Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Every time in Scripture, there are few in the Scripture.
It shows us a picture into the throne room, right?
We see it in Revelation. We see it in Isaiah.
That's the song that they're singing.
OK, so when we gather together and we sing in the forms of the
the melodies and all that holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty. We are joining in with the
chorus of heaven. That is our ultimate reality.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty doesn't just mean that
he is morally better than I am and morally better than we are.
What it means is that he is separate.
He is distinct, he is set apart from us.
And what that means is that leads us that that is where our
our confession comes in our confession each week we say we
are badly broken, we are deeply loved and we are badly.
Broken the holiness of God is that he is able to look into and
at our. Brokenness and still love us.
Maybe the only thing that you need to hear today is that your
brokenness has not separated you from the ruthlessly determined
God who wants to love you. Doesn't mitigate it.
It doesn't mean that we're not broken.
It just means that our brokenness isn't what's ultimate
and what's final about us. In fact, it's His Holiness that
is good news for us. It is His Holiness that draws
us. And you may have a hard time
with the brokenness. You may be some of us in here
are just like Nope. I tasted it this week.
I saw. It on the way here.
In my own life, it's not. But some of you, this may be new
and you're just like, wait, what do you mean like I'm broken
going? Oh, that's OK.
That's pretty good. We have this experience in life.
Right. The things that I intend to do
are not always the things that happen.
There's a gap. Between my intention and the
expression of of those intentions, I try to do.
Good Romans Romans 7 Paul says the thing that I I I don't want
to do, I find myself doing right, but a story of my life is
a story of walking into moments expecting and intending.
One thing I said last week, I want you to hear all throughout
this series on the Proverbs. My assumption about you is that
your intentions are good. I don't think anybody wakes up
in the morning and is like, like, I am ready to ruin
someone's day today, right? No.
We walk into the world intending to do good, and yet.
In an honest moment, best intentions notwithstanding, we
can find we find ourselves where the fruit of our intentions
isn't what we expected it to be. And so then, right, we're in
this position where we got it. OK, well, what do we got?
We got to figure this out, right?
And I, what I'm going to say is I think our attempts and our
approach to figuring it out as part of the problem.
Often times when we talk about figuring out, figuring it out
why things are going the way they are, figuring out why
there's a gap between my intent and the and the expression, the
impact of my life. What is that?
Most of those attempts are centered around and gathered
around information. Somehow we live in the post most
enlightenment, right? Like we are a thoroughly
scientific people, right? We want to reason together and
we want to understand, and that's important.
That's that's great. We see it.
But our attempt to figure out our lives and the world that we
live in that we either try to gather more information, right?
When things aren't going well, when I'm not feeling right, when
something has happened that I don't understand or don't like,
I want to gather more information, right?
What are the rules? What, what, what happened?
What did I, what did I do that I should have done differently?
We begin to look for angles. What, what position can I
leverage? How can I find something to get
this through and into this moment?
How can I make this happen in such a way that they can see and
think and feel what I want them to do?
What is it that is keeping me from winning, from getting
ahead, from overcoming? This is information gathering
and we go to all kinds of different places for it.
It's not bad. Information is is super is
important. I'm wired like I have emotions.
The older I get, the more comfortable I am acknowledging
that like I have emotions, but I don't make any decisions based
on them, right? I distrust them, right?
So I'm always going like, well, what can I do different?
So we're just trying to gather information or we're trying to
use information to clarify, right?
Somebody says something that hurts us or something, right?
What do we want to do? Oh, I was only.
Right, this is. Clarifying our intent, giving
you information that we think is going to make a different or you
didn't do this. If you had done this, then it's
the information of how this could be better.
Underlying all of this is this assumption.
If we could just get the right information at the right time,
everything will be better. Yep, I I.
I think that I believe that I'm I'm a gatherer.
I want to find details. I want to find information.
Here's the problem that I have to that I have to wrestle with.
In the Internet age, the sum total of all knowledge is
available to any third grader with Internet access.
And still we live in a world that is angry and afraid and
anxious and scared and uncomfortable and poor.
So the reality that we can, or that the conclusion that we can
draw from that is the question that information asks is, is
what do I know? What, what?
What do I? Understand what's the knowledge
and the information. Whereas wisdom, as we saw last
week, starting right, wisdom begins in the fear of the Lord.
