Out of the Overflow

Transcript

Aaron Brockett • Slip of the Tongue • Matthew 6:21 and Matthew 12:34b

All right, how’re we doing this weekend? Good, good. Good to see you. I want to welcome all of our guests, those of you who might be visiting at any one of our campuses. We are absolutely thrilled to have you. I know what it feels like to be a new person in a new place, and so we hope that you feel right at home and get a chance to meet a few new people.

I want to say hello to our North campus, Downtown, West, anybody watching online, as well as those of you here at our Northwest campus. In fact, at each of our campuses, let’s put our hands together, make it a warm space.

It’s kind of a cool weekend because this weekend marks one year ago today that our North and Downtown campuses moved into their permanent facilities, which is really something cool to celebrate. The story of how God kind of orchestrated both of those facilities is just incredible.

I want you to know that West campus—we love you guys—they are setting up and tearing down every single weekend at a middle school, so God bless you. We know how maybe challenging that can be, but also I just want to encourage you. You are making more of a difference than you may realize. Thank you, thank you, thank you to every single one of our volunteers at all of our campuses.

But we are praying that God will provide some kind of a permanent facility for our West campus at some point in the near future. We love you guys so, so much.

Well, we last week started this series of messages on the power of our words. When I was growing up, we had some family friends who had a daughter that was a year younger than me and we lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, the same church, the whole deal, knew each other really, really well, so I kind of saw her like a really good friend. I almost kind of saw her like a little sister even, which was why it got really, really awkward and uncomfortable my senior year in high school when her parents began to kind of drop hints that they would sort of like to see us date. That’s just awkward, right? It’s not that I didn’t like her, it’s just I didn’t like her like her. I just kind of saw her as like a sister and a good, good friend.

We were out somewhere with them one night, and her mom was talking and the subject of dating came up. She said, “Well, Aaron, are you dating anybody?” and I said, “No.” She said, “Well, Jenny’s available.”

Just like puts you right on the spot, right?

I didn’t have time to think it through, and I ended up laughing out loud and then I think I said something like, “Not Jenny,” something along those lines. Thinking back on it, my outburst, my response was a bit too passionate and enthusiastic and it hurt her mom’s feelings. She was offended. She was hurt. She was even angry.

I can’t say that I blame her. I’m a father of three daughters now and I wouldn’t want anybody reacting that way about any of them, although I can tell you right now I ain’t gonna be setting them up on any dates anytime soon, until there like 35-ish or so.

But I did not intend for my words to have that kind of impact. Any of you ever been there? You ever have a conversation where you’re just like, “Oh, I can’t get those words back in,” and you just want to like open up your mouth and insert your foot. I did not mean for my words to affect you the way that they did, but oftentimes it’s too late.

You see, when it comes to our words, I’ve got some bad news and I’ve got some good news. Let me start with the bad news first. I always like to get the bad news first.

The bad news is that each and every one of us, we have the potential to say some things that are more hurtful than we intended. You probably already know that to be true.

The good news is though that we also have the potential to say things that are more helpful than we ever imagined, and one of the things that I want us to understand is that our words have the potential to literally change somebody’s life, now certainly for the worst, but also for the better.

Every single day, it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, doesn’t matter your gender, doesn’t matter what you do for a living, doesn’t matter how important you think you are or not important you think you are, every single person has the potential to wake up in the morning and go, “You know what? I could literally change somebody’s life today with the words that I speak to them.”

You don’t have to use a lot of words—in fact, sometimes the fewer the better—and your words don’t have to be eloquent. They just need to be thoughtful and sincere and well placed. God wants to use our tongues to speak life into others.

Last week, if you were here, I said that on average we speak about 16,000 words per day, which equals up to about a 60-page book that could be written with our words every single day. Now that’s a lot of words, which, if you think about it, that’s a lot of opportunities to slip up and say the wrong thing.

But it’s also an opportunity to learn from it. I mean, if you’re going to speak that many words over the course of your lifetime, that’s an opportunity to learn from it, to grow from it, and to eventually get it right.

I’m hoping that that’s what this series does, that it shines a spotlight onto this area of our lives that we all know is there. We all know that it can potentially be a real problem but we don’t often really want to think about or talk about.

And you know, there may be plenty of times when we say things that just slip up. We certainly don’t mean it, and we need to cut ourselves some slack because we’re all humans.

But there are other times, would you not agree, that when you say something maybe hurtful, oh you meant every word. Right? It’s like, “Man, I know full well what these words are going to do to this person that I’m saying them to, but I’m going to say them anyway.”

Have you noticed that we oftentimes reserve our harshest, most mean-spirited words for the people who we say we love the most? I was thinking about that this last week. I was like, “Man, why do we do that?” I don’t know. There are maybe multiple reasons.

I think maybe one is that we are so comfortable with them that we take their love and commitment to us for granted and so we sort of think, “Well, you know, I can just give you a tongue lashing and you’ll still be there tomorrow.” Until maybe one day when they’re not.

Maybe another reason is we know them so well we know how to push their buttons. We know exactly the right thing to say to really cut deeply and get under that person’s skin.

Have you ever said something that was so mean and so cruel that it even surprised you when it came out of your mouth? And almost as soon as you said it you were like, “Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t know where that came from. Let me take that back.”

But one of the hardest lessons to learn when it comes to our words is that we just can’t get them back once they are spoken. Now we can be forgiven of it. We can have another conversation about it, try to patch things over, but we just can’t get them back in. I mean, once they’re out there, they’re out there.

Have you ever seen that reality TV show that came out a few years ago called Tattoo Nightmares? It’s this reality show where people in a sort of impulsive, kind of careless moment find themselves in a tattoo parlor and they make a decision based on impulse, which is what you never want to do if you’re in a tattoo parlor, alright? Because that’s permanent.

So they get these tattoos that they are embarrassed about, they don’t want anymore, and so they are trying to do something about it. A few of my favorites are this one right here, this tattoo, “No regerts.” I got no regerts for my tattoo. Proud of this one.

How about this one, “Plan ahea” (tattooed letters on eight fingers). Just count the letters and your fingers. There are 10 of them.

This is one of my favorites. Maybe some of you remember this a few years ago. This is for all my UK fans. This tattoo right here, before they were 40-0, they got the tattoo that said 40-0 and then they weren’t 40-0. They lost. Which I think is hilarious, okay?

But the show is about these people who, in just an impulsive moment, a thoughtless moment, a careless moment, they ended up getting this tattoo that now they wish that they could get rid of.

Now, you can change it into something else. You can maybe go through the tattoo removal process, which I hear is painful and expensive and really doesn’t fully get rid of all of it. If you look closely, it’s faded maybe some but it’s still there.

I want us to think about that as a metaphor for the words that we speak. I know this is kind of a crazy idea, but just go with me if you would. What if every word that slipped off our tongue got tattooed on that other person’s skin? And would that maybe just cause us to just pause a little bit before we said it? Would it cause us to be a little more thoughtful, a little more careful about the words that we would speak to others? I would hope so.

The thing is is that thankfully those words aren’t tattooed on that other person externally, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. It doesn’t mean that those words still didn’t get tattooed deep within that person’s heart and soul on the inside.

Some of us, if not all of us, have had words that were spoken to us by someone else in a thoughtless moment, an impulsive moment, a careless moment that were hurtful, hateful, mean spirited, and degrading. Now our self-image is oftentimes connected to and is a reflection of those words that were spoken to us and about us and over us. Maybe the other person totally forgot that they said it, but we haven’t. It’s there.

This is why the Bible says this in Proverbs 12:18. It says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” So the bad news and the good news. The bad news is that our reckless words can pierce others like swords. The good news is that our words can bring healing.

The question is what’s coming out of my mouth the majority of the time because once we let those words slip, it doesn’t matter if they’re out of anger or stress or frustration or because we’re tired, which is usually what ends up happening. We can say we’re sorry. We might even mean that we’re sorry. We can ask for a do-over, but like a bad tattoo, those words just won’t go away.

If that sounds extreme and sort of final, it is kind of extreme. I heard from a number of you this past week how convicting this series has already been, which I just want to address that. I want you to know, I hope that you know, my heart. I think that good teaching will be convicting because we all have things that we need to see in our lives, and me first; I’m at the front of the line.

But this series is not designed to just make you feel bad about yourself or the words that you speak. I mean, if that’s all that you felt coming through this, then I haven’t done my job effectively.

