OLD SCHOOL WISDOM | Week 3 | Full Service

So before we start, I want to show you some of these cards that we found. Students wrote letters to their teachers at the end of the year, and these cards are absolutely incredible. Let me show you the first one that we saw.

This is from a kid named Brian. He said, Mrs. Munn, you were a good teacher this year, but you were not my favorite ever. Not even close. Kids are incredible. Here's the next one. Michael wrote, Mrs. Stevens, I'm sorry your cat died but at least you won't smell as dirty anymore.

With a little picture of a cat there, right? That's funny because we all had that lady as a junior high teacher. Here's the next one from Stacy. It says, Ms. Mandy, you can move my seat and I will still talk a lot. I just will. Think about that this summer. Stacy is a gangster. I like me some Stacy.

Christian wrote to Mr. Michaels, he says, you've made second grade fun. I know you're going to really enjoy the bars this summer. With a picture of a little cocktail glass with an umbrella on it. I don't know what Mr. Michaels was doing, but I imagine that's how I would survive teaching second grade as well.

Patrick, this is the last one. He said, I like you, Klein. If I had to choose between you being killed or me not getting to eat dessert, I choose for you not to be killed. I think she's thankful that he won't be in her class next year, right?

He's probably a serial killer but that's a sermon for another day. Hey, the reason that I start there is kids have this uncanny ability. I remember being in a grocery store with my son and we were at the checkout stand and this lady had a kind of large nose and my son was like, hey, look mom, it's a witch bagging the groceries, right? They just, they say things that hopefully over time you and I learn not to say. Maybe you haven't learned it yet but not everything that comes to your mind needs to come out of your mouth, right? And kids just

say whatever's on their mind and is part of what makes them funny. But hopefully over time we learn that not everything that we think has to be spoken. The reason that I start there is the Proverbs we're going to look at today is focused entirely on something that we often dismiss and overlook. It's the words that we say.

What Solomon is gonna talk about in Proverbs chapter 18 is the power of language. The power of the spoken and written word to people that is much more than what we think it is. That its consequences are much more far reaching than we could ever imagine.

And the truth is, is the sad reality is even today on Father's Day, some of us, some of the deepest, most hurtful wounds that we still carry, They come because of words that were spoken over us oftentimes by our dad. And it's amazing how words spoken over us when we're little kids can still impact us to this day.

We make up sayings like sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me. We make up those statements because we know that words are really hurtful. And a lot of times they stay with us.

This shouldn't surprise us because what we're gonna see today, big idea, the thing I wanna spend the next few moments looking at friends is simply this. Our words will bring and produce life or death.

The question that we all have to ask ourselves today is are the words that we're speaking over our friends, our family, our spouses, our children, our employers, our employees, our coworkers, our friends. Are they producing life or are they producing

death? Here's what Proverbs chapter 18 verse 21 says. It says that the tongue

can bring death or life. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences. One verse, Solomon says that the power of life and death exists in the words that you and I speak. Now here's the challenge and also the opportunity. Statistics tell us that men, you and I, will speak on average about 7,000 words every day.

That is nothing compared to women who will speak close to 25,000 words in a day. And all the dudes said amen. In a single lifetime, you and I, they say, will speak eight fifty million words. That is eight fifty million opportunities to plant seeds of life or death.

The question is, is in the eight fifty million words that you speak, will you sow life or will you sow death? My basic submission to all of us today is the words that you speak specifically over the people that you're closest to. Those words matter more than you could ever imagine.

That gets us to James chapter three. James chapter three is where James will essentially expand on this thought. He will go in-depth on this very thing. If you're newer to church or the Bible, James is a book that's written by the half brother of Jesus.

Now I had an older sister that was like the perfect one and I was always the one getting in trouble and I'd be like, dude, can you do something wrong every now and then to draw some attention off of me? Right, like that was bad. The only thing that would have been worse is having literally Jesus as my sibling.

Like could you imagine having Jesus as your older brother? They obviously had different dads. Jesus' dad was God but they grew up in the same home and James is almost uniquely qualified to talk about what a relationship with God is supposed to produce out of us. This is James' basic premise for the entire book.

He says faith is an internal work. It's something that happens inside of your heart. It's a private thing. It's a personal thing. But that private and personal thing that happens internally,

it should produce some things out of you. Okay? Now this is where some religions get this wrong and they say that means you have to work for faith. That's not what James says.

