Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Inescapable Witness: The Tongue as the Soul’s Evidence (Matthew 12:33–37)

Transcript

The Inescapable Witness: The Tongue as the Soul’s Evidence (Matthew 12:33–37) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  I am really excited to get into the text we have in front of us
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  today. It it deals with something that
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  is just completely inescapable. It.
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  Really is. It's something every one of us
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  does, I don't know, thousands of times a day.
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  Most of the time, without even thinking about it, we're talking
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  about our words. To speech the tongue exactly.
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  It's good to be here. And you're right.
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  Speech is just constant. James, you know, he calls the
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  tongue a world of unrighteousness.
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  And I think today we're really going to see why we're zeroing
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  in on a pretty specific text in Matthew chapter 12.
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  Verses 33 through 37. That's the one.
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  Now, before we even open up the text, I think we need to
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  challenge a sort of a cultural assumption.
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  We all know that old playground rhyme.
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  Oh yeah, sticks and stones. Sticks and stones may break my
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  bones, but words will never hurt me.
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  We all grew up with that. We use it as a kind of shield.
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  We tell ourselves that, you know, words are cheap.
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  They're lightweight. I'm just blowing off steam,
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  right? I didn't really mean it.
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  It's a classic defense mechanism, isn't it?
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  We try to create this separation between what we say and who we
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  really are. Yeah, we treat speech like it's
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  this disposable thing, like a wrapper on a candy bar.
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  You just toss it out and it doesn't really count.
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  It's not part of the actual meal.
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  But looking at the sources for this deep dive, it's clear that
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  Jesus has a completely different view.
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  A radically different view. He does not see words as cheap
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  at all. Not in the slightest.
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  In fact, he puts forward this idea that is, and I'm not
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  exaggerating, it's genuinely terrifying.
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  He basically argues that the tongue isn't some independent
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  little organ that just does its own thing.
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  No, it's a monitor. It's a readout.
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  The sources uses great image and I think we should hold on to it
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  today. The tongue is the dipstick of
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  the soul. That's the central metaphor,
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  absolutely. The dipstick.
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  You pull it out of the engine of a car and what does it tell you?
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  Tells you what's going on deep inside where you can't see.
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  The fluid levels, the quality of the oil.
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  The condition of the engine itself.
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  And Jesus is saying that's what our words do.
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  They are evidentiary, they carry weight and in the end, they are
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  the very base on which we will be judged.
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  So that's really our mission for this deep dive.
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  Today we want to unpack this theology of speech.
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  We're going to look at this, this brilliant, logical trap
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  Jesus sets for the religious leaders.
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  Then there's this fascinating anthropology of the heart as a
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  kind of a reservoir. And then the part that, well, it
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  might keep you up at night, what we're calling the Tribunal of
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  Whispers. And we also have some serious
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  theological work to do near the end, verse 37, it says, by your
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  words you will be justified. Yeah, that's a tough one.
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  For anyone coming from a Reformed background holding to
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  Solafi justification by faith alone, that verse sounds like a
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  like a clanging bell, a contradiction.
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  So we need to figure out how to reconcile that.
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  We certainly do. But before any of that, we have
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  to set the scene. Context is just king in
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  Matthew's Gospel. This is not, you know, a polite
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  Sunday school seminar. This is not people sitting in a
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  circle sipping tea and sharing their feelings.
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  Far from it. Matthew 12 is a war zone.
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  It's a violent clash of kingdoms and to really feel the force of
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  what Jesus says about trees and fruit, you have to see what
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  triggered it. OK, So what just happened?
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  Jesus has just performed this incredible miracle.
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  He healed a man who was demon, oppressed, blind and mute.
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  Let's just pause on that for a second.
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  The state of that man. Total isolation.
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  He can't see, so he's in darkness.
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  He can't speak, so he's silenced and he's oppressed by a demon.
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  Complete bondage. And in an instant, Jesus
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  liberates him. He's he's plundering the
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  strongman's house, as the text says.
