Formed - How Wisdom Shapes A Life: Part 2- The World Our Words Create

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Every time in Scripture, there are few in the Scripture.

It shows us a picture into the throne room, right?

We see it in Revelation. We see it in Isaiah.

That's the song that they're singing.

OK, so when we gather together and we sing in the forms of the

the melodies and all that holy, holy, holy is the Lord God

Almighty. We are joining in with the

chorus of heaven. That is our ultimate reality.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty doesn't just mean that

he is morally better than I am and morally better than we are.

What it means is that he is separate.

He is distinct, he is set apart from us.

And what that means is that leads us that that is where our

our confession comes in our confession each week we say we

are badly broken, we are deeply loved and we are badly.

Broken the holiness of God is that he is able to look into and

at our. Brokenness and still love us.

Maybe the only thing that you need to hear today is that your

brokenness has not separated you from the ruthlessly determined

God who wants to love you. Doesn't mitigate it.

It doesn't mean that we're not broken.

It just means that our brokenness isn't what's ultimate

and what's final about us. In fact, it's His Holiness that

is good news for us. It is His Holiness that draws

us. And you may have a hard time

with the brokenness. You may be some of us in here

are just like Nope. I tasted it this week.

I saw. It on the way here.

In my own life, it's not. But some of you, this may be new

and you're just like, wait, what do you mean like I'm broken

going? Oh, that's OK.

That's pretty good. We have this experience in life.

Right. The things that I intend to do

are not always the things that happen.

There's a gap. Between my intention and the

expression of of those intentions, I try to do.

Good Romans Romans 7 Paul says the thing that I I I don't want

to do, I find myself doing right, but a story of my life is

a story of walking into moments expecting and intending.

One thing I said last week, I want you to hear all throughout

this series on the Proverbs. My assumption about you is that

your intentions are good. I don't think anybody wakes up

in the morning and is like, like, I am ready to ruin

someone's day today, right? No.

We walk into the world intending to do good, and yet.

In an honest moment, best intentions notwithstanding, we

can find we find ourselves where the fruit of our intentions

isn't what we expected it to be. And so then, right, we're in

this position where we got it. OK, well, what do we got?

We got to figure this out, right?

And I, what I'm going to say is I think our attempts and our

approach to figuring it out as part of the problem.

Often times when we talk about figuring out, figuring it out

why things are going the way they are, figuring out why

there's a gap between my intent and the and the expression, the

impact of my life. What is that?

Most of those attempts are centered around and gathered

around information. Somehow we live in the post most

enlightenment, right? Like we are a thoroughly

scientific people, right? We want to reason together and

we want to understand, and that's important.

That's that's great. We see it.

But our attempt to figure out our lives and the world that we

live in that we either try to gather more information, right?

When things aren't going well, when I'm not feeling right, when

something has happened that I don't understand or don't like,

I want to gather more information, right?

What are the rules? What, what, what happened?

What did I, what did I do that I should have done differently?

We begin to look for angles. What, what position can I

leverage? How can I find something to get

this through and into this moment?

How can I make this happen in such a way that they can see and

think and feel what I want them to do?

What is it that is keeping me from winning, from getting

ahead, from overcoming? This is information gathering

and we go to all kinds of different places for it.

It's not bad. Information is is super is

important. I'm wired like I have emotions.

The older I get, the more comfortable I am acknowledging

that like I have emotions, but I don't make any decisions based

on them, right? I distrust them, right?

So I'm always going like, well, what can I do different?

So we're just trying to gather information or we're trying to

use information to clarify, right?

Somebody says something that hurts us or something, right?

What do we want to do? Oh, I was only.

Right, this is. Clarifying our intent, giving

you information that we think is going to make a different or you

didn't do this. If you had done this, then it's

the information of how this could be better.

Underlying all of this is this assumption.

If we could just get the right information at the right time,

everything will be better. Yep, I I.

I think that I believe that I'm I'm a gatherer.

I want to find details. I want to find information.

Here's the problem that I have to that I have to wrestle with.

In the Internet age, the sum total of all knowledge is

available to any third grader with Internet access.

And still we live in a world that is angry and afraid and

anxious and scared and uncomfortable and poor.

So the reality that we can, or that the conclusion that we can

draw from that is the question that information asks is, is

what do I know? What, what?

