The following sermon was delivered
on Sunday morning, January 12, 2003, at Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. One of the most sobering statements
found anywhere in the Word of God is found in Proverbs 18.21,
and it is this, Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Yes, you heard it correctly.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Solomon is here
asserting the sobering fact that deposited in the activity of
this relatively small fleshy organ Rooted in the upper front
of our throats, bounded on the east and west by two cheeks,
on the north and south by two jaws, placed behind two rows
of teeth, is this organ possessing the awesome power of death and
of life. And it is out of a deep pastoral
concern that the life-giving power of our tongues be more
fully exercised, and the death-imparting power be more fully restrained,
that we are engaged in a topical study entitled, Now Concerning
the Use of Our Tongues. I began this series of sermons
by considering five major categories of biblical witness to the crucial
importance of this issue of the use of our tongues. And I trust
that that initial consideration of this subject persuaded you
that the use of your tongue is indeed a major concern in the
teaching of the Bible. a concern with respect to the
nature and fruit of human depravity, the nature and fruit and reality
of saving religion, and the nature and fruit of practical spirit-wrought
godliness of life. Now, when you're ready to dismiss
depravity, true and vital saving religion and practical godliness,
then and only then can you dismiss a deep concern about this fleshy
organ of yours deposited between your cheeks and your jaws and
situated behind your two rows of teeth. We then proceeded to
examine four major sins of the tongue as they are identified,
defined, and condemned by the word of God. Namely, the sin
of lying, the sin of corrupt speech, the sin of abusive speech,
and the sin of meddlesome and intrusive speech. And then last
Lord's Day, we began to consider together the question, how does
this Bible that identifies the sins of the tongue, that tells
us death and life are in the power of the tongue, and for
our deaf and hearing impaired people, all of those things have
reference to their hands as they become their tongues to express
the thoughts and the sentiments of their heart, What does the
Bible tell us with respect to this question, how may we overcome
these sins of the tongue? And last Lord's Day, I sought
to direct your attention to what I described as the essential
or fundamental prerequisite for overcoming the sins of the tongue.
A prerequisite is something that is required before. And an essential
prerequisite is one that you cannot do without. And so I sought
to take you into this issue of what is the essential prerequisite
without which there is no hope that I shall overcome the sins
of my tongue. And with Matthew 12, 33 to 35
as our central but not exclusive text, we saw that this essential
prerequisite for overcoming the sins of the tongue is nothing
less than the radical transforming power of God's regenerating grace. In a context that oozes with
the subject of words, Jesus said that there must be a making of
the corrupt tree into a good tree so that it may bring forth
good fruit, which in context is good words. that the making
of the evil treasure of the heart into a good treasure so that
it may bring forth good things is the great concern set forth
by our Lord Jesus. And that which Jesus sets before
us under the imagery of the making of a corrupt tree into a good
tree, that it may bear good fruit, the making of the evil treasure
into a good treasure, that it may bring forth good things,
is what Paul describes in Titus 3 as the washing of regeneration
and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. or what is described
in the promise of new covenant blessing in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah
31 as the removal of the heart of stone, the implanting of a
heart of flesh, and giving to that heart of flesh the Holy
Spirit, writing the law of God upon that heart, giving the Spirit
as enabling power with respect to the will of God. And then
we took up the question, why? Is this radical, spirit-wrought
transformation the essential or fundamental prerequisite for
overcoming the sins of the tongue? And I gave you but two reasons.
Reason number one, without it we have no gospel-born power
to overcome our sins, and I gave you several texts that demonstrate
this. And secondly, we have no gospel-born
motives to overcome the sins of the tongue, and I described
our motives as the motors or the engines of our activity. And it is only when we are motivated
by gospel-born motives that there will be sufficient internal incentives
to overcome the sins of the tongue. Now today, I propose to set before
you the first three of six general directives for overcoming the
sins of the tongue. If I only get to two of them
in the constraints of time, we'll deal with two. But it is my purpose
this morning to take up the first three of six general biblical
directives for overcoming the sins of the tongue, and God willing,
next Lord's Day, the final three. So, having identified the essential
or fundamental prerequisite for overcoming the sins of the tongue,
and assuming that you have experienced that radical, spirit-wrought
transformation of God's regenerating grace, what then are you to do,
if anything, to overcome the sins of the tongue? To state it differently, confident,
I trust, that the tree has been changed from a corrupt into a
good tree and therefore in a position to bring forth good fruit. That
the evil treasure has been changed into a good treasure so that
it can bring forth good things. What do we do so that day after
day there is an increasing measure of grace to overcome the sins
of the tongue? Do we simply sit back and allow
the fruit to be born on its own with no conscious deliberate
effort on our own? Do we passively now say, oh God,
you have made the tree good and you've said a good tree brings
forth good fruit, so Lord let the fruit be born. Or you've
made my heart into a good treasure, out of which can come good things.