James is in agreement with everything else that Paul says that faith is something that we receive through faith. It is an act of grace, not of our own works, but the inward process of restoration

and being filled with the Holy Spirit. It will produce out of our lives good works. James' book, Crescendos, in chapter two, and he says, faith without works, it's a dead faith. It's not a real faith. A person who claims to be Christian but lives nothing like a Christian

maybe is not a Christian. And in James chapter three, grandma Sally is calling me. I'll mute that real quick. In James chapter three, he spends an entire chapter

writing a chapter about the words that we speak. Here's where he begins in verse one.

He says, Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church for we who teach will be judged more strictly. I wish I had read that before I started teaching in the church, but we'll move on to verse two. He says, Indeed,

we all make many mistakes. I can relate to verse two, right? He says, for if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way. This is really interesting to me. James says, you wanna know the marker of a Christian who's perfect?

Now he's not literally meaning perfect and that they have no flaws. The sentence starts with we all make many mistakes. The word in the Greek there is he uses a word that means healthy and mature. He says, you want to know the marking of a healthy and mature follower of Christ? A person who submitted their life to Jesus has learned to heed his voice, to follow his instruction?

It's somebody who speaks life giving words. They've learned to control their tongue. When I think of a perfect Christian, truthfully, the words that that person speaks isn't even in the top five or six things that I would think of.

But James says that the words that somebody speaks, it reveals much more about them than you would realize. He says that I would argue that if they've learned to control their tongue, they've probably learned to control other parts of their life as well. James begins to show us that maybe just maybe the words that we say,

they reveal a lot more about us than we realize. But this is the really difficult part about a message like this and why it can be easy to dismiss because you and I can't necessarily see the damage that our words produce.

I was reading a story a couple weeks ago about this doctor in the eighteen hundreds that lived and he's got a really hard name to pronounce, so I won't even try, but he was a doctor in the 1850s, and he ran a gynecology clinic with a bunch of doctors.

But what he couldn't figure out is women at his clinic that gave birth there were dying at five times the rates of the local midwife's clinic. Then he said, we do a lot of the same things. Our practices are similar. He went and visited how the midwives did deliveries and he says, we do a lot of the same stuff. I don't understand why women are dying at five times the rate here than they are there.

And then he came to a conclusion as this thing kept him up at night and he said, well, maybe there's a connection between we do one thing that the midwives don't do. We have to do autopsies on dead bodies and in between autopsies, we will do deliveries. Now again you have to understand in the 1800s microbiology

didn't exist. They had no idea of bacteria and it's kind of gross but they would go from doing an autopsy to doing a delivery and there was no sanitation that happened in between those procedures. And so he said, maybe there's a connection there.

So he said, all the doctors in our practice, let's start washing our hands between doing autopsies and deliveries. And just like that, he fixed the death rate at the office. But here was the problem. He couldn't explain why.

He couldn't prove to people why it was happening. All he saw was the fruit of what was happening because he chose to listen, because he chose to do this thing. He tried to convince the medical community, you need to wash your hands, doctors, you need to wash your hands between autopsies and deliveries.

And true story, you can look it up. The medical community was so taken back at the notion that doctors were somehow dirty that he was going against the culturally accepted medical hypothesis that everybody had agreed upon, they literally rejected him to a point that he ended up going crazy.

He later died four or five years later in an insane asylum because he was so pushed back against by the medical community. And it tells us that once the medical community makes up their mind about something, good luck changing it. Hello, recent history. And two,

that you and I, when we can't see something, we can be really prone to dismiss it as it's not that big of a deal. Well, forty years later, he was vindicated when bacteria was discovered.

And they began to realize it was there the whole time we just couldn't see it. What James is trying to get us to see is that our words are producing something in the people around us.

You just might not be able to see it. The opportunity that's there for us this morning is to maybe take a look at it even if we can't understand it. To begin to go, I don't know why, but the Bible is very clear that the words that we say are incredibly powerful. What are we saying?

What are we speaking? Is it life or death? Here's how James continues. In verse three, he says, here's what's crazy is we can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. He says a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go. He says even though the winds

are incredibly strong. He says in the same way, the tongue is just a small part that makes grand speeches, but a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. He says among all the parts of the body, the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness.

Corrupting your entire body, it can set your whole life on fire for it is set on fire by hell itself. James is saying that your tongue in proportion to the rest of your body, it's just a small thing but the consequences can be massive.