No, conviction should lead to hope. Conviction should lead to healing. Conviction should lead to transformation. Conviction should lead to, “Hey, man, I’m going to turn a corner in my life. God, what will you need to do in my life so that some things can change?”

And I just want you to know that I’m not up here talking at you. I’m not up here like, “Hey, man, I got this thing figured out so do as I do.” I’m right there with you, and if you think it’s uncomfortable listening to this, try preparing for it and then preaching it, knowing that you got some junk in here that “I got to deal with.” Because I’ve said some things in my past that I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of.

It kind of reminds me of what Will Rogers said one time. He said live your life in such a way that you would never be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip. Unfortunately, I just haven’t. There are some things that I know that I’ve said.

It’s easy for me to maybe go, “Well, you know I was a teenager then. That was a long time ago.” Yeah, but the words are still there. Or, “Man, that was a different season of my life,” or “I didn’t really fully mean it,” or “You know, that person, they’re just too sensitive. They need to get over it.”

Here’s the thing that kind of scares me. I know that there are most likely things that I’ve said that have stayed with a person for a really, really long time that have maybe hurt them and I don’t even remember it. But I know that they do.

James was the half-brother of Jesus. He has a lot to say about the tongue. In fact, the three places in the Bible that have the most to say about it are the Proverbs, which is why we’re going to be there a lot; Jesus’ teaching; and then Jesus’ half-brother James.

We’re actually going to look at what James has to say about the tongue next week, and he uses a whole bunch of different metaphors for the tongue to help us understand it.

James says this. He goes: Hey, man, “No one can tame the tongue.” Like nobody. So if you ever have somebody who goes, “Hey may, I got this thing under control,” he goes: No you haven’t.

Nobody can tame the tongue.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that is extremely frustrating to me because something that is so small and so seemingly insignificant, I don’t like it that it can have that much impact upon the trajectory of my life and the condition of my relationships. I just don’t like it.

When you think about your tongue, it weighs about 70 grams.

[slide-pic] tongue. This is an accurate scientific depiction.

It weighs about 70 grams. It’s about 70% water. It’s about 20% muscle. It’s about 10% fat. It’s a weird collection of muscles in this sense. Have you ever thought about this? It never gets tired or sore. Have you ever thought about that? I mean, how many of you at the end of a long day are like, “My tongue is so sore.” You can be wagging that thing all day and it can still go.

I will, over the course of this weekend, be talking just up here alone about an hour and a half. I’ll teach for about 35-45 minutes or so. If I were to go out and run for that long, I would stretch my hamstrings, my quads, my calves. I was not backstage a minute ago stretching my tongue. If I were that would have been weird. When I get done today I’m not going to go home and ice it down. I’ve pulled a hammy, but I’ve never pulled the tongue.

Yet, I know that I’ve got to pay more attention to that muscle than any other muscle in my body because even though it’s small, it’s powerful.

We looked at this verse last week from Proverbs 18:21. It says, “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.”

We learned together from the book of Genesis that words are God’s thing, like this is what God does. God’s even described as the Word. He gave us the Word. When he speaks, things come into being. When God speaks, it brings about life and light.

Satan uses words too. Satan uses words to bring about death and darkness. He uses words to confuse and to tear down and to break down. He’s deceptive with words.

So the question that we asked last week we want to continue to consider all series long. It’s if I am a follower of Jesus, then whose words do my words sound most like? And that’s really the issue.

So James says nobody can tame the tongue. And we might say, “Okay, well James, why should we tame the tongue? What’s our motivation to want to tame the tongue? Is it to just be nicer people? Is it to win friends and influence people?”

Well, that’s maybe not such a bad thing, but no, that’s not the primary reason.

Is it to be politically correct? Well, not such a bad thing, but no, no, no. That’s not the primary reason.

Is it to avoid getting fired at work or divorced from our spouse? Well, that obviously would be a good thing to consider, but that’s not the primary reason.

The primary reason James would say that we need to tame our tongue, that we need to at least try to tame our tongue, is that if we are a follower of Jesus, what that means is we’ve invited him to take up residence in our hearts. Which means that it should be more of him in here gradually as we grow and less and less of me and my desires and my impulses and that his speech would begin to become my speech.

For some of us, maybe we intellectually have given our heads to Jesus but we’ve never given him our hearts. Some of us it’s the opposite. Some of us have given him our hearts, but we’ve never given him our heads.

If we’ve given him our intellectual assent, but we’ve never really traveled down here to give him our hearts, what that means, what we did, maybe many of you grew up in church but you really didn’t grow up in Christ. There is a difference. See, you can attend church but never really know Jesus, never really know the Gospel. You just go through the motions. What you did and the reason why it didn’t work was because it was a religious transaction. And that’s not what God’s offering. God’s offering an invitation to transformation.

He’s offering something much, much better than a transaction, and some of us have settled for that. A transaction says, “God, okay, I’ll say that I believe in you, I believe that Jesus is your son, and so I’ll go to church and I’ll give and I’ll serve and I’ll do all the things a nice, good, Christian person should do. Now you need to uphold your end of the bargain by keeping me healthy, wealthy, satisfied with life, cancer-free, and some good friends.”

Then when God doesn’t do that we say, “You didn’t hold up your end of the deal, so this must not have worked or you don’t exist.”

God’s never put that offer on the table. He’s offered you something so much better.

So when James says that we need to tame our tongues, he’s not just talking about: Hey man, be careful about what you say. He’s challenging all of us to go deeper than that to examine our hearts, and that’s just something that many of us just don’t want to do, me included, because we’re afraid of what we’ll find in there. Just to get down in there into the sludge and just kind of examine some stuff and just kind of see what’s going on inside of our hearts.

How do you know if Jesus has taken up residence in your heart? That’s the question. And it’s oftentimes phrased as “how do I know I’m saved?” or “did my salvation really take?” or however you want to phrase that. Jesus would say in addition to putting your trust in the finished work of Jesus on a cross, there are two very tangible, practical ways that you can tell who is in possession of your heart.

The first one has nothing to do with this sermon but Jesus addresses it a lot. It’s your checkbooks. He would say in Matthew 6:21, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Many of us, when we went down into the tank to get baptized, we took our checkbooks, our credit cards, our wallets, our purses, our 401K, put them into a little plastic Ziploc bag and sealed it up and said, “I’m going to get wet, but this isn’t because, God, I’ll give you my heart, but I ain’t giving you that.”

The next one Jesus would say is our tongues. And he would say in Matthew 12:34, “For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.”

I want us to be really, really clear. Our salvation does not hinge upon the words that we say, thankfully, because if it did, then we’d all be in trouble; however, we should not use that as an excuse either. Grace isn’t like just a total get-out-of-jail-free card in the sense that I can just live my life however I want with no consequences because God’s forgiven me. “So God’s forgiven me—I’m under his grace—so I’m going to let you have it. I’m just going to give you an earful.”

We could say it this way, that our salvation, while it is certainly not dependent, Jesus would say it is revealed, not dependent but revealed by the content and the tone of our speech. Like healthy fruit that comes from a healthy tree, our words are the fruit of our heart. It tells us more than anything else what’s really going on in there.

In fact, James would even say something so, so convicting, I almost don’t even want to read this, but it’s true. In chapter 1:26, he says, “If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless.”

Now James isn’t just going after the tongue. This is actually grouped together with some other things that James would say is worthless. Like he would say you can say you believe, he would say if you don’t look after orphans and widows in their distress, your religion is worthless. He would say the same thing.

He also says the same thing about our tongues. He’s like: Man, you can claim to know God, you can claim to love God, but man if you are reckless with your speech, then you’re just going through the motions.

And so how’s your speech? On the way here today, what was the conversation going on in the car?

Somebody cuts you off in traffic and you curse them out, but you let yourself get away with it because you’re the only one in the car.

Or have you ever like been in a conversation and you start gossiping about somebody but you never intended to gossip. It sort of drifted into that. Then you realize about halfway through that you’re probably gossiping and so you try to excuse it by saying, “Hey, I’m not telling you what I wouldn’t say to their face if they were here.” Anybody else done that? Yeah, me neither. Somebody probably has. But the thing is they’re not there.

Or maybe you say something cruel and undeserved out of stress to your spouse or to your kids. When you subtly put down a friend to try to make yourself feel better, when you fire off a careless comment or harsh criticism that is undeserved behind a keyboard void of relationship, listen, those things communicate something about the condition of our hearts.