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  Elsewhere, he's showing that the Kingdom of God has arrived.
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  And with authority. With absolute authority.
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  So the crowds, they're just amazed.
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  They start whispering, could this be the son of David?
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  You know, the Messiah? They're right on the edge of
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  belief. But the Pharisees, the religious
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  establishment, they have a very different take.
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  A very different take. They can't deny the miracle.
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  I mean, the proof is standing right there in front of them,
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  seeing and speaking. So they have to reframe the
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  source of the power. They can't attack the what, so
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  they attack the how. Exactly.
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  They say he casts out demons by Beelzebel, the Prince of demons.
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  That is just it's a staggering claim.
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  They are looking at the undeniable work of the Holy
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  Spirit, liberation, healing, mercy, and they are calling it
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  the work of Satan. It's the absolute height of
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  blasphemy. It's not a simple
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  misunderstanding. This is, you know, this is moral
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  malice. They are consciously twisting
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  the narrative to protect their own power and status.
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  So when Jesus launches into this teaching, this analogy about the
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  tree and the fruit in verse 33, he's not just giving some
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  general life advice. No, not at all.
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  He's responding directly to that accusation.
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  He's springing a trap, and with it he's going to dismantle their
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  entire worldview. OK, let's walk right into that
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  trap then. This is section one of our
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  outline, the logical trap. It starts right there in verse
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  33. Jesus says either make the tree
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  good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.
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  That word for make in the Greek is poyosote.
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  It's an imperative, a command. He's essentially saying make up
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  your minds or consider the logic here.
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  You have to be consistent. He's forcing them into a binary
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  choice. So how does the trap actually
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  work? How does it corner them?
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  Well, just look at their position.
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  They have to admit, at least functionally, that the fruit is
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  good. A man who was blind and mute now
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  sees and speaks. A demon was cast out.
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  You can't really argue that healing is a bad outcome, right?
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  But at the same time they want to claim the tree Jesus himself
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  is bad, that he's satanic. Jesus just exposes the raw
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  inconsistency of that. He's saying, look, if you admit
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  the fruit is good, logic demands you admit the tree is good.
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  If you insist the tree is bad, then you are forced to conclude
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  the fruit is bad too. You can't have it both ways.
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  You can't have satanic malice producing righteous liberation.
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  You can't. A divided Kingdom cannot stand.
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  But Jesus takes it even deeper than just pure logic.
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  He gets into the the organic nature of things and he uses 2
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  very specific words to describe these trees.
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  OK, for the good tree he uses the word kalon.
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  It means good, but more than that, it means healthy, sound,
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  beautiful, useful, fit for its purpose.
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  And for the bad tree. For the bad tree, he uses the
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  word sapron. Sapron, that just sounds bad.
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  What's the nuance there? It's a nasty word.
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  It doesn't just mean a tree that's, you know, having a bad
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  season or is a bit ugly. Sapren means rotten, decaying,
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  crumbling from the inside out. It refers to organic corruption
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  at the core. So we're not talking about a
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  tree that just has some brown leaves or needs a little
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  fertilizer. We're talking about a tree that
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  is structurally, fundamentally unsound.
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  Exactly. A tree that is dead or dying on
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  the inside. And this brings us right to the
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  heart of Reformed theology, specifically the doctrine of
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  total depravity. Or maybe a better term is total
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  inability. How does that connect?
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  Jesus is establishing what we could call an organic necessity.
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  The quality of the fruit is enslaved to the nature of the
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  tree. A saperin tree, A rotten tree is
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  biologically incapable of producing kalon fruit.
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  It's an impossibility. This just crushes the whole idea
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  of moralism, doesn't it? I feel like so much of modern
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  advice, even within the church sometimes is just behavioral
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  modification. It is.
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  Just try harder to speak nicely. Count to 10 before you yell.
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  Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap them when you want to
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  say something mean. That's the very definition of
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  moralism. It's the equivalent of trying to
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  tape plastic apples onto a dead Grinch.