He says that this very thing could be the reason when you look at your life and it seems like everything is on fire. It seems like there's chaos all around you. Sometimes that's because you've set it on fire with the words that you've spoken over yourself.

Because these are the things that you continue to repeat about you. That's why our worlds can be set on fire. And he says, it's this really small thing. It's insignificant,

but just like the rudder on a boat, it's this small thing, but it directs the entire ship. So is the words and the language that you and I choose to use verbally and written online. They matter more than we could ever imagine. He says, you have to understand the words that we speak,

oftentimes the fiery arrows that we shoot at one another, it is the very tactic of the enemy. He says the source of it, the thing behind the thing, it's the enemy.

The greatest tool that he has is to sow division amongst the communities of God, to come in and get us to attack each other on our differences, to set little fires here and there because of the things that we just disagree on.

And he says, it's crazy what can happen with one spark, with one word, how the entire force can get set on fire. Now for somebody who grew up in California, that's what we were always worried about was wildfires. I can remember so many times having to evacuate our homes and fires coming over the hill.

And the craziest thing is the most devastating fire that has hit California was in 2018. It was called a ranch fire. It burned 440,000 acres, cost $12,000,000,000 in damages. Two firefighters died. Almost 400 structures were burned to the ground.

Do you know how the ranch fire was started? It was started by one man on his ranch, hence the name the ranch fire. He went out because he had a shade structure that had become disattached and so he was trying to get it reestablished and he took one metal spike and he took a hammer

and he hit the nail on the head to put the shade structure back into the ground. And when he hit it, sparks flew into the brush. And the brush caught on fire and the fire was taken by the wind. The next thing he knew, the entire hillside was on fire. 440,000

acres were burned to the ground. Two men would lose their lives. $12,000,000,000 of damage would happen because of one man hitting one nail with one hammer. What James is saying is that the words that you speak to your spouse when you're angry, the things that you say to your kids when you're frustrated,

sometimes it will set a fire that will cause more damage than you could ever imagine. Sometimes it will start a fire that you can't stop even after you apologize.

And here's the truth of what I know is a lot of us sit in this room and we have eating disorders because somebody told us when we were a kid that we were overweight. And it's amazing to me how long things can stay with us when people who were supposed to protect us say really hurtful things to us.

James is telling us our words really matter. Be careful what you do. Be intentional with them because you could set a fire that might get out of control even though it wasn't what you intended to do. I promise you, if you ask this guy, this rancher,

hey, hey, this is what's gonna happen when you do this, he would have figured out a different way to tie down the shade structure. Our idea our our opportunity this morning

is to potentially find different ways of saying things to the people around us because we don't want to sow life. We want to put we don't wanna sow death. We wanna sow life into people. Here's where James ends this section right here in verse seven.

He says, people can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one,

no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil that is full of deadly poison.

And the crazy part is, is James wrote this way before SeaWorld ever existed. Do think you could have imagined us taming an Orca whale on a dude standing like this and having the orca shoot him out of the water? He could not have seen that, but he was right. He said, you can tame all kinds of things. You can get a whale to jump you out of the water. You can ride an elephant. You can get all these big animals to do whatever you want. But here's the one thing you and I can't do on our own in our own power.

You and I cannot control our tongue on our own. He says this is the tension. That's what makes this message so difficult because your words matter more than you could ever imagine. They can cause more damage than you could ever realize. And oh, by the way, there's nothing you can do about it.

This is where if this was a self help talk, we'd go, well, good luck guys, try not to suck, have at it. But this is the good news friends is we're not left helpless. What is impossible with man is possible with God. That is the good news for those of us who have put our faith in Jesus is that there is hope,

but it starts with an understanding that on our own, through our own attempt, through our own ability, through our own cuss jars on the kitchen counter, we will not be able to tame this alone. We cannot control our tongue by ourselves.

So what do we do? We have to start with an agreement that I have belabored for the last fifteen minutes. Words are incredibly powerful. We have to start there and all agree on that. We all go, okay, yes, we agree that words are powerful.

Words have the ability to impact more than we could ever imagine. There was this crazy thing that happened in the nineties. There was a Japanese scientist, again, there's all these guys with weird names, I don't even try to pronounce them, but he had this hypothesis that words impacted our environments.

He specifically went after water. And so for twenty four hours, he took a team of people and they spoke positive and encouraging and affirming and life giving statements over a cup of water. I know this sounds really woo woo, but just stick with me for a second. After twenty four hours of speaking positive, affirming things over this water, he froze the cup of water and he looked at the crystals under a microscope and this is what he saw.

