering around the woman's cosmetic section.

That thing is huge. It just goes around and around and around until finally you veer off and you escape. I can't recall, as I thought back to that wonderful moment, seeing anything for the tongue.

Nothing. There are no fashion shows that feature the tongue. In fact, you have never once gone on a diet to get your tongue back into shape. Yet the truth remains it is your tongue more than your figure, your wardrobe, your income, your title or position in the community more than anything else that makes you attractive. It is your tongue which makes the greatest impact perhaps on not only your life but the lives of those around you. It's interesting that the Bible refers to a number of different kinds of people and relates them to their tongue. A flattering tongue in Psalm 5-9. A proud tongue in Psalm 12-3. A lying tongue in Proverbs 6-17. A deceitful tongue in Psalm 120-2. Proverbs 10-31.

A perverted tongue. A wicked tongue in Psalm 10-7. A soothing tongue in Proverbs 15-4. A destructive tongue in Proverbs 17-4 and 15-4.

A gossiping tongue in Proverbs 25-23. It is the tongue more than anything else that defines who we are. A tongue can make or break apart a marriage. A tongue will make a home a pleasant environment or a desert.

It will be the tongue that makes friends or loses friends. It will be the tongue that strengthens the church or divides it. It is the tongue which attracts people to the truth of Christ or repels them. It is the tongue which honors God or curses them. No wonder Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18-21 death and life are in the power of the tongue.

That is the tongue has the power over those issues related to life and death. Thus far in our study in the evil communication of mankind we have watched the divine physician open the mouth as it were of humanity and inspect the mouth. In verses 13-14 God diagnoses the throat of man, the lips of man, the tongue of man, the mouth of man and none of these diagnoses are very flattering.

We've already discovered that but it's true. As he opens as it were the mouth of humanity and gives his impression. The first inspired diagnosis that we have discovered as it relates beyond the evil condition of mankind in verses 11-12 but now the evil communication of mankind is that mankind's throat exposes hidden depravity. He says in verse 13 their throat is an open grave. Literally their throat is like a newly opened grave containing within it the horror of death. Justice taking the lid off of a coffin reveals the stench and decay of death. So in the analogy of Paul so opening the throat allows one to see the stench and the depravity and the decay of death in the human heart.

The second diagnosis was equally unflattering. It stated that the tongue produces great deception. Paul wrote with their tongues they keep deceiving. If the throat hides hidden decay or depravity the tongue produces great deception and the tense of the verb means that mankind is continually deceiving. Mankind naturally deceives, finds it natural or we would call it easy to lie.

He is consistent and he is proficient at lying, deceiving. Thirdly the divine physician reveals that the lips inflict untold damage. In the latter part of verse 13 the apostle says the poison of asps is under their lips. In other words we have within our mouths the sack of venom and we can strike at one another with venomous words and untold heartache and untold sorrow. Unbelievable pain can be inflicted by our our words. Have you ever heard the saying? Of course you have. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never what?

Words will never hurt me. It's not true is it? I don't know who made it up but it's not true. I can remember that big dirt hill near my childhood friend's house. We'd get out there with a bunch of other boys in the afternoon and have dirt clod fights. What magnificent fun that was. Beaning each other with dirt clods and they'd splatter on impact. You say oh what a foolish thing to do and you outgrew it. Well you know grown men do it today with paint balls.

It looks more sophisticated and grown up but the motive is the same. Splatter them. Bean them. You know get them. Two Christmases ago my brothers, I have two younger brothers, one turns 40 this month. It's a great moment.

Then there's a 38 year old. We all converge with my older brother and our kids on our parent's home and my two younger brothers have paint ball rifles and paint ball pistols and one of my brothers who makes more than everybody else combined has all this paraphernalia. He's got these special air tanks that he connects to his air pistol and his rifle and he has camouflage pants and boots and all the cousins were there and I'll admit my sons were there with their little rifles too and they were going to go over to the hill next to my parent's front yard and have this massive war. Well I don't own any equipment and they insisted I play and I of course said no I didn't want to play and they said why don't you come out in the front yard and we'll give you a pistol and you can just shoot at the hill where we are. They knew I couldn't reach the hill and I said okay. So I went out in the front yard. You know I don't pastor in that area so it's safe to do things like this. I sit out in the front yard and I'm just pow pow and I notice you know none of the paint balls would make it but if I aimed higher I can still remember one of my younger brothers saying ow Stephen you hit me in the leg.

