Wisdom in Our Words 

A man walked into a pet store and saw a parrot with a sign that read, talks like a human, and excited, he bought it.

However, once he realized the parrot had, when he bought it, he realized that parrot had a serious problem.

It was abusive.

This parrot just abused the man constantly, insulting him, criticizing his cooking, and even mocking his fashion choices.

And so, he got to the end of his tether, and the man finally said, enough, if you don't stop, I'm putting you in the freezer.

I'm putting you in the freezer.

And the parrot sneered but kept squawking, just kept abusing him.

So he grabbed the parrot, put him in the freezer.

And the parrot just kept on.

And then suddenly screamed, squeaked, screamed, and then went silent.

And so, the man let it go for a few seconds, and then he was quite alarmed, and he opened up the freezer door.

And the parrot, now shivering, humbly stepped out and said, I sincerely apologize for my poor choice of words.

I promise to only say kind and uplifting things from now on.

The man was stunned and he nodded, and then the parrot cautiously said, By the way, what did the chicken do?

No feet and no head.

Words have the power.

We're getting somewhere here.

Words have the power to build up and tear down.

They have the power to get us into a lot of trouble too.

Amen?

Proverbs 18 21 is our main text today.

Wendy read a different portion that we'll get to as well.

But the main text for today is Proverbs 18 21.

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

The tongue has the power of life and death.

So this is the third message in a series we're doing in the Proverbs.

There's five Lord willing, five messages in this month, and we're building it around this framework of truth.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and knowledge rightly applied is wisdom, and wisdom ultimately leads to life.

So Proverbs says that the tongue has a lot of power, a lot of power, life and death.

The tongue is how we respond to God for salvation, isn't it?

It's from our heart, but when you think about it, it's quite extraordinary, the power of the tongue.

Romans 10, 9 says, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

The power of the tongue to express the heart's desire to give glory and repentance, glory to God and repent of our sin, with our tongue, we confess faith in Christ and it leads us to salvation.

So powerful.

James said in chapter 3 of his book, anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

The word is telios.

He actually really means what he says here.

The tongue will lead you to perfection.

It's so powerful.

Life and death.

Of course, Jesus was perfect.

He never said a word that was out of place.

But for most of us, in fact, all of us, the tongue is where we will realize very quickly we are sinful.

It has the power of life and death.

I looked up the physiological process.

I'm going to read from my notes, because I'm no doctor.

But I just thought it's interesting to see, it's not just the tongue, is it?

Words come from the whole body.

So it starts in the brain.

Speech begins as electrical impulses in our brain from certain parts of our brain that are responsible for speech.

And these regions organize our thoughts, select appropriate words, and then generate instructions for muscles involved in speech.

The brain transmits these instructions via nerve impulses through nerves which send signals that reach muscles in the chest and the throat, the face and mouth, guiding precise movements.

And of course, speech involves air.

We need air flow and that comes from our diaphragm.

This dome-shaped muscle beneath our lungs contracts downward.

This muscle expanding our chest cavity, causing our lungs to expand, pulling air into our respiratory system, and then air from our lungs move upward through the trachea, the windpipe, toward the larynx, and then muscles around our vocal cords, these two bands of flexible muscle tissue, adjust tension and positioning of the cords to create vibrations, producing sound waves.

The note takers, are you keeping up with this?

The raw sound from our vocal cords then moves upwards toward the pharynx, our mouth and nasal cavities, muscles in our tongue, soft palate and jaw adjust rapidly to shape the sound, forming recognisable syllables and words, and then this super agile muscle, the tongue, is manoeuvring around with precision against the teeth, the palate, the gums and consonants and vowels are created with this airflow.

Finally, our lips and facial muscles refine and shape the sound, allowing nuanced articulation.

P, B, M, F, F.

And the result is incredibly synchronized interplay of neurological signals, muscle contractions and airflow, and out of this meaningful speech emerges each word, shaped by complex, rapid interactions of mind, muscle and breath.

Praise God.

Praise God.

What an amazing God we have.

There was a widely cited study done in 2009 in the University of Arizona, and they estimated, quite legitimately it would seem, that the average person, both male and female equal, contrary to popular opinion, speak about 16,000 words per day.