Now, Lord, unpack the treasure and sit back and watch the treasure
be unpacked. No, as you have been reminded
many times in this place, there is no more critical text that
condenses the biblical teaching on how regenerate sinners live
the Christian life than Philippians 2, 12 and 13, in which Paul says,
So then, my beloved brethren, As you have always obeyed, not
only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God
who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good
pleasure. And in that text that only causes
people to scratch their heads who don't understand the ways
of God, the Apostle says, you Philippians, I want you to engage
all of your faculties and all of your powers, and conscious
that you are living before the face of God, I want you to give
yourself with all of those faculties and powers to the working out
of your salvation. And I want you to do so in the
confidence that God all the while is continually, effectually working
in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure. In other
words, the apostle is unashamed to say that God's working in
us assures the possibility of my working you work out for. It is God who is working in you.
And my working is the validation and the manifestation of His
working. Because He does not work bypassing
my willing and my working, but He works in me to will and to
work. So I can marshal all my faculties
knowing I'm not on a fool's errand. God's at work in me. He's made
the tree good. It can bring forth good fruit.
He's made the treasure good! It can bring forth good things. And so in this text there is
a marvelous distillation of the biblical teaching on how we live
the Christian life. So then, in this consciousness
of my need of His working in me to overcome the sins of my
tongue, and in the determination to work at overcoming the sins
of my tongue, what am I to do? Well, here's the first of the
three directives that I hope to cover this morning. Number
one, we ought to engage in consistent, earnest prayer that God will
guard our tongues. We ought, ought is a word of
duty. And I know that in many circles
today, duty is considered dirty. But I have no reservations, thinking
biblically, that ought is not a dirty word. Paul could say
to the Thessalonians, you know how we taught you how you ought
so to walk as to please God. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and
I am using the word ought without any embarrassment whatsoever. And I'm asserting that when we
go to our Bibles with the question, O God, in the working out of
my salvation with fear and trembling, with respect to this specific
concern, how do I overcome the sins of my tongue, that the answer
of Scripture is that we ought to engage in consistent, earnest
prayer that God would guard our tongues. You remember that when
the disciples in Luke 11 said, Lord, teach us to pray, Jesus
answered by saying, when you pray, say. And at the end of
that framework of prayer, we have these words, and lead us
not into temptation. Luke 11, 4. The Lord was saying,
when you pray, be sure that incorporated into your prayers are consistent,
earnest petitions that you will be kept from sin. And in the
parallel passage in Matthew 6, where the words are not, when
you pray, say, but after this manner pray, clearly indicating
that whatever we may believe about using the so-called Lord's
Prayer as a form of prayer, Our Lord is also teaching it is a
framework for prayer and within that framework of the elements
that are essential to comprehensive Christ-directed prayer are these
words, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil or from
the evil one. So generically we know that any
well-instructed Christian walking according to the directives of
his Lord will have as part of his prayer life engaging in consistent,
earnest prayer that he be kept from sin. And I want to seek
to demonstrate from the scripture that that generic concern needs
to be focused specifically upon this member that's between our
cheeks and jaws, rooted in the upper front part of our throats,
the tongue. Please turn with me now to Psalm
141. Psalm 141. And I'm going to read the first
three verses. Lord, I have called upon you. Make haste unto me. Give ear
to my voice when I call unto you. Let my prayer be set forth
as incense before you, the lifting up of my hands as the evening
sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my
mouth. Keep the door. of my lips. In verses 1 and 2 of this psalm,
David prays earnestly that his prayer will be heard. But in calling, Lord, please,
please hear me. Make haste to me. Give ear to
my voice when I call. And then he uses beautiful imagery.