James says: Listen, man, this is for your good. You’re fooling yourself. All those religious motions, they don’t mean anything. So the question is who is in control of my heart? My heart? Don’t think about your neighbor, don’t think about your spouse, don’t think about the person sitting behind you, think about yourself. Who’s in control of this thing. There are really only two options: You or the Spirit of God.

You can say whatever you want, but the tone of your speech and the content of your speech will reveal it every time, and the stakes are pretty high.

Jesus has a whole lot to say about the tongue. Some of the most unsettling, uncomfortable things that Jesus teaches have to do with our speech. For Jesus, that’s saying a lot because Jesus says a lot of uncomfortable things about a lot of different topics.

In fact, a few years ago—some of you might have been around here—we did a message series where we went through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and we just studied all of the cringeworthy things that Jesus taught. We called the series Cringe. The graphic was fingernails on a chalkboard. It was not one of our more popular series. The least amount of downloads I think ever. This one might come in right behind that one, I don’t know.

But it’s just unsettling. Jesus would say things like: Hey, man, if your right eye caused you to sin, just gouge it out and get rid of it.

Okay. Let me get right on that.

If you’ve lusted after somebody in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery with them.

Wow, man, that sounds so severe.

And Jesus would say some really difficult things about our tongues. We looked at it last week from Matthew chapter 12. I want to look at Luke 6. This is something very similar to what Jesus said last week in Matthew chapter 12.

So what’s happening is that Jesus is re-preaching a sermon to a different crowd in a different place, a different scenario, different set of circumstances, but he thinks this is important enough to preach again, and he says something similar, but he adds to it.

Listen to what he says in Luke 6. He says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” That makes sense. “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.”

Now he’s going to transition to us. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart,” (stored up means stuff that you’ve been putting in there in the past) “and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.” Now let’s read it out loud together, all of our campuses. “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

He just goes: Hey, man, what comes out of your mouth is just what’s been in your heart.

So we act surprised when maybe something comes out of our mouth, but maybe we’ve been putting stuff in our heads and our hearts, our eyes and our ears for a long time, and then we become sort of shocked to see the fruit that comes to bear. And maybe we shouldn’t be.

I remember when I was in college. I took a preaching course one semester, and one of the things we had to do was we had to write sermons and then we had to stand up in front of the class and we had to preach them. As soon as we were done, the class would critique us. It was loads of fun. I don’t miss those days at all.

I remember one day there was a guy that got up to preach the sermon, and he’s going after it. He’s really eccentric and he’s real passionate, and he’s just wailing away. He gets about halfway through his sermon and he slips and he says a foul word.

Which pretty much discredits the whole sermon.

It was like you could hear a record scratch, like he stopped, like, “Oh my goodness. I can’t believe I just said that.” It was real quiet in the room, and then he kind of tried to get it back on track and kind of finished out the sermon.

So we get done and we start critiquing him. We’re kind of giving him some things to work on, some things that he did well, and I’m wondering like, “Okay, is anybody going to call him out for saying that?”

Finally, one guy raised up his hand. He goes, “Hey, bro, you probably shouldn’t cuss in your sermon.”

I’ll never forget the professor was sitting in the back of the room. His head was down. He was making some notes. He never lifted his head, but he said these words loud enough to reverberate through the room. I’ll never forget it. He said, “If you get it out of your heart, it’ll stay out of your mouth.”

I don’t remember the sermon that that young man preached that day. Ironically, I do remember the word. I don’t remember the sermon, but I’ve never forgotten what that professor said. Because it just reverberated into my heart.

If you get it out of your heart, it’ll stay out of your mouth. What’s that mean? Well, it means that every day we’re filling our heads and our hearts, our eyes and our ears with some kind of content, both good and bad, and those things are eventually going to make their way out into our lives like fruit. They’re going to make their way out into our speech.

So what’s that mean? Well, I know this isn’t real popular to say, but this would include our entertainment choices, the music we listen to, the images we gaze upon, the content we absorb, the company that we keep. All of that stuff gets into our hearts and it sort of marinates around.

I know all the excuses that we try to use to kind of say, “Well, that doesn’t matter as much.” I’ve used some of these excuses. “Hey, hey, hey, we don’t want to be legalistic here. We have freedom in Christ. I’m not hurting anybody. It’s just entertainment. All right, man, I got my career over here and I got my relationships over here, and I got my spiritual life over here, and this is my entertainment piece over here, and it doesn’t get involved in all this other stuff. I can put whatever I want in my heart and, man, it’s not going to come out in my life.”

And then it does.

Have you ever noticed that after you see a movie you have a tendency to walk around sort of mimicking the characters in that movie for awhile?

I took my family to go see Black Panther Friday night. Great movie if you haven’t seen it. For the next hour as we were going home, I was speaking in the Wakanda accent. It’s ridiculous. My wife is like, “What are you doing?” I was like, “Could I have some water?” And that’s not even it. That’s like a bad Wakanda accent.

But for the whole hour I’m like trying to mimic this. Why do we do this? Why is it every Sylvester Stallone movie we walk around talking like him for the next half hour? Because we mimic what we’re exposed to. And that would include words and content and tone and speech.

That’s why Paul says in Philippians 4:8, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Why? So that you can be a goody, goody two-shoes? No. Because what goes in eventually comes out, for better or for worse. Then, in an unguarded moment, it usually surfaces through a crass or cutting or crushing word that slips from our tongues and we go, “Man, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” And maybe Jesus is standing in the back going: Well, I do. Man, it’s been in your heart for awhile.

This is why Proverbs 4:23 would say this. “Above all else,” above all else. In other words, priority #1, “guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” So this would be like defensive in nature, like he’s saying: Hey, man, don’t just let anything and everything come into your heart. Be selective about that. There is a lot of content, a lot of things that can flow into your heart on a regular basis. He goes: Man, guard that. Don’t let everything that’s willing to come in in. Guard your heart.

Now we understand, I think, the metaphor of the heart inherently. In the Hebrew culture, they would’ve understood it even more so. They were not talking about this thing that beats in your chest; they were talking about this metaphor for the center and the core of your life. It’s the spiritual and emotional hub of your life, and then the spokes go out into every other area of your life, and he goes: Man, you guard that hub.

Just like you would never want to contaminate a water source that would impact a city, don’t contaminate your heart because it’ll impact all of your relationships. Guard it.

But you don’t just guard it. You’re not just defensive in nature. You also need to be proactive. That’s why Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

This is the idea, not just that you’re reading the Bible or that you’re studying the Bible to try to determine if it’s true or not, but you’re actually marinating on it to the point that the Bible’s reading you. You’re actually receiving it into your heart. This is Scripture memorization and internalization. This is the idea that you want to internalize and devour and memorize so much Scripture.

“Why in the world should I do that?” Well, because the next time you’re angry and you want to blow up, hopefully maybe the words of God will actually come out because that’s what’s been in here.

When you’re stressed and just so frustrated with your spouse and you just want to say something so cutting, instead you’ve been hiding God’s Word in your heart that what comes out is actually useful for building up.

Whenever you’re worried and anxious, instead of just like talking out loud and just worrying yourself into a lather, you’re actually allowing the words of God, they’ve been marinating in there so much, they can’t help but come out.

That’s what he says: Man, be proactive about filling your heart with the very words of God. So the question that I want you to consider is this: What am I putting into my heart? Maybe a little bit better way of saying this is what am I allowing into my heart?

There is no passiveness in this. You have to be intentional about this. What are you allowing into your heart?

At the conclusion of the series here in a couple weeks, if you come back… If you come to the conclusion of the series and you’re like, “All right, Aaron, all right. I get it. I get it, man. I need to watch my mouth. Point taken. I need to reign in my tongue.” If that’s the application that you take with you from this series, then you don’t get it. You’ve missed it. I’ve not done my job effectively because this actually really isn’t even about the tongue primarily. The tongue just reveals the problem. The tongue is the symptom of the problem. The real issue, this is really a heart series. What is God doing in here?

Man, guard this thing. And be proactive about what you put in here.

That’s why I threw out this challenge last week—I hope you’re taking me up on it—that as a church at all of our campuses we would memorize Psalm 143:3. Let’s say it out loud together, all of our campuses. “Take control of what I say, O Lord, and guard my lips.” And God take control of what I say. I give it to you. And guard my lips.