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  It might look OK from a distance, you might even fool
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  your neighbors for a little while, but there's no life in
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  it. And the tree is still rotten
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  the. Tree is still sapping.
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  Jesus is saying the human will isn't some neutral switch.
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  You can just toggle back and forth between evil mode and good
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  mode. It's not a light switch, it's a
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  biological condition. That's a great way to put it.
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  If your nature is corrupt, if you are by nature a bad tree,
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  your fruit will inevitably necessarily be bad.
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  This connects directly to, for instance, the Westminster
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  Confession, Chapter 9, Section 3.
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  What does that say? It says that man, by his fall
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  into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any
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  spiritual good accompanying salvation.
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  We cannot, by our own strength, convert ourselves or even
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  prepare ourselves for conversion.
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  We're the rotten tree. We can't fix ourselves.
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  That's a really tough pill for the modern ego to swallow.
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  We love to think we're the captains of our own souls, the
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  masters of our own fate. And Jesus is saying no, you're
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  organically bound to your nature.
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  You are what you are, and what you are is rotten.
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  And that's precisely why the gospel is such good news.
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  But he's not done with the diagnosis yet.
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  He's just getting started. In verse 34, he moves from the
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  tree metaphor to a direct and a very personal attack on the
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  Pharisees. He calls them a brood of Vipers.
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  You offspring of snakes, that's not something you want to hear
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  from anyone, let alone the Messiah.
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  It sounds like an insult to us. He's just losing his temper and
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  lashing out. And it is harsh, but it's so
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  much more than an insult. It's a theological
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  categorization. He's making a direct connection
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  back to Genesis 3.15. Remember that first prophecy?
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  The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
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  The two spiritual lines of humanity.
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  By calling them a brood of Vipers, he is identifying their
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  spiritual lineage. He's saying, in effect, you
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  claim Abraham is your father. But your words and actions prove
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  your spiritual father is the serpent from the garden.
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  Wow, so their opposition to him isn't just an intellectual
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  disagreement? No, it's hereditary in a
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  spiritual sense. They speak venom because they
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  share the nature of the Viper. It's what they are.
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  And then he asks that crushing question, How can you speak good
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  when you are evil? Notice the wording.
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  How can you? It frames it as an
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  impossibility. He doesn't say.
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  You know, it's really hard for you to speak good things.
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  Or you should try harder. Right, he says.
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  How is it even possible? It's like asking how can a dog
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  fly or how can a fish climb a tree.
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  It's simply not in its nature. This just reinforces that
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  inability we were talking about. The unregenerate heart is
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  constitutionally incapable of producing speech that is
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  spiritually pleasing to God. There's an analogy for this in
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  the Old Testament, isn't there? The Ethiopian in his skin.
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  Exactly Jeremiah 13.23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the
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  leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who
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  are accustomed to do evil. The point is the same.
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  You cannot change your fundamental nature by sheer
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  force of will. And this leads him to that
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  famous hydraulic metaphor in the text.
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  The hydraulic metaphor. I like that out of the abundance
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  of the heart, the mouth speaks. The keyword there for abundance
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  is parasima. It means a surplus, an overflow.
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  It's what exceeds the brim of a container.
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  OK, let's unpack this image because it's so powerful.
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  We've got a reservoir and a spillway.
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  Think of the heart as the reservoir.
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  It's where everything collects all your desires, your secret
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  affections, your hidden grudges, your worship, your idols.
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  It just fills up drop by drop, day after day, with what you
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  think about and what you love. And the mouth.
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  The mouth is just the spillway, or maybe a pressure release
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  valve. The key is that the mouth
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  doesn't manufacture the water, it doesn't create the content,
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  it just releases whatever has risen to the top of the
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  reservoir. This is where it gets really
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  convicting for me because this whole image just destroys the IT
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  just slipped out excuse. It obliterates.
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  It we've all been there. Yeah, your thumb with a hammer,
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  or someone cuts you off in traffic, or you're in a heated
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  argument with your souse and justice.