What do I? Understand what's the knowledge

and the information. Whereas wisdom, as we saw last

week, starting right, wisdom begins in the fear of the Lord.

Not in some trembling, afraid that God's going to like strike

me down or punch me, but just in the acknowledgement that God is

holy. He's different from me.

He's not. He's not just someone that I'm

on equal speaking terms with. He is God.

He's the one who created all things.

His way is good and righteous, and my way is hopefully

attending to be. That information asks, what do I

know? But the question that wisdom

asks is what am I becoming and when?

When the Bible asks the question or implies the question, what am

I becoming? It's talking about submission.

What am I submitting to? What am I giving permission to

tell my heart where to go and what to do and how to act and

how to behave right? Because the reality that we can

know for sure is it's not just the information that we have.

It's how that information gets into us and then out of us.

What does it do in here? And then to get out.

And that is a question of character.

That is a question of God's nature.

That is about formation. And we said that last week when

we begin to walk in the fear of the Lord and our wisdom begins

to grow in US and around us and through us, it transforms us.

It changes us. So wisdom that isn't just some

abstract idea. Wisdom isn't just some data set

that we try to memorize and then rehearse kind of by checking our

brains out at the door. Wisdom means being fully

intellectually available to the moment, but also being fully

available to the rest of what's. Going on around us and the thing

so so the the place that that most clearly shows up so I am

prone to hyperbole you know hyperbole right to exaggerate

I'm I'm the most hyperbolic person in the entire world right

so I tried to to dial that back this week right to try to not

speak in in big because. What I think the Scripture shows

us is not always and not exclusively, but if you want a

great read, a trustworthy read on our wisdom quotient in any

given moment. The best place to look is in our

speech is in the way that we use our words, verbal communication,

non verbal communication, all all of that.

So we're going to focus on wisdom through our speech.

What does it look like? Not just not just how can I

memorize the wise words, right? But we're going to look, we're

going to be in two Proverbs, Proverbs 12 and Proverbs 15,

right? Like one page over if you got

your paper Bible if you need to. Swipe if you got.

Scrolls. You know you can unroll it.

You do. What you need to do right?

But we're not just trying to memorize wise words that we can

say. Rather we want to get in on.

We want to understand how does wisdom get involved in in like

the time of our lives, the moments, the day-to-day moments

where we exist? Because wisdom is demonstrated

at work. Wisdom is demonstrated in your

marriage, in your singleness, in your finances, in your

entertainment, in all of the places that we go moment by

moment. Wisdom has a formative have

effect on us. The more that we begin to walk

in that place, the more that our moments will be transformed.

And as we look at that, we're going to see how wisdom shapes

us, our nature, our character, and finally how all of that

comes together into creating an atmosphere or an environment.

Or a culture. Our words are powerful words.

And let me just let me guess something.

My guess is that at some point today, something's going to push

on you. We've already acknowledged we're

broken. We're broken and we're loved.

So we don't have to hide. From that brokenness, when it

shows up, when we go, it's now not just general brokenness, but

it's a specific brand and breed of brokenness.

And I also want to say like, so Monday, Monday is my big like

sermon. Like I get in and I read all the

stuff to feel really smart. And so Monday, I knew what this

message was going to be. I knew where it was going to be

about. And I literally, I can show you

in my journal, I literally wrote down, Lord, I'm not going to

have any problem with the content of this message.

I'm going to have to wrestle with the heart of this.

And so I want you to know I have been through it this week with

this content. I'm not here today as someone

telling you what you need to do so you can be more like me.

I'm telling you, I spent this week with this as the framework

for me realizing how wonderful Jesus is and how much better my

world in life would be if I were more like Him.

OK, so I don't want you to hear judgement in any of this.

It's not. It's not there.

But I also don't want you to needlessly protect yourself

because you are deeply loved. Deeply loved.

And if anything gets revealed today, it was already there and

he knew it and he loved you anyway.

Not only did he love you anyway, I loved you anyway, OK?

You're not going to shock me by your brokenness.

I promise you I'll match a story for story.

Like, let's go at it, OK? What we want to do is we want to

be formed by wisdom. We want to be transformed.

We want to be different because of what we see from him in the

scripture. And so here's kind of the big

idea over kind of over this at the beginning is our words are

steering every moment towards either healing or harm.

OK, so every moment. Every word that we say,

everything that comes out of our mouth is steering each moment in

a direction. It's going one way or the other.

