“There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.” KJV
“Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” NIV I sometimes feel like David when he wrote Psalm 57:4: “My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.” This is not because of sharp words said to me necessarily, but because I hear so many wicked things said about other people. Sharp-tongued “lions” are all around us. Being a man who makes his living primarily using his tongue to speak to people, I want to be real careful that I do not “speak with a forked tongue.” I want to be careful that my words do not cut a negative swath through people’s hearts. I think that you should feel the same no matter what your occupation. Let me explain what I mean. We speak with “healing tongues" when we say positive things to people. Think about it for a minute: Don’t you like it when people say nice and kind things to you? In my preaching I try to speak positively to people. This doesn’t mean that I never say negative things. (More about this later) What it means is that I want my words to help bring healing to the hearts of the people who hear me preach. But this does not just apply to preaching; rather, it applies to all of our relationships in life. We need to be careful that we do not say hurtful words to people. All you have to do before you say a hurtful thing is to ask yourself if you would want such a thing said to you. There are some people who are so negative, and their tongues so “piercing” that we would really prefer not to be around them. We speak with healing tongues when we say negative things to people in a positive way. Are you confused by this? Well, I’m going to explain what I mean. Paul gave us some direction on this in Colossians 4:6: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” I think that “seasoned with salt” means that we should not be mealy-mouthed when we speak to people, nor should we give false flattery. Speaking with grace, means that we want to be careful not to hurt the other person’s feelings by what we say. If your purpose is to hurt someone’s feelings, you are wrong from the outset. Let me give you an example of speech not done with grace and not seasoned with salt: “Preacher, that’s about the worst sermon I’ve ever heard.” Or you might say: “Jane where in the world did you get that tacky hat?” Now let’s see speech given with grace and seasoned by salt: “Preacher, that sermon gave me some things that I need to think about.” You didn’t say “I enjoyed the sermon,” you just told him the truth that he did say some things that you need to think about. If he didn’t, just don’t say anything. As for Jane with her “tacky” hat, you might say: “Jane it is good to see you today.” You notice that the hat was not even mentioned. The point: If what you are going to say is going to ruin someone’s day, keep your mouth shut. Jesus said both positive and negative things to people. He took the self-righteous Pharisees to task, and He let the people who were making the temple into a “den of thieves” know that He was not pleased with them. We need to remember, however, when we talk to people that we are not Jesus. But we also need to remember that sometimes we need to just tell people the truth and let the chips fall where they may. But we don’t need to do this in a nasty, judgmental way, and make it seem that we are looking down our noses at them. Even negative things that we say should be with “grace, seasoned with salt.” We just need to remember that too much salt is worse than not enough salt. Even when we are correcting people, we need to be redemptive, and not just negative or mean-spirited. I know that it is not always easy to do this, but if we want to be effective witnesses for Jesus, we will certainly be aware of the impression that we leave. If our purpose is to give “a piece of our mind,” we need to remember that we don’t have the mind to spare. If our purpose is to help keep someone from the error of their way, then we will have healed and not hurt. Keep in mind that not everyone will appreciate even speech given with grace, but you will know that you have said the right thing in the right way. My closing advice here is that if you are not sure what the motives of your heart are when you are speaking with other people; just don’t say anything – kyms (keep your mouth shut). Bro. Joe
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(Archive 2014)
“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man (or woman) sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” KJV “As iron sharpens iron, so one man (or woman) sharpens another.” This morning I was thinking of people who have made a difference in my life. I will not name the people who have made a difference, but they are many dating all the way back to childhood, through church, public school, U.S. Navy, college, seminary, seven churches, one Baptist Association and all of the preachers that I have had fellowship with over the years. I’m sure that you can recall many people in your life who have made a difference. I think the Proverbs 27:17 speaks to that. God has given us each other to help each other grow. This happens in several ways. There are people who have loved you through thick and thin, good and bad, pretty and ugly. Your parents probably figure in here, as do your wife and children. But there have been people outside of your family who have overlooked various faults and loved and supported you anyway. I think of the people in my first church. At the ripe old age of twenty one I did not think that there was a whole lot that I did not know. I look back and think of a lot of mistakes that I made in that church, but they loved me anyway. I had a lot of “mamas and grandmas” in that church. They loved me anyway because they knew that I would pastor a lot of other people in the future and that how they helped me and held up my hands would benefit me for the rest of my life. Whether they realized that or not, that was certainly true. Without realizing it, they sharpened me as “iron sharpens iron.” Think back, you have people in your life who loved you in spite of you. There are people who have sharpened you by loving you enough to give you needed criticism. We call it “positive criticism.” I was a pastor three years before Mary and I were married. After we were married, I had someone to give me feedback after I preached. She loved me enough to be honest about, for example, pulpit mannerisms that were disconcerting. Someone told me that I was a better preacher after I got married. One reason was that