Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Speech from Proverbs 11:9–13
God is a talking God. This is bound up in Scripture with the fact that although he is transcendent, that is, above space and time, independent of the created universe, he is also personal. He is not an impersonal force or a merely unmoved mover or a philosophical ground of all being. He is a person who talks.
We saw yesterday rather briefly how this truth, this basic axiom of Scripture, dumps out into theme after theme after theme. God’s first act in Genesis is to speak. “Let there be light,” he says, and there is light. He created all things by his powerful word. Exodus says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made …”
He rules through his word. His word does not return empty. That is, as if it’s frustrated. When he says, “It happens,” he shuts doors and he opens doors merely by decreeing that is the way it will be, and so important is this line of argument in Scripture that ultimately Jesus himself, the supreme manifestation of God, can be described as the Word of God, God’s ultimate self-expression.
We are God’s image bearers, and we are talking people. God expects his own people to reflect his own care in speech, his own self-revelation in speech. He expects us to be careful of what he says and to be careful of what we say. Thus, on the one hand, Deuteronomy, chapter 8, cited by Jesus himself in Matthew 4, “Human beings do not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
That presupposes, of course, that God does speak individual words which may be examined and obeyed. There is not some hidden, merely sentimental view of revelation here. Words, every word God has spoken … From that shall we live according to Jesus himself? At his best, David can say, “With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.”
Do you see this mirror image? The laws come from God’s mouth. Now with my mouth, with my lips, I repeat them. God is a speaking God. We pick up God’s words and we repeat them. We are to think God’s thoughts after him. We are to repeat God’s speech after him. That is why you have this rather stunning passage in Deuteronomy, chapter 17 in a prescription of what kings should do when they arise in the nation.
We are told, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law …” What we would call the Pentateuch. “… taken from that of the priests who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendents will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”
He’s to copy it out longhand. He’s not sort of just to dump it from a CD onto his hard drive. He’s to copy it out longhand, and then he’s supposed to read it day after day after day after day. All the words of this law (all of God’s words) now becoming his words. The same thing is given to Joshua, if you recall.
“You are to meditate on this law day and night, and then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” It is not just a question of believers being challenged to take God’s words seriously. They must, in consequence, take their own words seriously. Hence, two of the Ten Commandments deal, in fact, with human speech.
First, regarding profanity. To speak of this God as if he were common is profane. It is immensely discourteous. It is fundamentally blasphemous. It is to reduce him to something we domesticate even by our speech whereas, in fact, our speech ought to honor him. We are not to take the Lord’s name in vain.
Secondly, we are not to bear false witness. We deal with a God who speaks the truth. Should we do no less? If we are made in his image, do we have sanction then to use our tongues to speak in ways that are corrupt or discourteous or slanderous or lying?
Of course, in biblical terms the mouth is not independent. It’s really a form of metaphor, isn’t it? It’s not that the mouth speaks independently of the rest of me. Jesus acknowledges the point. It reflects what is in the heart. Thus, the Lord Christ says in Luke 6, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart …” That is, the center of his being, his mind, his motives, his thoughts, his values. “… the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart, for out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
Thus, your speech, ultimately, really reflects what you are. There are similar perceptions, of course, in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs, chapter 10, verse 20. Notice the parallelism. “The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked is of little value.” Of course, this is antithetic parallelism: the righteous in the one and the wicked in the other.
“The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart …” Not the tongue. “… the heart of the wicked is of little value.” Of course, the parallelism really means in both cases you’re dealing with the heart as it manifests itself in the tongue. Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 5: “A truthful witness does not deceive, but a false witness pours out lies.” That is to say at the end of the day, the lies (the overt speech acts) come from the witness who is intrinsically false over and against a truthful witness who is intrinsically truthful.