So formation then is our ability to intentionally and

deliberately with wisdom, steer those moments.

Here's what I want, formation. Some of you may have Tesla.

I've heard one of the coolest thing about the Tesla is

sometimes the Tesla car, right? You get into a Tesla and what

happens? Like you turn it on and it will

say, your car has been updated. You now have this new feature,

right? Your car is now 14% faster than

it was. I am.

I go to bed like Lord, download wisdom.

I would love, right? I have to pick up my phone.

It's like you are 14% wiser in your speech today.

Not, not the case. That's not what formation means.

What formation does mean for us is growth, a growing awareness

that every moment that we walk into already has context.

You hear what I'm saying? Every person that you talk to

every moment of every day already has emotion, already has

tension. They're having a certain kind of

day already. So when you speak into that,

you're not speaking into a blank space.

You're speaking into something, into a story already in motion.

And that, and what that means is, are you listening?

Your words aren't neutral. I the problem is I thought they

were. I always thought they were and

that. Allowed me to say, oh, I didn't

know I'm man Why? Like when I was a a younger man,

newly married, my beautiful, sweet bride, you know, I was

well, I told her the truth that was important for her to know.

Valentine's Day is just a hallmark holiday.

It's not real. See, I get the Amen, right?

Yeah. That's so.

Now listen. Was it true?

Sure. Was she?

Devastated. Oh yeah, Yeah.

No, definitely, definitely. My intent was one thing, the

impact was another. Proverbs 12/18 says some people

make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing.

I had to acknowledge the reality that in that moment I had great

intentions. And far too often I find that I

have great intentions and a wake of emotionally bleeding people

behind me. And so I have to contend with.

Is that the wisdom of speech And it also confronts me with

something else. It doesn't say here that that

the the fundamental distinction is between truth and error.

It's possible to be true and still, unless what I told

Natalie was true, I'm not calling into that.

But what she did, she didn't hear what she wanted me to say

was I am grateful for this opportunity to demonstrate and

express my love for you, regardless of who sketch

schedules the day on the holiday.

And sure, I I should do it on every day, but you should do it

on that day too. That would have been the wise

thing to say. So the question primarily in

wisdom isn't primarily is this true or is this error?

I don't in any way want to minimize the value and the

necessity of truth. But what I do want to say is the

primary question isn't, is this true or is this error?

It's are my words in this moment working with Jesus or against?

Him. Jesus said I'm redeeming

everything. He said I am making all things

new. Jesus said, blessed are you when

you mourn because you will be comforted.

Are my words an expression of that or an opposition to that?

It's one or the other. I'm either communicating my love

and devotion and commitment to my wife, Hallmark Holiday not

with regardless, or I'm cutting her and hurting her.

What I had to wrestle with in that moment is that my.

Truth and me being me. Doesn't absolve me from the

responsibility of my relational context.

I'm responsible for what happened in my wife's heart that

day. And I want you to know this very

week, you might be surprised to find that sometimes my words get

a little bit ahead of my brain. This week I wreck.

I had to wrestle with that and I had to contend with this.

My words, the pastor's words, the preachers words cut and do

harm and I'm responsible for that.

Proverbs 15 one tells us a gentle answer to flex anger, but

harsh words make tempers flare. See, that's what our speech

does. Our speech either redirects the

emotion that's already in the room towards something that is

healing and life giving. Do you realize that you have

that power with your words? You can walk into a room where

people are afraid and you can bring peace with your words.

You can walk into a room where people are angry and ready to

riot and you can calm the room. You can bring the temperature in

the room and you can redirect those words towards

reconciliation, towards wholeness, towards redemption.

Or you can walk into a room of anger and anxiety and fear and

pour the gaslight the match throw and watch the whole thing

burn words. Are powerful.

So the question of wisdom and the question, and this is

especially relevant for us as Christians, I think the question

for us is, do we care enough? Do we care enough to redirect

each of these loaded moments? Do we care enough?

About the heart of other people to de escalate.

Do we care? Enough about the people around

us to speak compassion and life and goodness or will.

You. Speak your truth, consequences

be damned, and pour fuel on an inferno of anxiety and fear and

outrage. You don't have to tell me what

you're going to do. I can see it in the spaces that

we walk into, not just the physical space.

One of the things I love most about this is this is such an

encouraging place. On Sunday morning.

I see people being prayed with, being encouraged, being loved.