Listening could be between 20,000 and 30,000 words per day, and all these words have the power of life and death.

Wow!

As the Toy and Toy Story said, it's a dangerous world we live in.

All of these words, you would think with this big process that they'd take a long time to get out.

They don't, do they?

They're just out there, and we can cause a lot of harm with these words that are produced so quickly, they sometimes are like living in our body.

How are you at controlling your tongue?

How are you at controlling your tongue?

Moving towards the perfect side?

Or very much imperfect?

So Wendy read for us this portion of the Proverbs in 15.1-4.

Let me read it again.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

From these four verses, these couple of Proverbs, we see that words are a portal to pain when used recklessly, and they can also be a portal to promise.

Words are a portal to pain.

Who remembers Doctor Who?

A few of us.

There was the Tardis, and it was a portal to take the doctor and his friends to other places.

The portal in the Tales of Narnia was the wardrobe.

In the Old Testament, the temple is a portal to Yahweh, a gateway into relationship with Him.

Words are a gateway.

They're a portal to either promise or pain.

How often have we seen the words of this proverb shown to be true?

A gentle answer turns away wrath.

That person is ready to explode at you.

Does anyone know that picture?

Clenched fist, the teeth are starting to grind.

What are you going to do in that moment?

Is that the time to light the match and throw it on the kindling, on the petrol?

Will you press send on the email immediately after you've written it?

Or will you stop?

The scripture says, a harsh word stirs up anger.

It also says, but there is knowledge adorning the words of the wise.

They are weighty, the words of the wise, they are substantive.

But the mouth of the fool gushes folly.

The mouth of the fool gushes folly.

Proverbs 10, 19 says, sin is not ended by multiple words, but the prudent hold their tongues.

Where there are many words, sin is not absent, another translation says.

In other words, if you talk too much, you'll probably end up sinning.

And the hard part is, the fool who gushes folly is normally living in self-deception and thinks their words are just a blessing to the world.

More and more words.

So what can we do to avoid letting our words be a portal to pain?

Keep going with the P-alliteration.

Pause, don't you think?

Pausing in the grace of God.

Pressing pause between trigger and action.

Pause long enough to pray.

To just stop and acknowledge my words have so much power.

What am I going to use them for?

Lord, is this being said in love?

Is this being said for the sake of truth?

Is this being said for the good of others?

Maturity is so often marked by the distance between being triggered and response, isn't it?

This in-between time is maturity.

And we can apply that to words so effectively.

Sometimes people, have you found that you might be one of these people?

Sometimes people like to say, I say it how it is.

I'm not a scaredy cat.

Not like those, I've got the courage to just speak it how it is.

A good post-modern approach, as though it is what you think it is.

I would just say to you, if that's you, and you probably already know this, your words have caused a lot of pain in your life, haven't they?

Because the Proverb is true.

It's a portal to pain if our words are not seasoned by grace.

The text says, a harsh word stirs up anger, the mouth of the fool gushes folly.

There are lots of other Proverbs, and sometimes it's good when you study Proverbs, to just let them speak.

Proverbs 12, 18, the words of the reckless pierced like swords.

17, the one who has knowledge uses words with restraint.

Whoever has understanding is even tempered.

21, those who guard their mouths, their tongues keep themselves from calamity.

25, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

26, without wood a fire goes out, without a gossip a quarrel dies down.

Words, they are a portal to pain, but they're also a portal to promise.

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

God watches over every conversation.

His eyes are everywhere.

But isn't that an interesting thought?

He is present in every conversation.

Has anyone thought conversations are fairly insignificant?

They just happen all the time.

They just happen all the time.

God wouldn't be interested in that.

He's interested in some other aspects of my life that I may be more aware of, that I struggle in.

No, He's actually everywhere all the time.

In His eyes, in this context, we're thinking about words.

And the Proverb is speaking about words.

And He is aware of the power of our conversations.

That physiological process that I spoke about before, it's also profoundly spiritual, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Words filled with power.

Look at this statement.

The soothing tongue is a tree of life.

Connect that to what the tree of life is.

The tree of life was the tree in the garden of Eden that God said, you should not eat of that or you will live forever.

The Proverb is saying that...

Excuse me.

The tongue leads to life, like Romans 10.