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  Something nasty flies out of your mouth.
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  And what's the first thing we say?
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  I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that it just
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  slipped out. That's not the real me.
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  And Jesus's response to that is, Oh no, that is the real you.
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  The reason it slipped out is because the reservoir was
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  already full of it. The pressure of the situation,
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  the hammer, the traffic, the argument.
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  It didn't create the malice. It simply squeezed the sponge.
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  You can't get orange juice out of a sponge that's been soaked
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  in vinegar. You cannot spill what is not in
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  the cup. That slip is actually one of the
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  most honest moments of your day is in that moment your social
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  filter yourself control it momentarily breaks down.
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  And the real you, the true surplus of the heart, just leaks
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  out. It's raw, unfiltered data from
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  the reservoir. That is a deeply convicting
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  thought. It is the tongue really is the
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  dipstick. It gives you an accurate reading
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  of the heart's fluid levels. If bitterness comes out when
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  you're under pressure, it's because you've been storing
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  bitterness. If lustful words come out, it's
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  because you've been storing lust.
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  And if the heart is this reservoir, Jesus then takes the
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  metaphor a step further in verse 35.
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  He calls it a treasury, a storehouse.
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  He says the good person out of his good treasure brings forth
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  good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth
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  evil. That Greek word is the sorrow,
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  right where we get thesaurus. That's it.
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  It's a vault, a strong box, a place where you consciously keep
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  things you value. We need to clarify something
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  here though. When Jesus says the good person,
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  who is he talking about? Because we just spent 10 minutes
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  establishing that everyone is by nature a rotten tree.
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  That's a critical question. We have to be careful not to
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  read this, as some people are just naturally nice and others
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  are naturally mean. If we take the whole council of
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  scripture seriously, like Romans 3, no one is righteous.
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  No, not one. Then the good person here cannot
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  mean someone who is just naturally virtuous.
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  So who is it? In the context of the New
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  Testament, the good person is the regenerate person, the
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  person who has been given a new heart.
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  The one who's had that heart transplant, as Ezekiel
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  prophesied about the heart of stone replaced with the Mart of
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  flesh. Exactly.
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  The good treasure isn't something we generate ourselves.
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  It's the grace of God, the indwelling presence of the Holy
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  Spirit, the new nature planted in us at conversion.
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  Now look at the evil person. That's a natural man.
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  What are they storing up in their treasury?
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  They are treasuring pride, self worship, resentment, lust,
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  greed, and the verb Jesus uses for what they do with this
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  treasure is ecbalay. What's the name?
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  It means to throw out, or to extract or cast out.
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  It's an active, almost forceful word.
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  It sounds like we're actively reaching into the vault of our
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  heart and just tossing the contents out into the world.
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  That's the image. Speech is an expenditure.
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  Every time you open your mouth, you are handing out a little
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  invoice that lists the inventory of your heart.
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  You're throwing out the contents of your soul for everyone to
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  see. That is a powerful image.
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  Speech as an invoice. Voice of the Heart's inventory.
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  And the key insight here, the practical take away, is that
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  speech problems are never just vocabulary problems.
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  They're always Treasury problems.
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  So if you have a problem with gossip or angry outbursts or
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  lying. You don't need a dictionary or a
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  thesaurus. You need a heart inspection.
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  You need to ask what am I treasuring that is producing
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  this? You cannot speak grace if you
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  are hoarding pride. You cannot speak truth if you
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  are hoarding feel of man. You have to deal with the
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  inventory. This all leads us to the part of
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  the text that expands the scope in a way that is frankly
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  terrifying. Up to this point, Jesus has been
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  laser focused on the Pharisees and their specific sin of
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  blasphemy against the Spirit. But in verse 36, he pivots.
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  He does. He turns from the specific group
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  in front of him to the universal audience of all humanity for all
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  time, he says. I tell you, on the day of
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  judgement, people will give account for every careless word
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  they speak. Every careless word.
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  That phrase just stops you in your track.
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  It's meant to the Greek word for careless there is Argon.