But then I go off in other places, the places where I go,

it's easy for me to be in here because I'm in pastor mode.

But then I. Go home and I speak words that

aren't wise, speak words that cut.

I speak words that incite anger, that that in spite incite

outrage rather than deflecting. And then I realize like I'm not

complete. Yet our online spaces are words

unfiltered. Do they bring healing?

This is our superpower. Wise words have the power to

shape what comes next and the power to transform not just a

heart, but a moment. You can transform anger and

division and separation. Here's what I'm saying.

In your marriage, are you feeling that growing gap?

Are you feeling that inability to connect, to understand?

Are you starting to wonder whether it's too late?

She's too far gone? He stopped listening.

Maybe he has. But listen, the purpose of this,

I know the temptation. The whole time I was.

That was my Monday, right? I'm reading all this.

I'm just like, Lord, man, you better tell Natalie.

Tell her Lord. She needs to know.

That's not what this is about this morning.

Listen, Here's my confidence. The Holy Spirit is so good at

applying truth where it needs to be.

He is so good at that that we can devote.

All of our. Attention this morning to

listening to how he wants to apply it to our life, to my

life, because the reality is I don't always shape the words the

way I think Jesus would shape the moments with my words, the

way Jesus words. What speech does it is either

going to amplify destructive emotion, or it's going to

steward it towards peace. It's only going to do one of

those things. It's either going to make people

more anxious, more angry, more afraid, more outraged.

More intolerant, More, more, more.

Or it's going to say, what about can we over?

The world seems to be on fire, doesn't it?

The world's just burning. People are angry and they're

afraid and they're alone and they're entrenched.

You ever feel like that? I guess the question I would ask

is, why do we continue to listen to people who fan flames with

anger and victimhood and separation?

Why do we continue to fill our head and our hearts with voices

that. Turn US against that.

Tell us that our anger is righteous and justified and our

fear is expected and even responsible when we have a Jesus

who said trust. Me.

Said I've overcome. The world see the significance

of that idea, our ability to shape the world, our ability to

redirect and to shape it is that whether we're stewarding it or

whether we're inciting and and by the way, it is one of those

two. We are either escalating or we

are de escalating and that isn't really just about the moments

that's about our character that's about the kind of people

that we are. This is the part that I really

hate. I really hate this, but how we

use our words reveals the kind of person that we are becoming.

It's not just verbal speech, it's non verbal communication.

And this is important. Speech isn't just expression,

it's it's formation. It's not just what comes out,

it's what's inside. Listen to 15 to the.

Tongue of the wise makes knowledge appealing.

Wise words make people go, Hey, I want that.

Oh, is that that's true. Will will help me help me know

that that that's interesting to me like because I I need some of

that. That seems like something like

wisdom takes the truth that would otherwise make people go,

Oh, I can't have that. I can't hear that right.

Wisdom makes knowledge appealing, but the mouth of a

fool belches out foolishness. The words that we speak have

potential to either bring life or to bludgeon.

People to death and. We are becoming individually

either the kind of people who bring life or the kind of people

who bludgeon people to death. The words that we.

Choose, even when we're unintentional in our choice,

indicate the kind of people that we are becoming.

We are either people regard. Listen, don't don't tell me what

you're trying to do. I hear, I hear the intention.

I I hear the the intent is the world burning down around you.

The question that I would ask is which voices are you saturating

your brain with? Which sounds are you putting in

and then letting come out? Because the counterpoint to

wisdom to why speech isn't silence.

It doesn't say that. The counterpoint to why speech

is belching. I love it.

A belch is like undigested gas, right?

Like it's in there, you eat something and right, and it just

gets out. Foolish words are like that when

you walk into a room. You've probably known a Belcher,

right? Someone who belches you're like

to how long to talk about this just It's a great illustration.

I'm glad it's in the. Bible.

We're talking about the Bible. Here, right, Someone walks into

the room and belches. Nobody in the room feels better

except you. Right?

Right. That's what.

Unwise speeches. You're terrible.

I don't like you. You're scary.

I don't want you to go away. Oh.

I feel so much better, right? Who else feels better?

No one else in the world. And so we, when we walk around

and we make the primary goal of our speech and our language to

make us feel better, to express ourselves, to say what's on our

minds. I just got to be me.

No you don't What if you being you is foolish?

What if you being you is destructive and hurtful.