It leads us to salvation, but it also leads us to life now.

Life now, I thought, this is a fantastic example of words that lead to life now.

Are people familiar with Helen Keller?

Who is?

About half of us.

I'm with the ones who didn't put their hand up.

I found this story about Helen Keller, and I mentioned it to Leanne and Josiah, and they said, Surely you know Helen Keller.

Sorry, I better come out from under the rock.

But Helen Keller is an amazing woman.

She's not alive anymore, but she lived the late 1800s and then died in 1968.

She was a prolific author.

She campaigned for those with disabilities, for women's rights, for labor rights, for achieving all sorts of human right advancement.

She was deaf and blind from 19 months old.

How did she achieve so much?

She was a prolific author, but she was deaf and blind.

Well, one day, when she was six years old, a woman who became a great friend of hers all her life, named Anne Sullivan, poured water at six years of age, poured water over one of her hands, and wrote the letters of water in the other palm, W A T E R.

And that one word, water, written on a palm, opened her up to communication.

Isn't that an amazing story?

One word.

And I share that suggesting to you that it's true what the Proverbs says, what the Bible teaches, that words have the power of life and death.

They have the power of life and death to accept what Christ has done for us in full salvation, but they also have the power to bring life to people right now.

Amen?

Our words have such incredible power.

One word in season can be a portal to the promise of eternal life and even to life now as well.

The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

Crushes the spirit.

I wonder how many people, surely it's all of us, carry wounds, carry scars, that come from crushing words that we have received in our life, in our lifetime.

The Bible is clear, it says a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

Well, remember that you get to choose what the words mean.

Amen.

We all get to choose what the words we receive mean.

And last week, Ben preached on the importance of guarding our heart.

And I think the filter that we put up about what words we receive into our heart is very important as relating to words.

Amen.

Guarding our hearts is so much about guarding the words.

But the text says, the soothing tongue is a tree of life.

What an unlikely prophetic powerhouse of a sentence that is.

Way back in the time of the Proverbs, the author here writes, the soothing tongue is a tree of life.

Who could have imagined that the very word of God, who is life in himself, would come from eternity into time and walk among us?

A soothing tongue, the tree of life.

Truth is a word, isn't it?

Light is a word, life is a word, and his name is Jesus.

The soothing tongue is a tree of life.

Let me read to you what many of us know.

In the beginning, John 1 says, was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him, all things were made.

Without him, nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The word of God is eternal.

The word of God is creator.

The word of God is the essence of life itself.

The word of God is the light of the world.

The word of God holds the victory over the darkness.

The most important being in the cosmos, in the universe, is a word, the word.

Do you see that words are far more important than just utterances that come from a physiological process?

Proverbs 18 21 says, The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Which portal are we opening?

Which portal are we opening?

Every word we speak is a choice, a portal to pain or a portal to the promise of life, life to the full.

How will you use your words this week?

Because they're filled with potential, aren't they?

Power.

Will they stir up anger or bring peace?

Will they break down or build up?

Will they bring death or release the promise of life?

Remember, Jesus said in Luke 12, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.

We're not on our own with our words, amen?

When we walk with the Spirit, we are promised He will guide that turbocharged little muscle in our head, the tongue.

The power of life and death is in your tongue.

So may we submit that power to the Spirit of God.

I wonder if we could stand.

I'd love to pray a blessing over us because, and the band's gonna come up, and lead us in worship.

I think if ever we need a blessing of restraint and empowering, it's at a moment like this as we think about the power of our words.

So let's receive this from the Lord.

In the name of Jesus, may you be filled with the Spirit's wisdom, so that every word you speak reflects his truth.

May you be guided by his power, choosing words that build up rather than tear down.

May your speech bring healing to the broken, comfort to the weary, and hope to the discouraged.

May your heart be so full of God's love that your words overflow with his grace and kindness.

May you speak life into every conversation, led by the Holy Spirit and reflecting the goodness of the one who dwells within you.

May you be slow to speak in anger, but quick to offer words of peace, mercy, and reconciliation.

May your mouth declare the praises of the Lord, and may your tongue proclaim his faithfulness all your days.

May you be a portal to life through your words, to the glory of Jesus, and may his kingdom come.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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