In chapter 15, verse 7, “The lips of the wise spread knowledge. Not so the hearts of fools.” Obviously, it’s not the hearts of fools that dispense anything. It’s the hearts through their lips, but the two thus are conflated in the obvious parallelism. It’s out of such thoughts as these that Jesus wields his profound utterance, “For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
Granted the assumption of that link between what we are and what we say, it is quite possible to look at our speech or our tongues or our mouths or our lips as the ultimate reflection of just who we are. Isn’t that part of the power of James, which incidentally is often classified in huge chunks as an example of Wisdom Literature? It is worth taking the time to hear these paragraphs from James.
“Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.
Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by men, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.”
Do you notice this likeness relationship again reflected in your speech? “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.”
Consider, again, Paul in his list of sins that exclude a person from the kingdom in 1 Corinthians 6: slanderers, liars. Think of the list in Revelation 21:7 and 8: idolaters and blasphemers and liars excluded from the kingdom. Amongst the 144,000 of Revelation 14:5, those who never tell a lie.
This is based also on Old Testament prophesy. Zephaniah, chapter 3, verse 13: “The remnant of Israel will do no wrong. They will speak no lies nor will deceit be found in their mouths.” Ultimately, you see that as Paul’s analysis of the problem of the entire human race. Is it not? In Romans, chapter 1, what is the problem?
The problem is we have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness until we believe the big lie, and the big lie is ultimately to worship some element of the creation rather than the Creator himself until God comes along in ultimate judgment, according to 2 Thessalonians, and sends them a big delusion so they will believe the lie. Someone has said the ultimate punishment of the liar is not that he is not believed but that he does not believe.
Even if we believe all of these things, it is vital to see such stances working out in practical terms and practical counsel. Here, the book of Proverbs is refreshingly powerful. It uses an array of colorful images and vignettes that crystallize what it means to use our mouths and our tongues and our lips in the fear of God.
Mouths, tongues, lips … It’s all part of the same structure, the same expression. Thus, for example, chapter 10, verse 11: “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.” Then 31 and 32: “The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but a perverse tongue will be cut out.”
The only reason it’s tongue now and not mouth is because you do not easily speak of cutting out a mouth. You may speak of cutting out a tongue. You see? “The lips of the righteous know what is fitting, but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse.” The same colorful image is in effect. If I’m speaking of two mouths here, I could equally speak of two tongues, and I suppose four lips or two pairs thereof.
In the passage before us there are, once again, two tongues. Chapter 11, verse 9: “With the mouth the godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escape.” Here you have both a godly speech and an ungodly speech. Verse 11: “Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed.”
Before we look, however, at this peculiar emphasis in this little collection of proverbs here in chapter 11, it is worth culling a few insights from related proverbs on speech throughout the book, so I want briefly to outline a few proverbs on the bad mouth, a few proverbs on the good mouth, some isolated proverbs contrasting the two mouths, and then we’ll come to this passage which adds another dimension we’ll see at the end.
1. Proverbs on the bad mouth.
Chapter 10, verse 10: “He who winks maliciously causes grief, and a chattering fool comes to ruin.” The phrase winks maliciously suggests a sly person. He’s not honest. He causes grief, and he comes to grief. He comes to ruin. He chatters on, and because he’s so sly, he uses his mouth in a malicious way, and he is destroyed.
Chapter 10, verse 18: “He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.” The phrase conceals his hatred here does not mean hides it in a disciplined way in order to deal with it. What it means is he conceals it while, in fact, he is letting it go in sly slander off camera. He hides it to your face and then slashes up your back with his sharp tongue like a knife thrust into your back.
“He who conceals his hatred has lying lips …” He is smooth to you, but in fact, he is lying through his teeth. “… whoever spreads slander is a fool.” This reminds us of Jesus’ insistence that in the church, in the community of the believers, they must deal with one another. It is not enough for A to go to B about how A is offended by C. Anyone who has been a pastor has had someone come from the congregation and say, “You know Mrs. Smith. She really is a pain. Do you know what she did? Do you know what she said?”
If you’re a wise pastor, you will say, “Have you been to Mrs. Smith?” If the person says, “No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” then what you say is, “Then I don’t want to hear it. Go and confess your attitude of bitterness and deal with Mrs. Smith yourself, and if you can’t, then I’m happy to come with you, but otherwise, hold your tongue.” It’s called slander.