I know that maybe for some of you it’s not just the things that have been really hurtful that have stayed with you, but it’s some of the things that you wish others would say to you but they never really said. See, for many of us, it’s not just what we’re putting into our hearts, it’s what other people have put into our hearts or what they’ve actually refrained from putting into our hearts. We just desperately needed them to say these things to us but they never did. But those are seeds too.

So what happened is is your parents, your mom and your dad, your siblings, people of influence in your life, they planted seeds through words, and now what’s happening is that the fruit, good or bad, is coming to bear in your life and now you are planting seeds into the lives of others.

This is one of the reasons why if you have kids, when you’re lecturing or disciplining them, all of a sudden in the middle of it—you ever have one of these moments?—you go, “Oh my goodness, I sound like my mother.” “I sound like my father,” because they planted seeds in you. Now you’re planting seeds in them.

Maybe you just desperately needed to hear these words from your dad, “I am so proud of you,” and they never came. You’re an adult. They still have never come, and you just want him to say it. So every time you call home and maybe he answers and there’s a little bit of small talk. You talk about the sports and weather and then, all of a sudden, what does he say after a few awkward moments? “Well, let me go get your mother,” and you’re like, “And… could you just say it, dad?”

Maybe you’ve longed to hear your mom say, “I love you no matter what. You’re so beautiful,” and she just can’t say it. I wonder if it’s because her mom couldn’t say it to her.

Maybe you’ve longed to hear the words, “Man, you matter. I see something good in you.” You needed to hear that from a coach or a friend or a teacher, someone of influence, and maybe those words, they never came.

Here’s the thing. Now you’re in a position of influence and somebody else needs to hear that from you, so will you be willing to unleash your tongue to say some things that you know others need to hear, and maybe you don’t even feel like saying it, but you know you need to say it? And you’re underestimating the power that your words might have in their life.

See, this speech isn’t just about reigning it in, but it’s about knowing when to unleash it. Sometimes when we feel that prompting, we need to be ready and willing to do that.

I remember several years ago—this was back in the 90s—there was a prominent Christian author and speaker by the name of Tony Campolo. Some of you might recognize that name, some of you may not, but he was speaking at a conference in Chicago for two or three days. He lived on the West Coast so he was on West Coast time. He was in Chicago, woke up at 2:30 in the morning, couldn’t go back to sleep, and so he decided to go down on the street level. He had seen a diner down there that was open 24 hours.

He went down, sat in a booth, and he got some decaf coffee. He was doing some reading, when about 3:00 in the morning there was a group of ladies that walked in. It was very clear that they were prostitutes. They came in. They sat down at the booth right behind him, and he was overhearing their conversation. He didn’t necessarily mean to be eavesdropping, but they were close enough he couldn’t help but hear.

They were talking about the men that they had been with that night. They were talking about their lives, and several moments later, one of them, her name was Agnes, she said very enthusiastically to the other ladies around the booth, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”

The words that came out of these ladies’ mouths next really broke Tony’s heart. They responded with, “So what? Why are you telling us, Agnes? We all have birthdays. Why are you so special? What, do you want us to bake you a cake or something?”

Agnes just like wilted like a flower. She said, “Oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”

About 20 minutes or 30 minutes later or so, they finished up; they left. Tony was just sitting there thinking about what he just heard. He walked over to the owner of the diner, introduced himself. He said, “Hey, my name’s Tony. I’m in town for a few days.” He said, “I’ve got a question for you. Do those ladies come into the diner every night?” and he said, “Yeah, usually. Every night about 3 a.m. They usually work the street corner down the block and they come in here.”

Tony said, “Do you think that maybe tomorrow night we could throw Agnes a surprise birthday party?” and the owner of the diner was a little confused. His wife came out of the back at that moment. She had a dishrag. She’d been washing some dishes, and she said, “I think that’s a fantastic idea.” She was like, “I don’t think Agnes has had anything done like that for her in a long, long time.” So they arranged it.

The next day, between sessions at the conference, Tony went out. He got birthday party hats and streamers and went to Kinko’s and got one of those big birthday banners that says Happy Birthday, Agnes on it, and the owner of the diner and his wife, they baked this big birthday cake.

The next night, they were going out. They were trying to get as many people into the diner as they could, complete strangers, people off the streets who maybe know who Agnes was, and they all got in there. They got the party hats on, the streamers, the big banner.

At 3 a.m., Agnes and her friends walked in, and everybody went, “Surprise! Happy birthday, Agnes!” and she stood there and tears welled up in her eyes. Her lips began to tremble, and she started to walk over to the cake, kind of tentatively, like she might wake up from a dream she doesn’t want to wake up from.

They all sang Happy Birthday to Agnes, and she was just standing there, tears streaming down her face. At some point, somebody said, “Agnes, blow out the candles,” and she looked up and she said, “Do I have to?” She said, “I have a little boy who is asleep in my apartment around the corner. I would love for him to see this. Could I take it up to him and wake him up so he can see it too?” They said, “Well, I guess so. It’s your cake. You can do what you want with it.” So she took it and she left.

Tony said that’s when things got real awkward because here he is, a married man, all alone, in a strange city in the middle of the night, in a diner full of prostitutes with birthday hats on. He’s just like, “Okay, how do we end this party?” So he said the first thing that came to his mind. He said, “Hey, thank you for coming to the party. My name’s Tony. I’m a preacher. Could I pray for us?”

They were all like, “Okay,” so they bowed their heads and closed their eyes, and Tony prayed for the whole room. He prayed for Agnes and he prayed for her little boy, and he, through his prayer, declared the Gospel message that is true for everyone in there.

He got done, and as soon as he said amen, the owner of the diner is just staring a hole right through him. He looked miffed. He walked over to Tony and he said, “Man, you didn’t tell me you were a preacher.” He said, “What kind of church do you belong to anyway?”

Tony looked at him and he said, “I belong to the kind of church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:00 in the morning.”

I love his answer. That’s not primarily why I love the story though. I love the story because, I’ve thought about it, if I would’ve been in his position, sitting in that diner on that first night, and I would’ve overhead those ladies’ conversation, my heart would’ve been broken for Agnes for sure. But I think that I would’ve been tempted to just maybe right in that moment pray a little silent prayer for her, you know, “God, I don’t know anything about her, but I just pray that you would love on her and help her,” and then go about my day.

What I love about Tony is he decided to lean in and be intentional and not just do some things, but to say some things that a lost little girl named Agnes needed to hear, that she was loved by God, that she matters to God, that she can have hope through Christ.

Happy birthday, Agnes. Powerful words.

I’m wondering if there would be anybody here who would be willing to simply do this, which is a really, really vulnerable position and thing to do. What I mean is that you would literally take your heart that has been tattooed with all kinds of junk that is simply not true but it’s been said to you and over you and about you to the point that you’ve actually taken that thing and guarding your heart means a different thing. Guarding your heart means, “I’m not going to let anybody hurt me ever again.” Guarding your heart means, “I’m actually going to shroud this thing in so much bitterness that I’m not going to ever say or expose myself or be vulnerable ever, ever again.”

Man, I’m so sorry. But the invitation that God is giving you is that you trust him with this, that you would take it and you would just simply extend it to him and say, “Jesus, here’s my heart. It is wounded and broken and hurting and tattooed with all kinds of junk. Would you take it and make this thing new?” He will. He will.

What’ll happen is that it’ll begin to change this thing to the point that you won’t even have to worry about reigning in your tongue because the stuff that’ll come out of it is life and light. I want to invite you into that kind of relationship.

Let’s do it together.

Father, we come to you right now, and I thank you for saying hard things that I don’t often want to hear but need to hear.

I pray that your Spirit would be in this room and in the room of all of our campuses right now, that we would resist the urge to let our thoughts wander towards lunch or what we’re going to do later today. Those things matter, but they’ll still be there in a few moments. We need to be fully present in this moment right now.

And your Spirit is here. We welcome you here. We ask that you would do a healing work here in the lives of individuals and people, and we’re going to take communion together in a moment, and God, we just want to reflect upon you. We just want to ask you to give us the courage and the strength to take the application of this message into our lives, but we also want to ask you to minister to our hearts so that we can find ourselves in a place of transformation and healing.

So as we, in a moment, lift up our words and sing, I pray that we’re not just going through the motions but that we would actually commune with you, that we would actually have an experience with you where you would echo and whisper words of healing and transformation over us that would replace the words that have wounded us so deeply.

