This morning, I would like to speak on a topic which some who know me might say is my topic of choice to talk on from a soap box, in fact of all the things I write about it would have to be this topic that I write about the most. That topic is “Our speech,” and if I were to title this message it would be “Speak as though God were listening” - because he is.
I think of how Jesus would act and react to the world we live in if he were physically walking the earth among us today. My thoughts turned to Galations 3:28 where we read:
"speak as one who speaks the very words of God"
or put another way, speak as if God was standing next to you. Speaking the words of God does NOT include cursing, vile and vulgar language or divisive language.
In I Corinthians 9:22 the apostle Paul gives us the reasoning of why we should not let such words be manifested in our lives when he tells us:
“…I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
Paul wasn’t saying he argued politics or race, he wasn’t saying he didn’t have his own opinions or thoughts about such things. What he WAS saying is that he didn’t get drawn into discussions that could close the hearts and minds off to Jesus to those who thought differently than he.
Now I like to talk politics and social issues privately and with great caution with consideration of who I am talking to. And I used to post on Facebook my opinions and viewpoints on those topics until one day in Bible study I read this scripture with new eyes. This scripture taught me that I could not reach the lost if they have already closed off their heart and their ears, and their minds because of things I have put forward which they may be passionate about and not agree with. I do not want to be responsible for a soul being lost because of something I may have said or done. THAT is what I believe Paul was trying to get across. It is not worth losing a soul because you are passionate about things to believe in. There is an appropriate time and place to be passionate about things, especially Bible subjects.
Concern yourself with the love of man’s soul, not the color of their skin. Concern yourself with uplifting the poor, the handicapped, the weak, the elderly and those less fortunate than yourself for when you do you draw closer to God.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’”.
(Matthew 25:40)
I say these things not as someone superior for there was a time in my life when I was rebellious, immature and had left the church, I say these things as one who bears the shamefulness of being guilty of putting political rhetoric ahead of God. A Christian's words should aim to bless and build others up, reflecting the grace of God, rather than being destructive or worthless. This ought not to be.
Love people. Love. It’s not a 60’s flower power concept. It’s a concept that’s bequeathed to us from and by our creator and if we fail to put Love to use then we have failed God.
Our speech is not relegated to what comes out of our mouth, which we’ll address in a minute. The type of speech I want to address before that is our speech in writing.
Some may not agree but I hope you will consider my point and give it due diligence.
The part of speech I’m referring to is the ambivalence the world has with respect to taking God's name in vain. It is especially troubling in this day and time to hear those who profess to be Christians absent-mindedly insert "God" into their remarks - something God has expressly forbidden
"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain."
Exodus 20:7
When we insert "God" into a remark as just a flippant annotation to some abject comment we utter during the course of our day we are in fact using God's name in vain because we are not recognizing the omnipotence and holiness of God when we do so.
"But!" you say "God's name isn't God so it's okay to say 'Oh my god.'"
No. No it isn't okay. True the term "God" is a word that recognizes that God is a position or title and Isaiah 42:8 God himself tells us his name is Jehovah. Consider for a moment though that any reference to our Creator spoken loosely and with little consideration for what and who he is can only serve to trivialize him. And in our society now we have found a way to trivialize Jehovah God even further when in our digital universe, and sometimes vocally, we exclaim "OMG!" throughout our social comments. Think of it... we have reduced God down to a single exclamation, to a single word in our society, failing miserably to recognize the awesome power of a Creator who loves us. How sad.
Having grown up in a very conservative and religious family I have heard it said that even words such as "gosh," and "golly" are extrapolations of “God” and we should even remove those words from our language. Whether they are or not (and there are those who claim to trace the etymology of the words back to God) the point is still valid - ANY word we use in reference to God would be a practice in trivializing our heavenly Father and reducing him to an afterthought. I don't know about you, but I don't ever, ever want to minimize our Creator in ANY way, and I pray you wouldn't want too either.
I was sitting at a youth sporting event, when a lovely, Christian lady beside me shouted, “Oh, my God!” as her child made a mistake on the field. I cringed inside. And then I wondered, “does she know?” Does she know that the Bible tells us not to use God’s name in vain?
And honestly, this is not unusual. I hear Christians do this all the time. Many are wonderful people who obviously love the Lord. Is it because we just don’t hear this called sin anymore? Are we so hardened to the use of His name due to the company we keep and the entertainment that we fill our minds with, that we just didn’t notice when we started doing it, too?
Exodus 20 is where we find the ten commandments. We mentioned this scripture earlier, but lets listen to it again. The third commandment is
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”
We are not to use God’s name as a curse word. We are not to use His name lightly. If we study who God is, we understand a bit more why this is such a grave sin. God is holy, sovereign, unchangeable, omnipotent, omniscient, faithful, patient, and merciful. This is just a short list of the adjectives that could be used to describe Jehovah God, the One who made a way for us to be reconciled to Him through His son, Jesus the Christ. If He is so awesome and so wonderful (and He is!), then we can understand why it is so important for us not to use His name flippantly when we are angry or surprised.
I am not saying this to point a finger or to make you feel guilty. Quite honestly, I have personally believed for a long time, that I probably shouldn’t even say “Oh, my gosh!” It is obviously a sadly disguised reference of the word “God” in my opinion. Language is a hard thing to change for most people. When we grow angry or are surprised, we tend to forget our speech in the heat of the moment.
My desire is and always will be, is to make us think. We need to think about the words that come out of our mouths. If we are a baptized believer, a redeemed soul saved by grace, then all of life should be lived intentionally to please our heavenly Father.