Let my prayer be set forth as incense before you. The lifting
up of my hands is the evening sacrifice. as God would smell
the incense going up from a sacrifice offered in the tabernacle according
to divine directive by the divinely appointed man. And God would
smell it and it would be a sweet savor to him. David says, Oh
God, give ear to my voice when I call. Lord, let my prayer be
sweet to your nostrils as the incense of the evening sacrifice. Then, having pleaded that his
prayer will be heard, notice what his first actual petition
is, that he desires will be heard, and it is this, set a watch,
O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips. Now these words, watch and keep,
are words which along with their cognates, when people talk about
the cognates, that's the verbal cousins, first cousin, second
cousin, twice removed, uncle or aunt. It's words that come
out of the same family. They have a family relationship. And these words, keep and watch,
and their cognates are with their verbal cousins, aunts and uncles,
are the very words used to describe a military activity of placing
soldiers in a strategic place in order to guard someone or
something. We find the words used that way
in Judges 7.19 and Nehemiah 4 in verse 9. Now usually, when a military
guard, a watch, is posted, it is to prevent an unwarranted
entrance into a protected area outside the city gates. You remember
in the Gospels, they set a guard, a watch, outside the tomb of
our Lord Jesus. in order to prevent any unwarranted
intrusion, in order to prevent anyone from going in and removing
his body. And the Jewish authorities said
then they would claim that he had been raised from the dead
as he prophesied he would be. Now in the case of Some instances,
recorded even in the scriptures, in 1 Samuel 19.11, Saul sets
a watch to keep David from going out of his home. But generally
the watch is set to keep unwarranted people from entering somewhere,
whether it's the camp of the Philistines, whether it's entering
into the tomb of our Lord Jesus, but we do have that instance
in which the word watch is used, with Saul setting a watch at
the house of David, lest David escape, and he is not able to
lay hold of him and to kill him. Now, here in this passage, David
with that military imagery is asking God to do this. Set a
watch, O Lord, before my mouth, Keep the door of my lips. Now do you see what the imagery
is? He's saying, Lord, I want a sentinel to be set outside
my lips that I'm likening to a door. I'll not be able to speak
unless the door swings open. And then I will speak as long
as the door is shut, I'm silent. Now Lord, I want you to set a
watch. I want you to set a watch before
my mouth. I want you, Lord, to be the doorkeeper
as a sentinel of soldiers before my lips. I'm conscious, Lord,
that unless you do this, The hinges on the door of my lips
will be opening in times and in circumstances where they ought
not to. Lord, would you not please, will
you not please act like a sentinel upon the door of my lips? That's David's prayer. Now, having
prayed that, And picturing that prayer coming like incense into
the ears of God, let me ask you this question. If God were to
speak to David and respond to that prayer audibly, what would
he say? All right, David, I'll do that. Leave the whole thing
to me. I'll take care of it. No. I believe
from the analogy of scripture we can say that God would say,
My son David, I will answer that prayer, and in answer to that
prayer, I will set four sentinels in front of the door of your
lips in fact I'll send four captains and on that door of your lips
I'm going to put four locks in vertical arrangement every one
of them with a deadbolt two, three, four and David When you
pray that I would set a watch upon your mouth, and that I would
guard the door of your lips, David, I answer your prayer by
sending you four sentinels, each with a key in his hand. And David,
when your words are knocking on the back side of the door,
I charge my sentinels to ask them, do you meet my criteria
for coming out? If so, I'll put my key into the
lock and turn it. And David, unless all four of
the captains turn their key, The door should be kept shut,
and you should keep your words to yourself. And I'm going to
call them Captain Purity or Sanctity, Captain Love, Captain Necessity,
and Captain Propriety. Lord, keep the door of my lips. Alright, David? When you knock,
about to speak, And Captain Purity or Sanctity says, David, are
the words that are coming out of your mouth up to the standard
of sanctity? They are not lying words. They are not corrupt words. They
are not abusive words. They are not intrusive and meddlesome
words. And David can say, yes, Captain
Sanctity, they are none of those things. Captain Sanctity says,
I'll put my key in, David. And he hears the dead bolt retract. Then Captain Love speaks up.