We thank you and love you, that you’re a God who changes things. We want to give you the opportunity to do that. Enter in, God; please meet us where we are. We ask this right now in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Aaron Brockett • Slip of the Tongue • Matthew 6:21 and Matthew 12:34b

All right, how’re we doing this weekend? Good, good. Good to see you. I want to welcome all of our guests, those of you who might be visiting at any one of our campuses. We are absolutely thrilled to have you. I know what it feels like to be a new person in a new place, and so we hope that you feel right at home and get a chance to meet a few new people.

I want to say hello to our North campus, Downtown, West, anybody watching online, as well as those of you here at our Northwest campus. In fact, at each of our campuses, let’s put our hands together, make it a warm space.

It’s kind of a cool weekend because this weekend marks one year ago today that our North and Downtown campuses moved into their permanent facilities, which is really something cool to celebrate. The story of how God kind of orchestrated both of those facilities is just incredible.

I want you to know that West campus—we love you guys—they are setting up and tearing down every single weekend at a middle school, so God bless you. We know how maybe challenging that can be, but also I just want to encourage you. You are making more of a difference than you may realize. Thank you, thank you, thank you to every single one of our volunteers at all of our campuses.

But we are praying that God will provide some kind of a permanent facility for our West campus at some point in the near future. We love you guys so, so much.

Well, we last week started this series of messages on the power of our words. When I was growing up, we had some family friends who had a daughter that was a year younger than me and we lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, the same church, the whole deal, knew each other really, really well, so I kind of saw her like a really good friend. I almost kind of saw her like a little sister even, which was why it got really, really awkward and uncomfortable my senior year in high school when her parents began to kind of drop hints that they would sort of like to see us date. That’s just awkward, right? It’s not that I didn’t like her, it’s just I didn’t like her like her. I just kind of saw her as like a sister and a good, good friend.

We were out somewhere with them one night, and her mom was talking and the subject of dating came up. She said, “Well, Aaron, are you dating anybody?” and I said, “No.” She said, “Well, Jenny’s available.”

Just like puts you right on the spot, right?

I didn’t have time to think it through, and I ended up laughing out loud and then I think I said something like, “Not Jenny,” something along those lines. Thinking back on it, my outburst, my response was a bit too passionate and enthusiastic and it hurt her mom’s feelings. She was offended. She was hurt. She was even angry.

I can’t say that I blame her. I’m a father of three daughters now and I wouldn’t want anybody reacting that way about any of them, although I can tell you right now I ain’t gonna be setting them up on any dates anytime soon, until there like 35-ish or so.

But I did not intend for my words to have that kind of impact. Any of you ever been there? You ever have a conversation where you’re just like, “Oh, I can’t get those words back in,” and you just want to like open up your mouth and insert your foot. I did not mean for my words to affect you the way that they did, but oftentimes it’s too late.

You see, when it comes to our words, I’ve got some bad news and I’ve got some good news. Let me start with the bad news first. I always like to get the bad news first.

The bad news is that each and every one of us, we have the potential to say some things that are more hurtful than we intended. You probably already know that to be true.

The good news is though that we also have the potential to say things that are more helpful than we ever imagined, and one of the things that I want us to understand is that our words have the potential to literally change somebody’s life, now certainly for the worst, but also for the better.

Every single day, it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, doesn’t matter your gender, doesn’t matter what you do for a living, doesn’t matter how important you think you are or not important you think you are, every single person has the potential to wake up in the morning and go, “You know what? I could literally change somebody’s life today with the words that I speak to them.”

You don’t have to use a lot of words—in fact, sometimes the fewer the better—and your words don’t have to be eloquent. They just need to be thoughtful and sincere and well placed. God wants to use our tongues to speak life into others.

Last week, if you were here, I said that on average we speak about 16,000 words per day, which equals up to about a 60-page book that could be written with our words every single day. Now that’s a lot of words, which, if you think about it, that’s a lot of opportunities to slip up and say the wrong thing.

But it’s also an opportunity to learn from it. I mean, if you’re going to speak that many words over the course of your lifetime, that’s an opportunity to learn from it, to grow from it, and to eventually get it right.

I’m hoping that that’s what this series does, that it shines a spotlight onto this area of our lives that we all know is there. We all know that it can potentially be a real problem but we don’t often really want to think about or talk about.

And you know, there may be plenty of times when we say things that just slip up. We certainly don’t mean it, and we need to cut ourselves some slack because we’re all humans.

But there are other times, would you not agree, that when you say something maybe hurtful, oh you meant every word. Right? It’s like, “Man, I know full well what these words are going to do to this person that I’m saying them to, but I’m going to say them anyway.”

Have you noticed that we oftentimes reserve our harshest, most mean-spirited words for the people who we say we love the most? I was thinking about that this last week. I was like, “Man, why do we do that?” I don’t know. There are maybe multiple reasons.

I think maybe one is that we are so comfortable with them that we take their love and commitment to us for granted and so we sort of think, “Well, you know, I can just give you a tongue lashing and you’ll still be there tomorrow.” Until maybe one day when they’re not.

Maybe another reason is we know them so well we know how to push their buttons. We know exactly the right thing to say to really cut deeply and get under that person’s skin.

Have you ever said something that was so mean and so cruel that it even surprised you when it came out of your mouth? And almost as soon as you said it you were like, “Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t know where that came from. Let me take that back.”

But one of the hardest lessons to learn when it comes to our words is that we just can’t get them back once they are spoken. Now we can be forgiven of it. We can have another conversation about it, try to patch things over, but we just can’t get them back in. I mean, once they’re out there, they’re out there.

Have you ever seen that reality TV show that came out a few years ago called Tattoo Nightmares? It’s this reality show where people in a sort of impulsive, kind of careless moment find themselves in a tattoo parlor and they make a decision based on impulse, which is what you never want to do if you’re in a tattoo parlor, alright? Because that’s permanent.

So they get these tattoos that they are embarrassed about, they don’t want anymore, and so they are trying to do something about it. A few of my favorites are this one right here, this tattoo, “No regerts.” I got no regerts for my tattoo. Proud of this one.

How about this one, “Plan ahea” (tattooed letters on eight fingers). Just count the letters and your fingers. There are 10 of them.

This is one of my favorites. Maybe some of you remember this a few years ago. This is for all my UK fans. This tattoo right here, before they were 40-0, they got the tattoo that said 40-0 and then they weren’t 40-0. They lost. Which I think is hilarious, okay?

But the show is about these people who, in just an impulsive moment, a thoughtless moment, a careless moment, they ended up getting this tattoo that now they wish that they could get rid of.

Now, you can change it into something else. You can maybe go through the tattoo removal process, which I hear is painful and expensive and really doesn’t fully get rid of all of it. If you look closely, it’s faded maybe some but it’s still there.

I want us to think about that as a metaphor for the words that we speak. I know this is kind of a crazy idea, but just go with me if you would. What if every word that slipped off our tongue got tattooed on that other person’s skin? And would that maybe just cause us to just pause a little bit before we said it? Would it cause us to be a little more thoughtful, a little more careful about the words that we would speak to others? I would hope so.

The thing is is that thankfully those words aren’t tattooed on that other person externally, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. It doesn’t mean that those words still didn’t get tattooed deep within that person’s heart and soul on the inside.

Some of us, if not all of us, have had words that were spoken to us by someone else in a thoughtless moment, an impulsive moment, a careless moment that were hurtful, hateful, mean spirited, and degrading. Now our self-image is oftentimes connected to and is a reflection of those words that were spoken to us and about us and over us. Maybe the other person totally forgot that they said it, but we haven’t. It’s there.

This is why the Bible says this in Proverbs 12:18. It says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” So the bad news and the good news. The bad news is that our reckless words can pierce others like swords. The good news is that our words can bring healing.

The question is what’s coming out of my mouth the majority of the time because once we let those words slip, it doesn’t matter if they’re out of anger or stress or frustration or because we’re tired, which is usually what ends up happening. We can say we’re sorry. We might even mean that we’re sorry. We can ask for a do-over, but like a bad tattoo, those words just won’t go away.

If that sounds extreme and sort of final, it is kind of extreme. I heard from a number of you this past week how convicting this series has already been, which I just want to address that. I want you to know, I hope that you know, my heart. I think that good teaching will be convicting because we all have things that we need to see in our lives, and me first; I’m at the front of the line.

But this series is not designed to just make you feel bad about yourself or the words that you speak. I mean, if that’s all that you felt coming through this, then I haven’t done my job effectively.