Do you want to be that and it's not anybody else, not everybody

else's fault and responsibility and problem to meet you where

you're of course and listen, the Lord will meet you.

The Lord knows that we have all these tendency as I use my words

to hurt and cut this week unintentionally.

The Lord was right there in that moment and you know what he was

doing. He was healing the person that

I. Cut.

Holding me accountable. He says, oh, you, you stand on a

stage, Jason, right? You don't get to use your words

to oppose what I'm doing in other people.

That's anti Christ, right? We read Revelation and we're

like who? Is he?

He's got a big thing on his head.

He's probably from Russia. We got to do that.

No, Antichrist is a spirit and it's at work right now when we

use our words and our being and our position and our power to

undo the things that Jesus did. We just spent like 58 weeks in

Ephesians going, Jesus died to destroy the boundaries so that

there is no longer Jew and Greek.

There is no longer slave and free.

There is no longer sex and dialect.

There's not even male and female in the Kingdom.

He loves and responds and respects and calls all of you

together and we're like, I got to be me.

Great. What are you doing with your?

Words are you destroying what Jesus died to do, Antichrist.

It's not out there. It's not someday.

It's in our presence. It's in our heart.

When we decide to use words in a way that Jesus wouldn't do that,

the problem isn't neutral ignorance.

One time, it's not right. Like after that Valentine's Day,

right? Like I could generally say,

listen, I am for sure an idiot. I mean, you knew that, honey,

but for sure, right? The first time I get to say I

didn't know The second time, and the third time and the 40th time

and the 200th time, I did know and I just chose.

And that's a character issue. When I I do.

Me. Without regard for the

consequence. That's not wisdom.

It doesn't lead to the life that Jesus would call us to.

And here's an unsettling reality.

Because it's easy for me to say to think man like that in my

house, right? Nobody saw it.

I'm still OK. But listen, Proverbs 15 three.

The Lord is watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil

and the good. What that means is that there's

no such thing as hidden speech, gossip that doesn't get back to

the subject of the gossip, that the problem isn't just that you

said bad things about a person. The problem is that by saying

those things, we are becoming the kind of people who put

people down instead of lift them up.

Gossip is destructive. It destroys whether the other

person hears it or not. There is no room for it in the

body of Christ. There's no hidden speech.

He defines goodness, right? It's like he's watching

everybody's keeping his eye on both the evil and the good.

That doesn't mean that he's like, well, this person cusses

and this person doesn't cuss. It doesn't mean like this person

voted this way and this person voted the.

Other way it doesn't mean this person has this money and this

person doesn't have this many. Whatever the distinctions are,

goodness is always and only the character and nature of God.

Our closeness to goodness is how much like that we are becoming.

We're not like that at all. Someday we're going to see him

and going to know him and we're going to be fully transformed.

But right now, when it says he keeps his eye on the evil and

the good, we're all much closer to that first part.

There's no shame in that. There's no secret in this.

The point is, we are loved. He sees us and he knows us and

he loves us. But we get hell bent for leather

on on our unwise speech. We get determined to be able to

say what we want, when we want, where we want, who we want.

At that point, we're no longer submitting to the formation and

the leadership of Jesus. We're just blowing off steam.

We're belching, and the Bible calls it foolish.

You know, the problem when we define goodness like that is

that means that all the other definitions of goodness fall

off. That means that the ends don't

justify the means. That means that expedience is

not a value. You know, there's one day in the

year that we call good. What day's that Good Friday?

That's goodness. Now step back and think about

it. You know what happened on

Goodness. Light lost day that we call Good

Friday, is the one who is supposed to be the king, the

ruler, the creator of all things, the Messiah.

He was the one that all those apostles and disciples had

pinned their hopes on. He was going to sit on the

throne of David. And on Good Friday,

fundamentalist religion and the power of state conspired

together to murder him. That's what God calls good.

We don't get to wrap our own desires in the claim of goodness

because we won. We don't win.

God wins. Jesus won.

He invites us into his victory celebration, full stop.

That's what goodness is. We do not get to baptize bad

behavior and victory in winning. We do not get to say, sure it

caused problems, sure that, but all's well that ends well.

That's not the case. I can get my house clean by

berating everybody in it. I can yell at my children until

they are so afraid that they will do whatever I want.

I will have a clean house and I will be an abusive father and I

can promise you an eternity. Only one of those matters.

I am either the kind of person that.