David's still knocking. I want these words to have an
exit. Captain Love says, David, Are
you going to speak the truth in love? Ephesians 4 and verse
15 Romans 13.10, love works no ill to his neighbor, therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law. Are the words you are about
to speak motivated by love? A love that does not seek to
do ill? A love that is determined, in
some cases, to wound? For faithful are the wounds of
a friend. Paul can say of the Romans, I'm
persuaded of you, you're full of goodness, able to admonish,
not the gushy notion of love that will never rebuke, never
admonish. But is the word that desires
exit a word motivated by love? Love that seeks the good of its
object? Love that is not easily provoked,
that seeks not its own? And if David can say, yes, Captain
Love, these words are motivated by love and shaped by love, Captain
Love will say, I'll place my key in the door. He places it
in, and another dead boat is retracted. But then Captain Necessity
speaks. Captain Necessity speaks. Are these words necessary to
be spoken? Or, David, are they just words
that want to come out and run all over the place? For the scripture
says, in Proverbs 10 and verse 19, this very interesting and
practical thing, in the multitude of words there lacks not transgression,
but he that refrains his lips does wisely. Yes, Captain Necessity. Love demands that I speak these
words for a number of good reasons. I believe it is right that they
should be spoken. Captain Necessity says, I'll
put my key in the door. He retracts his bolt. But then
finally there's Captain Propriety. And what's propriety? What is
proper? What is fitting? What is suitable? There's a marvelous passage that
indicates that Elihu The younger man who stood around and watched
and listened as Job's comforted spewed out all of their verbiage. He had a sense of the propriety
of words. Listen to what Elihu says in
Job chapter 32. Job chapter 32. Elihu says this, verse 6. Verse 4, Elihu had waited to
speak unto Job. There was a bolt, yet, on Ellie
Hughes' door. He was listening. He was feeling
things very deeply. Verse 2, Then was kindled the
wrath of Elihu, the son of Barakel, the Buzite of the family of Ram. Against Job was his wrath kindled,
because he justified himself. Also against his three friends
was his wrath kindled, because they had found no answer and
yet had condemned Job. Now Elihu had waited to speak
because They were older than he. You see, Elihu believed that
he had vital words to speak, words that needed to be spoken
in a love that is not contradicted with righteous anger. But there
was one sentinel that he couldn't get past, and that was the sentinel
Captain Propriety. I'm the kid. These are the older
berserkers. These are the people that ought
to be giving wisdom in their speech. And I'm younger, and
it is not seemly. for a young squirt to be shooting
off his mouth in the presence of older, reputedly wise men. And as deeply as I feel, none
of them has hit the mark. Job's off the mark. His friends
are off the mark. It is not proper in ordinary
circumstances for a young man to be shooting off his mouth
in the presence of older men. Then we read in verse 6, Then
Elihu the son of Barakel the Buzite answered and said, I am
young, you are very old. Wherefore I held back, and I
dared not show you my opinion. I said, Days should speak, and
multitude of years should teach wisdom, but And now he goes on
to tell them why his initial sense of the impropriety of his
speaking is being overcome so that he is now ready to speak. I think it's a marvelous example
of Captain Propriety standing at the door of Elihu's mouth
until he can say to Captain Propriety, Initially, your refusal to open
the door, I consent was right, however." And then he persuades
him it's time to draw back the boat and out come his words. Love does not behave itself unseemly. Paul says to Timothy, an apostolic
representative, with the authority of the apostles standing above
him and behind him, Timothy, 1 Timothy 5.1, don't rebuke an
older man, but entreat him like a father. Timothy, make sure
that the manner in which you speak to older men can pass muster
with captain propriety. And when those four sentinels
turn the boat, then you can say, Lord, thank you. Thank you for
watching over the door of my lips that I might not speak that
which is dishonoring to you and grievous and unedifying to others. Lord, thank you for hearing my
prayer. that you would set a watch upon
my mouth, before my mouth, and that you would keep the door
of my lips. You say, Pastor, are you serious?