No, conviction should lead to hope. Conviction should lead to healing. Conviction should lead to transformation. Conviction should lead to, “Hey, man, I’m going to turn a corner in my life. God, what will you need to do in my life so that some things can change?”

And I just want you to know that I’m not up here talking at you. I’m not up here like, “Hey, man, I got this thing figured out so do as I do.” I’m right there with you, and if you think it’s uncomfortable listening to this, try preparing for it and then preaching it, knowing that you got some junk in here that “I got to deal with.” Because I’ve said some things in my past that I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of.

It kind of reminds me of what Will Rogers said one time. He said live your life in such a way that you would never be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip. Unfortunately, I just haven’t. There are some things that I know that I’ve said.

It’s easy for me to maybe go, “Well, you know I was a teenager then. That was a long time ago.” Yeah, but the words are still there. Or, “Man, that was a different season of my life,” or “I didn’t really fully mean it,” or “You know, that person, they’re just too sensitive. They need to get over it.”

Here’s the thing that kind of scares me. I know that there are most likely things that I’ve said that have stayed with a person for a really, really long time that have maybe hurt them and I don’t even remember it. But I know that they do.

James was the half-brother of Jesus. He has a lot to say about the tongue. In fact, the three places in the Bible that have the most to say about it are the Proverbs, which is why we’re going to be there a lot; Jesus’ teaching; and then Jesus’ half-brother James.

We’re actually going to look at what James has to say about the tongue next week, and he uses a whole bunch of different metaphors for the tongue to help us understand it.

James says this. He goes: Hey, man, “No one can tame the tongue.” Like nobody. So if you ever have somebody who goes, “Hey may, I got this thing under control,” he goes: No you haven’t.

Nobody can tame the tongue.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that is extremely frustrating to me because something that is so small and so seemingly insignificant, I don’t like it that it can have that much impact upon the trajectory of my life and the condition of my relationships. I just don’t like it.

When you think about your tongue, it weighs about 70 grams.

[slide-pic] tongue. This is an accurate scientific depiction.

It weighs about 70 grams. It’s about 70% water. It’s about 20% muscle. It’s about 10% fat. It’s a weird collection of muscles in this sense. Have you ever thought about this? It never gets tired or sore. Have you ever thought about that? I mean, how many of you at the end of a long day are like, “My tongue is so sore.” You can be wagging that thing all day and it can still go.

I will, over the course of this weekend, be talking just up here alone about an hour and a half. I’ll teach for about 35-45 minutes or so. If I were to go out and run for that long, I would stretch my hamstrings, my quads, my calves. I was not backstage a minute ago stretching my tongue. If I were that would have been weird. When I get done today I’m not going to go home and ice it down. I’ve pulled a hammy, but I’ve never pulled the tongue.

Yet, I know that I’ve got to pay more attention to that muscle than any other muscle in my body because even though it’s small, it’s powerful.

We looked at this verse last week from Proverbs 18:21. It says, “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.”

We learned together from the book of Genesis that words are God’s thing, like this is what God does. God’s even described as the Word. He gave us the Word. When he speaks, things come into being. When God speaks, it brings about life and light.

Satan uses words too. Satan uses words to bring about death and darkness. He uses words to confuse and to tear down and to break down. He’s deceptive with words.

So the question that we asked last week we want to continue to consider all series long. It’s if I am a follower of Jesus, then whose words do my words sound most like? And that’s really the issue.

So James says nobody can tame the tongue. And we might say, “Okay, well James, why should we tame the tongue? What’s our motivation to want to tame the tongue? Is it to just be nicer people? Is it to win friends and influence people?”

Well, that’s maybe not such a bad thing, but no, that’s not the primary reason.

Is it to be politically correct? Well, not such a bad thing, but no, no, no. That’s not the primary reason.

Is it to avoid getting fired at work or divorced from our spouse? Well, that obviously would be a good thing to consider, but that’s not the primary reason.

The primary reason James would say that we need to tame our tongue, that we need to at least try to tame our tongue, is that if we are a follower of Jesus, what that means is we’ve invited him to take up residence in our hearts. Which means that it should be more of him in here gradually as we grow and less and less of me and my desires and my impulses and that his speech would begin to become my speech.

For some of us, maybe we intellectually have given our heads to Jesus but we’ve never given him our hearts. Some of us it’s the opposite. Some of us have given him our hearts, but we’ve never given him our heads.

If we’ve given him our intellectual assent, but we’ve never really traveled down here to give him our hearts, what that means, what we did, maybe many of you grew up in church but you really didn’t grow up in Christ. There is a difference. See, you can attend church but never really know Jesus, never really know the Gospel. You just go through the motions. What you did and the reason why it didn’t work was because it was a religious transaction. And that’s not what God’s offering. God’s offering an invitation to transformation.

He’s offering something much, much better than a transaction, and some of us have settled for that. A transaction says, “God, okay, I’ll say that I believe in you, I believe that Jesus is your son, and so I’ll go to church and I’ll give and I’ll serve and I’ll do all the things a nice, good, Christian person should do. Now you need to uphold your end of the bargain by keeping me healthy, wealthy, satisfied with life, cancer-free, and some good friends.”

Then when God doesn’t do that we say, “You didn’t hold up your end of the deal, so this must not have worked or you don’t exist.”

God’s never put that offer on the table. He’s offered you something so much better.

So when James says that we need to tame our tongues, he’s not just talking about: Hey man, be careful about what you say. He’s challenging all of us to go deeper than that to examine our hearts, and that’s just something that many of us just don’t want to do, me included, because we’re afraid of what we’ll find in there. Just to get down in there into the sludge and just kind of examine some stuff and just kind of see what’s going on inside of our hearts.

How do you know if Jesus has taken up residence in your heart? That’s the question. And it’s oftentimes phrased as “how do I know I’m saved?” or “did my salvation really take?” or however you want to phrase that. Jesus would say in addition to putting your trust in the finished work of Jesus on a cross, there are two very tangible, practical ways that you can tell who is in possession of your heart.

The first one has nothing to do with this sermon but Jesus addresses it a lot. It’s your checkbooks. He would say in Matthew 6:21, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Many of us, when we went down into the tank to get baptized, we took our checkbooks, our credit cards, our wallets, our purses, our 401K, put them into a little plastic Ziploc bag and sealed it up and said, “I’m going to get wet, but this isn’t because, God, I’ll give you my heart, but I ain’t giving you that.”

The next one Jesus would say is our tongues. And he would say in Matthew 12:34, “For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.”

I want us to be really, really clear. Our salvation does not hinge upon the words that we say, thankfully, because if it did, then we’d all be in trouble; however, we should not use that as an excuse either. Grace isn’t like just a total get-out-of-jail-free card in the sense that I can just live my life however I want with no consequences because God’s forgiven me. “So God’s forgiven me—I’m under his grace—so I’m going to let you have it. I’m just going to give you an earful.”

We could say it this way, that our salvation, while it is certainly not dependent, Jesus would say it is revealed, not dependent but revealed by the content and the tone of our speech. Like healthy fruit that comes from a healthy tree, our words are the fruit of our heart. It tells us more than anything else what’s really going on in there.

In fact, James would even say something so, so convicting, I almost don’t even want to read this, but it’s true. In chapter 1:26, he says, “If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless.”

Now James isn’t just going after the tongue. This is actually grouped together with some other things that James would say is worthless. Like he would say you can say you believe, he would say if you don’t look after orphans and widows in their distress, your religion is worthless. He would say the same thing.

He also says the same thing about our tongues. He’s like: Man, you can claim to know God, you can claim to love God, but man if you are reckless with your speech, then you’re just going through the motions.

And so how’s your speech? On the way here today, what was the conversation going on in the car?

Somebody cuts you off in traffic and you curse them out, but you let yourself get away with it because you’re the only one in the car.

Or have you ever like been in a conversation and you start gossiping about somebody but you never intended to gossip. It sort of drifted into that. Then you realize about halfway through that you’re probably gossiping and so you try to excuse it by saying, “Hey, I’m not telling you what I wouldn’t say to their face if they were here.” Anybody else done that? Yeah, me neither. Somebody probably has. But the thing is they’re not there.

Or maybe you say something cruel and undeserved out of stress to your spouse or to your kids. When you subtly put down a friend to try to make yourself feel better, when you fire off a careless comment or harsh criticism that is undeserved behind a keyboard void of relationship, listen, those things communicate something about the condition of our hearts.

