Tongue Bad

If you have never read it, you should read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. It is a very good autobiography, eloquently written (unlike the intentionally silly title of this post). In the course of telling his story, Fredrick Douglass wrote about the various masters that he had before he escaped to freedom. And he told about an overseer named Mr. Severe. It was Mr. Severe whom Douglass described in this way:

"Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man... He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer... Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. His presence made it both the field of blood and of blasphemy... and he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths".

What an epitaph! How would you like to have that engraved on your tombstone? "Here lies a cruel and blasphemous man. He died cursing God". 

The Bible has a lot to say about the words that come out of our mouths. James, a half-brother of Jesus, called the tongue "a world of iniquity". He pointed out how with the same tongue that people use to praise God, they often also curse their fellow humans who are created in God's image (read James 3:1-12). 

King Solomon tells us that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat it's fruit" (Proverbs 18: 21). Like Mr. Severe's bloody cow-skin whip and hickory stick, so the tongue can become a cruel devise to lash out and wound people. And if anyone blasphemes God, that person wounds their own soul; which is not really their own, because every soul belongs to God who created it.

Jesus Himself said, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). But this truth leaves no one unscathed, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Jesus confirms this when He calls everyone evil (Luke 11:13, Luke 18:19, John 7:7). 

And when we sin in any way at all, we demonstrate a lack of love toward our heavenly Father who is love, and who created us in His perfect image before the Fall. And so when we speak any kind of wickedness; whether cruel insults, hurtful gossip, deceitful lies, foul obscenities, or irreverent blasphemies, we speak against our holy God who is love. And it is a reflection of the condition of our hearts. 

When God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his sin, Nathan spoke by the Holy Spirit and said to David:

"Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own" (2 Samuel 12:9-10; NIV, emphasis added).

So we learn from this passage of Scripture that all sin is a personal affront to our heavenly Father. And that of course includes any kind of sinful speech, because our words are a reflection of what is in our hearts. And one thing that David understood is that even though humans are fallen creatures, God desires righteousness to be in our inward being (Psalm 51:5-6).

David also prayed, saying, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, oh LORD, my strength and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). Only by the power of the Holy Spirit, can our inward being become truly right and good and pure in the eyes of the LORD. And as Jesus said "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" (Luke 11:13; NIV).

Thankfully for David, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross paid retroactively for his sin, just as fully as it pays for the sins of all who trust in Jesus. And like Abraham before him, David looked forward to the arrival of God's salvation which came through Christ (John 8:56-58, Psalm 119:81). He even prophesied concerning the Crucifixion, a millennium before it happened (Psalm 22).

Now because of His sacrifice, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, those who trust in Jesus are no longer subject to that foul, lacerating, severe old man. Sin is no longer our master. We are free in Christ (John 8:31-36, Romans 6:6-23). And as we practice righteousness in Him, we grow in His likeness; the perfect image of God in which He originally created humanity (1 John 3:2-3). 

So we are admonished through the Holy Spirit to put away that dead, decomposing old man; and become the new man, created in harmony with God. Which, among other things, means to put away "corrupt speech", or "unwholesome talk" and use our mouths to praise our heavenly Father; and to bless, and build up others through the grace of God (Ephesians 4:21-32).   

The Triune God

The word "Trinity" never appears anywhere in the Old or New Testament. However, the concept is there; beginning right in the very first chapter of the Bible. On the sixth day of Creation, God says "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (Genesis 1:26, emphasis added).

It is clear that by "Us" and "Our", God is referring to Himself alone, and not to Himself and the angels. It is clear because in verse 27 the text continues, "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them".

So right from the start, we read of God referring to Himself in plural form; even though the Scriptures very clearly teaches that there is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 45:5, 1 Timothy 2:5).

God speaks the same way at the Tower of Babel, saying "Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" (Genesis 11:7, emphasis added).

Much later, when God first appeared in a vision to the prophet Isaiah, He asked "Whom shall I send, and who shall go for Us?" (Isaiah 6:8, emphasis added).

And the Psalmist, David wrote "The LORD said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool.'" (Psalm 110:1). 

Jesus referenced this passage when He asked "How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Spirit: 'The LORD said to My Lord, Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool. Therefore David himself calls Him 'Lord', how is He then his Son?" (Mark 12:35).

Jesus was challenging His listeners to understand that He, the Messiah, is more than just the Son of David. He is the Son of God. 

Jesus is sometimes referred to as both the Root and the Branch of Jesse. Jesse was the name of David's father. This title, given to Jesus, is based on a couple of verses in the 11th chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. 

Isaiah 11:10  says "And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious". Isaiah 11:1 says "There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots" (also see Revelation 22:16).

As the song from the O.C. Supertones' first album says "Jesus came from Jesse, but Jesse came from Jesus." Jesus is both the Root and the Branch of Jesse. This is a Christological concept. And Christology is, of course, tied in with the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus in not only the Son of Man through David's line. He is also the Son of God from whom David's line originated.

And whereas the Old Testament gives compelling hints of the Trinitarian doctrine, the New Testament abounds with it. Take just for example the Great Commission, given by Jesus as He sent out His apostles before He ascended to the Father. He said "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19; also see Matthew 3:16-17, John 1:1, John 1:14).

God is love (1 John 4:8). And love has existed between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from eternity past. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity; what we mean by saying "God is love" is "that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else" (book 4, chapter 4, paragraph 5).