Uses my words to lift up, to make people free the partner in

the ongoing redemption of this world.

Or I can use my words to dehumanize people, to serve my

agenda. I can make you a pawn in my

game. I can make sure that when you

hurt me, I make sure everybody knows how terrible you are and

how justified I am. And listen, I told you, our

intentions are good. Our intentions are to fix the

world, friend, that's not your responsibility.

You can't possibly fix the world.

You can't even fix your own bank account.

I know because I'm because I know because I spent this whole

week going, Lord, I'm not ready to talk about this because I

suck at this. I'm quite possibly the worst

ever at this, right? There's the hyperbole thing

again. As your pastor, you're not

responsible for saving the world.

Only Jesus can do that. You're responsible.

Responsible for becoming the kind of person who looks and

acts like Jesus. That's it.

And wisdom is aligned with that, and everything else is unwise.

The Bible calls it foolishness, and the words of foolishness are

called folly. Man, I hate that.

How I said that. I hate that.

I hate that after all this time, I'm still the kind of person who

will be careless when it serves me that I will hurt others if it

makes me feel better. You know what I do in that

moment? I confess it.

I don't hide from it. I stand before the Lord and go,

Oh, yeah, I see that. I see that wound over there.

I did it, Lord, and if I had been more like you, I would have

done it different. And you know what he says says

that's it, kid. Let's go.

We're ready. We'll do it different next time.

Except I don't do it next time. I do it exactly the same every

time, every time, every time, right?

Because what I find is when I try to go, Oh my God, I'll never

do that again. That's me trying to win.

That's me trying to be better than you, better than everybody

else. And the Lord's like, you're not,

you don't win, I win. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God

Almighty. Full stop.

We live up to and into that, and by degrees much slower than I.

Want he transforms my heart, he makes me new and he sets me

free. But he does it by degrees as I

walk in wisdom. I talked last week, remember?

I was like, there's my friend Jaime over here.

When Jaime. Reads the proverbs and he begins

trying to live out the wisdom that they're.

Jaime becomes a wise person as my friend Derek reads the

scriptures and becomes wise in them.

And he starts his, He becomes wise.

And what happens with Derek is when Derek becomes wise and he

begins to speak wisdom into his family, his whole family starts

to become wise and, and as and it starts to go.

And what happens is we become wise as a culture.

The more people find this and follow this, wisdom becomes

bigger than just me, bigger than just Jaime, bigger even than

Jaime's family. And it becomes a culture of a

place. It becomes an atmosphere that

you can feel in the air. That's what Psalm 50, Proverbs

54 says. Gentle words are a tree of life.

Just close your eyes for a second and I just want you to

think about that. A tree of life.

We. Find the Tree of Life explicitly

in two places in Genesis and in Revelation at the beginning and

the end and the Tree of Life in the beginning.

It was what we were kept away from.

It's what we were we we stopped having access to in the garden,

but it doesn't go away. It's restored to us.

Again when we come to the read Revelation chapter 22, we find

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

that the tree of life has been there all along.

And the great thing about the tree of life it says is it bears

freeze fruit in season and out. And what that means is that

whether you're having a good day or a bad day, you can find fruit

and peace and life and nourishment and sustenance and

provision. And what the scripture says is

that that tree of life is wise speech.

Gentle words are a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes

the spirit. The words that affect

individuals create environments. When we speak words that destroy

somebody's day, that day impacts every person that they touch

throughout throughout that day. So with our.

Words and our speech and our patterns and our demeanor and

the things that we say and the way that we say them, we can

either make this world and life in it habitable.

Gracious. Life giving, you know you can do

that with your words. You have that power to create

life giving words. Or we can.

Create atmospheres that are heavy and crushing and soul

sapping. I'm I was surprised at the

comparison in this right. Like notice, notice what it

says. It says gentle words, our tree

of life. I would expect the comparison to

be like harsh, right? Gentle and harsh.

But what does he compare with gentleness?

He compares deceit so I would expect.

The comparison either to be gentle and.

Harsh or true and deceit, but what gentleness right and the

counterpart to. Deceit is that.

Gentleness and truth both have is those are both rooted in the

character of God. Those are both expressions of

ultimate reality, whereas deceit and harshness and dishonesty are

not. So when it says gentle words are

a tree of life. Being aligned with reality in my

heart and my thoughts and in my speech brings life to the places

that it goes. But to be opposed to that in any

way or form, it brings death or destruction.