These beautiful crystals began to form. So he took another cup of water and he began to speak negative. Mean hurtful things like that Ghostbusters two scene. If you've seen it where they're like yelling at the thing and it gets worse and bubbles up more. They spoke negative, harmful, degrading things over the water.

We're that.

And do able

and we don't really know completely, but here's what it proves to us. Our words are powerful. We live in a world that is 60% water. Our bodies are made up of 70% water. You know your brain, the little brain that's inside of every one of your kids, it's 80% water. So if that's what's happening microscopically,

what is happening to our bodies when we continue to speak negatively? The Bible has been clear from the beginning. It is producing death, but there's an opportunity to speak life. So what do we do? What do we begin to practically

do? The first thing I wanna show you is some of the things we have to be careful of. What does a deadly tongue do? What does a mouth that speaks death? What are some of the tendencies

that we have? There's a couple of things I want you to look out for. A couple of things to be careful of. Here's the first one. A deadly tongue is one that just gossips really freely. People in Christian community, we've got to be really careful of these. These are often called prayer requests. Right?

We're like, can you just pray for Jane? I was at her house and those kids were watching Harry Potter and they said at least three cuss words. And I don't even think that they're Christian, but just be praying for them, right? And we just gossip. And gossip is a really dangerous thing to do.

And the truth is, as my grandma told me years ago, be careful of people that gossip near you. Because if they'll say it to you, they'll say it about you.

And we have to be people to go, we are going to root out gossip. That we will confront people when we need to have hard conversations, but we'll address it with them. We won't talk about them. Here's another thing I think that tongues that speak death do. We just complain a lot.

And this is something that's really easy to do, especially for me as a San Diego kid that's getting ready to go into the hottest point of summer for about ninety days. I hate this place. Right? I'm just like, who would live here? How did I end up here? God, what did I do wrong? How did I go from the promised land to the desert? I think it was supposed to go the other way. And then I can forget

there's a reason that this is the second fastest growing city in the entire country. And that tons of people would love to live here. And by complaining, what do I do? I just pollute my environment and I forget all the incredible blessings and all the things that I am grateful

for. Here's what the Bible tells us about complaining in Philippians chapter two verse 14. It says, you and I are supposed to do everything without complaining and arguing.

This is my kids' one memory verse. Just do everything without complaining or arguing, right? They still haven't memorized it and it's still not working, but we're trying. Friends, we've got to be careful not to just be people who complain. What else can happen when we're unintentionally

speaking death? This is one of those ones I think we've got to look out for. I think we can just be really careless with our words. This is one for me that truthfully I have to be careful of. As somebody who likes to talk and somebody who likes to joke, I can unintentionally hurt people when I'm careless with my words.

I can say things that sure they're funny, but I've had to go back afterwards and apologize because even though I was doing it and I was joking,

it still hurt people. And I was just careless with my words. There's a verse in Proverbs that truly I've never seen before. I read it this week and it was an arrow to the heart for me. Here's what Proverbs chapter 26 says about careless words. Notice this picture. It says, just as damaging

as a madman shooting a deadly weapon. Okay. This is the illustration

that is used. He says, imagine there's a crazy person going around with a machine gun. Okay? Crazy person with a machine gun. Not a great scene. Here's what that is. That's like somebody who lies to a friend and then has to come back later and say, hey, I was only joking. What he's saying is that sometimes even in jest,

even in joking, you can do a lot of harm. You can do a lot of damage. I don't know about your family, but my family's very sarcastic. If you're around our family and you have thin skin, you're going to have a hard time.

And I've had to learn over the years that just because that's how I grew up, it doesn't make it okay because I'm somebody that wants to speak life And I'm somebody that's around a lot of people and I speak into a lot of things. Am I speaking life or death in those moments?

There's power in our words. What is a tongue that committed to speaking life? What are some practical things that we can do? This is the first one that I think we can do that's really simple.

Just give people compliments.

This can be as easy as your friend gets a new haircut being like, boy, that hair looks good, man. They killed that haircut. Right? Like you go to lunch and your girlfriend's got some makeup on. You're like, girl, the mascara, the eyeliner, I don't know what you did, but it is bonkers this morning. You killed it. Right? It's amazing how much compliments. Like, I like your shirt, man. Those are awesome.