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  It literally means workless, idle, lazy, inoperative,
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  unproductive. So we're not just talking about
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  the big premeditated sins of the Ton year.
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  We're not talking about perjury in a courtroom or shouting
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  blasphemy from a rooftop. We're talking about filler.
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  We're talking about filler, small talk, jesting, the off the
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  cuff comments you make when your mind is in neutral, the
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  murmuring under your breath in the checkout line, the I was
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  just saying moments that you think no one hears or cares
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  about. But why?
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  Why would God judge those words? Shouldn't the final judgement
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  focus on the really heavy sins? Why does the idle, workless word
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  matter so much? Well, think about the logic of
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  it. It's an argument from the lesser
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  to the greater. If God's final audit is so
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  meticulous that it includes the idle word, the word that does
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  nothing and accomplishes nothing, how much more certain
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  will his judgement be on the malicious lie, the calculated
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  slander, the deceptive flattery? It's like if an accountant cares
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  about tracking every single penny, you can be sure he's not
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  going to miss $1,000,000 hair. That's it exactly.
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  But there's another reason the idle word is so significant.
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  The argon word is often the purest, most accurate sample of
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  the heart. Why?
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  Because the filter is off. Precisely when you're reading a
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  formal e-mail to your boss, or praying in church, or you're on
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  a first date, you are carefully curating your words.
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  You're filtering. You're presenting a certain
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  version of yourself. You're managing your image.
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  Right. But when you're just chatting
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  with friends, or you're tired at the end of a long day, or you're
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  just venting your frustrations, the guard is down.
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  That argon word is raw leakage from the soul.
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  It shows what's really in the reservoir without any of the
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  Polish or public relations spin. I we have to talk about the
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  digital tongue here, this concept of the idle word that it
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  feels like it was written for the Internet age.
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  It couldn't be more relevant. Social media is basically a
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  global factory for producing argon words.
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  We type things instantly, we react without thinking.
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  We throw out snark, sarcasm, outrage, often anonymously, or
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  at least with the comfortable distance of a screen.
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  It all feels so weightless. I'm just tweeting.
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  It's just a meme to comment to you on this video.
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  And Jesus says that tweet, that comment is Exhibit A in the
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  final judgement. The Internet has created this
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  massive attention economy where speed is rewarded over truth and
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  hot takes are rewarded over wisdom.
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  We are literally incentivized to be careless with our words.
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  And to be harsh. And to be harsh, but this text
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  says that the Tribunal of Whispers, this final court,
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  includes the vast, unedited, unabridged transcript of our
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  entire lives, including our digital lives.
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  That is a horrifying thought, to think that there is a transcript
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  that nothing is truly deleted. It should be horrifying,
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  Terrifying. It absolutely destroys the idea
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  that we can compartmentalize our lives.
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  You know, I'm a Christian on Sunday morning, but on Twitter
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  I'm a political savage. Jesus says no.
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  The savage on Twitter reveals the true state of your heart.
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  The idle word reveals the real you.
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  The delete button on your keyboard does not erase the
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  record in heaven. And this brings us to Section 5
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  and what is probably the biggest theological knot we need to
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  untie today, verse 37. The bombshell.
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  For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you
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  will be condemned. You can almost hear the
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  collective gasp of Protestants everywhere when they read that.
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  Right, we are the people of solified justification by faith
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  alone, Paul says in Romans. For we hold that one is
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  justified by faith apart from works of the law.
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  Then you come here, and Jesus himself says, by your words you
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  will be justified. Is this a contradiction?
• 19:03
  Is Jesus contradicting? Paul, it's a great question, and
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  the answer is no. This is where we have to use
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  that classic principle of interpretation, the analogy of
• 19:11
  faith. We interpret Scripture with
• 19:13
  Scripture. The Bible doesn't contradict
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  itself, so we have to understand these two truths in harmony.
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  The key is to distinguish between the ground of
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  justification and the evidence of justification.