And this is the uncomfortable truth that I don't like being

unnecessarily harsh with. My truth is no closer to the

character of God than a gentle, smiling white lie.

If I serve you truth on the blunt end of a sledgehammer, and

you have no possible hope of receiving that in such ways to

be transformed by it, I'm no closer to being transformed by

truth. Your truth has been worthless.

Doesn't mean it's not true. It means that you didn't feel

like it was important enough to handle that truth in a way that

led to life instead of instead of death.

Question then becomes like, because because it's about me

and it's about you, right? And doing our homework.

One way to tell is like, ask yourself the question, when I

walk into a room, do people brace or do they breathe easy?

There are some people not this, not in this room.

I looked around. I looked at you.

All right? They were all in first service.

Weirdly enough, there are some people who, when I see their

name on my caller ID, my heart beats fast.

And I I want to screen it every time because I know what's

coming. It's either going to be untrue

or it's going to be unnecessarily harsh, or it's

going to be half cocked or it's going to be angry.

It's going to be whatever. And I just want you to know

there are others of you in this room.

Jaime Martinez is one of them. I could go down the line and

point you all out. There's some people in this

room, bro. I would take your call seated in

the electric chair because your words bring life to me.

Your words bring hope and encouragement to me.

Which one are you? I tell my kids this all the time

about this. And I tell myself also, we have

to live in the world that we create.

We have to live in the world created.

And I don't mean physically, I've never created a tree or

anything like that, but I've absolutely created an atmosphere

and I've actually absolutely created a culture.

And so the question is. If I spend my time and my energy

and if I fill my head and my brain and, and all of that.

And if I use the words that I have and the opportunities that

I have to demonize other people to talk about what's wrong with

them, to talk about how terrible and destructive they are.

If I use my words to make demons out of other people, of course

I'm going to see a demon around every corner.

Of course I'm going to find people that are terrible and

awful. But if I pause for a second and

if I go to somebody and. Just go listen.

Let me tell you right, I there's people that I can spend my time

with, people who will say, listen, whatever is out there,

but let's talk about what my, what God might be doing.

Let's find out how we can respond with wisdom to this,

because I don't think God sees that person as his enemy.

I think God just sees them as someone that he created and

desperately loves. And they may be, and probably

are misguided. Probably badly broke.

Definitely badly broken Misguid. Guided as they can be, just like

me, how can we respond with wisdom in an unwise world?

But if I spend all my time making demons of people that are

different, I shouldn't be surprised when I feel the whole

world is full of demons. What if we do the opposite?

What if we change path? I'm not pretending that dark is

light. I'm not pretending, I'm not

asking you to do that. I'm asking you to check your

brain at the door. I'm just saying I'm asking us to

acknowledge the reality that good and bad, right and wrong,

you know, love and hate, it doesn't run down this line down

the middle and some are on one side or the other that.

Line runs right here through. Me and I have the choice to

decide, am I going to give voice to the wisdom, to the goodness,

or am I going to give voice to the destruction and the safety?

Or in that, in that hatred, if you realize the second is

better, right? Because you have agency in that

you can choose that you can choose to see in other people

what you see. So which are we choosing?

We said kind of last week that the worst possible thing we

could do with the proverbs would be to take them and then go home

and just try to, you know, try to figure out what we think that

they mean, right? I was like, what, you know, I

thought about this. And we'll always get that wrong

because we'll always protect ourselves.

We'll always try to make our ourselves look good.

Right. There is an absolutely

infallible way to to to understand this, to an interpret

this and it's Jesus, the life of Jesus.

The Proverbs will never trump Jesus.

The the you know, Moses will never trump Jesus.

The Paul in the New Testament will never trump Jesus.

What I mean to say that is whatever wisdom we read about in

the Proverbs, we should hear it see embodied in Jesus and not

just embodied, but talked about Jesus should express the same

wisdom that we see in the Scriptures.

So we go to Luke chapter 6 and this is Luke's, Luke's version

Luke 6 · chapter mention

of the Sermon on the Mount. And he says this in Luke 643,

says a good treat can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't

produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its

fruit. Figs are never gathered from

thorn bushes, and grapes are not picked from Bramble bushes.