That before I say anything, I should run down that checklist? Well,
for some of you, it wouldn't help to do it for a while. But when you've conditioned your
conscience to think in these biblical categories, it is amazing
how quickly those things can be run through at times in milliseconds. If men with their brain matter
can make computers that in fractions of seconds can access millions
of bits of information, What about the thing that produces
that? This marvelous thing called the human brain. And what I'm
appealing for is not some kind of legalism that we all go around
with a checklist, mute, until we come up to one another and
someone dares, dares to say, I think I got a word that came
by the four sentinels. And then you stand there mute
for another five minutes while you're going to... No, no, no,
no. I'm not talking about that. God
doesn't lay upon us the ludicrous. But I do believe the text that
I've quoted under each of these headings validates. that our
speech is to be speech that does indeed pass the test of purity
or sanctity. It is not dishonest speech. It
is not corrupting speech. It is not abusive speech. It
is not meddlesome speech. We spent four weeks demonstrating
that from the Scriptures. And surely if we are to walk
in love and speak the truth in love, and whatever else is present
in us, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have
not love, it profits me nothing. Surely it is right that our speech
should pass the scrutiny of sentinel Captain Love, and then likewise
with necessity all that the Scripture speaks about unnecessary speech
and Captain Propriety. Then, then, we'll have much less
repenting to do about the careless, loveless, improprietous things
we say to one another about one another. Could it be that many
of our sins of the tongue are the result of simply not crying
to God like David did? For James says you have not.
Why? because you ask not. And may I pastorally entreat
you, I can't bind your conscience, but I certainly can plead with
you, to determine that in the coming week you will incorporate
into your own devotional prayers at least one utterance from the
heart of Psalm 141 and verse 3, once a day. That's an entreaty. I can't bind
your conscience by it. I can bind your conscience with
the word of God that your speech ought to be pure and loving and
necessary and proprietous I can't bind your conscience to take
this step of saying you must pray at least once a day, Psalm
140.1.3, but I can entreat you, can't I? And I think your conscience
tells you that's not an excessive entreaty. It should not be a
laborious, burdensome entreaty to pray. Set a watch, O Lord,
before my mouth. Keep the door of my lips. Furthermore, I urge you, when
you get on the phone with someone, lift up your heart with this
prayer. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to say, Mary, Sally, God's been
dealing with me about this matter of overcoming the sins of the
tongue. May I just briefly pray back Psalm 141.3 before we talk? And then you say, O Lord, as
Mary and I talk, may you, Lord, set a watch before our mouths,
keep the door of our lips. Is that some kind of excessive,
burdensome, legalistic concept of the Christian life? I don't
think so. When sitting at your computer,
you guys, you e-mail freaks, you i-mail freaks, brrk, brrk,
brrk, brrk, brrk, brrk, brrk, this is one of the great dangers
of the e-mail and the i-mail. There isn't the discipline of
composition that comes with a formal letter. Very, very easy to let
all kinds of things come out of the door of your lips, through
your fingers, and through electrical impulses in your computer that
would never pass the approval and get by the bolts of Captain
Purity, Captain Love, Captain Necessity, Captain Propriety. Husbands and wives. One of the most wretched manifestations
of our remaining sin is that we feel the liberty to hurt the
most those with whom we have the most secure relationship. Some of you men would never dare,
I don't care how aggravated you were, you would never dare speak
to your boss the way you speak to your wife when you get aggravated
by her. Why? Because you know your boss might
fire you. You know your wife isn't going to divorce you. You
see, it's the security of the relationship that constitutes
a framework that makes it easy to abuse it and sin. Am I the only perverse one here? Nobody's nodding their head.
Come on, am I the only perverse one here? Same thing with you
kids, husbands, wives. I urge you, I entreat you, if
you're serious about overcoming the sins of the tongue, then
cry to God in all these relationships. You begin to speak to your wife,
your husband, and it's evident that something is coming into
the range of discussion that's got some burrs on it. You begin
to feel something, the heat of disagreement and a differing
emotional response. If necessary, husbands take the
lead and say, sweetheart, let's stop right now. Let's pray and
pray together in unison. Psalm 141 verse 3. And if you're so heated in your
spirit that you can't hear the voice of the sentinels outside
the other side of the door, walk in the other room. Say, dear,
sweetheart, honey, darling, whatever you call one of them. You got
no pet names for one another. Something's fishy. Excuse me.
All right. Whatever you call one another. If we're serious, dear people,
if we're serious, and we better be serious because our Bible,
that initial message, those five categories of biblical truth,
says you better take what comes out of this tongue seriously.