That is how you build integrity in the church of Christ. If instead what you do is stroke such a person and commiserates endlessly, all you’re doing is encouraging slander. That’s all you’re doing. You’re certainly not encouraging integrity. Of course, the first time you do that, you yourself will be slandered for a bit. Put up with it. It’s the way the Master went.
2. Proverbs on the good mouth.
I draw your attention to just one passage, chapter 16, verses 23 and 24: “A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction.” The same link between heart and mouth. “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Isn’t this remarkable?
If you have the kind of heart that is wise, it shapes what you say, and as a result, your lips promote instruction and are acceptable. A wise man’s heart not only guides his mouth and promotes instruction, but the words are sweet to the soul and healing to the bones as opposed to tearing everything down and calling it faithfulness.
There is a way of dealing with things pastorally that is sufficiently gentle or trenchant or calling for repentance or building up or encouraging, using the lips out of wisdom to build up and edify in the long haul. The aim of the game, then, is not to win an argument. The aim of the game is that the wisdom that is being secured in the heart will come out in your speech in such a way that the speech is acceptable, sweet as honeycomb, to do good and to edify and to promote instruction.
3. Proverbs contrasting the two mouths.
There are many isolated proverbs contrasting the two mouths, an antithetic parallelism: two mouths or two tongues or, if you like, four lips. Let me just draw your attention to a few of these and make one or two comments. Chapter 10, verse 6: “Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.”
Here I suppose if you were pushing the parallelism all the way to the floor, you would say head is parallel to mouth, but that rather misses the point. The point is in this context that the righteous express their righteousness in acts and in speech and blessings eventually crown their head. By contrast, violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. It swamps it. It takes it over, as it were.
In verse 8: “The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.” The assumption here is that a chattering fool can’t accept commands. If you’re the sort of person who chatters rubbish all the time, you’re also the sort of person who can’t take any advice too. Wise words are acceptable. They successfully admonish. The chattering fool is not listened to, but neither can a chattering fool listen.
Chapter 10, verses 11 and 12: “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” In Hebrew, wickedness covers up violence; love covers up sins. The same verb but used in quite different ways. Wickedness swamps violence, or it covers it up and hides it and is deceitful (one of the two), but love covers up sins so they’re not circulating and doing damage.
Chapter 10, verse 19: “When words are many sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” Isn’t that an astonishing passage? One feels one doesn’t want to say much about this verse lest one sin. Chapter 10, verse 20: “The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked is of little value.” Notice tongue and heart again.
Verse 21: “The lips of the righteous nourish many, but fools die for lack of judgment.” Notice the lips of the righteous nourish many. They are nourishing others by their speech, but fools not only do not nourish others; they themselves die for lack of judgment. If we move on to chapter 12, verses 13 and following, all the way to 26 there is verse after verse after verse with extraordinary insight in this matter of talk.
“An evil man is trapped by his sinful talk …” Haven’t we seen that? Maybe you’ve seen it in your own life. God forgive me. I’ve certainly seen it in mine. You say something foolish or dumb or daft or half-thought-through or semi-malicious and it comes back to haunt you later when somebody remembers it. “… but a righteous man escapes trouble.” Of course. He watches his mouth. You escape most of the trouble in your life if you watch your mouth.
“From the fruit of his lips the man is filled with good things as surely as the work of his hands rewards him.” That is, what you say will reward you as much as your work rewards you. “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice. A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.” Isn’t that what Jesus says? Isn’t that what Proverbs is constantly saying? “A soft answer turns away wrath.” You absorb things; you don’t lash back and keep score. “… a prudent man overlooks an insult.”
“A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells lies.” That’s not a truism (truth tells truth and false tells false). It’s not a truism. It’s saying at the end of the day what is spoken reflects, again, the character. A true witness tells the truth. A false witness tells what’s false. At the end of the day the problem is who you are.
“Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” You might be right, but you might also be stupid in the way you say it. “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.” Our words have eternal significance. “There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil but joy for those who promote peace,” and the promotion of peace here is bound up with promotion with word in the context.
“No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble. The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly,” and so on and so on. Let me come at last to the passage at hand: chapter 11, verses 9 to 14.
4. Proverbs with a different dimension.
This passage (chapter 11, verses 9–14) now adds one new dimension. It suggests there are entire spheres in which mouths may operate for good or evil. Instead of individualistic proverbs there are entire spheres of operation. First, there is the arena of the personal, the neighborly. Chapter 11, verse 9: “With his mouth the godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escape.”
There is, in fact, a hook word to chapter 11, verse 8. It is often the way proverbs progress. In verse 8, the righteous man is rescued from trouble (the same word as in “… but through knowledge the righteous escape”). The emphasis in verse 9 could refer either to gossip or to perjury. “With his mouth the godless destroys his neighbor. Through knowledge the righteous escape.”
The godless may destroy the neighbor through perjury, getting them into trouble, like Naboth’s vineyard, or it could be a simple question of terrible gossip that destroys a person’s reputation and belittles them and cuts them down until he is destroyed or may escape through his own careful righteous knowledge and the way he handles things.
Have you not seen this in a church? My brother was pastor of a church in northern Ontario 15 years or so ago where there was a family that had basically brought down three or four previous ministers. I’m sure you’ve never seen that happen in a church, but it happened there. This family would somehow insinuate itself into the confidence of the new pastor and then, parading a front of a certain kind of spirituality, actually destroy the man root and nail.
Eventually, the pastor would usually get so angry or cause a confrontation or blow up or something that he’d start destroying himself, and then the family would sit back and say, “See? I told you so.” No minister seemed to stay there for more than about two years before he was basically run out of town on a rail or so discouraged he felt useless in the ministry. This family, parading itself to be amongst the spiritual leaders of the church, had basically destroyed three ministers that way.
My brother (bless his heart) found out within a few months this is what was going on and checked a bit in the church and realized this was going to happen, so he went out of his way to befriend them. He went out to their farm and he pulled tree stumps with him, and he helped him milk the cows. (This was a rural church.) He went hunting with them. He tried to befriend the kids and be there whenever there was a problem. He tried very hard to befriend the man.
He never said anything against them in public, and yet, all the time behind the scenes this was building and building and building and building. The stress on my brother’s family was enormous. He forbad anyone in the family from saying anything negative about this family, and eventually the family again precipitated an all-church meeting to sort discipline out. The family in question did its whole shtick (all the sins and all the failures and so on), and Jim simply said to the church, “You decide,” and walked out of the room.
Isn’t that what Jesus said? Tell it to the church. The church voted 100 percent behind my brother, and the other family left the church, and the next year the church doubled in size. In other words, he had used his tongue to absorb the malice. In this case, it was the right thing to do. There are other cases where it may be wise to call someone to account. It may be, but that was an astute, wise assessment of what was going on.
In this kind of context, the difference between the two behaviors was so clear to the whole church that the church acted in wisdom. That was the end of the problem, and a year after that they put up a building. The arena of the personal, the neighborly. Look at verse 12. “A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue.”
Notice it does not say the man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding praises him. Occasionally you find a neighbor with very little to praise, quite frankly, but then if there’s nothing much to praise, at least you can keep your mouth shut! Do you see? The wise part here in speech is saying nothing over against speaking the truth that is unnecessary.
Isn’t that something we see in our children when we rear our families? If you have an only child, you don’t see it. If you have two or more children, you sure do. All kinds of interesting dynamics. The younger one feels threatened by the older and shows off. The older one feels the little one doesn’t know anything in any case. If they get a little tired, and then at the meal table they start to squabble.
The other day … I can tell this story here because my children are out of the country. I don’t tell stories on my children when we’re in the same country, but half a world away I can probably get away with it. The other day at the meal table, my daughter, who is really quite good on a horse … (She is very good. She does acrobatics, gallops around standing on it bareback and this sort of thing.)