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  OK. Let's break that down the ground
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  versus the evidence. The ground of our justification,
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  the legal basis for our acquittal before the throne of
• 19:31
  God, is solely and completely the finished work of Jesus
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  Christ, His perfect life of obedience, His sacrificial death
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  on the cross. That is the ground we receive
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  that righteousness by faith alone.
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  Our words do not purchase our pardon.
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  So I can't talk my way into heaven with a really eloquent
• 19:46
  speech. Definitely not.
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  No amount of nice words or good deeds can pay the debt of sin.
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  Only the blood of Christ does that.
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  So while Paul is usually talking about the ground or the source
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  of our right standing with God, Jesus here, and James by the
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  way, in his epistle is often talking about the public
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  vindication or the proof of that standing.
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  An analogy would be helpful here.
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  Think of a thermometer. I like the thermometer analogy.
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  A thermometer accurately indicates the temperature of the
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  room. It tells you if it's hot or
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  cold. But the crucial thing is the
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  thermometer doesn't create the heat.
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  It doesn't have a little furnace inside it.
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  It just reports the existing reality.
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  It's an indicator, not a 'cause. That's it.
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  Our words are the thermometer of the heart.
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  They indicate it's true condition.
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  They prove whether the heart is alive and priced or dead in sin,
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  whether it's regenerate or unregenerate.
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  But our words do not create the righteousness that saves us.
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  So on Judgement Day, our words are presented as Exhibit A.
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  They are the evidence that proves the reality of the faith
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  we professed. Exactly when the final verdict
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  is read, well done, good and faithful servant, that verdict
• 20:55
  is spoken to people whose fruit, including their words, proved
• 20:59
  that their route was genuinely in Christ.
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  This just demolishes that concept of a hidden faith,
• 21:04
  doesn't it? The idea that you can be a
• 21:05
  Christian on the inside, but live and talk like the devil on
• 21:09
  the outside. It completely demolishes it.
• 21:12
  A bad tree cannot belong to Christ if there is no good
• 21:15
  fruit, or if the fruit is consistently rotten.
• 21:18
  It proves there is no life giving root in Him.
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  It's a terrifying thought for the antinomian, the person who
• 21:24
  thinks grace is a license to sin.
• 21:26
  The person who says well I believe in Jesus so it doesn't
• 21:29
  matter if I slander my neighbor or gossip about my Co worker.
• 21:32
  And Jesus says, actually, your slander and your gossip are the
• 21:36
  very evidence that proves you don't really know me.
• 21:38
  Words are the public declaration of a reality that faith has
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  already secured privately in the heart.
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  That clarifies it immensely. We're not earning our salvation
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  by what we say. We're displaying the reality of
• 21:48
  our salvation through what we say.
• 21:49
  That's the heart of it. OK, we've been through the
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  logical trap, the anthropology of the heart, the treasury, the
• 21:55
  tribunal and the theological resolution.
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  Now let's get practical. Section 6.
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  Law Gospel Application. This is where it all lands.
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  We always want to apply the text through that historic lens of
• 22:07
  law and gospel. First, the law.
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  What does the law do? It acts as a mirror.
• 22:13
  It shows us our sin. It shows us our dirt.
• 22:15
  And this text is a particularly harsh mirror.
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  It's not very flattering. It's brutal, but we need it.
• 22:22
  We need to hold this text up to our lives and do a serious
• 22:24
  audit. We have to ask those diagnostic
• 22:26
  questions we touched on earlier. What spills out of me when I'm
• 22:29
  frustrated in traffic? What comes out when I'm tired
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  and the kids are screaming? What words flow from my keyboard
• 22:34
  when I read a political headline that makes my blood boil?
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  And it's not just about feeling bad.
• 22:39
  It's about identifying the idol. The words of the smoke.
• 22:43
  The idol is the fire. That's a great way to put it.
• 22:45
  If your default speech is harsh and demanding, perhaps your idol
• 22:49
  is control. You lash out because you lost
• 22:52
  control of a situation or a person.