Not in some trembling, afraid that God's going to like strike
me down or punch me, but just in the acknowledgement that God is
holy. He's different from me.
He's not. He's not just someone that I'm
on equal speaking terms with. He is God.
He's the one who created all things.
His way is good and righteous, and my way is hopefully
attending to be. That information asks, what do I
know? But the question that wisdom
asks is what am I becoming and when?
When the Bible asks the question or implies the question, what am
I becoming? It's talking about submission.
What am I submitting to? What am I giving permission to
tell my heart where to go and what to do and how to act and
how to behave right? Because the reality that we can
know for sure is it's not just the information that we have.
It's how that information gets into us and then out of us.
What does it do in here? And then to get out.
And that is a question of character.
That is a question of God's nature.
That is about formation. And we said that last week when
we begin to walk in the fear of the Lord and our wisdom begins
to grow in US and around us and through us, it transforms us.
It changes us. So wisdom that isn't just some
abstract idea. Wisdom isn't just some data set
that we try to memorize and then rehearse kind of by checking our
brains out at the door. Wisdom means being fully
intellectually available to the moment, but also being fully
available to the rest of what's. Going on around us and the thing
so so the the place that that most clearly shows up so I am
prone to hyperbole you know hyperbole right to exaggerate
I'm I'm the most hyperbolic person in the entire world right
so I tried to to dial that back this week right to try to not
speak in in big because. What I think the Scripture shows
us is not always and not exclusively, but if you want a
great read, a trustworthy read on our wisdom quotient in any
given moment. The best place to look is in our
speech is in the way that we use our words, verbal communication,
non verbal communication, all all of that.
So we're going to focus on wisdom through our speech.
What does it look like? Not just not just how can I
memorize the wise words, right? But we're going to look, we're
going to be in two Proverbs, Proverbs 12 and Proverbs 15,
right? Like one page over if you got
your paper Bible if you need to. Swipe if you got.
Scrolls. You know you can unroll it.
You do. What you need to do right?
But we're not just trying to memorize wise words that we can
say. Rather we want to get in on.
We want to understand how does wisdom get involved in in like
the time of our lives, the moments, the day-to-day moments
where we exist? Because wisdom is demonstrated
at work. Wisdom is demonstrated in your
marriage, in your singleness, in your finances, in your
entertainment, in all of the places that we go moment by
moment. Wisdom has a formative have
effect on us. The more that we begin to walk
in that place, the more that our moments will be transformed.
And as we look at that, we're going to see how wisdom shapes
us, our nature, our character, and finally how all of that
comes together into creating an atmosphere or an environment.
Or a culture. Our words are powerful words.
And let me just let me guess something.
My guess is that at some point today, something's going to push
on you. We've already acknowledged we're
broken. We're broken and we're loved.
So we don't have to hide. From that brokenness, when it
shows up, when we go, it's now not just general brokenness, but
it's a specific brand and breed of brokenness.
And I also want to say like, so Monday, Monday is my big like
sermon. Like I get in and I read all the
stuff to feel really smart. And so Monday, I knew what this
message was going to be. I knew where it was going to be
about. And I literally, I can show you
in my journal, I literally wrote down, Lord, I'm not going to
have any problem with the content of this message.
I'm going to have to wrestle with the heart of this.
And so I want you to know I have been through it this week with
this content. I'm not here today as someone
telling you what you need to do so you can be more like me.
I'm telling you, I spent this week with this as the framework
for me realizing how wonderful Jesus is and how much better my
world in life would be if I were more like Him.
OK, so I don't want you to hear judgement in any of this.
It's not. It's not there.
But I also don't want you to needlessly protect yourself
because you are deeply loved. Deeply loved.
And if anything gets revealed today, it was already there and
he knew it and he loved you anyway.
Not only did he love you anyway, I loved you anyway, OK?
You're not going to shock me by your brokenness.
I promise you I'll match a story for story.
Like, let's go at it, OK? What we want to do is we want to
be formed by wisdom. We want to be transformed.
We want to be different because of what we see from him in the
scripture. And so here's kind of the big
idea over kind of over this at the beginning is our words are
steering every moment towards either healing or harm.
OK, so every moment. Every word that we say,
everything that comes out of our mouth is steering each moment in
a direction. It's going one way or the other.
So formation then is our ability to intentionally and
deliberately with wisdom, steer those moments.