being married tends to mature people, at least it did me, and the other was that I had someone to talk to and to give me positive reinforcement when I needed it, and criticism when I needed it. Please don’t think that the people who criticize you are trying to hurt you. It is quite possible that they are trying to help you. I know that not every criticism is for positive reinforcement, but I think that God has given us the sense to know the difference and to take it as it is given. However, I have found that sometimes even hostile criticism can give us food for thought that can change us for the better. There are people who have sharpened you by giving you good advice that stuck in your mind and changed you for the better. It didn’t come as a criticism, but you might not have appreciated it at the time, but looking back you were glad that you listened. I know that advice is cheap, and I am careful about giving it unless it is asked for, but even seeming cheap advice may be good for us. One of my favorite people was Sherman Hall, who was my math teacher and coach in high school. He gave me some advice in the locker room of the Lee Country High School gym one day that I did not take at the time, but it came to my rescue many times. That advice was given when I was fourteen years old, I am seventy eight now and I still remember the “talking to” that Coach Hall gave me. You have people like that in your life. Be thankful for them. There are other ways that people have sharpened you. Pause and give thanks to God for them, for He certainly put them in your life. Bro. Joe “Let your light so shine among men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Don’t you love the fancy title of this article? This was a thought that I had today and wanted to share it with you. These are some things that we need to do more of and that will make our light shine and glorify our Heavenly Father. We need to love people. I remember a song that Burt Bacharach wrote in the 70’s that reminded us of this: “What the world needs not is love, sweet love...” This is still true in the 2000’s. We need to love people whether they are lovable or not. If those of us who belong to Jesus cannot love people, who can? We need to remember that Jesus loves sinners…of which we all are. We cannot let the rampant hatred that is loose in the world keep us from shining for the glory of God. We Christians need to do a better job of loving each other as an example to the world. We need to hate sin. The sins that we need to hate the most are those that keep us from shining our lights to a dark, dark world. Loving people does not mean that we hate sin less. It is sin that has been destroying the world since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. We are not true friends to the world if we just accept sin that is ruining their lives. We do not need to be self-righteous, but there is certainly nothing wrong with us if we live righteously. Jesus did not save us to accept sin as the norm – even in our own lives. We need to be careful what we say to each other. One of the most hurtful things that can happen to us is for someone to use unkind words to us. We also need to remember that our own unkind words can really hurt people. I have received two kinds of criticism in my fifty-seven year ministry: One is criticism that has been given in love, because I needed correction. Second is criticism that has been given in a nasty, hurtful way. I’ve got to tell you that I really, really do not like the second criticism. I try to remember this if I have to be critical for some reason or other. In this matter, I always think of Job’s friends who sat with Job for seven days and kept their mouths shut, and then when they started to talk they made all kinds of false accusations. Think of them before you speak an unkind word. Of course, there are more than three things that we need to do more of, but these are uppermost in my mind today. I think that you will agree that we need to do more of these things. Bro. Joe “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pititul, be courteous.”
Having been involved in church work for fifty-six years, twenty-seven as a pastor, twenty-three as a Director of Missions, working with churches in an association, then about one year as an interim pastor, then finally serving a church for two years, I am qualified to say that “living in harmony” is a real need in churches. Peter tells us how to live in harmony in this verse. First, he told them to have compassion for each other. This doesn’t mean to just tolerate each other. To have real compassion, frankly, we have to have the mind of Christ and also heed to have the pull of the Holy Spirit. We can get awfully callous in our treatment of each other in churches. I had to watch this in my own heart as a pastor and as a Director of Missions. I had to deal with this in the treatment of church members with each other. Having real compassion for each other, will make us careful how we treat each other. Second, he told them to love as brothers/sisters. In a real sense, a church is like a big family. This means that we are joined together in the family of God by the blood of Jesus, which makes it necessary for us to love one another as brothers and sisters. Sometimes with brothers and sisters we have to overlook some personality quirks. This is true of brothers and sisters in church. Sometimes with brothers and sisters we have to just accept them because we have the same father and mother. We have to accept each other as brothers and sisters because we have the same Savior. (I might also add that Peter was not joking or speaking lightly about this matter.) Third, he told them to “be pitiful and be courteous.” “Pitiful” can be translated as “humble.” We are to act in common courteousy with our brothers and sisters in church. Sometimes we just have to “get off of our high horse” as problems arise in churches and be humbly courteous. This would sure curtail a lot of church fusses. You just have to agree with Peter’s reasoning. Think of your own relationships with people in your church. Are you really in harmony with them? Do you have compassion for them? Do you love them as brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you humbly courteous in your dealings with them? If your church was like you, would your church be in harmony? Bro. Joe “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came everyone from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. 13. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was great.”