Most of the time we're talking to people, the things we highlight aren't the greatest things about them. What would happen if we just became people who gave tons and tons of compliments?

It's always good when you get a compliment. Here's what's crazy to go a little bit deeper into this. I do a lot of premarital counseling with couples before they get married.

We take them through this thing called love languages, which if you've never understood your love languages, I would encourage you to go through. There's basically five love languages and all of us through life,

we've learned to give and receive love in certain ways and oftentimes we've just learned to give love the way that we learned in our environments, but that doesn't mean that's how our spouse receives love.

And so you go through this test and this assessment to learn, okay, how do I receive love? And then the spouse commits to trying to love their spouse that way particularly. And here's what's crazy, I can tell you 95%

of the men in this room, I can tell you exactly what their love languages are. Their first one is called physical touch. It's followed closely by a second one called physical touch. Kind of kidding, but there is another one.

The second one that comes up the most with men. I see it way more with men than I do with women. The second one is words of affirmation. It's amazing to me how many men that I go through this process with and their primary love language is this physical touch and words of affirmation.

And it's interesting to me that most men are only ever spoken to when they're doing something wrong. They're brought into an office when they did something wrong at work. They're talked to about their parenting when they didn't say things correctly to their kids.

And we don't have a society that's built around building men up. And so I would encourage all of you who are around men in your life, find ways to praise them. But one of the greatest thing that my wife does for me is she reminds me I'm doing better than I think I am.

She'll tell me when I don't feel like I'm a really good dad. Hey, you're a great dad. And I know it seems really silly, but those things really matter. This is a small way that we can be people who commit to speaking life to one another. Here's another thing that we can do. We can take the responsibility

of encouraging those around us. The reason that I love the word encourage is because it literally means to put courage into somebody. This is what we're doing with our children.

This is what we're doing with the next generation. This is what we're doing with our friends and families. Our responsibility to put courage into them. In a world that is constantly telling them to be afraid, we can be the people that says, no, no, no, no. I want to encourage you, man. You're doing great. You're doing better than you think you are. You can continue to do this thing. My hope and my prayer is that every time you walk in the doors of this church, that you walk out of here with your head held high going, Man, there's a God that's for me. My best days are still ahead of me. Even when I've made mistakes, grace is for me. There's a God that loves me, who's made me, that is pursuing me, that has a life for me beyond my wildest dreams because that's who God is.

And I don't know where the church got off thinking that it's our job to tear each other apart. Our job is to build each other up, to come into this place and encourage each other and to be positive and to uplift each other. And sure, we have hard conversations, but we do it from love. No, we do it from a place of going, I'm for you. I want you to do better than I am.

And the church has to stop being the ones that tear each other apart. As I go on social media, man, there's so many times that I just go, how do we think this is what the church is supposed to be? That we're supposed to be the, like, political police of the world.

Imagine what would happen if we just said, you know what? We're gonna speak life to people. Even when they disagree with us, even when they land on the opposite end of a decision than we do, we're gonna be people who go, our words matter, and we're gonna choose them really carefully.

This is what Paul encourages us to do. In first Thessalonians chapter five, he says, our responsibility is to encourage each other and to build each other up. And I love what Paul says at the end, just as you are already doing. He's encouraging them to do what they're already doing. Let's be the people who build each other up and just keep doing it. One of my favorite stories of my grandma, my grandma was the sweetest lady in the world. I loved her more than anybody on this planet. She had 19 grandkids, but I can count like five, six times in my life where my grandma would pull me to the side.

And she'd go, hey, you see all these grandkids? Out of all of them,

you're my favorite. And I'm like, man, I knew it. I knew it. That makes sense to me. You know what I mean? Like, they they are not as awesome as me. And she would do that multiple times. And as a little kid, it mattered to me. It meant a lot to me to go, you know what? My grandma thinks I'm awesome and she loves me more than all these knuckleheads.

And here's what was amazing. At her funeral, cousin after cousin after cousin got up and told the story about how she pulled them to the side. And I was like, dang it, man. This whole time I thought I was the favorite. She did it for every one of us. But it was amazing how much it meant to me.

And it tells me that our words matter. Encourage the people in your lives because they need it. The last thing that we do if we're gonna be committed to speaking life is we're gonna have moments and conversations that involve correction, but we're gonna do it in love.

What I'm not saying is that we don't have hard conversations and we brush everything under the rug and we just become a doormat and let people walk all over us. That's not what I'm saying at all. Bill had an entire message on this last week. If you missed it, I would encourage you to go watch it. Have hard conversations.