One of the best Christmases I've ever had. I actually love my brother but I personally cannot remember the pain of any of those dirt clods that I got beamed with and I don't think my brother remembers the pain from that one paint ball at least I hope so but the truth is sticks and stones may break your bones but words take a lot longer to get over. Once they splatter against the soul and bring great pain they do great harm. Paul delivers what God says. He says there's venom in our mouths. We might not say it so strongly but God does.

He says there is the ability to attack with venom. We are poisonous vipers as it were unless something by a means of the Spirit of God happens. The fourth and final observation we glean from this divine examination of our mouths is found in verse 14.

Let's look there. He says their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. It's another way of saying fourthly the mouth of mankind reveals internal despair.

The word for cursing is ara. It's a word that refers to a person publicly criticizing publicly defaming another person. It has the worst intention in mind. It has at its intention to inflict pain, to discredit the other person, to ruin their reputation as it were and hurt the person of whom they are speaking. And mankind in effect does this not only with others because this is the characteristic of mankind at large. Mankind does this in relation to God. Mankind curses God. Mankind seeks to destroy, discredit the character and reputation of God. And so mankind curses God attaching his name to all sorts of expletives or simply using his name out of context. They use the name Jesus or God in any number of derogatory ways. What's interesting to me is that man naturally attaches God's name to that stuff.

I've never heard of Buddha damning anybody. Why God? Why doesn't somebody out there say the name of some other prophet? Why is it always Jesus Christ? Because naturally there is the bitterness of man in his heart toward this one, at least in our Western world. And so this view, this version, this name known to him which would be that of God is used. They do not know him, this one true and living God. And so they curse him. And profanity becomes the way that they curse him. It is the natural language of someone far from God. And it reveals who they are.

I remember several years ago having lunch with a very wealthy man and his wife and he had a number of businesses with his last name attached to them and they'd begun coming to Colonial and asked me out. And I could tell sort of halfway through it that there was a little hook here to this meal and get that feeling every once in a while. But during the course of the conversation he let some profanity slip. I could tell his wife was mortified and he just kept talking, trying to get past it. And I didn't say anything for the moment.

I just kept eating. And later on he said, you know, listen, I want to know how to make a significant contribution in your church. That's when I thought it would be a good time to speak up. I said, you know, you've been attending church all your life so you've said, but your profanity earlier in our meal indicates to me that you haven't grown in Christ.

You need to come to Colonial not to give us anything but let us give you something. You grow in the Lord and allow God's Word to change the way you talk. And his wife's over there nodding her head up and down. And I knew I had struck a nerve. We, from what I remember, didn't hang around for dessert.

It was sort of the end there and we left and he didn't come back. Ladies and gentlemen, the point is here, we are children of the King. And if you say you're a Christian, talk like it. If you say you belong to God, don't use his name or anything about him in a way that would be profane. Stay away from the dirty innuendos. Stay away from the off-color jokes. Walk away. You might even be tempted to laugh. Leave. By no means be involved in saying things like that.

Don't be shady. It's interesting that our Western ancestors understood civil language. In fact, the old Latin name for a cathedral, I discovered one of the nicknames of a cathedral was the word fane, f-a-n-e. And if you said a couple of hundred years ago that that cathedral was a beautiful fane, everybody would know that you were complimenting the structure, the architectural structure of that church. So what they did is later on they added the prefix pro- in front of the word fane to create the word profane, which literally meant out in front of the church, out in front of the cathedral. So with a little tongue-in-cheek humor, they thus created a word to refer to the language that is outside the church. Profane language is that what you do out there. You don't do it in here. You wait till you get out there. So with a little wry humor, they came up with a word that referred to language or things that you would never say in the fane. You would wait till you got out in front.

You would wait until you got out on the porch. The question is do you have one vocabulary for inside the church and another vocabulary for outside the church? Do you speak one way in here today and do you speak another way differently in a profane way at work or in that campus classroom or on the ball field? The authenticity, ladies and gentlemen, of Christianity is directly related to your tongue. Listen to James as he writes, if anyone considers himself truly religious and yet does not control his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.

Worthless. Use of profane language, that which is outside the church, we really shouldn't talk any differently out there than we do in here, right? I recently read that in the Welsh revival of the early 1900s, many of the coal miners, of course, used the pony drawn carts to pull the coal out in its rough form. They had a revival come to Wales in the early 1900s and many of these coal miners came to faith in Christ and radical changes occurred, but it created trouble in the mines. I read where the ponies were no longer able to understand their commands and they didn't work. They weren't used to hearing language without all that other stuff. They didn't know how to pull the coal out.