I’m going to assume that you know something about the book of Job. It is one of those biblical narratives that we hear a lot about because of its unusual nature. In the book God allows Satan to rip Job’s life apart by causing him to lose everything, including all ten of his children and all of his wealth. The gist of the narrative is that Satan thought he could make Job curse God, and God knew that Job would remain steadfast throughout the ordeal – which he ultimately did but not before he asked a lot of questions and agonized over his ordeal. In the midst of Job’s suffering come his three friends. Here is where we will see that we do not need to be like Job’s friends. In verse 13, we note that these three friends came to Job in the first place to comfort him. They got off to a good start, because for the first seven days they sat with him and did not say a word. The lesson here is that as long as Job’s friends kept their mouths shut and just shared their presence with Job, they did fine. The problem with them arose when they began to run their mouths and try to straighten Job out. They were trying to convince Job that he was being punished by God for all of the sins that he had committed. Let me give you one example of a “word of comfort” from Job’s dear friend Eliphaz: “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off? Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity; and sow wickedness, reap the same” (Job 4:7-8) Wow! How is that for comfort? He couldn’t have been further from the truth. Here is what God said to Satan about Job in Job 1:8: “And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that fears God and escheweth evil?” We should think before we speak, because words, unfortunately, cannot be called back into our mouths. Sometimes it is just best to keep our mouths shut and just be a friend. Job’s friends purported to speak for God, when they were just giving their own opinions of what God was doing in Job’s life. I have discovered that I have a hard enough time determining what God is doing in my life without trying to figure out what he is doing in the lives of others. We need to be careful when we speak for God, because we may just be speaking for ourselves. We need to think long and hard before we give advice to suffering friends, particularly in the spiritual realm. We might think that we know the mind of God for that person, but we probably do not. What could Job’s friends have done for Job that would have been better than what they did, and for which they had to repent? (Read Job 42:7-10) They could have just stood by him as they did at first and kept their mouths shut. They could have just prayed for him silently and vocally, and asked God to relieve their friend. They could have just let Job talk about his troubles without giving their self-righteous feedback. They could have heard Job’s complaints and not have given their judgments about them. They could have just been his friends – period. The lesson for us is that we are to just love our friends, pray for them and help them when we can. When we can’t say something encouraging, it might be a good idea to follow what Job’s friends did in Job 2:13. Bro. Joe "But you should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? 29. Be you afraid of the sword: for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, the you may know there is judgment."
As I make my way through Job, I am picking up all sorts of ideas. Today's thought comes from Job's statement to his critical friends: "Be you afraid of the sword." What he was basically telling them was, "Clean up around you own backdoor." We have all heard that statement at some time or other. Jesus stated it differently in Matthew 7:1: "Judge not, that you be not judged." It means the same thing: "Clean up around your own back door." Does this mean, then, that we can never offer constructive criticisms to erring friends? No. It means that before we start criticizing others, we should take a look at our own lives, and make sure that we have cleaned that up in our own lives. Job's friends are a perfect example. They just kept on heaping criticism on poor Job. He tried to defend himself, but they just kept on, and they were wrong about everything they said. Some of their assumptions were true, but not pertaining to Job. The point is that if we are going to be able to minister to people, and help erring friends see the error of their ways, we are going to have to make sure that we are not being hypocritical. Being a preacher, I have been keenly aware of this. Many times over the years, as I have been preaching, I have said to myself, "Who are you to talk?" In other words, we need to be keenly aware of our own faults as we attempt to minister to the world, and not approach people in a self-righteous manner. Let me put it this way, self critcism is not our "long-suit." It is much easier to see the faults of others than it is to see our own. But, be assured of this, we have faults as well. That's why as we minister to this world, we need to make sure that we have "cleaned up around our own backdoor." Bro. Joe |
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