Here's what I want, formation. Some of you may have Tesla.
I've heard one of the coolest thing about the Tesla is
sometimes the Tesla car, right? You get into a Tesla and what
happens? Like you turn it on and it will
say, your car has been updated. You now have this new feature,
right? Your car is now 14% faster than
it was. I am.
I go to bed like Lord, download wisdom.
I would love, right? I have to pick up my phone.
It's like you are 14% wiser in your speech today.
Not, not the case. That's not what formation means.
What formation does mean for us is growth, a growing awareness
that every moment that we walk into already has context.
You hear what I'm saying? Every person that you talk to
every moment of every day already has emotion, already has
tension. They're having a certain kind of
day already. So when you speak into that,
you're not speaking into a blank space.
You're speaking into something, into a story already in motion.
And that, and what that means is, are you listening?
Your words aren't neutral. I the problem is I thought they
were. I always thought they were and
that. Allowed me to say, oh, I didn't
know I'm man Why? Like when I was a a younger man,
newly married, my beautiful, sweet bride, you know, I was
well, I told her the truth that was important for her to know.
Valentine's Day is just a hallmark holiday.
It's not real. See, I get the Amen, right?
Yeah. That's so.
Now listen. Was it true?
Sure. Was she?
Devastated. Oh yeah, Yeah.
No, definitely, definitely. My intent was one thing, the
impact was another. Proverbs 12/18 says some people
make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing.
I had to acknowledge the reality that in that moment I had great
intentions. And far too often I find that I
have great intentions and a wake of emotionally bleeding people
behind me. And so I have to contend with.
Is that the wisdom of speech And it also confronts me with
something else. It doesn't say here that that
the the fundamental distinction is between truth and error.
It's possible to be true and still, unless what I told
Natalie was true, I'm not calling into that.
But what she did, she didn't hear what she wanted me to say
was I am grateful for this opportunity to demonstrate and
express my love for you, regardless of who sketch
schedules the day on the holiday.
And sure, I I should do it on every day, but you should do it
on that day too. That would have been the wise
thing to say. So the question primarily in
wisdom isn't primarily is this true or is this error?
I don't in any way want to minimize the value and the
necessity of truth. But what I do want to say is the
primary question isn't, is this true or is this error?
It's are my words in this moment working with Jesus or against?
Him. Jesus said I'm redeeming
everything. He said I am making all things
new. Jesus said, blessed are you when
you mourn because you will be comforted.
Are my words an expression of that or an opposition to that?
It's one or the other. I'm either communicating my love
and devotion and commitment to my wife, Hallmark Holiday not
with regardless, or I'm cutting her and hurting her.
What I had to wrestle with in that moment is that my.
Truth and me being me. Doesn't absolve me from the
responsibility of my relational context.
I'm responsible for what happened in my wife's heart that
day. And I want you to know this very
week, you might be surprised to find that sometimes my words get
a little bit ahead of my brain. This week I wreck.
I had to wrestle with that and I had to contend with this.
My words, the pastor's words, the preachers words cut and do
harm and I'm responsible for that.
Proverbs 15 one tells us a gentle answer to flex anger, but
harsh words make tempers flare. See, that's what our speech
does. Our speech either redirects the
emotion that's already in the room towards something that is
healing and life giving. Do you realize that you have
that power with your words? You can walk into a room where
people are afraid and you can bring peace with your words.
You can walk into a room where people are angry and ready to
riot and you can calm the room. You can bring the temperature in
the room and you can redirect those words towards
reconciliation, towards wholeness, towards redemption.
Or you can walk into a room of anger and anxiety and fear and
pour the gaslight the match throw and watch the whole thing
burn words. Are powerful.
So the question of wisdom and the question, and this is
especially relevant for us as Christians, I think the question
for us is, do we care enough? Do we care enough to redirect
each of these loaded moments? Do we care enough?
About the heart of other people to de escalate.
Do we care? Enough about the people around
us to speak compassion and life and goodness or will.
You. Speak your truth, consequences
be damned, and pour fuel on an inferno of anxiety and fear and
outrage. You don't have to tell me what
you're going to do. I can see it in the spaces that
we walk into, not just the physical space.
One of the things I love most about this is this is such an
encouraging place. On Sunday morning.
I see people being prayed with, being encouraged, being loved.