James says: Listen, man, this is for your good. You’re fooling yourself. All those religious motions, they don’t mean anything. So the question is who is in control of my heart? My heart? Don’t think about your neighbor, don’t think about your spouse, don’t think about the person sitting behind you, think about yourself. Who’s in control of this thing. There are really only two options: You or the Spirit of God.

You can say whatever you want, but the tone of your speech and the content of your speech will reveal it every time, and the stakes are pretty high.

Jesus has a whole lot to say about the tongue. Some of the most unsettling, uncomfortable things that Jesus teaches have to do with our speech. For Jesus, that’s saying a lot because Jesus says a lot of uncomfortable things about a lot of different topics.

In fact, a few years ago—some of you might have been around here—we did a message series where we went through the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and we just studied all of the cringeworthy things that Jesus taught. We called the series Cringe. The graphic was fingernails on a chalkboard. It was not one of our more popular series. The least amount of downloads I think ever. This one might come in right behind that one, I don’t know.

But it’s just unsettling. Jesus would say things like: Hey, man, if your right eye caused you to sin, just gouge it out and get rid of it.

Okay. Let me get right on that.

If you’ve lusted after somebody in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery with them.

Wow, man, that sounds so severe.

And Jesus would say some really difficult things about our tongues. We looked at it last week from Matthew chapter 12. I want to look at Luke 6. This is something very similar to what Jesus said last week in Matthew chapter 12.

So what’s happening is that Jesus is re-preaching a sermon to a different crowd in a different place, a different scenario, different set of circumstances, but he thinks this is important enough to preach again, and he says something similar, but he adds to it.

Listen to what he says in Luke 6. He says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” That makes sense. “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.”

Now he’s going to transition to us. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart,” (stored up means stuff that you’ve been putting in there in the past) “and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.” Now let’s read it out loud together, all of our campuses. “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

He just goes: Hey, man, what comes out of your mouth is just what’s been in your heart.

So we act surprised when maybe something comes out of our mouth, but maybe we’ve been putting stuff in our heads and our hearts, our eyes and our ears for a long time, and then we become sort of shocked to see the fruit that comes to bear. And maybe we shouldn’t be.

I remember when I was in college. I took a preaching course one semester, and one of the things we had to do was we had to write sermons and then we had to stand up in front of the class and we had to preach them. As soon as we were done, the class would critique us. It was loads of fun. I don’t miss those days at all.

I remember one day there was a guy that got up to preach the sermon, and he’s going after it. He’s really eccentric and he’s real passionate, and he’s just wailing away. He gets about halfway through his sermon and he slips and he says a foul word.

Which pretty much discredits the whole sermon.

It was like you could hear a record scratch, like he stopped, like, “Oh my goodness. I can’t believe I just said that.” It was real quiet in the room, and then he kind of tried to get it back on track and kind of finished out the sermon.

So we get done and we start critiquing him. We’re kind of giving him some things to work on, some things that he did well, and I’m wondering like, “Okay, is anybody going to call him out for saying that?”

Finally, one guy raised up his hand. He goes, “Hey, bro, you probably shouldn’t cuss in your sermon.”

I’ll never forget the professor was sitting in the back of the room. His head was down. He was making some notes. He never lifted his head, but he said these words loud enough to reverberate through the room. I’ll never forget it. He said, “If you get it out of your heart, it’ll stay out of your mouth.”

I don’t remember the sermon that that young man preached that day. Ironically, I do remember the word. I don’t remember the sermon, but I’ve never forgotten what that professor said. Because it just reverberated into my heart.

If you get it out of your heart, it’ll stay out of your mouth. What’s that mean? Well, it means that every day we’re filling our heads and our hearts, our eyes and our ears with some kind of content, both good and bad, and those things are eventually going to make their way out into our lives like fruit. They’re going to make their way out into our speech.

So what’s that mean? Well, I know this isn’t real popular to say, but this would include our entertainment choices, the music we listen to, the images we gaze upon, the content we absorb, the company that we keep. All of that stuff gets into our hearts and it sort of marinates around.

I know all the excuses that we try to use to kind of say, “Well, that doesn’t matter as much.” I’ve used some of these excuses. “Hey, hey, hey, we don’t want to be legalistic here. We have freedom in Christ. I’m not hurting anybody. It’s just entertainment. All right, man, I got my career over here and I got my relationships over here, and I got my spiritual life over here, and this is my entertainment piece over here, and it doesn’t get involved in all this other stuff. I can put whatever I want in my heart and, man, it’s not going to come out in my life.”

And then it does.

Have you ever noticed that after you see a movie you have a tendency to walk around sort of mimicking the characters in that movie for awhile?

I took my family to go see Black Panther Friday night. Great movie if you haven’t seen it. For the next hour as we were going home, I was speaking in the Wakanda accent. It’s ridiculous. My wife is like, “What are you doing?” I was like, “Could I have some water?” And that’s not even it. That’s like a bad Wakanda accent.

But for the whole hour I’m like trying to mimic this. Why do we do this? Why is it every Sylvester Stallone movie we walk around talking like him for the next half hour? Because we mimic what we’re exposed to. And that would include words and content and tone and speech.

That’s why Paul says in Philippians 4:8, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Why? So that you can be a goody, goody two-shoes? No. Because what goes in eventually comes out, for better or for worse. Then, in an unguarded moment, it usually surfaces through a crass or cutting or crushing word that slips from our tongues and we go, “Man, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” And maybe Jesus is standing in the back going: Well, I do. Man, it’s been in your heart for awhile.

This is why Proverbs 4:23 would say this. “Above all else,” above all else. In other words, priority #1, “guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” So this would be like defensive in nature, like he’s saying: Hey, man, don’t just let anything and everything come into your heart. Be selective about that. There is a lot of content, a lot of things that can flow into your heart on a regular basis. He goes: Man, guard that. Don’t let everything that’s willing to come in in. Guard your heart.

Now we understand, I think, the metaphor of the heart inherently. In the Hebrew culture, they would’ve understood it even more so. They were not talking about this thing that beats in your chest; they were talking about this metaphor for the center and the core of your life. It’s the spiritual and emotional hub of your life, and then the spokes go out into every other area of your life, and he goes: Man, you guard that hub.

Just like you would never want to contaminate a water source that would impact a city, don’t contaminate your heart because it’ll impact all of your relationships. Guard it.

But you don’t just guard it. You’re not just defensive in nature. You also need to be proactive. That’s why Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

This is the idea, not just that you’re reading the Bible or that you’re studying the Bible to try to determine if it’s true or not, but you’re actually marinating on it to the point that the Bible’s reading you. You’re actually receiving it into your heart. This is Scripture memorization and internalization. This is the idea that you want to internalize and devour and memorize so much Scripture.

“Why in the world should I do that?” Well, because the next time you’re angry and you want to blow up, hopefully maybe the words of God will actually come out because that’s what’s been in here.

When you’re stressed and just so frustrated with your spouse and you just want to say something so cutting, instead you’ve been hiding God’s Word in your heart that what comes out is actually useful for building up.

Whenever you’re worried and anxious, instead of just like talking out loud and just worrying yourself into a lather, you’re actually allowing the words of God, they’ve been marinating in there so much, they can’t help but come out.

That’s what he says: Man, be proactive about filling your heart with the very words of God. So the question that I want you to consider is this: What am I putting into my heart? Maybe a little bit better way of saying this is what am I allowing into my heart?

There is no passiveness in this. You have to be intentional about this. What are you allowing into your heart?

At the conclusion of the series here in a couple weeks, if you come back… If you come to the conclusion of the series and you’re like, “All right, Aaron, all right. I get it. I get it, man. I need to watch my mouth. Point taken. I need to reign in my tongue.” If that’s the application that you take with you from this series, then you don’t get it. You’ve missed it. I’ve not done my job effectively because this actually really isn’t even about the tongue primarily. The tongue just reveals the problem. The tongue is the symptom of the problem. The real issue, this is really a heart series. What is God doing in here?

Man, guard this thing. And be proactive about what you put in here.

That’s why I threw out this challenge last week—I hope you’re taking me up on it—that as a church at all of our campuses we would memorize Psalm 143:3. Let’s say it out loud together, all of our campuses. “Take control of what I say, O Lord, and guard my lips.” And God take control of what I say. I give it to you. And guard my lips.