And that's the great burden that I have. One more message and
some of you say, okay, I can breathe easy now. And there's
no difference. Same degree of angry words in
the home? Same degree of sharp words when
someone disagrees with you? No real progress! In God's name, what will it take? What will it take? I don't know
how to open up the text more clearly, more plainly, apply
them more closely. Or is it that you really don't
take it seriously? If indeed we take this seriously,
we will engage in consistent, earnest prayer that God will
guard our tongues. Now, in the second place, we
not only ought to engage in consistent, earnest prayer that God will
guard our tongues, but we ought to engage in the conscious, constant
effort to bridle our tongues. We ought to engage in the conscious,
constant effort to bridle our tongues. Now, I know that a division
without a distinction ought not to be. And some of you more astute
thinkers may say, well, Pastor Martin, there's a lot of overlapping
in that, isn't there? Yes. But I want biblical images
to be stamped on your heart. And there is a biblical image
in two critical texts that is completely distinct and different
from the image of the guard, and it's the image of the bridle
or the muzzle. And I didn't know how to get
those texts out and seek to get them into your conscience without
a separate heading. So if I have disrupted your sense
of how material ought to be divided, I apologize, but I'm going to
do it anyway. All right? We ought to engage
in the conscious, constant effort to bridle our tongues. In the first directive, we focused
on crying to God. Yet it did involve our activity
of consulting the captains at the door of our lips. This biblical
imagery of the bridle or the muzzle focuses on our conscious
activity in a totally different category of imagery. Text number
1 is Psalm 39 and verse 1. Psalm 39 and verse 1. If you read through the psalm,
it's obvious that there's a situation in which David felt something
very, very deeply. He says at the end of verse 2,
my sorrow was stirred, my heart was hot within me. Sorrow stirred, heart was hot. within me yet for compelling
reasons and if we read the psalm carefully we see it was the honor
of God he judges it was not yet time to speak so what does he
do verse 1 I said I will take heed to my ways that I sin not
with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle
or with a muzzle while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with
silence. I held my peace even from good,
and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me while
I was musing. The fire burned. Then spoke I
with my tongue. So you see the situation. Here
David feels something very, very deeply. His heart is hot within
him. His sorrow is stirred. Everything
in him wants to break out and articulate this with his mouth,
with his lips. But he's not able to do so. There
are good and wise reasons to be restrained. So what does he
do? He says in verse 1, I renewed my determination that I would
be careful about my ways, particularly that I would not sin with my
tongue. In other words, David knew himself
well enough to know, here's a situation where I could sin with this member. And I was determined that I would
not carelessly walk into a path of sin. I said I will take heed
to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. And then he uses this
imagery, I will keep my mouth with a bridle or with a muzzle. Now whether it's the bridle or
the muzzle, the imagery is graphic. If it's the bridle, what do you
do when you bridle a horse? Well, here is this animal, this
bundle of muscle and sinew, and the unbridled horse goes where
he will at whatever speed. But when he's bridled, no matter
how much he wants to move, and picture that horse, that is bringing
his head up and down, snorting through his nostrils, pawing
with his foot. But the rider's in control. Everything
in that huge beast, in all of the muscle and sinew, wants to
go here, wants to go there, in keeping with his own will. But
the rider holds him in with a firm grip upon the reins, joined to
the bridle. Or, if the proper rendering is
a muzzle, Think of that yelping dog, howling on the hill, thinking
he's going to scare the moon off to another galaxy. Howling
away at a full moon. You see him? Can you hear him?
I won't imitate him. I'd be pushing the thing a little
bit too much. And you go over and you say,
you dumb animal, shut up. You're going to wake up the neighbors.
And you take his upper and lower jaws and you clamp them shut
and you hold them shut. David says, that's what I did
with myself. He says, I will keep my mouth
with a bridle, with a muzzle. My mouth at this time may be
like an energetic horse that is pawing the ground, bobbing
its neck up and down, determined to go, but I'm going to rein
it in, conscious, deliberate effort. It may be like a yapping,
yelping dog. I'm going to clamp the hands
of my soul over my mouth. Shut it up. Now my brothers and
sisters, the point is, you don't do this unconsciously. You don't do this while you're
sleeping. You don't do this without thought. You don't do this without
the full engagement and activity of your will. And that's the
point I'm making when I say we ought Having prayed that God
would set a guard upon our mouths and keep the door of our lips,
we ought under the imagery of this passage, we ought to engage
in the conscious, constant effort to bridle, to muzzle our tongues
and our mouths. Though we may feel something
very deeply, so deeply that we can say our hearts are hot within
us. It's like a fire within our breast
yearning to break out and find an egress through our mouths. We bridle it. We muzzle it. We restrain the yelping dog. Now the New Testament passage
that takes up the same imagery is James chapter 1. James chapter
1. Text we looked at in our initial
study. We come back to it now to focus
on this imagery. James chapter 1 verse 26. If
any man thinks himself to be religious If any man judges himself
to be a possessor of true and vital religion in its internal
reality and its external expressions, while he bridles not his tongue,
who bridles it? Not the Lord, he does. While
he does not bridle his tongue, this man's religion but deceives
his heart. This man's religion is vain. And there's the imagery again.