Address the issues that are happening in your life. But don't do it while you're angry. Let the anger and the deep emotion pass so that you can have a conversation in love. This is the hardest part specifically about having confrontation inside of a marriage relationship.

My wife and I went to a seminar and learned really early on the damage that happens in hard conversations. It's usually not about what you're fighting about. The damage happens how you fight about what it is you're fighting about. Do you get dirty when you fight? Do you sink low when you fight?

Because the truth is, is there's nobody in this world that could hurt me more than my wife. Why? Because she knows me better than anybody else. She knows my real weaknesses. She knows my struggles and I know hers. And when we get into arguments, I could and she could go to that place.

But we refuse to do it because we know our responsibility is to build each other up, not tear each other down. Maybe just maybe you could try speaking life into your spouse, encouraging your spouse, speaking positively about them when they're not there. And maybe just maybe

the marriage would begin to turn around. And I know marriage can be hard, but try having conversations of correction rooted

in love.

There's a couple things I wanna point out. There's a list that I saw this week, and I think you might see yourself somewhere in this list. I only put it out there to level the playing field and go, look, I think all of us are in here. All of us struggle to some degree with the words that we say. We can all do better in this. So there's a couple of things before we wrap up I want you to see.

Sometimes there's things in when we speak that we struggle with. And the guy in the back is like, what are we doing? Because I skipped all over this. I got to make a point first so he'll get back online. Here's the second point I wanna make. Here's the truth of our words, They reveal more about who we really are.

This is what makes this thing really difficult. It's why looking at our words is so important because our words are much more of an indication of our soul and our hearts than our quiet times are in the morning.

If I walked around and listened to the conversations you have, the stories that you tell, how you tell them, how you speak about your spouse, how you speak about your kids, The truth is is that's who you really are. It's why Jesus says in Luke chapter six,

he says that a good person will produce good things from the treasury of a good heart and an evil person produces things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say

flows from what's in your heart. So the next time you say something really hurtful and really mean and you try to come back and go, Hey, I'm sorry. I was just stressed out. I didn't mean that.

I'm not saying that you didn't mean to say it that way. But the truth is, is when we're pressed, when we're stressed, what's really actually in us is what will come out. And maybe just maybe the words that we say are one of the best indicators for us to go. How are we doing in here? How is our soul? How is our heart?

Because Jesus says that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth will speak. Okay. Couple of things I want you to see before we kind of wrap up and give some conclusions. Sometimes if you're somebody that has more of a harsh tongue, you're more of the critical person that says things meanly.

A lot of times that's rooted in a heart that's full of a lot of anger. We have to let God deal with that.

Another thing that you might struggle with is somebody that has a really negative tongue. You just poke holes in everything. You're the one that's always kind of belittling the plans and you're just always upset. A lot of times that can be because your heart's really sad. For others in this room,

you might have a boasting tongue. You're the guy that goes, doesn't matter how many push ups I say I can do, you can do 10 more. Like we all know that guy. Oftentimes that's rooted out of a massive insecurity and we have to let God deal with that. For others here,

you might be the person that has the filthy tongue. You just always say the inappropriate joke and you're always the guy when you say something at the family dinner, everybody's like, oh no, what's about to happen? Sometimes and we just have to have an honest assessment. Sometimes that's because there's some impurities

in our heart. The last one that I want us to look at is for those of us who tend to be more critical, to be more negative. A lot of times that can be rooted in bitterness.

The whole point of this thing is to get us to see, and this is why James says the tongue is so hard to control and why you can't do it on your own. Because the only way that we can control and change our language, change how we speak to our kids is we have to let God deal with our heart.

We have to assess what's really going on in here because it's out of the overflow of this thing that we will speak.

So the question is, is what do we do? I have a couple of challenges for you. I have a couple of simple practical things that I want you to do. The first one is a prayer that I would encourage you to be praying this week. Psalm fifty one ten records this incredible prayer from the Psalmist and his prayer has asked is that God, would you create in me a clean heart? Would you renew

a loyal spirit within me? It starts with inviting God to purify your heart, to give you a clean heart. And then there's another prayer that I would encourage you to pray that's found in Psalm 141. It says that while I'm being purified internally,

God, would you take control of what I say and guard my lips? It's almost like God, would you be a filter on my mouth? Would you, as you deal with my heart, a filter on my mouth and let those moments where I'm tempted to say the really hurtful thing, God, would you give me the courage and the boldness to not say it?