But then I go off in other places, the places where I go,
it's easy for me to be in here because I'm in pastor mode.
But then I. Go home and I speak words that
aren't wise, speak words that cut.
I speak words that incite anger, that that in spite incite
outrage rather than deflecting. And then I realize like I'm not
complete. Yet our online spaces are words
unfiltered. Do they bring healing?
This is our superpower. Wise words have the power to
shape what comes next and the power to transform not just a
heart, but a moment. You can transform anger and
division and separation. Here's what I'm saying.
In your marriage, are you feeling that growing gap?
Are you feeling that inability to connect, to understand?
Are you starting to wonder whether it's too late?
She's too far gone? He stopped listening.
Maybe he has. But listen, the purpose of this,
I know the temptation. The whole time I was.
That was my Monday, right? I'm reading all this.
I'm just like, Lord, man, you better tell Natalie.
Tell her Lord. She needs to know.
That's not what this is about this morning.
Listen, Here's my confidence. The Holy Spirit is so good at
applying truth where it needs to be.
He is so good at that that we can devote.
All of our. Attention this morning to
listening to how he wants to apply it to our life, to my
life, because the reality is I don't always shape the words the
way I think Jesus would shape the moments with my words, the
way Jesus words. What speech does it is either
going to amplify destructive emotion, or it's going to
steward it towards peace. It's only going to do one of
those things. It's either going to make people
more anxious, more angry, more afraid, more outraged.
More intolerant, More, more, more.
Or it's going to say, what about can we over?
The world seems to be on fire, doesn't it?
The world's just burning. People are angry and they're
afraid and they're alone and they're entrenched.
You ever feel like that? I guess the question I would ask
is, why do we continue to listen to people who fan flames with
anger and victimhood and separation?
Why do we continue to fill our head and our hearts with voices
that. Turn US against that.
Tell us that our anger is righteous and justified and our
fear is expected and even responsible when we have a Jesus
who said trust. Me.
Said I've overcome. The world see the significance
of that idea, our ability to shape the world, our ability to
redirect and to shape it is that whether we're stewarding it or
whether we're inciting and and by the way, it is one of those
two. We are either escalating or we
are de escalating and that isn't really just about the moments
that's about our character that's about the kind of people
that we are. This is the part that I really
hate. I really hate this, but how we
use our words reveals the kind of person that we are becoming.
It's not just verbal speech, it's non verbal communication.
And this is important. Speech isn't just expression,
it's it's formation. It's not just what comes out,
it's what's inside. Listen to 15 to the.
Tongue of the wise makes knowledge appealing.
Wise words make people go, Hey, I want that.
Oh, is that that's true. Will will help me help me know
that that that's interesting to me like because I I need some of
that. That seems like something like
wisdom takes the truth that would otherwise make people go,
Oh, I can't have that. I can't hear that right.
Wisdom makes knowledge appealing, but the mouth of a
fool belches out foolishness. The words that we speak have
potential to either bring life or to bludgeon.
People to death and. We are becoming individually
either the kind of people who bring life or the kind of people
who bludgeon people to death. The words that we.
Choose, even when we're unintentional in our choice,
indicate the kind of people that we are becoming.
We are either people regard. Listen, don't don't tell me what
you're trying to do. I hear, I hear the intention.
I I hear the the intent is the world burning down around you.
The question that I would ask is which voices are you saturating
your brain with? Which sounds are you putting in
and then letting come out? Because the counterpoint to
wisdom to why speech isn't silence.
It doesn't say that. The counterpoint to why speech
is belching. I love it.
A belch is like undigested gas, right?
Like it's in there, you eat something and right, and it just
gets out. Foolish words are like that when
you walk into a room. You've probably known a Belcher,
right? Someone who belches you're like
to how long to talk about this just It's a great illustration.
I'm glad it's in the. Bible.
We're talking about the Bible. Here, right, Someone walks into
the room and belches. Nobody in the room feels better
except you. Right?
Right. That's what.
Unwise speeches. You're terrible.
I don't like you. You're scary.
I don't want you to go away. Oh.
I feel so much better, right? Who else feels better?
No one else in the world. And so we, when we walk around
and we make the primary goal of our speech and our language to
make us feel better, to express ourselves, to say what's on our
minds. I just got to be me.
No you don't What if you being you is foolish?
What if you being you is destructive and hurtful.