They had to be retaught. Well, according to Paul, in this description of fallen humanity, in this one paragraph, one of the most distinctive differences between those outside of the faith and those in the faith, of course, implied is the tongue. He writes, the unbeliever's mouth is full of cursing. It is full of bitterness.

Now, the word for bitterness, pikria, is an interesting word that refers to the hostility and the anger within the human heart that sort of bubbles up and bubbles out. The truth is, you can't cover your heart. Paul has already said in verse 13 that the throat is an open grave. It's as if it were a coffin lid that is continually removed every time you speak and you reveal the depravity and death inside. In other words, if there is bitterness then in your heart, it's going to come out of your mouth. If there's anger in your heart, it's going to come out of your mouth. If there's greed in your heart, it's going to come out of your mouth. Jesus Christ said the mouth speaks out of that which has filled the heart.

Matthew 12, 34. So whatever is treasured in your heart comes out of your mouth. If you love art, you're going to talk about art. If you love cars, you're going to talk about cars.

If you love sports, you're going to talk about sports. A person who loves himself is going to talk about what? Who?

Himself. Paul's point in Romans 3, 14 is that mankind as a whole is resentful, is bitter, is angry, is discontented and spiteful and malicious and revengeful. And the mouth reveals the hidden decay. Every time it opens, as it were, it just sort of comes out. It spouts out. Becoming a Christian, by the way, doesn't automatically solve all the problem, right? One of the things we struggle with is what?

Our tongue. It takes the dominating control of the Holy Spirit to keep us from saying things we shouldn't and help us to say things we should. In fact, one of the great problems of the Corinthian church was their tongue. Paul was planning on meeting them. He's planning on visiting them. And he writes to them in 2 Corinthians 12. He said this, I am afraid that when I come to you, there's going to be strife. You imagine the great apostle saying, you know, when I think of coming to your church, I'm afraid when I get there, there's going to be strife. He says, I'm afraid when I come, there will be strife, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, disturbances.

You get that list? I'm afraid to come to your church because there's going to be strife and angry tempers and disputes and slanders and disturbances. Who's he writing to?

Hockey fans? You would think? No, he's writing this to us, the church. I'm afraid when I come to church that there's going to be disturbances and strife and all of these things, by the way, are performed by the tongue, angry tempers and disputes and slanders and disturbances.

This would be profane speech. The problem is it's not out front. It's not on the porch.

It's not even out in the community. It's found its way inside. It's found its way into the hallways. It's found its way into private conversations before the service begins or when it ends. It finds its way into the business meetings. It finds its way into the Sunday school classrooms and the lunches.

And it will find its way perhaps onto the gymnasium floor when everything's cleared away and guys are going at it. It's stuff that doesn't belong in the mouth of a believer. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4, let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word is as good for edification according to the need of the moment that it may give grace to those who hear. It doesn't mean you don't speak the truth, but you speak it in love. Hard word sometimes, but he said it edifies.

That is, it builds the other one up. It reminds me of another verse I mentioned in our last discussion in Colossians 4, 6 where Paul encouraged the church, let your speech be always with grace. Literally, let your speech be always gracious. He said, seasoned as it were with what? With salt.

What does he mean, season your words with salt? Well, you need to know that salt was extremely valuable in Paul's day. It was akin to money.

It could be used to buy in the marketplace. Covenants were made with salt, binding contracts. It was highly significant and very valuable. In fact, Roman soldiers in the days of Paul were paid in salt many times.

The expression, a man's got to be worth his salt comes out of Paul's day when they were paid in salt. So you didn't throw salt around. You were careful with it. You didn't treat it lightly. You would carefully season your food with it. You wouldn't want to waste any of it.

Perhaps that's what Paul is meaning then. He is saying, don't waste your words. Don't throw them around carelessly. Don't just give them out indiscriminately. Think about it. Be careful with your words.

Don't waste them. Of course, the more obvious meaning is that just as salt makes food palatable, enjoyable, so good words make conversation palatable. In fact, it enhances the reputation of the person speaking. Well, what are some words that season a person's vocabulary and give it grace? What are salty words? Well, let me give you a few as we wrap it up here. Let me give you some valuable words.