• 22:54
  If your speech is full of gossip, maybe your idol is
• 22:57
  social power or twisted sense of belonging.
• 23:00
  You sell other people's secrets to buy intimacy for yourself.
• 23:04
  So the law exposes the rot. It forces us to admit we are the
• 23:08
  bad tree and if we stop there we just end up in despair.
• 23:11
  We either despair or we run back to moralism.
• 23:14
  We try to fix it ourselves. We see the rotten fruit and
• 23:17
  decide to start taping plastic apples back on the branches.
• 23:19
  I'll just bite my tongue harder next time.
• 23:21
  I'll try to be more positive. But Jesus has already told us
• 23:24
  that's a dead end. It won't work.
• 23:26
  The bad tree cannot educate itself into goodness.
• 23:29
  You can't send a rotten tree to a self help seminar and expect
• 23:32
  it to start producing good fruit.
• 23:33
  So what's the gospel remedy? The only remedy is a heart plant
• 23:37
  regeneration. We need a new nature.
• 23:39
  We need the good treasure to be placed inside us and that is
• 23:42
  something only God the Holy Spirit can do.
• 23:44
  We need to look away from our own efforts and look to Christ.
• 23:47
  Christ as the only true good tree.
• 23:50
  He is the only human being whoever lived with a perfectly
• 23:52
  good treasure in his heart. He never spoke a single Argon
• 23:56
  word, not one careless, lazy or unproductive word.
• 24:00
  Every single word he spoke was life giving, truthful and
• 24:04
  perfectly obedient to the Father.
• 24:06
  And then think about his silence.
• 24:09
  His silence on the cross before his accusers.
• 24:11
  That's the key. When he stood before the brood
• 24:13
  of Vipers as they hurled their venomous lies at him, he opened
• 24:17
  not his mouth. He stood silent to absorb the
• 24:20
  penalty for our venomous speech. He took the judgement that our
• 24:23
  Viper like nature deserved. He paid for our careless words
• 24:27
  with his careful silence. Beautifully put.
• 24:29
  And the promise of the gospel is that because he took our
• 24:32
  penalty, we, the brood of Vipers, can be adopted into
• 24:34
  God's family. The bad wild branch can be
• 24:37
  grafted into the true vine, into Christ himself.
• 24:40
  That changes the motivation for everything.
• 24:42
  We don't watch our words in order to earn salvation.
• 24:45
  We watch our words because we have been given a new nature and
• 24:47
  we want to look and sound like our Father.
• 24:49
  And that's the third use of the law, our guide for
• 24:51
  sanctification. Now that we are new trees by
• 24:55
  grace, how do we cultivate and grow good fruit?
• 24:58
  Input determines output. That's the principle.
• 25:01
  If the heart is a treasury, then we have to be extremely careful
• 25:04
  about what we are stocking the shelves with every day.
• 25:07
  You cannot fill your mind with 12 hours of partisan cable news,
• 25:10
  angry social media feeds and spiritually empty entertainment
• 25:14
  and then be surprised when the overflow of your heart is anger,
• 25:17
  anxiety and foolishness. You can't weave a silk purse out
• 25:21
  of a sow's ear. In Garbage out, it's a simple
• 25:24
  principle. We have to be intentional about
• 25:26
  saturating our minds with Scripture, meditating on it,
• 25:29
  stocking the treasury with the writings of the faithful, with
• 25:32
  good theology, with Christ, honoring music.
• 25:34
  We need to fill the reservoir with high quality ingredients so
• 25:37
  that when life inevitably squeezes us, the Word of God is
• 25:40
  what spills out. You mentioned this idea of holy
• 25:43
  slowness. It comes from James One point
• 25:45
  month team. Be quick to hear, slow to speak,
• 25:48
  slow to anger. In a world that demands instant
• 25:51
  hot takes and rewards the fastest reply, the Christian
• 25:55
  practice of pausing is profoundly countercultural.
• 25:58
  Just taking a breath. Just taking a breath.
• 26:00
  That pause creates a space for the Spirit to engage.