Do you want to be that and it's not anybody else, not everybody
else's fault and responsibility and problem to meet you where
you're of course and listen, the Lord will meet you.
The Lord knows that we have all these tendency as I use my words
to hurt and cut this week unintentionally.
The Lord was right there in that moment and you know what he was
doing. He was healing the person that
I. Cut.
Holding me accountable. He says, oh, you, you stand on a
stage, Jason, right? You don't get to use your words
to oppose what I'm doing in other people.
That's anti Christ, right? We read Revelation and we're
like who? Is he?
He's got a big thing on his head.
He's probably from Russia. We got to do that.
No, Antichrist is a spirit and it's at work right now when we
use our words and our being and our position and our power to
undo the things that Jesus did. We just spent like 58 weeks in
Ephesians going, Jesus died to destroy the boundaries so that
there is no longer Jew and Greek.
There is no longer slave and free.
There is no longer sex and dialect.
There's not even male and female in the Kingdom.
He loves and responds and respects and calls all of you
together and we're like, I got to be me.
Great. What are you doing with your?
Words are you destroying what Jesus died to do, Antichrist.
It's not out there. It's not someday.
It's in our presence. It's in our heart.
When we decide to use words in a way that Jesus wouldn't do that,
the problem isn't neutral ignorance.
One time, it's not right. Like after that Valentine's Day,
right? Like I could generally say,
listen, I am for sure an idiot. I mean, you knew that, honey,
but for sure, right? The first time I get to say I
didn't know The second time, and the third time and the 40th time
and the 200th time, I did know and I just chose.
And that's a character issue. When I I do.
Me. Without regard for the
consequence. That's not wisdom.
It doesn't lead to the life that Jesus would call us to.
And here's an unsettling reality.
Because it's easy for me to say to think man like that in my
house, right? Nobody saw it.
I'm still OK. But listen, Proverbs 15 three.
The Lord is watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil
and the good. What that means is that there's
no such thing as hidden speech, gossip that doesn't get back to
the subject of the gossip, that the problem isn't just that you
said bad things about a person. The problem is that by saying
those things, we are becoming the kind of people who put
people down instead of lift them up.
Gossip is destructive. It destroys whether the other
person hears it or not. There is no room for it in the
body of Christ. There's no hidden speech.
He defines goodness, right? It's like he's watching
everybody's keeping his eye on both the evil and the good.
That doesn't mean that he's like, well, this person cusses
and this person doesn't cuss. It doesn't mean like this person
voted this way and this person voted the.
Other way it doesn't mean this person has this money and this
person doesn't have this many. Whatever the distinctions are,
goodness is always and only the character and nature of God.
Our closeness to goodness is how much like that we are becoming.
We're not like that at all. Someday we're going to see him
and going to know him and we're going to be fully transformed.
But right now, when it says he keeps his eye on the evil and
the good, we're all much closer to that first part.
There's no shame in that. There's no secret in this.
The point is, we are loved. He sees us and he knows us and
he loves us. But we get hell bent for leather
on on our unwise speech. We get determined to be able to
say what we want, when we want, where we want, who we want.
At that point, we're no longer submitting to the formation and
the leadership of Jesus. We're just blowing off steam.
We're belching, and the Bible calls it foolish.
You know, the problem when we define goodness like that is
that means that all the other definitions of goodness fall
off. That means that the ends don't
justify the means. That means that expedience is
not a value. You know, there's one day in the
year that we call good. What day's that Good Friday?
That's goodness. Now step back and think about
it. You know what happened on
Goodness. Light lost day that we call Good
Friday, is the one who is supposed to be the king, the
ruler, the creator of all things, the Messiah.
He was the one that all those apostles and disciples had
pinned their hopes on. He was going to sit on the
throne of David. And on Good Friday,
fundamentalist religion and the power of state conspired
together to murder him. That's what God calls good.
We don't get to wrap our own desires in the claim of goodness
because we won. We don't win.
God wins. Jesus won.
He invites us into his victory celebration, full stop.
That's what goodness is. We do not get to baptize bad
behavior and victory in winning. We do not get to say, sure it
caused problems, sure that, but all's well that ends well.
That's not the case. I can get my house clean by
berating everybody in it. I can yell at my children until
they are so afraid that they will do whatever I want.
I will have a clean house and I will be an abusive father and I
can promise you an eternity. Only one of those matters.