My daughter and my son, who is trying to catch up now to do a little more of this sort of thing, were talking about how he was looking forward to getting back to America next year and taking the next level at this particular camp they go to. My daughter immediately chimes in, “Well, I don’t think you’ll …” I interrupted. “Wait a minute. Before you go any further, is your judgment of what he will or will not be able to do something you can say without running him down?”
“It’s just that I don’t think he will be as interested in horses perhaps as maybe I was.” You could see her trying to say all of this malicious put-down stuff in a way that wasn’t too malicious after all. So many of the language games we play are nothing but forms of one-upmanship. Isn’t part of rearing a family trying to get children to interact with one another with a modicum of courtesy?
Or at least if they’re going to put one another down, let it be part of the cultural cutting down the tall poppy and not malicious. Even cutting down the tall poppy has its cultural rules. There are certain things you don’t say. You never laugh at your teenage sister’s pimples. It’s against the rules.
Verse 13: “A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret.” Another way where the best gift of speech is silence. On our faculty we have one particular man who is so bad at this that if I want something to get up to the administration and I don’t know how else to do it, I’ll just tell him. Slightly Machiavellian but … There is the arena of the personal, the arena of the neighborly.
Secondly, there is the arena of the city. Verses 10 and 11: “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed.” Those are two interesting verses. Verse 10 talks about how different groups of people react. The righteous prosper; the city rejoices. The wicked perish; there are shouts of joy. Here there is rejoicing because of the prosperity of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked.
Then verse 11: “Through the blessing of the upright, a city is exalted.” I don’t think that means they’re sort of standing over the city on a mountaintop saying, “I bless you, dear city,” or sprinkling holy water on it or pronouncing some kind of formula. It means all they do blesses the city, and in the context of speech all through here, it is the blessing of the upright in their counsel, in their advice, in their integrity, in their pursuit of justice, in righteousness.
By contrast, by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed, which is not meant in some narrow sense like it’s betrayed and as a result the walls are breached. It means wickedness, including wicked speech, in a city ultimately destroys the culture.
Thirdly, there is the arena of the nation. Verse 14: “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisors make victory sure.” That’s a common stance in Scripture. I’ve been involved enough in administration of various fairly large organizations to have learned a few rules, and some of them have pretty direct bearing on large churches, too.
In a large organization, the president can only have so many people responding to him or her. You can’t have everybody doing so. It’s bad administration. There aren’t enough hours in the day in any case. Most managerial books say five or six, not more. On the other hand, when you have five or six directly responding to you, they must have ready access to you.
The only reason why I’m telling you this in this context is for this reason: you must make sure you’re getting the truth from them. That means you must not only encourage them to tell the truth, however good, convenient, or embarrassing, but you also need backchannels. Backchannels they know about. You shouldn’t be deceitful with them or do anything to undermine them. If you can’t trust them, get rid of them and replace them.
Meanwhile, you must have access in each department to other information within that department in a kind of open backchannel so that you’re getting advice from something other than official channels. Why? To get the truth. So you’re not too isolated. In a big organization you get isolated. When you’re president of the United States, you surround yourself finally with “yes” people who only tell you what they think you should hear. You must have backchannels. In much advice there is wisdom.
I have seen more than a few large parachurch organizations kill themselves on exactly this point. They’re not sufficiently interested in the truth. They’re interested in their reputations, but they’re not interested in the truth, so they don’t organize themselves for the truth. This presupposes that you organize yourself for it. You’re dealing with a nation here. Let’s sort out how we get advisors going here. Do you see? No one has all the wisdom. Thus the question of truth extends even to the arena of the nation.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we deal with a God whose every word is true. We deal with a God who loves the truth. We deal with a God, in fact, who says we are sanctified by the truth. On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them through your word. Your word is truth.” At the end of the day, there is no sanctification amongst the people of God apart from this truth-bearing word from this personal God, accepted and absorbed into our lives by the power of the Spirit so that we, his image bearers, reflect truth as well. May it be so of us. Amen.