In fact, I want to practice some of them together and just be as practical as we possibly can. The first word that came to my mind as I thought about this is the word please. Say that with me. Please. When you say please, you are revealing humility and you're treating the person not as an object, but as a person with dignity, not as somebody who's been placed on planet earth just to serve your need at the moment, but it is giving to them the honor that they ought to have.

And so I'm sure with children, you teach them early as we've taught ours to say please, or we'd turn to deaf ears if we didn't hear. Add to that word the words thank you. Say that with me. Thank you.

Rare words. It may be a long time since some of you husbands said thank you to your wife for the myriad of things she does for you around the home. Amen. When's the last time you thanked her for dinner? Honey, thank you. It was delicious. If it wasn't, just thank you, honey.

That was unforgettable or something. Really unusual. I've said this before and I checked on my story a couple of months ago. I asked a waitress what's the worst day of the week to work and she said it was indeed still true. Sunday. Sunday.

Sunday afternoon. The comments are the harshest and the tips are the smallest. You know, we're done with church now. We're going to go fill up restaurants and can you imagine being a waiter or a waitress thinking, oh, man, here comes the church crowd.

How tragic. This ought to be the day when the tips are the best. Amen.

Just stingy people. Go out there. Tip big. Be kind. Say thank you and please.

Treat them with dignity. Another set of words that will season life with grace are the words I appreciate you. What a great treasure in words.

I appreciate you. You probably remember if somebody's told you that. That just doesn't splatter against your soul. That just sort of comforts it, doesn't it?

It brings flavor to life. Another sentence that could change your life if you'd say these words. I'm sorry, I was wrong.

Those are even rarer words. I'm sorry, I was wrong. Look at the person next to you and just practice saying that.

I'm sorry, I was wrong. If you're married, look at your spouse and say those words. You say, but what if I haven't done anything wrong? You will.

You will. Some of you are explaining. You've said more than I'm sorry, I was wrong. This conversation now is going on and on. It isn't but, but these things.

No, I'm sorry, I was wrong. There are no loopholes in those words. There isn't any excuse. There's no way out of it.

It's just full admission. The responding words to those words would be the words, I forgive you. You ought to look at that person now and say, I forgive you. Perhaps no more powerful words in the human language than those. There may be a relationship here, perhaps a marriage that would instantly begin to heal if those words were spoken. I'm sorry, I was wrong. I forgive you.

Maybe two believers in conflict, there would be healing if those words would be said. How seasoned is your tongue? Professionals who are supposed to know stuff like this say that the average person has around 700 opportunities to speak every day. And the average person will speak some 12,000 sentences formed out of approximately 50,000 words. That's a lot of salt. 50,000 words every day.

That's the size of a small paperback in your library. I wonder at the end of the day how much of it would be worth writing down? How much of it would be worth even repeating? The mark of an unbeliever, Paul says, is his throat, his lips, his tongue, his mouth. So he also implies on the flip side of this, of course, then the distinguishing, authenticating characteristic of the believer is that distinctive, pure, wholesome, edifying, kind use of the tongue that distinguishes who we are as opposed to those who do not believe in Christ. So I want to end with the same question I began with.

It's a question that others could answer for you, but they wouldn't dare. How beautiful is your tongue? There's a prayer someone wrote out in a book I've long forgotten the name of, but it goes like this. Oh, Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me when I've said enough.

I like that. Every one of us stand convicted in a sermon like this, and every one of us ought to pray, Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff. And then would you, Spirit of God, nudge me when I've said enough?

Let's make that our prayer to God today. Fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me when I've said enough. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey.

I'm Scott Wiley. Listen to this note that came in from one of our regular listeners. It was Dale, my husband, who was actually looking for a business podcast to try to hopefully start a small business. But instead, God put Wisdom for the Heart into his earbuds. After one sermon, he ran to me and said, baby, you have to hear this. And ever since that night, we have listened, studied and prayed for two years now, seven days a week for about 10 hours a night as we work.

We are listening and studying. The lessons we've gone through from Stephen have changed our life. We can't get enough of the Lord. All the teachings we've had in our lives don't even compare to the lessons we're learning now through Pastor Davey. We've been taught so wrong for so long, and we're extremely excited and thankful to have you in our life.

Well, that's from Dale and Teresa, who live in Ragley, Louisiana. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to share that. Stephen's committed to teaching you God's Word as faithfully and accurately as possible. We're always glad to learn how God's using these lessons in the lives of people like you. What's your wisdom story?

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