• 26:03
  It allows us to ask those basic questions.
• 26:06
  Does this really need to be said?
• 26:07
  Is it true? Is it kind?
• 26:09
  Is it helpful? Will this build someone up?
• 26:12
  The sources also mentioned a specific application for parents
• 26:15
  and leaders. It's huge.
• 26:16
  Children learn the dialect of the home.
• 26:18
  If the ambient noise in the home is grumbling, complaining about
• 26:21
  the neighbors, criticizing the pastor, tearing down
• 26:23
  politicians, the children are learning that as their native
• 26:26
  tongue. They are learning to speak
• 26:28
  discontent. But if the home is filled with
• 26:30
  the language of grace, forgiveness, gratitude and
• 26:33
  praise. They learned that dialect
• 26:35
  instead. And for pastors and elders,
• 26:38
  office bearers, the standard is even higher.
• 26:40
  James 3.1. Not many of you should become
• 26:43
  teachers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with
• 26:46
  greater strictness. Their words carry more weight.
• 26:48
  So much more. A pastor who speaks argon words
• 26:52
  from the pulpit, silly jokes that distract from the text,
• 26:55
  lack of preparation, or who is harsh and domineering in a
• 26:58
  church meeting is betraying his office.
• 27:01
  His words are meant to be representative of the Great
• 27:04
  Shepherd. It all circles back to this idea
• 27:06
  of stewardship. Our words are a stewardship.
• 27:08
  They are a powerful resource God has given us, and every day,
• 27:13
  with every conversation, every text, every post, we can use
• 27:16
  them to build, to heal, to comfort, to point people to
• 27:19
  Christ, or we can use them to tear down, to wound, and to
• 27:23
  serve ourselves. So to summarize where we've been
• 27:26
  today in this deep dive. We've seen that undeniable
• 27:29
  organic link between the heart and the mouth.
• 27:32
  The tree determines the fruit. You can't fake it for long.
• 27:35
  We've seen the danger of the idle word, the shocking reality
• 27:38
  that nothing is off the record. And most of all, we've seen the
• 27:41
  absolute necessity of a new heart, a new nature that can
• 27:44
  only come through faith in Christ.
• 27:46
  It really stops being about watching your language and
• 27:49
  starts being about watching your heart.
• 27:50
  That's it. If you want to change the fruit,
• 27:52
  you have to get to the root. All right, here is a final
• 27:54
  thought for you to chew on as we wrap things up today.
• 27:57
  James uses that other famous analogy for the tongue.
• 28:00
  He calls it a small rudder that steers the whole ship.
• 28:03
  A tiny part that directs the course of the whole person.
• 28:06
  So if the Day of Judgement involves a full playback of
• 28:09
  every word we've ever spoken, that means the rudder of our
• 28:12
  tongue is steering our soul toward its eternal verdict.
• 28:16
  The terrifying reality is that our flesh, our sinful nature,
• 28:19
  wants to grab that tiller every day and steer us straight onto
• 28:23
  the rocks of condemnation with every careless, angry or foolish
• 28:27
  word. Our only hope, then, is that the
• 28:29
  hand on that tiller is the Holy Spirit, not the flesh.
• 28:32
  Our only hope is that when the log book of our life's voyage is
• 28:35
  opened in that final court, the pages filled with our shipwreck
• 28:38
  speech have been completely blotted out by the blood of
• 28:41
  Christ. And the only entries left are
• 28:43
  the ones that He himself produced in US by His grace.
• 28:46
  Said a guard, O Lord, over my mouth, keep watch over the door
• 28:49
  of my lips. Psalm 141.
• 28:51
  That's a good prayer for all of us to have on our lips.
• 28:54
  I'm into that. Thank you for listening to
• 28:55
  Reformed Thinking. We hope this deep dive helps you
• 28:58
  check the dipstick of your own soul.
• 29:00
  And more than that, drives you back to the only good tree,
• 29:03
  Jesus Christ. We'll see you next time.