I am either the kind of person that.
Uses my words to lift up, to make people free the partner in
the ongoing redemption of this world.
Or I can use my words to dehumanize people, to serve my
agenda. I can make you a pawn in my
game. I can make sure that when you
hurt me, I make sure everybody knows how terrible you are and
how justified I am. And listen, I told you, our
intentions are good. Our intentions are to fix the
world, friend, that's not your responsibility.
You can't possibly fix the world.
You can't even fix your own bank account.
I know because I'm because I know because I spent this whole
week going, Lord, I'm not ready to talk about this because I
suck at this. I'm quite possibly the worst
ever at this, right? There's the hyperbole thing
again. As your pastor, you're not
responsible for saving the world.
Only Jesus can do that. You're responsible.
Responsible for becoming the kind of person who looks and
acts like Jesus. That's it.
And wisdom is aligned with that, and everything else is unwise.
The Bible calls it foolishness, and the words of foolishness are
called folly. Man, I hate that.
How I said that. I hate that.
I hate that after all this time, I'm still the kind of person who
will be careless when it serves me that I will hurt others if it
makes me feel better. You know what I do in that
moment? I confess it.
I don't hide from it. I stand before the Lord and go,
Oh, yeah, I see that. I see that wound over there.
I did it, Lord, and if I had been more like you, I would have
done it different. And you know what he says says
that's it, kid. Let's go.
We're ready. We'll do it different next time.
Except I don't do it next time. I do it exactly the same every
time, every time, every time, right?
Because what I find is when I try to go, Oh my God, I'll never
do that again. That's me trying to win.
That's me trying to be better than you, better than everybody
else. And the Lord's like, you're not,
you don't win, I win. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty. Full stop.
We live up to and into that, and by degrees much slower than I.
Want he transforms my heart, he makes me new and he sets me
free. But he does it by degrees as I
walk in wisdom. I talked last week, remember?
I was like, there's my friend Jaime over here.
When Jaime. Reads the proverbs and he begins
trying to live out the wisdom that they're.
Jaime becomes a wise person as my friend Derek reads the
scriptures and becomes wise in them.
And he starts his, He becomes wise.
And what happens with Derek is when Derek becomes wise and he
begins to speak wisdom into his family, his whole family starts
to become wise and, and as and it starts to go.
And what happens is we become wise as a culture.
The more people find this and follow this, wisdom becomes
bigger than just me, bigger than just Jaime, bigger even than
Jaime's family. And it becomes a culture of a
place. It becomes an atmosphere that
you can feel in the air. That's what Psalm 50, Proverbs
54 says. Gentle words are a tree of life.
Just close your eyes for a second and I just want you to
think about that. A tree of life.
We. Find the Tree of Life explicitly
in two places in Genesis and in Revelation at the beginning and
the end and the Tree of Life in the beginning.
It was what we were kept away from.
It's what we were we we stopped having access to in the garden,
but it doesn't go away. It's restored to us.
Again when we come to the read Revelation chapter 22, we find
that the tree of life has been there all along.
And the great thing about the tree of life it says is it bears
freeze fruit in season and out. And what that means is that
whether you're having a good day or a bad day, you can find fruit
and peace and life and nourishment and sustenance and
provision. And what the scripture says is
that that tree of life is wise speech.
Gentle words are a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes
the spirit. The words that affect
individuals create environments. When we speak words that destroy
somebody's day, that day impacts every person that they touch
throughout throughout that day. So with our.
Words and our speech and our patterns and our demeanor and
the things that we say and the way that we say them, we can
either make this world and life in it habitable.
Gracious. Life giving, you know you can do
that with your words. You have that power to create
life giving words. Or we can.
Create atmospheres that are heavy and crushing and soul
sapping. I'm I was surprised at the
comparison in this right. Like notice, notice what it
says. It says gentle words, our tree
of life. I would expect the comparison to
be like harsh, right? Gentle and harsh.
But what does he compare with gentleness?
He compares deceit so I would expect.
The comparison either to be gentle and.
Harsh or true and deceit, but what gentleness right and the
counterpart to. Deceit is that.
Gentleness and truth both have is those are both rooted in the
character of God. Those are both expressions of
ultimate reality, whereas deceit and harshness and dishonesty are
not. So when it says gentle words are
a tree of life. Being aligned with reality in my
heart and my thoughts and in my speech brings life to the places
that it goes. But to be opposed to that in any
way or form, it brings death or destruction.