When somebody goes low, would you give me the willingness to stay high?

God, would you create in me a clean heart? In Acts chapter two, when the Holy Spirit falls on the scene, Pentecost happens. It's this really bizarre scene where the disciples for the first time are filled with the helper, the Holy Spirit. And what's crazy is at Pentecost what happens is all the disciples start praying in tongues.

And the church has gotten really weirded out about like, Oh, that means if you've been filled with the Holy Spirit, you have to pray in tongues. We've gotten really fixated on why would praying in tongues be the evidence of the holy spirit.

I think God was showing us it's impossible to control your tongue on your own. But when I dwell within you, when I overwhelm you, he was proving

I can take control of your mouth. And he made the disciples speak in a language that they didn't know. And the church has been so fixated on praying in unknown languages. And is praying in tongues something that can happen? Sure.

But you know what I think is an even better sign that the Holy Spirit is alive and active in you? That it's alive and active in me. It's not that I pray in a language that I don't know, it's that I learn to bridle and control the language that I do know. And I wonder what would happen to the people of God

if we began to be people who said in every interaction, in person, online, in our offices, in our homes, we're gonna ask God, would you transform us? Would you change us from the inside and out? And would you begin to create in me a spring that bubbles out goodness and mercy and kindness and gentleness

and self control and that our words would be the very fruit of the spirit that is promised in the book of Galatians.

So here's what I wanna do. With every single person in here, I hopefully I've punched all of you in the throat equally because we're all in this together. All of us have to get better at this. The last thing that I would leave you with

is the exact same thing that happened to the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament. The book of Isaiah is this incredible scene where Isaiah has this vision and he sees God in the throne room. And he sees the holiness and the goodness and the mercy of God in his fullness.

And he says it's this incredible picture where the angels, the seraphim just follow in circles and they just cry out, holy holy holy are you God. And he has the same moment that I'm praying that you would have today in the presence of God as we worship together. That as we see God and we see him in his goodness,

in his holiness, that what it would do is it would show us all of our impurities and all the things that we still need to grow and all the things that we need to work out. And maybe just maybe the answers for us, the solutions for us to become the people that speak life and not death,

Maybe just maybe it's found in this prayer that Isaiah prays all the way back in Isaiah chapter six verse five. Here's how I end this whole message. Isaiah says that as I saw God, I then said, it's all over. I'm doomed for I'm a sinful man. He says, I have filthy lips and I live among a people with filthy lips.

Tell me that's not our culture. He says, yet I've seen the king, the Lord of heaven's armies. And then one of the Seraphim flew to me with a burning coal that he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and he said, see, this coal has touched your lips.

Now your guilt is removed and your sins are forgiven. Friends, how do we become people that speak life and not death? You need a touch from heaven. The angel came to him, the coal touched his lips and he says, here's how you will become a person who doesn't have a filthy mouth.

I will remove from you your shame and your guilt and your condemnation and all the ramifications that come with the things that you've picked up just going through this life. Because we, to change our speech, we need to change our heart.

So here's what I wanna do. With everybody in this room, I'm gonna ask you right now. I believe that God is going to do this same thing. I'm gonna ask you to close your eyes and bow your heads, everybody in this room. And I'm gonna ask right now in a room full of people with the presence of God here with us,

that God is here amongst us where two or more are gathered. He's here in this room. And Father, we're here God and we need a touch from heaven. And if that's you and you're in this room and you go, I want to do better in this. I know I have room to improve.

I want to be somebody that speaks life over my kids, life over my spouse,

life over the people in my life. If that's you right now and you wanna have a moment with the heavens to touch you and remove the sin and guilt from your life, just throw your hand in the air right now, everybody in the room. Throw your hand up all over the room. There's no shame. There's no condemnation. There's hands going up all over. Now I'm gonna ask you to put your other hand in the air and put both arms up in the universal symbol of surrender.

That father right now, we surrender to you. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would come into our hearts. You would transform us from the inside out. That Lord, we are not gonna try to do this on our own. We need you, Father, to do what only you can do. To remove our sin, to remove our shame, to remove our guilt.

Father, would you give us the courage, the boldness, and the willingness to be people who speak life and not death because we understand our words matter more than they could than we could ever imagine. It is in the holy and majestic name of Jesus that all God's people said. Amen and amen. Thanks

for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app and for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.