OK, so he's got, you can imagine Jesus standing there and he's

got a tree there, and he's talking about everything that

Jesus creates. Everything that God has ever

created has integrity. You've never peeled a banana and

like bees fly out of it, right? Because when you peel a banana,

there's a banana in there. And So what Jesus is pointing to

is the absolute integrity of God.

And he says what comes out is what's on the inside.

What's what's out there is what's in there.

And myself, I'm just like, oh, yes, well, I can, yes, I wonder

what this is about. Oh, perhaps it's about this.

Oh, perhaps it's about this. He goes on.

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a

good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the

treasury of an evil heart. And now he tells us what he's

talking about. What you say flows from what is

in your heart. You probably hate that as much

as I do. I didn't say it.

Jesus did. The question isn't whether we

like it. The question is, will I submit

to it? This isn't about general

behavior. This isn't just about, you know,

whether I give the one finger salute to the guy that cuts me

off. This isn't just about whether I

pet kitties and hold babies. This is about my words.

The nature of our speech is an accurate reflection of the

nature of our hearts. I love that Jesus didn't say try

harder. I love that Jesus didn't say go

stop cussing. Now you may need to stop cussing

that like that, whatever. But what he said is it's a heart

issue. What he said is it's not just

about you trying to be better or stronger.

It's about letting him transform what's in here.

It's about acknowledging I'm the kind of person who, when the

deck is stacked against me, cut other people.

I'm the kind of person who gives space to the worst, most

divisive voices in our culture. Jesus doesn't say, by the way.

That's a hard realization. I'm the kind of person who cuts

people with my words. Jesus's point isn't to shame us.

He says that assuming that we know that we're badly broken and

deeply loved. This isn't about whether we're

right or wrong. This is about whether we trust

him enough to say, I don't want the wrong anymore.

I want to be made new. Jesus never said that wisdom

meant having right answers. Jesus never said that wisdom

meant winning arguments. Jesus never said that wisdom

meant pointing out the flaws and the failures and the weaknesses

and the sins of others. There may be time for all of

those things, but the time will be determined by wisdom and

submission to the Holy Spirit, not by my desire and need to

belch. Sometimes the most, Not

sometimes. I'm going to say way more than

that. Far more often than not, my urge

to belch is exactly a reminder that I need to swallow it.

Jesus. Says Wisdom is being submitted

to God's direction and his correction until our hearts are

formed, transformed, made new. Redeemed and.

You're just like, OK. Right.

Go home, heart. Transformation.

Get a little lunch, take a nap, watch the Texans game.

It's a process. It's far slower than you and I

would like. It's going to take the rest of

your life. And what that means is that most

days you're going to have to stand before the living God and

go my speech and your purposes are not aligned.

But what it means is refusing to baptize that, refusing to say,

oh, well, God, no, I think you understand in this, the king who

was nailed on a cross and didn't respond to Pilate, didn't

respond to the Sanhedrin, didn't cry out in pain and anguish.

The only words that he spoke were father, forgive them.

He spoke to the care of his mother.

He spoke to forgiveness and that's all.

And he's our example and he's our king.

So don't be in a hurry. Acknowledge Lord, My words

aren't like you, but make me more like you.

And spend time honestly considering.

I'm going to give you 2 questions in just a second.

And take them home and think about them.

Think hard about them. Talk to somebody else, right?

And just ask somebody who knows you well, who will tell you the

truth to speak into your life. Here's the first.

What kind of fruit is your life? Bearing right now.

Do people brace or breathe when you walk in the room?

Do people? Jesus said.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Guess what? You don't even have to figure

out whether the person who's mourning.

You don't even have to figure out whether it's valid or not.

If they're mourning, you can comfort them.

Now, you don't comfort them by justifying them, but you can

look at them and say the Lord's desire is that you would be

comforted. And the second question is, what

kind of world am I creating with my words?

Am I creating a world where everybody in it is right and

everybody who's out of it is wrong?

And are you right but angry? You honest but alone, uncertain

but hopeful, badly broken, deeply loved?

Jesus, I pray that you would set us free to use our words to

bring life. Forgive us for the destruction

that we've caused. Forgive us for the destruction

that we've tolerated. Make us wise in the way that we

speak. And, Lord, make River City a

place where wisdom and gentleness and healing are like

a tree of life for all who enter this place, not because of us,

but because of you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God

Almighty was and is and is to come.

Amen. Thank you for joining us today.

River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing

God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that

you've been able to experience that today.

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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.