And this is the uncomfortable truth that I don't like being
unnecessarily harsh with. My truth is no closer to the
character of God than a gentle, smiling white lie.
If I serve you truth on the blunt end of a sledgehammer, and
you have no possible hope of receiving that in such ways to
be transformed by it, I'm no closer to being transformed by
truth. Your truth has been worthless.
Doesn't mean it's not true. It means that you didn't feel
like it was important enough to handle that truth in a way that
led to life instead of instead of death.
Question then becomes like, because because it's about me
and it's about you, right? And doing our homework.
One way to tell is like, ask yourself the question, when I
walk into a room, do people brace or do they breathe easy?
There are some people not this, not in this room.
I looked around. I looked at you.
All right? They were all in first service.
Weirdly enough, there are some people who, when I see their
name on my caller ID, my heart beats fast.
And I I want to screen it every time because I know what's
coming. It's either going to be untrue
or it's going to be unnecessarily harsh, or it's
going to be half cocked or it's going to be angry.
It's going to be whatever. And I just want you to know
there are others of you in this room.
Jaime Martinez is one of them. I could go down the line and
point you all out. There's some people in this
room, bro. I would take your call seated in
the electric chair because your words bring life to me.
Your words bring hope and encouragement to me.
Which one are you? I tell my kids this all the time
about this. And I tell myself also, we have
to live in the world that we create.
We have to live in the world created.
And I don't mean physically, I've never created a tree or
anything like that, but I've absolutely created an atmosphere
and I've actually absolutely created a culture.
And so the question is. If I spend my time and my energy
and if I fill my head and my brain and, and all of that.
And if I use the words that I have and the opportunities that
I have to demonize other people to talk about what's wrong with
them, to talk about how terrible and destructive they are.
If I use my words to make demons out of other people, of course
I'm going to see a demon around every corner.
Of course I'm going to find people that are terrible and
awful. But if I pause for a second and
if I go to somebody and. Just go listen.
Let me tell you right, I there's people that I can spend my time
with, people who will say, listen, whatever is out there,
but let's talk about what my, what God might be doing.
Let's find out how we can respond with wisdom to this,
because I don't think God sees that person as his enemy.
I think God just sees them as someone that he created and
desperately loves. And they may be, and probably
are misguided. Probably badly broke.
Definitely badly broken Misguid. Guided as they can be, just like
me, how can we respond with wisdom in an unwise world?
But if I spend all my time making demons of people that are
different, I shouldn't be surprised when I feel the whole
world is full of demons. What if we do the opposite?
What if we change path? I'm not pretending that dark is
light. I'm not pretending, I'm not
asking you to do that. I'm asking you to check your
brain at the door. I'm just saying I'm asking us to
acknowledge the reality that good and bad, right and wrong,
you know, love and hate, it doesn't run down this line down
the middle and some are on one side or the other that.
Line runs right here through. Me and I have the choice to
decide, am I going to give voice to the wisdom, to the goodness,
or am I going to give voice to the destruction and the safety?
Or in that, in that hatred, if you realize the second is
better, right? Because you have agency in that
you can choose that you can choose to see in other people
what you see. So which are we choosing?
We said kind of last week that the worst possible thing we
could do with the proverbs would be to take them and then go home
and just try to, you know, try to figure out what we think that
they mean, right? I was like, what, you know, I
thought about this. And we'll always get that wrong
because we'll always protect ourselves.
We'll always try to make our ourselves look good.
Right. There is an absolutely
infallible way to to to understand this, to an interpret
this and it's Jesus, the life of Jesus.
The Proverbs will never trump Jesus.
The the you know, Moses will never trump Jesus.
The Paul in the New Testament will never trump Jesus.
What I mean to say that is whatever wisdom we read about in
the Proverbs, we should hear it see embodied in Jesus and not
just embodied, but talked about Jesus should express the same
wisdom that we see in the Scriptures.
So we go to Luke chapter 6 and this is Luke's, Luke's version
of the Sermon on the Mount. And he says this in Luke 643,
says a good treat can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't
produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its
fruit. Figs are never gathered from
thorn bushes, and grapes are not picked from Bramble bushes.