I know that maybe for some of you it’s not just the things that have been really hurtful that have stayed with you, but it’s some of the things that you wish others would say to you but they never really said. See, for many of us, it’s not just what we’re putting into our hearts, it’s what other people have put into our hearts or what they’ve actually refrained from putting into our hearts. We just desperately needed them to say these things to us but they never did. But those are seeds too.

So what happened is is your parents, your mom and your dad, your siblings, people of influence in your life, they planted seeds through words, and now what’s happening is that the fruit, good or bad, is coming to bear in your life and now you are planting seeds into the lives of others.

This is one of the reasons why if you have kids, when you’re lecturing or disciplining them, all of a sudden in the middle of it—you ever have one of these moments?—you go, “Oh my goodness, I sound like my mother.” “I sound like my father,” because they planted seeds in you. Now you’re planting seeds in them.

Maybe you just desperately needed to hear these words from your dad, “I am so proud of you,” and they never came. You’re an adult. They still have never come, and you just want him to say it. So every time you call home and maybe he answers and there’s a little bit of small talk. You talk about the sports and weather and then, all of a sudden, what does he say after a few awkward moments? “Well, let me go get your mother,” and you’re like, “And… could you just say it, dad?”

Maybe you’ve longed to hear your mom say, “I love you no matter what. You’re so beautiful,” and she just can’t say it. I wonder if it’s because her mom couldn’t say it to her.

Maybe you’ve longed to hear the words, “Man, you matter. I see something good in you.” You needed to hear that from a coach or a friend or a teacher, someone of influence, and maybe those words, they never came.

Here’s the thing. Now you’re in a position of influence and somebody else needs to hear that from you, so will you be willing to unleash your tongue to say some things that you know others need to hear, and maybe you don’t even feel like saying it, but you know you need to say it? And you’re underestimating the power that your words might have in their life.

See, this speech isn’t just about reigning it in, but it’s about knowing when to unleash it. Sometimes when we feel that prompting, we need to be ready and willing to do that.

I remember several years ago—this was back in the 90s—there was a prominent Christian author and speaker by the name of Tony Campolo. Some of you might recognize that name, some of you may not, but he was speaking at a conference in Chicago for two or three days. He lived on the West Coast so he was on West Coast time. He was in Chicago, woke up at 2:30 in the morning, couldn’t go back to sleep, and so he decided to go down on the street level. He had seen a diner down there that was open 24 hours.

He went down, sat in a booth, and he got some decaf coffee. He was doing some reading, when about 3:00 in the morning there was a group of ladies that walked in. It was very clear that they were prostitutes. They came in. They sat down at the booth right behind him, and he was overhearing their conversation. He didn’t necessarily mean to be eavesdropping, but they were close enough he couldn’t help but hear.

They were talking about the men that they had been with that night. They were talking about their lives, and several moments later, one of them, her name was Agnes, she said very enthusiastically to the other ladies around the booth, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”

The words that came out of these ladies’ mouths next really broke Tony’s heart. They responded with, “So what? Why are you telling us, Agnes? We all have birthdays. Why are you so special? What, do you want us to bake you a cake or something?”

Agnes just like wilted like a flower. She said, “Oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”

About 20 minutes or 30 minutes later or so, they finished up; they left. Tony was just sitting there thinking about what he just heard. He walked over to the owner of the diner, introduced himself. He said, “Hey, my name’s Tony. I’m in town for a few days.” He said, “I’ve got a question for you. Do those ladies come into the diner every night?” and he said, “Yeah, usually. Every night about 3 a.m. They usually work the street corner down the block and they come in here.”

Tony said, “Do you think that maybe tomorrow night we could throw Agnes a surprise birthday party?” and the owner of the diner was a little confused. His wife came out of the back at that moment. She had a dishrag. She’d been washing some dishes, and she said, “I think that’s a fantastic idea.” She was like, “I don’t think Agnes has had anything done like that for her in a long, long time.” So they arranged it.

The next day, between sessions at the conference, Tony went out. He got birthday party hats and streamers and went to Kinko’s and got one of those big birthday banners that says Happy Birthday, Agnes on it, and the owner of the diner and his wife, they baked this big birthday cake.

The next night, they were going out. They were trying to get as many people into the diner as they could, complete strangers, people off the streets who maybe know who Agnes was, and they all got in there. They got the party hats on, the streamers, the big banner.

At 3 a.m., Agnes and her friends walked in, and everybody went, “Surprise! Happy birthday, Agnes!” and she stood there and tears welled up in her eyes. Her lips began to tremble, and she started to walk over to the cake, kind of tentatively, like she might wake up from a dream she doesn’t want to wake up from.

They all sang Happy Birthday to Agnes, and she was just standing there, tears streaming down her face. At some point, somebody said, “Agnes, blow out the candles,” and she looked up and she said, “Do I have to?” She said, “I have a little boy who is asleep in my apartment around the corner. I would love for him to see this. Could I take it up to him and wake him up so he can see it too?” They said, “Well, I guess so. It’s your cake. You can do what you want with it.” So she took it and she left.

Tony said that’s when things got real awkward because here he is, a married man, all alone, in a strange city in the middle of the night, in a diner full of prostitutes with birthday hats on. He’s just like, “Okay, how do we end this party?” So he said the first thing that came to his mind. He said, “Hey, thank you for coming to the party. My name’s Tony. I’m a preacher. Could I pray for us?”

They were all like, “Okay,” so they bowed their heads and closed their eyes, and Tony prayed for the whole room. He prayed for Agnes and he prayed for her little boy, and he, through his prayer, declared the Gospel message that is true for everyone in there.

He got done, and as soon as he said amen, the owner of the diner is just staring a hole right through him. He looked miffed. He walked over to Tony and he said, “Man, you didn’t tell me you were a preacher.” He said, “What kind of church do you belong to anyway?”

Tony looked at him and he said, “I belong to the kind of church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:00 in the morning.”

I love his answer. That’s not primarily why I love the story though. I love the story because, I’ve thought about it, if I would’ve been in his position, sitting in that diner on that first night, and I would’ve overhead those ladies’ conversation, my heart would’ve been broken for Agnes for sure. But I think that I would’ve been tempted to just maybe right in that moment pray a little silent prayer for her, you know, “God, I don’t know anything about her, but I just pray that you would love on her and help her,” and then go about my day.

What I love about Tony is he decided to lean in and be intentional and not just do some things, but to say some things that a lost little girl named Agnes needed to hear, that she was loved by God, that she matters to God, that she can have hope through Christ.

Happy birthday, Agnes. Powerful words.

I’m wondering if there would be anybody here who would be willing to simply do this, which is a really, really vulnerable position and thing to do. What I mean is that you would literally take your heart that has been tattooed with all kinds of junk that is simply not true but it’s been said to you and over you and about you to the point that you’ve actually taken that thing and guarding your heart means a different thing. Guarding your heart means, “I’m not going to let anybody hurt me ever again.” Guarding your heart means, “I’m actually going to shroud this thing in so much bitterness that I’m not going to ever say or expose myself or be vulnerable ever, ever again.”

Man, I’m so sorry. But the invitation that God is giving you is that you trust him with this, that you would take it and you would just simply extend it to him and say, “Jesus, here’s my heart. It is wounded and broken and hurting and tattooed with all kinds of junk. Would you take it and make this thing new?” He will. He will.

What’ll happen is that it’ll begin to change this thing to the point that you won’t even have to worry about reigning in your tongue because the stuff that’ll come out of it is life and light. I want to invite you into that kind of relationship.

Let’s do it together.

Father, we come to you right now, and I thank you for saying hard things that I don’t often want to hear but need to hear.

I pray that your Spirit would be in this room and in the room of all of our campuses right now, that we would resist the urge to let our thoughts wander towards lunch or what we’re going to do later today. Those things matter, but they’ll still be there in a few moments. We need to be fully present in this moment right now.

And your Spirit is here. We welcome you here. We ask that you would do a healing work here in the lives of individuals and people, and we’re going to take communion together in a moment, and God, we just want to reflect upon you. We just want to ask you to give us the courage and the strength to take the application of this message into our lives, but we also want to ask you to minister to our hearts so that we can find ourselves in a place of transformation and healing.

So as we, in a moment, lift up our words and sing, I pray that we’re not just going through the motions but that we would actually commune with you, that we would actually have an experience with you where you would echo and whisper words of healing and transformation over us that would replace the words that have wounded us so deeply.

We thank you and love you, that you’re a God who changes things. We want to give you the opportunity to do that. Enter in, God; please meet us where we are. We ask this right now in Jesus’ name. Amen.