Anyone who thinks himself, herself, to be the possessor of true and
vital saving religion in its internal reality and its external
expressions, who is a stranger to conscious, deliberate, effective
restraint of the natural impulses of the tongue, that person is
self-deceived. That's what James says. If you're
a stranger, if you don't know what it's like at times to feel
that restraining your tongue is like holding back a horse
that wants to bust out of the gate and go running at breakneck
speed, you're a stranger to real religion. Or you're so sanctified, my friend,
that I've got to rethink my whole biblical doctrine of remaining
sin. The possessor of true and vital
religion is no stranger to this activity, this conscious, deliberate,
reigning in of the tongue. Now this has peculiar application
when we are in social settings, when there's an atmosphere of
conviviality, sorry, Lastly, conviviality is just a nice happy
atmosphere, all right? All right? And words are flowing
and the hands are moving, all right? It's particularly, particularly
an area in which we can, in that context, so quickly get careless. And we need to cry to God when
we come into such circumstances. Oh God, help me to take hold
of the reins and the bridle. Lord give me grace that I not
sin with my tongue. And you younger ones, in the
presence of your parents, I'm getting a classical education. I can speak Latin. I know more at grade 10 than
my parents knew when they finished college. Well, fiddly do. Knowledge puffs up. There's a lot of things they
ain't going to teach you in Trinity Christian School. Your parents
have learned in the crucible of life. And though they may
not be able to pronounce one Latin word right, they've got
an encyclopedia of proven knowledge to which you are utterly ignorant
and it is your wisdom to acknowledge it and to put a bridle on your mouth
when you're ready to debate with mom and dad and ready to smart
mouth them that stinks in the nostrils of God you may be smarter They may say
things that you could argue them and show them up. Don't do it. Now if they say, now look, dad
knows he's ignorant in this area, can you help him? And then you
sit down and say, well very humbly dad, I'll be glad to. You see? Okay? That's different from you
taking the initiative. With no bridle upon your smart
mouth. No muzzle! upon your smart mouth. That's unseemly, kids. You want
to have any credibility with your parents and those who observe
you? Don't do it. I want you to look at a couple
of passages again in Proverbs. Proverbs 17, 28. Proverbs 17,
verse 28. Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise. When he shuts
his lips, he's esteemed as prudent. This guy don't know much. He
keeps his mouth shut and you just don't know how little he
knows. So Solomon observed that. He
said, hmm, even the fool when he holds his peace is counted
wise. At least he's got enough wisdom to know how to take the
reins upon his mouth and keep quiet when he ought to and not
be running off at the mouth. Proverbs 13 and verse 3 is in
a similar vein. Not identical, but similar. He
that guards his mouth keeps his life, but he that opens wide
his lips shall have destruction. Remember what James said in chapter
3. Every kind of bird and beast has been tamed. But the tongue
can no man tame. It's unruly, he says. And that's
true of all of us. And we need to cry to God not
only for the divine sentinel that we may know the grace and
power of God to guard our mouths and the door of our lips, but
that we may have a holy bridle and muzzle upon our mouths. And
then very briefly, as we conclude this morning, because I do want
to conclude on this gospel note, not only ought we to engage in
consistent, earnest prayer that God will guard our tongues, not
only ought we to engage in conscious, constant effort to bridle our
tongues, but we ought to engage in continual faith-suffused response
to the reality of our union with Christ. We ought to engage in
continual faith-suffused response to the implications or the reality
of our union with Christ. Now what in the world am I talking
about? We'll turn to Romans 6 for just
a few moments and I hope to answer that question. Many of you will know that Paul
has opened up in chapters 3-21 to the end of chapter 5, the
marvelous doctrine of justification by faith, God imputing to sinners
the very righteousness of Christ, so that where sin abounds, grace
does much more abound. Then Paul takes up what I call
the devil's logic to that, verse 1 of chapter 6. What should we
say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Paul
says, may it never be. And then he says these words,
we who are such as have died to sin. That's my translation
that brings forth the emphasis of the words and construction
in the original. We who are such, we who in our
true identity as Christians, we who are such as have died
to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? And having made
that seminal statement, then Paul goes on in verses 3 through
10 to give us what we would call these wonderful indicatives.