OK, so he's got, you can imagine Jesus standing there and he's
got a tree there, and he's talking about everything that
Jesus creates. Everything that God has ever
created has integrity. You've never peeled a banana and
like bees fly out of it, right? Because when you peel a banana,
there's a banana in there. And So what Jesus is pointing to
is the absolute integrity of God.
And he says what comes out is what's on the inside.
What's what's out there is what's in there.
And myself, I'm just like, oh, yes, well, I can, yes, I wonder
what this is about. Oh, perhaps it's about this.
He goes on.
A good person produces good things from the treasury of a
good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the
treasury of an evil heart. And now he tells us what he's
talking about. What you say flows from what is
in your heart. You probably hate that as much
as I do. I didn't say it.
Jesus did. The question isn't whether we
like it. The question is, will I submit
to it? This isn't about general
behavior. This isn't just about, you know,
whether I give the one finger salute to the guy that cuts me
off. This isn't just about whether I
pet kitties and hold babies. This is about my words.
The nature of our speech is an accurate reflection of the
nature of our hearts. I love that Jesus didn't say try
harder. I love that Jesus didn't say go
stop cussing. Now you may need to stop cussing
that like that, whatever. But what he said is it's a heart
issue. What he said is it's not just
about you trying to be better or stronger.
It's about letting him transform what's in here.
It's about acknowledging I'm the kind of person who, when the
deck is stacked against me, cut other people.
I'm the kind of person who gives space to the worst, most
divisive voices in our culture. Jesus doesn't say, by the way.
That's a hard realization. I'm the kind of person who cuts
people with my words. Jesus's point isn't to shame us.
He says that assuming that we know that we're badly broken and
deeply loved. This isn't about whether we're
right or wrong. This is about whether we trust
him enough to say, I don't want the wrong anymore.
I want to be made new. Jesus never said that wisdom
meant having right answers. Jesus never said that wisdom
meant winning arguments. Jesus never said that wisdom
meant pointing out the flaws and the failures and the weaknesses
and the sins of others. There may be time for all of
those things, but the time will be determined by wisdom and
submission to the Holy Spirit, not by my desire and need to
belch. Sometimes the most, Not
sometimes. I'm going to say way more than
that. Far more often than not, my urge
to belch is exactly a reminder that I need to swallow it.
Jesus. Says Wisdom is being submitted
to God's direction and his correction until our hearts are
formed, transformed, made new. Redeemed and.
You're just like, OK. Right.
Go home, heart. Transformation.
Get a little lunch, take a nap, watch the Texans game.
It's a process. It's far slower than you and I
would like. It's going to take the rest of
your life. And what that means is that most
days you're going to have to stand before the living God and
go my speech and your purposes are not aligned.
But what it means is refusing to baptize that, refusing to say,
oh, well, God, no, I think you understand in this, the king who
was nailed on a cross and didn't respond to Pilate, didn't
respond to the Sanhedrin, didn't cry out in pain and anguish.
The only words that he spoke were father, forgive them.
He spoke to the care of his mother.
He spoke to forgiveness and that's all.
And he's our example and he's our king.
So don't be in a hurry. Acknowledge Lord, My words
aren't like you, but make me more like you.
And spend time honestly considering.
I'm going to give you 2 questions in just a second.
And take them home and think about them.
Think hard about them. Talk to somebody else, right?
And just ask somebody who knows you well, who will tell you the
truth to speak into your life. Here's the first.
What kind of fruit is your life? Bearing right now.
Do people brace or breathe when you walk in the room?
Do people? Jesus said.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Guess what? You don't even have to figure
out whether the person who's mourning.
You don't even have to figure out whether it's valid or not.
If they're mourning, you can comfort them.
Now, you don't comfort them by justifying them, but you can
look at them and say the Lord's desire is that you would be
comforted. And the second question is, what
kind of world am I creating with my words?
Am I creating a world where everybody in it is right and
everybody who's out of it is wrong?
And are you right but angry? You honest but alone, uncertain
but hopeful, badly broken, deeply loved?
Jesus, I pray that you would set us free to use our words to
bring life. Forgive us for the destruction
that we've caused. Forgive us for the destruction
that we've tolerated. Make us wise in the way that we
speak. And, Lord, make River City a
place where wisdom and gentleness and healing are like
a tree of life for all who enter this place, not because of us,
but because of you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty was and is and is to come.
Amen. Thank you for joining us today.
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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.