“so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way…”
(Colossians 1:10)
May we recognize that taking Jehovah God’s name in vain in any form is offensive to the Holy God who saved us. And let’s start anew today using our tongues to glorify Jehovah’s name instead of curse it!
No more cussing
I mentioned before a time in my life when I had left the church. During that time away I took to the ways of the world in many ways, principally with foul language, even though I knew better. When I started going back to church and committed myself to the Christian lifestyle, my language was the first thing I had to change. I took to heart CoIossians 3:8 which commands us to, among other things,
“put away slander and obscene talk from your mouth.”
I no longer cuss. For me it was easy. Now when I am around others or even just sitting watching TV and hear someone cuss, I can't help but to think about how pathetic cussing sounds now that I no longer engage in that vice. And I think about those around me who are fast and loose with their tongues and then talk about how they go to church or trust in God or ask for prayers - all of which is fine and good except I also think about James 3:16 & James 1:26. The former verse says
"From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so."
In other words DON'T CUSS! The second verse is even more condemning saying
"If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless."
Think about that. If you claim to be religious but do not bridle your tongue (which means you do not stop cussing as well as speaking hateful things) then your religion is, well, worthless just as the scriptures say.
Isn't it time we not only put God back in schools and in our government and businesses but also back in our character? Couldn't that be part of what is wrong with our country today? We have relegated character to be wrongly an idea of fiction only found in old movies and TV. We need to change our character for a better world and we can start by bridling our tongue and stop cussing and spewing hate.
Oh !!!!
Back in 2016 I braved the cold, the wind and the rain to venture down to Charlotte to enjoy the two-day revelry of a two-day musical event called the Carolina Rebellion a rock music festival. Even though I had the foreknowledge of what to expect, as I had attended the festival before, I was still caught off guard by the language - principally the use of some of the more vile and filthy curse words, both from the performers as well as the audience.
Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some holier-than-though Christian as I myself have on occasion used similar curse words (before I came back to the church of course), generally as an expression of pain or anger and even now I police the vocabulary I use at such times when I am under duress, but the commonality which accompanied the words at the festival was extremely bothersome.
As I reflect upon that weekend, I realize how infantile it actually sounds these days. But Jesus describes that language in a different way:
"And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”
(Matthew 15:10-11)
As a youth and among those of my age it was rare I heard those vile words, we could go out as a family to a restaurant and have a nice meal or to a child’s ball game or the supermarket or basically anywhere in public and not hear such language as you hear today just about everywhere and any time. And when they were said it was generally by those who were trying to sound tough, by those I often associated with being bullies. Among adults the more vulgar words were mainly spoken by the enlisted military on the bases where we were stationed and among civilians by those on the lower rungs of society. As an adult myself I’m not naive enough to think that was the norm, rather the result of my parents trying to shield us from that part of life.
Now though we live in a world where any level of society and any form of entertainment, even our TV commercials and news programs are not exempt from such foul language. I have been shocked even by hearing vulgar words come from the mouths of Christians. I can understand if they were new Christians and a word slips out as they are trying to retool that part of their mind to stop cursing and not yet fully succeeded in doing so, but these were usually long-time members of the church.
We are a society and nation filled with people who on one hand fill up their Facebook pages with words of condolences and prayers for their friends in need, but on the other hand will spew of a slew of profanities in public and sometimes on Facebook and other social media. The hypocrisy of this is astounding to me. How can a person offer a prayer to God in one breath and the next be boisterous with vulgar language? It lends me to believe these people are either uneducated and don’t understand what they are doing, or they are simply hypocrites. I chose to believe the former for I truly believe most people are inherently good. The Bible tells us specifically in the book of James in the scriptures we previously read, that we should not have both foul language and good language come from our mouths:
“From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so”
(James 3:10)
But the writer also speaks specifically about those who cuss and at the same time profess to be religious:
“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless”
(James 1:26)
Make no mistake about it - cussing is a sin. One sin is as destructive as another
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”
(James 2:10)
So, using foul language is just as sinful as adultery or murder or stealing. We try to justify our sins by the consequences of them. Saying a foul word is not going to have the same consequence in this life as murdering your neighbor, but Jehovah God sees and hears all according to Proverbs 15:3 and will judge us accordingly. Both a murderer and a person using foul language are forgivable by God assuming certain conditions are met. And while someone may murder another, in this life, they must still also be punished according to earthly laws.
“Well,” you say, “no one can go to heaven then if that is the case.” This is where repentance and grace come into play for true Christians, and those are big subjects to tackle in one lesson so for now let it suffice to say that a person who is truly repentant of a sin will actually turn away from the practice of that sin in their life. Is it easy? Absolutely not. For me it was easy, and I believe that was because I had an upbringing void of vulgarity where many do not enjoy such a privilege. Others have a difficult time doing so.
I have a good friend who grew up in an environment of fighting, stealing, detention centers and cussing but in his adult life he has strived to separate himself from that past lifestyle. He struggles daily to not cuss but he often forgets himself and lets his tongue get out of control and foul words fly without him realizing it. Now I commend him for trying and I pray Jehovah God will give him strength to continue trying and succeed.
You may repent for cussing on one moment and say a bad word an hour later, but the difference will be in the heart. You will realize immediately you cussed and be sorrowful for it and again ask God for forgiveness and start again trying to live a life free of cussing. A sincere heart will continue this process until one day you realize you haven’t cussed in a while. God knows our heart and while we are going through this process of spiritual change as Christians, I believe his grace will cover us… but only if our heart is sincere throughout the process.
Obviously, there is a lot more to salvation than just having a pure heart and not cussing but everyone has to have somewhere to start, and it might as well be with our words.
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