He is declaring what is true of us if we are in Christ, if
we have known that radical, life-transforming work of the Spirit. We are now
united to Christ. And we are united to Him in such
a way that the virtue of His death, burial and resurrection
is passed over into us. We died with Him. We were raised
with Him. We are now in union with Christ,
such as have died to sin. Those are the great indicatives.
Then He takes up the imperatives that grow out of that. What am
I to do in the light of who I am in union with Christ? Verse 11. He says, even so, reckon, count
as reality yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God
in Christ Jesus. You say, I don't feel very dead
unto sin. That has nothing to do with your feelings. It's the
reality of who you are. And then it's as if someone said,
well, reckoning it to be so, what are the practical things
growing out of that? Paul says, I'll tell you, don't
let sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey
the lust thereof. Neither present your members
unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God
as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
unto God, for sin shall not exercise lordship over you. For you are
not under law, but under grace. Here are the imperatives in the
light of the great indicatives, who I am as a new man, new woman
in Christ. I am such as have died to sin
in union with Christ. And in the light of that, I'm
to reckon on that reality, I'm to count it as true, and counting
that as true, I am to assert that I do not need to be under
the lordship of sin. My tongue does not need to be. There is no moral necessity that
my tongue be an instrument of sin. And if it is not to be,
this is what I must do. I must determine that I will
not present my members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Sin has not died to me. I've
died to it. But sin will come as a usurper
master and say, give me your tongue. I want to use it for
my purposes. He personifies sin. As a master
that says, I want this member, I want your hands to steal, I
want your eyes to lust, I want your feet to go into forbidden
paths, I want your tongue to lie, to speak abusive speech,
corrupting speech, intrusive, meddlesome speech. Paul says,
no, you refuse to present your members instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, but you say, As one alive from the dead, I
belong to God through the work of Christ. I present myself to
Him, and I present my members to be instruments of righteousness
unto God. Lord, here is my tongue. May
it know the virtue and power of my union with Christ, that
the sin-breaking, sin-conquering power of Jesus that is mine in
Him. O Lord, may my tongue know. that sin-conquering power. For you have said, sin shall
not exercise lordship over me. I am no longer in that realm
where there is nothing but naked law demanding, galling, condemning. I am in the new age, in Christ,
free in Christ, empowered by Christ to live a life of righteousness. And you and I must learn more
and more to bring these gospel dynamics, what I've called faith
suffused response, to the implications of our union with Christ if we
are to know increasing measures of victory over the sins of our
tongue. Well, I lay before you then those
three very basic biblical directives. If you and I are going to make
progress in conquering the sins of our tongue. And I underscore
what we considered last week. If you're sitting here and you're
a stranger to God's renewing, transforming grace that comes
In the way of repentance and faith, in the way of God's sovereign,
gracious renewal in which he takes out the heart of stone,
imparts a heart of flesh. My friend, the Bible says, the
carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can it be, so then they that are
in the flesh cannot please God. Can't please God with their tongue.
Don't try to implement these directives we've looked at today
until you've reckoned with that essential prerequisite. And cry
to God that for Christ's sake he would have mercy. Go to Jesus
as mediator of the new covenant and say, Oh Lord Jesus, do in
me what you said you will do in the new covenant. Take out
my heart of stone, give me a heart of flesh, impart your spirit
to me, write your law upon my heart. And the scripture says,
him that comes to him, he will in no wise cast out. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for
your Word, that it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our
pathway. And we pray that in this matter
of the sins of our tongues, we may know your grace to internalize
and apply and work out with fear and trembling all that we have
considered from the scriptures today. Lord, don't let us simply
take these things as another sermon. But by your grace, may
we know you're working in us in power, even as you have promised. So we ask you to dismiss us with
your blessing, watch over us through the remainder of this
day, and bring us back together this night that we may know your
blessed presence and the working of your spirit among us, we ask
in Jesus' name. Amen.